ROCKPOKT

Benjamin W. Clark removed to the opposite side of the river in 1836, after selling his Illinois claim to Colonel Stevenson, and Messrs. Hamilton and Whiteside, the men who laid out the town of Stephensou, now the city of Rock Island, and Rock Island City, part of the site now the village of Sears.

They platted the purchase here, named the place Rockport, and sold lots to eastern capitalists, and either sold or gave away lots in the embryo city to Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun and other men of national reputation.

No enterprises, however, attracted population or enhanced valuations to remind lot owners of their holdings, and ac­ cumulating state taxes strangled the infant city.

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Illinois Ancestors

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