1832

Only two more land purchases occurred in 1832.  On April 5, 1832, James Harvey purchased 160 acres for $200 on the land we now know as the 223 property between Cruger Road and Boyd Parkway.  On April 21, 1832, Peter Scott purchased 160 acres for $200 in the area of Washington Estates across from Hillcrest Golf.

1832 saw a dearth of new arrivals, to the point where the area was now a small community instead of a collection of settlers.

The Christian Church was started in 1832 at the schoolhouse near what is now Dallas Road by Reverend Richard McCorkle, who had recently arrived in the area.  The original members were the McCorkles, The James McClure family, and the John Johnson family.

1832 saw the first physician in the township when Dr. Russell Tower Goodwin came from Vermont.  Before Goodwin's arrival, the residents of our township were their own doctors, and their principal medicine was white walnut bark.  Goodwin left the area in 1840.

This comes from the personal writings of Hosea Stout, a traveler through the area:

I was now very unwell & hardly able to go about notwithstanding I went on traveling up the river & by falling in with Mr. Holland who had a wagon I rode home with him some 15 miles that night at Holland's Grove again intending to try my fortune to the North.  Mr. Holland tried to dissuade me from going North not believing I could get a school & I had not much hopes myself. 

In the December 1832 Tazewell County Board minutes, the first documented appearance of the name "Holland's Grove" is seen describing the path of a proposed new road:

In the spring of 1832, Chief Black Hawk entered Illinois with an army of Natives in a last-ditch effort to protect his homeland.  The aggression struck fear in many White settlers, and Washington even erected a fort in case the battles came this far.  It was said in Charlotte Birkett's obituary in 1885:

Soon after their procuring of their new home in the wilderness, the Indians became outraged with the whites and buried the pipe of peace, and lifting the tomahawk, unified in one general determination to murder all the whites that could be found in the country.  In order to save the lives of themselves and children, they were compelled to bury all of their goods in large boxes deep into the ground, and fled to the Fort for two or three months, until the government could send out her forces and drive the Indians from the country.  

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