Category Archives: Communities

Tri-City boys basketball, 1952-53

The Tri-City Tornadoes were kings of Sangamon County basketball in the 1952-53 season. Tri-City Community High School, located in Buffalo, was the first consolidated high school district in Illinois. The merger of formerly separate high schools in Buffalo, Dawson and … Continue reading

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First Rochester schools

The 1881 History of Sangamon County, Illinois, Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships includes two short accounts of the earliest schoolhouses and teachers near Rochester. As described, the schools were rough and improvised, and one burned down in … Continue reading

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The Lemon Jelly Cake (Madeline Babcock Smith)

Madeline Babcock Smith earned her spot in the literary limelight. But she never got to enjoy it. Smith’s first novel, The Lemon Jelly Cake, published Aug. 4, 1952, “enjoyed an immediate and astounding success,” Dan Guillory wrote in his introduction … Continue reading

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Mazeppa (vanished town)

Long before there was any Ukrainian presence to speak of in Sangamon County, there was a town with a Ukrainian name. The town of Mazeppa stood for a few years after 1837 in what is now Ball Township, on the … Continue reading

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Bando (a railroad story)

The only place in the United States named “Bando” is in Sangamon County. If you want to visit it from Springfield, you won’t have to go far. From Stuart Park on the city’s northwest edge, follow the trail that curves … Continue reading

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East Springfield village hall and ‘calaboose’

Invisible and almost inaccessible, tucked into the side of the 19th Street overpass, a tumbledown brick building was in 2022 the last remnant of the once-feisty village of East Springfield. When constructed in 1901, the building served as the East … Continue reading

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‘Ghost towns’ of Sangamon County

This entry has been expanded. See “Hat tips” below.  Sangamon County doesn’t have the kind of ghost towns sometimes portrayed in Western movies. But a variety of vanished or forgotten place names dot the county, each of which tells its … Continue reading

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Bradfordton

Bradfordton owes its existence to a short-lived railroad and its name to a veteran of the War of 1812. Never an incorporated community, Bradfordton – on Illinois 97 (Jefferson Street extended) west of Springfield – originally was known as “Bradfordton … Continue reading

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Cotton Hill

Cotton Hill was the only community wiped from the map by the construction of Lake Springfield in the 1930s. But there wasn’t much there to begin with. The Illinois State Journal explained the origin of Cotton Hill in an editorial … Continue reading

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The Lochridge brothers, Pawnee merchants

The Lochridge brothers began as farmers, but became grocers, businessmen, investors and, for a time, bankers. In the process, they helped build the town of Pawnee. The first Lochridges, Revolutionary War veteran Capt. John Lochridge (1761-1851) and his son William … Continue reading

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