1842

Is 1842 William & Jane Holland's daughter Esther was born.  Esther was the longest surviving Holland child, passing away on August 31, 1932, at the age of 90.

James Kirke Paulding toured the western part of the U.S. in 1842 and wrote the following about the Illinois River Valley:

With the exception of points where the prairies approach borders, the river is every where skirted by those magnificent forests which constitute one of the most striking and beautiful features of this new world and completely sheltered from the storm, seems to glide along unconscious of the uproar of the elements around. It flows through a region which even in this land of milk and honey, is renowned far and near for its almost unequaled fertility, and the ease with which it may be brought to produce the rich rewards of labor. There is, perhaps, no part of the world where the husbandman labors less, and reaps more, than throughout a great portion of this fine state, on which nature has bestowed her most exuberant bounties.

But, strange to say, I found the good-hearted people, almost without exception, complaining of "hard times," not arising, however, from the usual sources of war, famine, or pestilence, but from actual abundance.

Paulding asserts that the bountiful harvests of the Central Illinois wheat crop had no home.  In 1841, wheat sold for 41 cents per bushel in Peoria and $1.00 in Chicago.  Getting it to Chicago was the problem.

State-wide problems occurred in 1842 with the closing of the State Bank of Illinois, which left Illinoisans without a currency center and with handfuls of state notes now worth only pennies on the dollar.

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