Casey, Zadok

Born: 1796-03-07 Greene County, Georgia

Died: 1862-09-04 Caseyville, Illinois

Educated in the common schools, Casey married Rachel King around 1816, and the couple, who would raise eight children together, settled in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, in 1817. Casey won election to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1822 and 1824 and to the Illinois Senate in 1826. He served as lieutenant governor of Illinois from 1830-1832 and was a volunteer in the Black Hawk War. He served five terms (1833-1843) in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Jacksonian, as a Democrat, and as an Independent Democrat. After his tenure in Congress, he returned in the Illinois House of Representatives (1848-1852), was the speaker of the House (1852), and served in the Illinois Senate during the Civil War (1860-1862). In 1848, he was a delegate to the Illinois Constitutional Convention. He was involved in the development of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad and the town of Caseyville, Illinois, through which the road ran, was named in his honor. He was a Methodist and lived on a farm called "Elm Hill." In 1850, he owned $15,000 in real property, and by 1860, he had accumulated $27,000 in real and personal property.

Gravestone, Old Union Cemetery, Mt. Vernon, IL; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-2005 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005), 797; Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 65, 76, 83, 102, 108, 121, 205, 215, 219, 449; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Jefferson County, IL, 389; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Jefferson County, IL, 28; John A. Wall, Wall's History of Jefferson County, Illinois (Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen, 1900), 55-58; William Henry Perrin, ed., History of Jefferson County, Illinois (Chicago: Globe, 1883), 182-86.