Jacksonville

Jacksonville, a city and the county-seat of Morgan county, Illinois, U.S.A., on Mauvaiseterre Creek, about 33 m. W. of Springfield. Pop. (1890), 12,935; (1900), 15,078, of whom 1497 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 15,326. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago & Alton, the Chicago, Peoria & St Louis and the Wabash railways. It is the seat of several educational and philanthropic institutions. Illinois College (Presbyterian), founded in 1829 through the efforts of the Rev. John Millot Ellis (1793-1855), a missionary of the American Home Missionary Society and of the so-called Yale Band (seven Yale graduates devoted to higher education in the Middle West), is one of the oldest colleges in the Central States of the United States. The Jacksonville Female Academy (1830) and the Illinois Conservatory of Music (1871) were absorbed in 1903 by Illinois College, which then became co-educational. The college embraces, besides the collegiate department, Whipple Academy (a preparatory department), the Illinois Conservatory of Music and a School of Art, and in 1908-1909 had 21 instructors and 173 students. The Rev. Edward Beecher was the first president of the college (from 1830 to 1844), and among its prominent graduates have been Richard Yates, jun., the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, Newton Bateman (1822-1897), superintendent of public instruction of Illinois from 1865 to 1875 and president of Knox College in 1875-1893, Bishop Theodore N. Morrison (b. 1850), Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Iowa after 1898, and William J. Bryan. The Illinois Woman’s College (Methodist Episcopal; chartered in 1847 as the Illinois Conference Female Academy) received its present name in 1899. The State Central Hospital for the Insane (opened in 1851), the State School for the deaf (established in 1839, opened in 1845, and the first charitable institution of the state) and the State School for the Blind (1849) are also in Jacksonville. Morgan Lake and Duncan Park are pleasure resorts. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,981,582, an increase of 17.7% since 1900. Jacksonville was laid out in 1825 as the county-seat of Morgan county, was named probably in honour of Andrew Jackson, and was incorporated as a town in 1840, chartered as a city in 1867, and re-chartered in 1887. The majority of the early settlers came from the southern and border states, principally from Missouri and Kentucky; but subsequently there was a large immigration of New England and Eastern people, and these elements were stronger in the population of Jacksonville than in any other city of southern Illinois. The city was a station of the “Underground Railroad.”