Georgetown, Illinois

Georgetown township lies in that portion of the county which is south and east of the center. It is in the second tier of townships from the south boundary line of the county, and has the Indiana state line on its eastern border. It embraces all of congressional township 18 north, range 11 west, and the fraction of 18-10 which lies between the former and the state line, and six sections in the southeast corner of 18-12. The Yermilion River runs across its northeastern corner for about five miles, and so deep down is its bed that the surrounding country is easily and perfectly drained into it. The Little Vermilion makes a short turn into its southern border, running through sections 33 and 34. The "State Road," from Vincennes to Chicago, runs across the township, and the "Salt-works Road," on which the products of the salt springs were carried into eastern Indiana (long before commercial intercourse had become so perfected that salt, boiled at Syracuse, could be transported to Danville and sold cheaper than it could be made here), ran diagonally across it. The Danville & Southwestern railroad runs through the town almost parallel with the " State Road," and has on it the two stations of Georgetown and Westville.

Passage source: History of Vermilion County, Together with Historic Notes on the Northwest, Gleaned from Early Authors, Old Maps and Manuscripts, Private and Official Correspondence, and Other Authentic, Though, for the Most Part, Out-of-the-way Sources, published 1879.

The township was originally nearly all timber, there being only about one-third of it along its western border and in its center, which was prairie. Some of the earliest settlements in the count}7 were made within its borders, and considerable farms were cleared before people learned that they could live on the prairie. Coal is known to be under pretty much all of the territory comprising this town ; and along the streams which flow into the Yermilion, its outcroppings have been freely worked. It was one of the tirst to be generally settled ; the abundance of its timber, the water supply, the general make of the land, and its proximity to the salt-works, - which was the center of settlement at that day, - drew to it those who first came to the county to make their pioneer homes.

Passage source: History of Vermilion County, Together with Historic Notes on the Northwest, Gleaned from Early Authors, Old Maps and Manuscripts, Private and Official Correspondence, and Other Authentic, Though, for the Most Part, Out-of-the-way Sources, published 1879.

The first one to make a home here was Henry Johnson, who settled on section 36 (18-12), just two miles west of the village of Georgetown, in 1820. It was the same year in which Butler made his home at worthies were the pioneers of this county, and were here at nearly the same date. Mr. Johnson has been long gone from here, but he is remembered as a man of generous impulses, and as a neighbor was little, if any, less than a "Good Samaritan." It is told of him (and in the light of the present day it seems hard to believe) that he would not take interest of his neighbors to whom he loaned money for a time, simply because he did not believe it was right to do it. Very soon after him came his brother-in-law, Absalom Starr, who took up his claim the following year, 1821, on the same section, south of Johnson's, where the then Mrs. Starr (now Mrs. Jones) yet resides. For fiftyeight years this good woman has lived here, performing all the arduous duties which mothers in the pioneer days were called on to do, and has seen the wild home of the red man converted into the busy abode of progressive civilization. Without seeming to realize it, she is now a wonder and a surprise, and is to-day the oldest living resident of Vermilion county, the story of whose life, trials, labors, triumphs and good deeds would make of itself a volume of fair proportions and enduring interest.

Passage source: History of Vermilion County, Together with Historic Notes on the Northwest, Gleaned from Early Authors, Old Maps and Manuscripts, Private and Official Correspondence, and Other Authentic, Though, for the Most Part, Out-of-the-way Sources, published 1879.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Georgetown Township - it names this place 110 more 110 times.