How places in Kendall County got their names…

Last fall, the University of Illinois Press had a truly can’t miss sale on electronic books. For $5 you would download any ebook in their entire catalog, which gave me the push I needed to read some good Illinois history.

I chose three books on subjects that looked interesting to me: Illinois History: A Reader; edited by Mark Hubbard; Illinois in the War of 1812 by Gillum Ferguson; and Place Names of Illinois by Edward Callary.

I picked the Illinois history reader mostly because it had a piece by my good friend Ray Hauser, formerly on the history faculty at Waubonsee Community College. Ray is THE expert on the Illinois Confederacy, and is a good and entertaining writer to boot. I’d been interested when Ferguson’s volume came out back in 2012, and had actually corresponded with her, promising I’d buy a copy—better late than never, I guess. I was finally prompted to buy the book because last fall I’d bought a copy of The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien by Mary Elise Antoine while we were visiting the fascinating Apostle Islands Booksellers up in Bayfield, and was interested to see how the stories in the two books meshed. Because, after all, during the War of 1812, Illinois Territory included all of what became the state of Wisconsin, so I figured it would be hard to separate the two stories.

I’ve been reading all three as the mood strikes me. Lately I’ve been concentrating on Place Names of Illinois, which is a fascinating read. And that prompted me to take another look at the place names right here in Kendall County. Given the explosive population growth during the past several years, lots of county residents probably have no idea why Oswego, Yorkville, or even Kendall County have the names they do. There is, of course, a story behind each one of them.

Almost everyone, I suppose, at one time or another, has looked at a map or a road sign and wondered, “Where did that name come from?” Kendall County has more than its own share of places with names that probably sound obscure to those newer residents noted above. I’ve no doubt some may even be puzzling to those who’ve lived here their entire lives.

Lewis B. Judson and his partner Levi F. Arnold, laid Oswego out early enough in 1835 that it is the oldest town in Kendall County. (Little White School Museum collection)

So let’s take a look at some of those names, starting right here at my home. Oswego Township and the village of Oswego both carry the Mohawk Indian name that literally means, “place of the flowing out,” or more familiarly, “the mouth of the stream.” The village was first named Hudson by the two men who laid it out back in 1835, Levi F. Arnold and Lewis B. Judson. Both were native New Yorkers, and picked a familiar name for their new town. When the village was awarded a post office in 1837, however, the government decided to call the post office Lodi. Two names for on the same town was clearly confusing, so later that same year, the four or five property owning male residents of the tiny village gathered and voted (no women allowed to vote back then, whether they owned property or not) on a permanent name, deciding on yet another familiar New York name, Oswego, by a margin of a single vote. When the Illinois General Assembly established townships in 1850, residents sensibly decided to name the township after the village.

Little Rock Township and the village of Little Rock are named after the creek over that direction. The City of Plano was laid out by early settler and businessman Lewis Steward, who told the CB&Q Railroad he’d establish a town if they’d run their line through his property. Which they did, and which he did. John Hollister, one of Stewrd’s associates gave the new town the Spanish word for plain, because, the town’s founders decided, it accurately described the new community’s site.

Bristol Township and the current village of Bristol are both named after early settler Lyman Bristol. In terms of area, Bristol is the smallest among Kendall County’s nine townships.

The modern village of Bristol was originally called Bristol Station because of the depot the CB&Q established there in the early 1850s when the railroad’s main line extended west of the Fox River. During that era, modern Yorkville was separated into two villages, Yorkville south of the Fox River and Bristol north of the river. The two communities finally merged into a single city in the late 1950s, and the “station” was finally dropped from today’s Bristol’s name.

Andrew Jackson’s political fixer and postmaster general, Amos Kendall, in an image created n 1844, just three years after Kendall County was established by the Illinois General Assembly.

Kendall Township, and the county as well, are named after Amos Kendall, journalist and political crony of Andrew Jackson. Kendall was Jackson’s primary political hatchetman and as Postmaster General, handled passing out thousands of postmaster patronage jobs throughout the nation. Jackson basically invented the spoils system, and made sure the postmaster in every town was his personal representative. We might cringe a bit at that today, but at least it gave the White House a direct line into every community, large and small, in the entire country.

Yorkville was named after the village in New York from which some of the early residents came. The north side of modern Yorkville, as noted above, was first known as Bristol and was a separate village until 1957 when Bristol and Yorkville merged.

