Mount Morris, Illinois

City: Mount Morris

County: Ogle

State: Illinois

Lat/Long: 42.0500, -89.4167

The town of Mount Morris is located approximately twenty-seven miles southwest of Rockford. Prior to the arrival of white people, the area was used by the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) and Bodéwadmi (Potawatomi) peoples as hunting grounds. The earliest white inhabitants arrived in 1837 from Washington County, Maryland and encouraged others from Maryland to move to the area. A U.S. Post Office was established in 1841 and the town was incorporated in 1857.

Harvey J. Kable and Harry G. Kable, Mount Morris: Past and Present (Mount Morris, IL: Mount Morris Index Print, 1900), 9, 11, 13, 20, 23; James N. Adams, comp., Illinois Place Names (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1989), 445; Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World. A Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer or Geographical Dictionary of the World (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1880), 1495; “An Act to Incorporate the Town of Mt. Morris,” 13 February 1857, Private Laws of Illinois (1857), 563-70.