Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

In force 21st Feb. [February]1837.

AN ACT to alter and re-locate a part of the State road leading from Jacksonville to Springfield.
1

Road from Springfield in direction of Jacksonville declared a state road

Road shall be kept in repair as a State road

Sec.[Section] 1. Be it enacted by the people of the State of Illinois represented in the General Assembly, That so much of the county road, leading from Springfield in the direction of Jacksonville, as was by order of the commissioners’ court of the county of Sangamon, at their December term, in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-six, fixed and established and described as follows, to wit: Beginning at William Moffitt’s, thence with the blazes made for the State road through the timber of Little Spring creek to Enoch Jones’, thence on a straight line to intersect the old road at Flenarty’s Point (now the town of Berlin,) thence to the county line of Morgan and Sangamon, be and is hereby established and declared to be a part and continuation of the State road, heretofore opened and laid out from said Jacksonville to Springfield and the same shall be kept in repair and maintained as a State road.

Sec. 2. This act shall be in force from and after its passage.2

Approved, 21st February, 1837.

1On January 21, 1837, Daniel Stone, a member of a select committee studying a petition concerning the road, introduced HB 142 in the House of Representatives. On January 30, the select committee reported the bill without amendment. On February 8, the House passed the bill. On February 18, the Senate passed the bill. On February 21, the Council of Revision approved the bill and the act became law.
Illinois House Journal. 1836. 10th G. A., 1st sess., 319, 425, 519, 604, 606, 612, 662; Illinois Senate Journal. 1836. 10th G. A., 1st sess., 377, 398, 436, 448.

2State roads were those public roads established or designated by the General Assembly and usually crossed county lines. Only the General Assembly could establish, alter, or abandon state roads, until 1840 and 1841, when the General Assembly gave counties the authority to alter or to abandon state roads upon petition by a majority of voters in the area of the change.
An Act concerning Public Roads, sec. 9; An Act Authorizing Commissioners’ Courts to Alter, Change, and Relocate State Roads; An Act concerning Public Roads.