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NAVIGATION
LaSalle
County
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Illinois
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History at
Rays Place
Also see [ Railway Officials in America 1906
] NEW
Rays
Place
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The Town of Elbridge, in the southeastern corner of Edgar County, includes 26,240 acres (41 sections) of land,
all of which, except a few small tracts in the north portion of the town, is timber land. The soil is rich and
fruitful, and, with careful intelligent farming. these lands are exceedingly profitable. The people, at least many
of them, were born and raised on the farms which they now occupy. understand them thoroughly and are prosperous
and contented, preferring the timber lands to the prairie. The Big Four and Vandalia Railroads traverse this town
and afford convenient transportation facilities for the people and their produce. The original settlers of Elbridge
were the Rays, Landis, Fosters, Yeargins. Ewings, Marley, Elliotts, Whites, Parrish, Pattons, Maddoeks, Cassels
and Mortons.
The stream called Sugar Creek meanders through this town diagonally from northwest to southeast, and while it breaks
the otherwise level land, it more than compensates for this with its rich bottom lands, the large beds and banks
of gravel for improving highways, and the plentiful supply of water. A coal shaft is being sunk near Nevins by
the Crandall Coal Company, a good vein of coal having been discovered.
In 1826, the New Providence Presbyterian Church was established in the Ray and Ewing settlement, and religious
services and Sunday school were held there with more regularity during the next few years than in Paris. The church
building was of logs and stood where the New Providence Cemetery now is, on a very handsome site then in the midst
of a grove of large beech and sugar trees. The present building is of frame, erected a half century or more ago
in another part of the same grove, and has been preserved with scrupulous care. The large beech and maple trees,
which surround this church, remind the worshippers who assemble there that “The groves were God’s first temples,”
and beget and promote a feeling of kinship with Nature and Nature’s God, that will long abide in a contemplative
soul. At Marley there is a Methodist Protestant church building; and at Nevins there is a Christian church and
an Old School Baptist church. There is a Christian church near Sandford, and the United Brethren Church at Vermilion
is within the town of Elbridge. On the hill north of Marley lie the remains of the only Indian ever slain by a
white man in Edgar County. This Indian was wandering away from his tribe, and was wantonly killed by a bad white
man who, for that and other lawless acts, was whipped by a party of the best citizens awl compelled to leave the
county.
TOWN OFFICERS.— George Roll, Supervisor; Herbert Parrish, Town Clerk; Byron Bergen, Assessor; E. F. Johnson, Collector;
Fred B. Crandall, Uriah Vance, Justices of the Peace, Jerome Baker, Bud Saunders, Constables; E. W. Anderson, W.
H. Cockroft, Joseph Comstock, Commissions of Highways.
FROM:
Encyclopedia of Illinois
and the History of Edgar County
Edited by: H. Van Sellar.
Munsell Publishing Company
Chicago 1905
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