Jerseyville, Illinois

City: Jerseyville

County: Jersey

State: Illinois

Lat/Long: 39.1167, -90.3167

Located in western Illinois, sixty miles southwest of Springfield, Jerseyville is the county seat of Jersey County. White settlers begin moving to the area, then part of Greene County, in the 1820s. They established a small settlement, which they called Hickory Grove. In March 1835, the U.S. Post Department established a post office in the settlement, and inhabitants changed the name to Jerseyville. In July 1837, the Illinois General Assembly incorporated Jerseyville as a town. When the General Assembly carved Jersey County out of Greene County in February 1839, it designated Jerseyville as its seat of government, which contributed to Jerseyville's slow, but steady, growth throughout the nineteenth century. The General Assembly re-incorporated Jerseyville as a town in 1855.

Webster's New Geographical Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1988), 571; James N. Adams, comp., Illinois Place Names (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1989), 403; History of Greene and Jersey Counties, Illinois (Springfield, IL: Continental, 1885), 493, 494; Edward Callary, Place Names of Illinois (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 177; An Act to Incorporate the Town of Jerseyville; An Act to Create and Establish the County of Jersey; "An Act to Incorporate the Town of Jerseyville," 14 February 1855, Private Laws of Illinois (1855), 33-42.