Soldier's Monument

About the first of July, 1835, Jared W. Sanford came up Rock River from Dixon, on horseback, en roufe (or Rockford - then called "Midway." Noting the excellent water privilege a mile west of the present site of Byron, on Leaf River, he laid claim to it by planting there a claim-stake, and proceeded on up the river. His brother, Joseph, and Perry Norton were then working on Kent's mill at Midway, and when told of the beautiful country south, they were induced to go down and examine it.

Passage source: The History of Ogle County, Illinois, Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns, Etc., a Biographical Directory of Its Citizens, War Record of Its Volunteers in the Late Rebellion, General and Local Statistics ... History of the Northwest, History of Illinois ... Etc, published 1878.

Mr. Norton still resides one and a half miles north of Byron, and is the oldest living resident. An account of his trip to the " far West," as it was then called, may be of some interest, showing, as it does, the vast changes time has made. From ocean to ocean is now but a pleasant ride of seven days, in palace coaches. Mr. Norton was from April 26 to May 26, 1835, in traveling from New York to Galena. The route was : to Buffalo by canal, to Detroit bv steamboat, across Michigan to Chicago by stage - all passage seats to Chicago were taken fifteen days in advance, such was the multitude seeking Western homes - from Chicago to Ottawa by stage. Ottawa had one tavern, one store, a few dwellings on the south side of the Illinois River, one on the north, and one between the Fox and Illinois Rivers. He went to Paw Paw Grove by private conveyance, and thence to Dixon on foot. Dixon consisted of a tavern, kept by a man named Black, in the old fort of the Black Hawk War, and five or six dwellings. He then went by stage to Galena, where he hired out to a Mr. Brush, agent for Germanicus Kent, of Midway. He arrived there on the eighth day of June. Rockford then consisted of two families and eight or ten young men ; Mr. Kent on the west, and Mr. Haight on the east side of the river. Mr. Kent had begun improvements there in the Fall of 1834; had commenced building a dam across the creek, near the Holland (now the Tinker) place. During the season of Mr. Norton's arrival immigration became more general ; among the settlers were Montague Dunbar, Fox Wood and family, Boswell and family,Thatcher Blake, still a resident of Rockford, and Joseph Sanford, who came in the Fall or Winter of 1834.

Passage source: The History of Ogle County, Illinois, Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns, Etc., a Biographical Directory of Its Citizens, War Record of Its Volunteers in the Late Rebellion, General and Local Statistics ... History of the Northwest, History of Illinois ... Etc, published 1878.

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 Byron Township - 11,616 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.