Crownover, Garritt

Born: 1812-12-31 Illinois

Died: 1879-05-30 Pocahontas, Illinois

Alternate name: Crownover, Garrett

Garritt Crownover was a merchant, railroad investor, state representative, and a Republican. In either 1840 or 1841, he moved from Saint Clair County, Illinois to Highland, Illinois, and built a store. Under his ownership and management, it became the most successful store in the town and remained so until about 1850. In December 1844, he married Melvina Dugger. By 1850, he owned $6,000 in real estate. In 1849, when Highland was hit with a major outbreak of cholera, he and other leading citizens raised funds to try to provide relief to impoverished immigrants to the community, who were suffering the worst impact from the disease. In 1852, he and others successfully petitioned the Madison County Circuit Court to set up and fund a formal system for tending to the needs of the town's poor. In March 1852, he married Parthenia F. Scott, with whom he had at least four children. He was a member of the Highland Republican Club at least as early as 1858 and remained active in politics. He became a stockholder and one of the incorporators of the Highland and St. Louis Railroad Company in February 1859. In the local elections of 1860, voters in Illinois's Fourteenth House District elected him to the Illinois House of Representatives. In 1860, he owned $1,500 in real estate and another $4,000 in personal property. In early 1865 he was also one of the incorporators of what became the St. Louis, Vandalia & Terre Haute Railroad.

History of St. Clair County, Illinois (Philadelphia: Brink, McDonough, 1881), 277; Amos P. Spencer, Centennial History of Highland, Illinois: 1837-1937 (Highland, IL: Highland Centennial Association, [1937]), 39, 60-61, 69; History of Madison County, Illinois (Edwardsville, IL: W. R. Brink, 1882), 169-70; William Henry Perrin, ed., History of Bond and Montgomery Counties, Illinois (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1882), 55-56; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Highland, Madison County, IL, 587; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Madison County, 26 December 1844; 24 March 1852, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; John Blattner and Others to Abraham Lincoln and Lyman Trumbull; "An Act to Incorporate the Highland and St. Louis Railroad," 12 February 1859, Laws of Illinois (1859), 434; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 223; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Madison County, IL, 90; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Pocahontas, Bond County, IL, 8; Parthenia F. Powell, Gravestone, Sugg Cemetery, Pocahontas, IL; Garritt Crownover, Gravestone, Sugg Cemetery, Pocahontas, IL.