Quincy, IL news and local guide

Quincy's site on the Mississippi has drawn settlers for centuries. The French were the first Europeans to colonize the region after the explorations of Jolliet, Marquette and La Salle, and the fur trade and the river made it valuable. Britain took control after 1763, and after the Revolution the area became part of the Northwest Territory and in 1818 the state of Illinois. After the War of 1812 the government granted military tracts to veterans, and in 1819 Peter Flinn, who had acquired a veteran's land, sold 160 acres to John Wood of Moravia, New York, for $60. Wood founded the town, first called Bluffs, which in 1825 was renamed Quincy and made the seat of Adams County, both for the newly elected President John Quincy Adams. Its square, first named John Square, became Washington Square. Peter Felt held the first service of what became one of the state's first Congregational churches in December 1830. Quincy was incorporated as a town in June 1834 and as a city in 1840, with Ebenezer Moore as its first mayor.

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When Missouri ordered Mormons expelled, many Latter-day Saints fleeing persecution found shelter in Quincy, whose residents, though vastly outnumbered, gave them food and lodging before Joseph Smith led them 40 miles upriver to Nauvoo. In 1838 Quincy also sheltered Potawatomi being forcibly moved from Indiana to Kansas. The 1850s and 1860s brought prosperity as steamboats and railroads, including the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, founded in 1855, and the Quincy Rail Bridge, made the city a transportation hub, and its population grew from just under 7,000 in 1850 to 24,000 by 1870. Sources Wikipedia: Quincy, Illinois