FORWARD

The first written record of anyone crossing over the site that became EL PASO (IL) goes to the Black Hawk war veteran JOHN D. GARDINER, who later lived in El Paso and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery.

The Native Americans and bison made the overland trails, and our pioneers made other trails as they rode overland to discuss mutual problems, including that of the Indians. The POTAWATOMI were the first to move from the immediate area, leaving from Six Mile Creek near Hudson in 1831 before the Black Hawk War broke out. The DELAWARE, MIAMI, OTTAWA, POTAWATOMI, and the early PEORIA's were reasonably friendly, with the KICKAPOO usually listed as undesirables. The SACs and the FOXes were the most dreaded. In the Winter of Deep Snows (1830-31) the local Indians were of more aid than danger to the hard pressed pioneers, and they sometimes brought in food when the whites found hunting too difficult.

With 5 other families, William McCord, Sr. and his family left their Southern home in Tennessee on June 7, 1827. They traveled in tightly packed covered wagons in which the women and children rode while the men and older sons walked behind with their cattle. After a very trying journey in a lot of rain, they finally arrived in the little settlement of Twin Grove, a few miles west of Blooming Grove (now called Bloomington.) The only settlements were in the groves and the only mill was a corn cracker at Twin Grove which was operated by horse power.

In March, 1831, the McCord family moved north to the upper Panther Creek settlement in Greene Township where their cousins, the Patrick's, had located. William McCord made a claim for land, which when surveyed, was the northeast quarter of section 19 in Greene Township & filed his claim at the Danville land office.

The families who preceded the McCord's to the Greene Twp. settlement were:

THE PATRICK'S: William, Allen, Eliza, Winslow, Almira, Eli, and Mary Amanda

THE BILBREY'S

THE STOUT'S

This is the Illinois Central Locomotive #1 which pulled the first scheduled train into Kappa, IL, & Panola, IL, (Woodford Co.) on May 23, 1853. El Paso did not yet exist.

What is today called the Main Line of Mid-America made its first scheduled passenger run northward, passing KAPPA at 8:00am on May 23, 1853, and PANOLA at 8:54am. The engine and cars had been previously brought south from the Illinois River on a non-scheduled run. ALLEN HART, an early Palestine Twp. settler, came into Kappa on this train, the first ever scheduled over the first 50 miles of rails of what became the vast Illinois Central Railroad System.