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NAVIGATION
LaSalle
County
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History at
Rays Place
Also see [ Railway Officials in America 1906
] NEW
Rays
Place
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Like most of the other townships in the county, Ophir Township was created in the spring of 1850. The 1920 official
census gives it a population of 694, while the census of 1910 records 768. The first white settler was John Reynolds,
who came, with his family, in 1830, and established his residence not far distant from the present Village of Triumph.
The family was compelled to depart when the Black Hawk war threatened this section, in 1832, and the Reynolds family
never returned to the township, the land claim having been sold to Asa Baldwin, who here established his home in
the latter part of 1832, and who later, in 1834, sold the property to Rev. Stephen R. Biggs, a Methodist circuit-rider
who here attempted to start a town. Other pioneers of the first decade in the history of this township were: John
Johnson, Joseph Worsley, Frederick Worsley, Charles C. Webster, Abner Westgate.
The little Village of Triumph, with a population of about 300, figures as a station on the line of the Chicago
& North Western Railroad.
The first township officers of whom there is official record were those elected in 1852, and they were as here
noted: Supervisor, Jairus Lawrence; clerk, Clement P. Eastman; assessor, William D. Stewart; collector,. Benjamin
Austin; justice of the peace, John Worsley; highway commissioners, Jairus Lawrence, Joseph Billings, Simeon Austin;
constables, Benjamin Austin, H. H. Worsley.
FROM:
History of LaSalle County, Illinois
By: Michael Cyprian O'Byron
The Lewis Pullishing Company
Chicago and New York
1924
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