dusts of the air and built a black top soil that included a mixture of vegetable and animal decay amid the ashes of forest and prairie fires. The settlement of our land has required only a figurative thirty seconds on the total geological scale of time. To this new soil came new animals, including man. Our mountain forebears who first saw these plains were amazed, for mile after mile they extended to the horizon, level beyond belief. We who live upon the flat land are so accustomed to it that we forget it is something different than most of the world knows. For only in the great Mississippi Valley and in the Pampas country are plains found on so vast a scale.
To this flat land our mountain ancestors came; on foot, horseback and in Conestogas. Husbands and wives dared the new frontier together; the men with guns and Bibles, the women with stout hearts and children. Ours is a heritage of courage and determination. Not one of these pioneer parents of ours ever made a dime by selling America short. To them we respectfully dedicate this book. They were daring men and women who
Set their feet in the Wilderness
And the Wilderness became a Home!
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. Jesuit Relations, LXXXVII., page 163
2. The Arrowsmitb Battlefield; Wm. B. Brigham, and an unpublished manuscript, The Fox Campaign of 1730 by C. C. K.
3. Des Noyelles, reporting by letter; Wisconsin Historical Collection, Vol.
16.
4. Local surveys began as soon as the base line, surveyed east from the village of Cahokia, and the Third Principal Meridian, running north from the mouth of the Ohio River, were completed for starting points. We recommend Dr. Arthur W. Watterson's thesis on this in the McLean County Historical Society's library. The second meridian ran north from the mouth of the Little Blue River in Indiana, and the fourth ran north from the mouth of the Illinois River. We believe it is true these lines were accurately surveyed over trackless prairies on a true north and south line because the engineers nightly sighted on Polaris and aligned ground stakes on it. In 1821 Polaris was 1° 40' from the true Pole, its apparent motion being around it on that radius. The engineers could know that at 3 o'clock, day or night, Polaris would be exactly true north in April and October, with the other months figured proportionately. Dr. F. W. Schlesinger of Adler Planetarium states he does not know the method used at that date.
5. The first land recordings in lower McLean County were in 1831; in that part which later became Woodford County, the first recorded patent we have found is that of Orman Robinson, who filed for the east half of the southwest quarter in Section eleven, Kansas Township, February 4, 1834.
6. It is interesting to note the several jurisdictions over our area. First claimed by Spain, then Plymouth Colony, then actually occupied by the French until taken over by the British on October 10, 1765, it was finally claimed and occupied for Virginia Colony in July, 1778 by George Rogers
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