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Sec.[Section] 1. Be it enacted by the people of the State of Illinois represented in the General Assembly, That all blocks, streets, lanes and alleys, in John Pearson[’]s ^addition^ to the town of Danville, Vermillion County laid out in 1836, on the South West fractional quarter of Section nine, in township
No. nineteen North of Range No. eleven West of the second principle meredian, be vacated and no longer considered town lots, and an addition; Except Blocks ten,
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen fifteen fifteen, sixteen, and in the range seventeen and the streets, lanes and alleys, in
and around these blocks to be left their laid out width and unvacated by this act.
This act to be in force from and after its passage.
Provided individual rights be not affected thereby2
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No 33
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[12]/[14]/[1840]
[12]/[14]/[1840]
Judiciary
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[12]/[17]/[1840]
[12]/[17]/[1840]
Engrossed.
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19
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12/19/1840
12/19/1840
passed Decr[December] 19/40
1John Pearson introduced SB 37 in the Senate on December 11, 1840. On December 14, the Senate referred the bill to the Committee
on the Judiciary. The Committee on the Judiciary reported back the bill on December
17 with an amendment, in which the Senate concurred. The Senate passed the bill as
amended on December 19. On December 21, the House of Representatives referred the bill to the Committee on the Judiciary. The Committee on the Judiciary
did not report back the bill.
Illinois House Journal. 1840. 12th G. A., 139, 142-43; Illinois Senate Journal. 1840. 12th G. A., 70, 76, 84, 95.
2Illinois experienced a time of intense land speculation in the 1830s that resulted in a number
of “paper towns,” settlements that were platted and available for sale but where
few or no people actually lived. Many of the proprietors of these settlements abandoned
them during and after the Panic of 1837. As a result, the General Assembly received a large number of petitions for vacation during their sessions from 1838
to 1841. In 1841, the legislature passed an act setting parameters for proprietors to vacate town plats themselves. Vacating a plat
gave owners greater flexibility in the use, fencing, and sale of the property.
An Act to Vacate Town Plats; Alasdair Roberts, America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the
Panic of 1837 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 19, 33, 38; James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 210-11; Robert P. Howard, Illinois: A History of the Prairie State (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1972), 196.
Handwritten Document, 2 page(s), Folder 245, SB 37, GA Session: 12-2,
Illinois State Archives (Springfield, IL) ,