In a previous post here, we looked into the historical accounts and legends of how the pioneer settlers here voted to name their town “Pekin” on 19 Jan. 1830. Early accounts tell us that Ann Eliza Cromwell , wife of Pekin co-founder Nathan Cromwell, was the one who suggested the name Pekin. As it happens, Mrs. Cromwell is also said to have chosen the names for most of the streets in the “Original Town” of Pekin. History and legend credits her with Pekin’s feminine-named streets.
Most of the standard works on Pekin’s history state unequivocally that Mrs. Cromwell chose the street names. For example, “Pekin Centenary 1849-1949” says she was “responsible for the early naming of the streets and the unique designation of the east and west street series with the names of women.”
The same thing is repeated in “Pekin Sesquicentennial 1824-1974” and “Pekin, Illinois: A Pictorial History” (1998, 2004), but with the additional detail that, as it says in “Pekin Sesquicentennial,” the streets were named “in honor of female relatives and friends of the original settlers.” Local historian Fred W. Soady’s 1960 paper, “In These Waste Places,” also says the street names “remain as daily reminders of the pioneer women of the city.”
The two earliest published accounts of Pekin’s founding, however, express some hesitation about Mrs. Cromwell’s role in the street-naming. Most remarkably, the 1870 Pekin City Directory of W.W. Sellers & W.H. Bates says it was Major Nathan Cromwell who named the streets: “The streets were named by Maj. Cromwell, assisted, doubtless, by his wife, and the singular femininity of the nomenclature still in a great degree, retained, will be accounted for when we state, on the best authority, that our daily walks are, to a great extent, over the quiet monuments of the early women of our beautiful city – that with but few exceptions the older streets are named to correspond with the given names of the daughters, mothers, grandmothers and wives of the old regime.”
Charles C. Chapman’s 1879 “History of Tazewell County” similarly presents Mrs. Cromwell’s role as a likely speculation rather than an indisputable fact: “We should think the streets were also named by this goodly matron, judging from the feminine names they bear. It is stated that they were named in honor, and perpetuate the names, of the early women of the city, and that the older streets, with few exceptions, bear the names of the mothers, grandmothers, wives and daughters of the pioneers.”
Whether or not Mrs. Cromwell advised her husband on this matter, Ben C. Allensworth’s 1905 “History of Tazewell County” presents a handy table that matter-of-factly identifies the women for whom the streets were named (but leaves out Cynthiana St., and calls Sabella St. “Isabel”):
Ruth – Ruth Stark
Minerva – named for the goddess Minerva
Matilda – Matilda Bailey, sister of Samuel P. Bailey, one of the pioneer lawyers of Pekin, after whom Bailey’s Lake (now Meyers Lake or Lake Arlann) was named
Lucinda – Lucinda Pierce, second wife of William Haines, who was the original purchaser of “Town Site”
Amanda – Amanda Swingle, wife of Major Hugh Woodrow, a pioneer and an officer in the Black Hawk War
Harriet – Mrs. Harriet Sandusky, mother of Mrs. Elijah Mark
Jane – Jane Adams, first wife of William Haines
Catherine – after the wife of Samuel Woodrow
Margaret – for the eldest daughter of Seth Wilson, known as “Grandma Young,” died 1901
Isabel – Isabel Briggs, daughter of one of the pioneer Sheriffs, Benjamin Briggs
Henrietta – Henrietta Shoemaker, cousin of William Haines
Charlotte – Charlotte Amanda Dusenberry, afterwards Mrs. Lincoln
Caroline – Caroline Perkins, whose father, Major Isaac Perkins, was killed in the Black Hawk War
Ann Eliza – the wife of Major Cromwell
Elizabeth – one or both of the wives of Thomas Snell and Gideon Hawley
St. Mary – the Blessed Virgin Mary
Susannah – wife of Major Perkins, who operated a horse mill near Circleville, which was converted into a fort during the Black Hawk War
Sarah Ann – daughter of William Haines, afterwards the wife of the Hon. B. S. Prettyman.
Besides the feminine named streets of Pekin’s old town, most of the rest of the streets had ordinal numerical names: Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh streets. The exceptions were Water Street (which no longer exists), Front Street (Pekin’s “First” street, named because it is on the riverfront), Court Street (named for the Courthouse), Market Street (named for the town’s first markets), and State and Capitol streets.
As their names indicate, those last two streets were chosen in the latter 1830s when the Illinois General Assembly was in the process of choosing a new state capitol to replace Vandalia. In those days, several towns and cities made their pitch to the General Assembly. Hoping to land the state capitol, Pekin’s Town Board named two streets State and Capitol, and reserved a square at the northeast corner of State and Capitol as “State Square” for the construction of a new State House where the General Assembly could meet. However, as we all know, in 1839 Springfield was chosen instead.
Pekin’s lonely State Square remained unoccupied until 1876, when the North Side Public School was built on the site. That school was later extensively remodeled and rebuilt to become Lincoln School (afterwards Good Shepherd Lutheran School, until that school relocated to the former Leath Furniture on Court Street, and the old school was demolished).