Boulder Hill, the huge unincorporated subdivision between Oswego and Montgomery east of the Fox River, was named after the Boulder Hill Stock Farm owned by the Bereman Family. The Beremans were famed for their thoroughbred Percheron draft horses and prize cattle. Developer Don L. Dise bought the stock farm, which covered more than 700 acres, in the early 1950s to develop his new community. Bereman once owned more than 1,000 acres of land in Oswego Township. Bereman’s sprawling farm was merely a hobby; he made his fortune manufacturing and selling freckle cream, which was advertised to eliminate skin blemishes and give women smooth, white skin so prized during the Victorian era.

NaAuSay Township was given a made-up name that some of the earliest township residents insisted meant “headwaters of the AuSable.” If it means what they thought it meant, it’s a fitting name since at least one branch of AuSable Creek starts in the township before flowing to its mouth on the Illinois River. AuSable Creek carries a French name generally said to mean “Sandy Creek.” It was a major landmark from colonial times until the 19th Century and is mentioned in many 19th Century Indian treaties.

Big Grove Township was named after the large grove of trees in Sections 9, 10, 15, and 16 of that township when settlers arrived in the 1830s. Newark was first called Georgetown after its founder, George Hollenback when Hollenback laid it out in 1835. Because of a conflict with another Georgetown elsewhere in Illinois, the General Assembly approved renaming it Newark on Feb. 16, 1843, after Newark, Ohio, which had been named after Newark, New Jersey.

Daniel Platt built his second stagecoach in at Plattville from limestone he quarried himself a few miles away. It replaced his first log tavern (Little White School Museum collection)

Lisbon Township and the Village of Lisbon both carry the name of the city in Portugal. According to early histories, settlers wanted to give their new home a different name from any of the county’s other towns. Plattville was named after its founder, Daniel Platt. Platt hailed from Plattsburg, N.Y., which his ancestors also founded.

Waubonsie Creek is named for the well-known Pottawatomie war chief who lived in the area. Waubonsee also gave his name to Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove and Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora. Note the different spellings—since the chief could neither read nor write English, feel free to spell it however you like. Waubonsie was also the name of a large reed marsh extending over some 350 acres near the intersection of U.S. Route 30 and U.S. Route 34 in Oswego and Montgomery. The marsh was drained in the early 1900s, but still reappears after heavy rains.

Morgan Creek is named for Ebenezer Morgan, an early Oswego Township settler and millwright. Hollenback Creek is named for the Hollenback family, early settlers and business leaders, noted above.

Bartlett Creek, also called Bartlett’s Run, which snakes through Oswego and crosses Main Street in downtown Oswego a block south of the old village hall, is named after the Bartlett family, early Oswego settlers. The small house on the west side of Main Street where it crosses the creek was built by the Bartletts when they came from New York in 1837, and may be the oldest house in Oswego.

Seward Township is named after New York Gov. William H. Seward, later U.S. Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. The township was originally named Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin, but the name had to be changed after it was discovered another Illinois township already carried that name.

Fox Township is, of course, named after the Fox River. Millbrook is named for the mill that used to be there back in the 19th Century.

The Mo-Ah-Way Reserve in the far southwest corner of Oswego Township and the Waish-Kee-Shaw Reserve in the far southwest corner of Oswego Township and extreme northwest corner of NaAuSay Township as drawn on the original plat map of Oswego Township published in 1842 from a survey taken in 1838. (Little White School Museum collection)

In the Treaty of 1829 signed at Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin, the U.S. Government granted reserves of land to two Indians then living in Kendall County. The larger Waish Kee Shaw Reserve went to the Indian wife of fur trader and businessman David Laughton and to her son, Joseph. The other reserve was granted to an individual named Mo-Ah-Way, of whom little else is known. Reservation Road bisects the two reserves, thus the road’s name. And the Oswegoland Park District’s Waa Kee Sha Park was named after Waish Kee Shaw. There is no evidence either Waish Kee Shaw or Mo-Ah-Way ever lived on their reserves.

Montgomery, which now extends well into Kendall County, was originally named Graytown after its founder, Daniel Gray. But again, a name conflict required a change, so it was renamed Montgomery after the county in New York many settlers came from.

The names of roads, towns, and streams can be a sort of guide to the history of an area. In our own area, Indian, French, and early pioneer influences are all evident. Knowing the origin of local place names is one way to make local history come alive.

One of these days, I’ll take a look at the names of the rural post offices that used to dot the landscape until the U.S. Postal Service initiated Rural Free Delivery, because that’s another fascinating look at a time so far in the past nobody remembers it any more.

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