Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen,
I like to think of myself as a historian ... a family historian. It is
important to know that I am human as everyone of my
ancestors. Some of them may have been strange, but none were
alien. :) So know all ye, that I can be no harder on my forebares
than I could be on myself. Therefore, I look at history as I might
live it. And, that is a lot of fun.
Many of my Illinois ancestors probably stopped in Massac
County, or at least passed through it. So this week I have
become the County Coordinator for the Massac County
ILGenWeb Project. This means, among other things, that I get
to build a web site that will hopefully help researchers looking
for information about that Illinois county.
The county was named for the fort located there. It is an ancient
site, predating the French who built the fort. About two miles
south and east of Unionville, are the ancient mounds called
Kincaid Mounds. There are ten of them, each about 30 feet high
and with bases of up to 200 feet by 300 feet. They are the
earliest discovered culture in Massac County from Indian Knoll
culture to Mississippian period.
Fort Massac, as mentioned, was built by the French. They
abandoned it after the French and Indian War. Due to it being a
symbol of the Euro-American, the Cherokee destroyed it.
President George Washington ordered it rebuilt. Anthony
Wayne, of the Battle of Fallen Timbers in northwestern Ohio,
and Zebulon M Pike, father of the Zebulon Pike of the discovery
of Pike's Peak in Colorado, were given the task to rebuild it.
The Fort also played parts in events prior to the War of 1812.
Aaron Burr, the vice-president under Thomas Jefferson, stopped
at the Fort for a few days in June 1805 to confer with James
Wilkenson, one of the Forts officers. This was part of a plot to
separate the western United States from the original thirteen
colonies. The plot included setting himself up as King Burr and
protected by Spain.
This is disputed, that instead he was planning to conquer
Mexico. Fact: he was massing men, flatboats, supplies, and
provisions on the Cumberland Island, which is near present day
Golconda. Well, Burr was arrested and tried for treason, as
most of us know.
The novel, The Man Without a Coutry, written by Edward
Everett Hale used this situation as basis for its plot. Mr. Hale's
choice of a situation as the nucleus for a story was a great
success and had only been adopted by one other person some
twenty years before [by Hawthorne, with very different material
and for a very different purpose]. I had better revise "novel"
for I believe it is classified as a "short story".
The Fort really took a beating from the New Madrid earthquake
and abandoned shortly after the War of 1812. One of Massac
county's residents of the late 1850s and early 1860s, was one of my
ancestors who experienced that earthquake. In the words of a cousin
of mine, our ".... family lost almost everything they owned in
that quake and after shocks. They suffered through the
earthquake and then came the War of 1812. In 1813 they were
in Caldwell Co., KY. having made their way up the Mississippi
and Ohio Rivers, in their covered wagon and what they had
left."
The movie film, U.S. Marshals, with Tommy Lee Jones was
partially filmed in the wooded Mermet swampland near
Metropolis. Also the Irvin S Cobb Bridge at Brookport, the
Massac Memorial Hospital, and a Truck Stop.in the county were
featured. The same cousin mentioned above relates this family
story about the filming of that movie: "When Tommy Lee Jones
was making that movie ... he hurt his hand (for
real) and saw a doctor in Paducah. Our youngest daughter was
in the medical building and ran into him in a corridor. She said
she thought 'that man looks just like Tommy Lee Jones.' She said
he was very pleasant looking and smiled in her direction. She
was thinking Tommy Lee Jones has a double living in Paducah.
Later when watching the local news she learned she had seen
Tommy Lee and not his double."
The mounds mentioned earlier may have part of the daily lives of
ancestors of the Shawnee and Cherokee peoples.
The cottonmouth snake, a swamp dweller measuring a half inch
short of 50 inches was killed at Mermet Lake. The lake taking
its name from Father Mermet, a Jesuit priest, who ministered to the Indians
in 1791 when Fort Massace was known as Fort Assumption.
New Columbia took its name from the Columbine flower and was
settled in the 1840s. Since Monroe county had a town so named
the word "new" was added to avoid confusion.
There is a town Joppa down river from Metropolis who had a
line of the Burlington RR ending there. And, a village was
named for L. D. Hillerman in 1835.
And, because of its name, the town of Metropolis has become
the hometown of the super hero, Superman. A giant statue guards
the entrance to the county courthouse adn is across the square
from the Super[man] Museum.
Wado,
Bill
--
Notes:
1.
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/state/
