04/27/2026
Sugar Grove Historical Society Presents
Almost Part of Wisconsin.
Part IV
Between 1760 and 1809, the land we call Illinois had been ruled by six separate governments: France, Great Britain, Virginia, the United States, the Northwest Territory, and the Indiana Territory. And governance was not a constant in this wild and distant land.
Even the name Illinois was not a promise. In 1784, the Land Ordinance, led by Thomas Jefferson, recommended the names Assenisipia, Illinoia, and Polypotamia for the areas that would later become the state of Illinois. We in Kane Co. would have been part of Assenisipia.
With constant change and uncertainty, new settlers grew dependent on the 1787 Northwest Ordinance for governance rather than on the faraway national government, never knowing when another change would come.
By 1809, a new chapter began with the creation of the Illinois Territory. Its first governor, Ninian Edwards, presided over a vast expanse of land that bore little resemblance to our state today. The territory stretched from the Ohio River to the Canadian border, an immense and largely unsettled frontier.
In 1816, the Indiana-Illinois boundary was set by Congress, allowing Indiana’s northern border to be extended 10 miles north of Lake Michigan's southermost tip to provide usable waterfront property and harbors. This was established as part of Indiana's admission to the Union on December 11, 1816.
Without intervention, using the Indiana-Illinois border would have left Illinois with no Lake Michigan shoreline, and Kane County would have become part of the Michigan Territory.
In 1818, Territorial Delegate for Illinois, Nathaniel Pope, fought to change our northern boundary from ten miles north of the southern tip of Lake Michigan to over 63 miles north to give Illinois ample access to Lake Michigan. Pope convinced Congress by arguing that Lake Michigan would not only strengthen Illinois economically but also help ensure the union of the United States by connecting Illinois to the northern non-slaveholding states of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York through the lakes.
If Illinois depended only on the waterways of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash rivers, its economy and sympathies would have been forever linked with the southern slaveholding states. By securing a northern connection through Lake Michigan, Illinois would become anchored to the free states of the North.
As we moved toward statehood, this decision helped to create Illinois’s identity and set us on a very different course.
Kane County Formation
1790-1801 Kane was part of the Northwest Territory
1801-1812 Kane was part of St. Clair County
1812-1815 Kane was part of Madison County
1815-1816 Kane was part of Edwards County
1816-1819 Kane was part of Crawford County
1819-1821 Kane was part of Clark County
1821-1823 Kane was part of Pike County
1823-1825 Kane was part of Fulton County
1825-1835 Kane was part of Putnam County
1835-1836 Kane was part of LaSalle County
