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Rays Place
Also see [ Railway Officials in America 1906
] NEW
Rays
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By natural and acquired advantages this is one of the important and progressive integral divisions of La Salle
County, and it was one of the first townships of the county to attract settlers. Of the township a former historian
has written as follows: “Its location is an enviable one, having the grand rapids of the Illinois River on the
south, the Village of Marseilles in the southeast corner, and Ottawa near the southwest. The Illinois & Michigan
Canal and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad cross it in the south, and the Fox River, in the north
and west, with its vast water-power resources, makes for Rutland a situation unsurpassed for manufacturing interests."
The foregoing estimate was one that was written in the year 1886. The township has been known for the prolific
yields it has given as an agricultural district of exceptional opulence and progressiveness.
Rutland Township was organized April 2, 1850, and for the first year or two bore the name of Trenton, which was
then discarded for the present title. In each of these township sketches it has been deemed sufficient to designate
only the officials elected in the respective townships in the years of their organization, and in Rutland the first
corps of officials (1850) was as follows: Supervisor, A. D. Butterfield; clerk, J. R. Shaver; assessor, W. Pitzer;
collector, Cyrus Shaver; highway commissioners, E. S. Hallowell, O. Olmstead, John Nichol; justices of the peace,
John Gibson, J. Smith; constables, J. M. Trenary and C. Shaver.
The first settler in Rutland Township was William A. Clark, who came from South Carolina and who here settled in
the year 1829. The same year witnessed the arrival of David, Samuel and Joseph Grove, as well as Rezin Debolt and
Henry Brumback, the latter's daughter Lizzie having been the first white child born in the township. Other sterling
pioneers who cafae to the township in the decade between 1830 and 1840 were: William L. Dunnavan, Edward Keys,
Christopher Long, Mathias Trumbo, David Shaver, William Parr, Samuel Milliken, Goodman Hargus, G. W. Howe, Anna
Pitzer, Edward Sanders, Jacob Anderson, Andrew Dall, Vital Vermit, James M. and John C. Phillips, John Weitsell,
Rev. John St. Clair, William Anderson, Solomon Channel, A. D. Butterfield, Ephraim Shaver, Thomas Tuttle, Garver
Gunderson, Timothy Corbit, Walter D. Rood, Jonathan Daniel, and John Gibson.
The population of Rutland Township in. 1910, including a part of the City of Marseilles, mentioned on other pages,
was 2,308, and the 1920 census recorded 1,842.
FROM:
History of LaSalle County, Illinois
By: Michael Cyprian O'Byron
The Lewis Pullishing Company
Chicago and New York
1924
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