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CAHOKIA: PERIOD OF CULTURE
A GOVERNOR. It seems strange that great and outstanding figures in history should most frequently spring from insignificant surroundings; be the sons or daughters of humble folk, be subject to hardship and privation in youth. Yet, thus history records, and thus we may read in its interesting pages. To Cahokia then came sometime in 1814, a man of outstanding legal abilities, a scholar and author, who was sixteen years later to be elected governor of the State of Illinois, and who was to prove himself one of the outstanding men that occupied said high position in its line of chief executives.
John M. Reynolds came to Cahokia fresh from the service in the private ranks in the war of 1812, and was a practicing lawyer, having served term with his uncle, Thomas Reynolds, who was a member of the Supreme Court of the State at an early date. Sixteen years after his first appearance as a lawyer in the old courthouse at Cahokia, John M. Reynolds announced his candidacy for governor of this newly erected state. He was at that time a popular member of the Lower House of the State Legislature, and as a speaker and brilliant lawyer was accorded high rank. He announced his candidacy as a Jacksonian Democrat, but not as a radical, rather a conservative-progressive, which seems an anomaly, yet proved he was a discerning politician. This twig of Jacksonian Democracy, was a Baptist minister, a successful business man and one who at that time was lieutenant-governor of Illinois. The candidate for lieutenant-governor on the Kinney ticket was Zadoc Casey, also a minister of the Gospel, and this was made much of by John M. Reynolds and his followers, they presenting this coincidence as a fact that "the Church was in politics." Strange vagaries of the human nature . . . then it was the Protestant church held up for derision because of its political activities, and by fellow Protestants ... today it is the Catholic Church, that with equal inconsistency is accused of "being in politics." And yet, that is exactly the place the Church, should occupy because politics is based on morality and religion, if worthy of the name. In his inaugural address Governor Reynolds advocated free popular education, general internal public improvements, the completion of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and the improvement of the Chicago harbor. (That was in 1830.) He advocated and recommended the completion of the first State penitentiary at Alton, at the direct cost of the state. Under his administration a law was passed re-refunding the old State Bank paper which had the effect of restoring the state credit to par again. Under Governor Reynolds ... once leading citizen of Cahokia ... the Black Hawk war broke out in 1831, and it lasted about eighteen months. The governor actively and energetically participated in the prosecution of this war to a successful and lasting peace. For more on Governor Reynolds, click here to read excerpts from his autobiographical history, My Own Times.A SCHOLAR: The civil government of St. Clair County was, upon its organization on April 14, 1790, entrusted to Justices of the Court of Common Pleas, and its sessions were held principally in Cahokia in a building erected by Francois Saucier in about 1785, and which building was purchased by Antoine Girardin, John du Moulin and Philip Engel, trustees for the county, for the sum of One Thousand dollars. In this building, now again re-erected in Cahokia, court was held for twenty-four years up to the end of 1814. Shortly after the creation of this Court of Common Pleas, there came to Cahokia two young men, whose names were almost identical, differentiated only by one letter. They were John Hays and John Hay. The first mentioned was named Sheriff and the last mentioned was chosen Clerk of the Court. From this man sprang a line of influential and scholarly men, culminating in County judge John B. Hay, who was born in Belleville, St. Clair County, Illinois, in 1834. To John Hay was intrusted the task of notifying the members of the Court of Common Pleas, at the December term, 1813, to assemble for the purpose of finding a more central site for the Court-house, and on Monday, February 14, 1814, these men met in Cahokia, and held a preliminary meeting. On Thursday, March 10, 1814, they again met at the home of George Blair, in what is now the city of Belleville, Illinois, then a corn-field . . . and accepted as a gift a square of land, containing one acre on which the public buildings of St. Clair County were to be erected. This consummated, John Hay moved to Belleville, its second permanent citizen. He was the generalissimo of the pen for the entire county, after that date, 1814, as he had been for many years prior in Cahokia, while the seat of justice, of education and of religion was situated in said village. John Hay, scholar, was the son of Major J. Hay, the English Governor of Upper Canada, during the years that England ruled the country south of the Great Lakes. John Hay received a liberal education and was a scholar of the classics. As already mentioned he settled in Cahokia in 1793, and as a matter of necessity and of foresight, all the offices that required exceptional talent, writing ability, and expert penmanship were settled upon him. Such was John Hay . . . Cahokia's first and foremost scholar of English descent. Cahokia's honored citizen in the days when it attained to civic and cultural heights. Soon again it will rise to great industrial heights.
A SOLDIER: So many men of vision came from out of old Cahokia prior to 1814, that to mention them by name would require many pages of a large book. We have, therefore, in this brief review chosen but three: a Governor, a Scholar, a Soldier. Prominent as a soldier and as also a pioneer resident of Cahokia, was Captain Thomas Brady. He was a native of Pennsylvania, and came to Cahokia prior to the war of Independence. He was a. daring and brave man, as many of his exploits attest. He was among the first to offer his services in the war of the Revolution. Indeed, so impulsive was he that early in 1777, he raised a small company of men from the villages of Cahokia and Prairie du Pont, marched through the wilderness to the fort at St. Joseph, Michigan, then called the "Cow-Pens," and captured it with the loss of but one man. After the organization of St. Clair County by Governor Saint Clair, in 1790, then known as part of the Northwest Territory, Captain Thomas Brady was appointed first Sheriff of the county. He died in Cahokia several years later lamented by many friends.
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