By Jared Olar
Library Assistant
Two summers ago, “From the History Room” presented a series on the unincorporated communities of Tazewell County. In the course of that series, we recalled (in the weblog post of 19 July 2019) a vanished town in Spring Lake Township that was named Spring Garden.
As I wrote back then, Spring Lake Missionary Church is on Town Line Road a few miles west of the Manito Blacktop, and Spring Lake Township Cemetery is located right behind the church. The church and cemetery are located in what was once the town of Spring Garden.
But perhaps it is more correct to say that they are located in what was meant to be the town of Spring Garden, which never had a railroad depot and therefore was never able to take root and grow. That is to say, it might be more accurate to describe Spring Garden as “aborted” rather than “defunct.” In any case, little trace remains of Spring Garden, though Spring Garden Road is still there.
Further information on Spring Garden has been provided to me by Ken Lacey of the Manito Historical Society, who has also been a member of Spring Lake Missionary Church for more than five decades. Lacey said in a recent email:
“The town was ordered to be laid out by Rev. Samuel A. Bumstead, the founding pastor of the church at Spring Lake, who donated the land. He owned the land that became Spring Garden and other acreage two miles south.”
Furthermore, on 10 July 2019, just nine days before my own “From the History Room” post on Talbott and its environs (and unbeknownst to me), Lacey had posted an account of Spring Garden’s history on the Facebook page of the Manito Historical Society.
One of the things that Lacey’s 2019 account explains is why Spring Garden Road doglegs about 300 feet to the west about a quarter-mile south of Spring Lake Missionary Church. Here follows Lacey’s account:
“Spring Garden had been platted and entered into Tazewell county records on Dec. 12, 1856, two years before Manito or Egypt Station had been. Located along a line from Havana to Pekin, Spring Lake and Spring Garden were in hopeful anticipation that the proposed Illinois River Railroad would be routed nearby. The railroad surveyor instead routed the railroad near land in which he had a personal interest. This change ended the hopes of the existing village of Spring Lake Village and destroyed Spring Garden’s hopes of a future. Spring Garden’s lots and streets soon became dominated by a cemetery. . . .
“The land Spring Garden had been located on was owned by the Reformed Church pastor. He planned his village with the church building as its cornerstone. Ironically, the surveyor mistakenly started his measurements 300 feet too far east. The entire village is off by 300 feet. Oak Street is now Spring Garden Road and originally the road was straight all the way to Spring Lake Road. Many years later when the mistake was discovered land descriptions and boundaries had to redefined. Today, 1/4 mile from Spring Lake Road, Spring Garden Road now ‘zig zags’ to correct the 300 foot mistake.”
Lacy provides additional information and detail in his recent email:
“One thing many people do not know is that when the town of Spring Garden was being laid out in 1856, the surveyor had begun in the wrong spot. He miscalculated when he chose the spot as a ‘point of beginning.’ The point he chose was 300 feet east of where he should have started. The whole town was laid out in the wrong place!
“The road that bordered the new town on the east was named ‘Oak Street’ and it eventually continued straight south all the way to the County Line and became known as Spring Garden Road. Bumstead turned the title of the church over to the Reformed Church denomination, but it was written according to the correct legal description of property he actually owned. The church building wasn’t actually on the property described in the deed.
“In 1866 the church asked Rev. Bumstead to donate additional land to the church to establish a cemetery on the property that was originally intended to be Spring Garden lots. The new surveyor discovered the mistake made in 1856. This discovery revealed to all the landowners along the east side of Spring Garden Road that they had a 300-ft. strip of land on the other side of the road which had been farmed by someone else for 10 years. Likewise, the farmers on the west side of the road had treated the 300-ft. strip as their own land when it wasn’t. The plat shows at least two structures and a school that would have been affected by being placed alongside the road.”
A comparison of the 1864 Tazewell County plat wall map with the 1873 “Atlas Map of Tazewell County” will reveal the original surveyor’s error. The 1864 plat shows the land of “S. A. Bumpstead,” and shows Spring Garden Road (Oak Street) as a straight north-south road. But by 1873, Spring Garden itself is no longer there, while the road has a dogleg south of the cemetery, which brings the southernmost length of the road back to where it should have been originally.
In his email, Lacey mentions that the original 1856 surveyor’s error continued to cause problems and confusion even up to the present day. After Lacey first posted the story of Spring Garden on the Historical Society’s website, he was personally thanked by John Parkin, a landowner along Spring Garden Road. Parkin told him that Lacey’s information had solved a mystery about their property that had been confusing Parkin and his brother.
“It seems that 300-ft. strip had been causing problems in property descriptions to all who live along the road,” Lacey wrote.
