Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
From the record
“The William Beith House, now known as the Beith House Museum, is a Registered Historic Place located at 8 Indiana Street in St. It largely retains its original riverstone exterior, while many other local structures have been significantly altered or covered in stucco.”
Wikipedia article William Beith House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 86 National Register listings published here for Kane County · listed in 1983 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.83003575- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
The ground it stands on
3,815 words
The chapter on St. Charles Township in History of Kane County, Ill., published 1908 names St. Charles. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.
At a meeting of the voters of St. Charles, Kane County. State of Illinois, convened at Horace Bancroft's Building agreeable to ten days public notice on Saturday the twelfth day of .\pril A. D. 1845 for the purpose of taking into consideration the propriety of incorporating said town of St. Charles. On motion G. W. Richards was chosen President and Charles W. Howard, Clerk. The president and Clerk were duly sworn Resolved that the voters proceed to vote. The vote being taken, resulted as follows.
St. Charles township and the village of St. Charles were, in the early days, the most important part of the county, and for years St, Charles was the center of the general activities of the northern part of the district. In an early day this township was the seat of many Indian settlements and the trails of the redmen were numerous. One of the most noted was known as "Waubonsie's trail," which tV>llo\ve(l tiie ri\-er on tlie west baiii-c and took in aU the prominent springs in that vicinity. As late as 1845 this trail was plainly visible across the land afterward owned by C. D. Wing, J. D. Brown and C. H. Haines. Another trail led west from Chicago to Rock River across Fox river near where the St. Charles dam now is and followed the ravine west and over the prairie. The third came from the northeast and a fourth diverged from the Chicago trail near Wayne Station and crossed the river at the bend now known as Five Islands, about a half mile below the present Illinois Central railroad bridge.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 16 fires within 5 miles of William Beith House
between 2013 and 2014, burning about 95 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
7
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
5
Equipment and vehicle use
2
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Arson/incendiarism
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
6 workings within 5 miles of William Beith House: 4 past producers, 1 producer, 1 plant.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
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