A Collection of Property Tax Rolls from Coles County, Illinois, Documenting the Transition of Federally Owned Land into the Taxable Economy, 1837–1854, with Several Signed by Illinois Politicians in Abraham Lincoln’s Circle.
Vandalia, Springfield, and Coles County Illinois: 1837–1854. Eight documents totaling about 75 pages, 7 ¾ x 12 ½ inches and 7 ½ x 12 inches. Generally folded with toning at folds, occasional small stains, and minor damage to margins; one with more extensive repairs made with thread; entirely legible. Overall excellent. Item #List3733
A collection of official documents from the Illinois auditor’s and Coles County collector’s offices, recording mainly lists of properties in Coles County that had become subject to taxation, with two recording properties owing back taxes and one recording tax delinquencies caused by assessment error.
The lists of properties newly subject to taxation generally indicate the year in which the land was entered—that is, when a settler had filed a claim with the federal land office registering intent to settle—and the year in which that land became subject to taxation. These lands were not immediately taxable, as the settler first had to meet certain legal requirements, such as living on and cultivating the land, before the government would issue a patent transferring the title of the property from the federal government to the individual and thereby making them liable for taxes on it.
The first Euro-American settlers had come to what would be Coles County in 1824, and it was set off from Clark County in 1830. That same year, the Indian Removal Act passed Congress, and the remaining Indigenous tribes in the region—many had already left following treaties earlier in the century—were pushed west of the Mississippi River. The federal government could then survey and map the land, and open it to entry and patent by settlers like those represented in these tax rolls. The earliest dated entries recorded in these documents are from 1835 and were patented in 1841 (though some entries likely occurred earlier, as one document lists entries patented in 1838 but does not list entry date), representing some of the earliest legal Euro-American settlements in the county. These documents thus record the incorporation of newly federally-owned “frontier” land into private ownership and into the county and state economy, and implicitly the placement of previously tribally stewarded land into the hands of its first settlers.
Also of interest in the documents are the signatories themselves. These include Albert Compton, William Lee D. Ewing, and Thomas Hayes Campbell, prominent early Illinois political figures; but also Levi Davis, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln’s, and James Shields, one of Lincoln’s best-known political rivals. Shields and Lincoln nearly fought a duel in 1842 after Lincoln criticized Shields’ work as Illinois State Auditor—the same office in which Shields signed one of the Coles County tax rolls preserved here. Men like these occupied a layer of early Illinois society distinct from many of the settlers whose lands appear in the records: lawyers, auditors, legislators, and political figures who linked frontier communities to the emerging institutions of state government. Coles County itself also held personal significance within Lincoln’s world, as the home of his father Thomas Lincoln and stepmother Sarah Bush Lincoln.
Documents as follows:
.
Price: $1,800.00