Belleville, IL news and local guide

In the mid-19th century the area drew heavy German immigration, including many educated Germans who left after the failed Revolutions of 1848, and Belleville became the center of Illinois's first major German settlement. By 1870 an estimated 90 percent of its people were German-born or of German descent. The city's first houses were simple brick cottages known locally as German street houses or row houses. After the Civil War Belleville became a manufacturing center, making nails, printing presses, gray iron castings, farm equipment and stoves, and it was known as the Stove Capital of the World. Illinois's first brewery was founded there, and in 1868 Gustav Goelitz founded the candy company now known as Jelly Belly. A vast deposit of bituminous coal, about 400,000 acres, lay under St. Clair County, and by 1874 some farmers had become miners, with a hundred shaft mines operating around Belleville. Coal brought the steam railroad, which carried tons of coal daily to St. Louis, and Belleville later had the state's first electric trolley. Sources Wikipedia: Belleville, Illinois