1836

In 1836, William Kern built a flouring mill on the banks of Farm Creek near South Adams Street.

1836 also saw many road requests to the Tazewell County Board from Washington to various other towns in the county.  This can be attributed to a growing population and possibly some modernization and less intimidation in dealing with the prairie.

1836 was the winter of the "Sudden Change." 

1836 was the year Asa Danforth first arrived in Washington Township, after spending a few months in Peoria.  Another early settler who arrived in 1836 was William B. Yale. 

Joel & Charlotte Sheppard arrived in 1836 from Indiana, following in the footsteps of Charlotte's sister Elizabeth Gibson Reid and brother George Gibson, who were already here.  Their son Dennis Sheppard would play a large role in Washington in later years, but in 1836, he was just seven years old.  Some of Dennis' recollections of the year they arrived include:

The school house was a log building and was located about where the present primary school building stands.  I went to school with Thomas Birkett’s children, William, Thomas and Dan, and their three sisters.  George H. Shaw, one of the first school teachers here, taught the school and he was called the abolitionist.  There was also another school here and they were known as the Brownites, being taught by a man named Brown.  There was great rivalry between these schools, which were then all paid schools.  The Brown school was in the second story of the present Roehm shoe store building...The business square had been covered with hazel brush which had just been cut down.  As a barefoot boy I remember it was hard work in running on the stubbles of the brush...When we first came here it was pretty wild and there was lots of game.  I remember when we lived on the claim a drove of 16 deer came right up to the house.  There were also lots of wild turkeys in the woods.  

William Birkett arrived from Peoria this year and purchased 320 acres from the federal government.  Birkett purchased 75% of the acreage in section 26, which is the area that Guth Road and Foster Road zig-zag through south of town, south of Glendale Cemetery.

In December 1836, Samuel Landes was appointed postmaster.

Back to 1835 --- On to 1837