Newton, Illinois

City: Newton

County: Jasper

State: Illinois

Lat/Long: 38.9833, -88.1500

When the Illinois General Assembly authorized the creation of Jasper County in 1831, they specified that the county seat, when located, would be called Newton. The names of Jasper and Newton were selected to honor Revolutionary War soldiers Sergeant William Jasper and Sergeant John Newton, whose story had been popularized and embellished by Parson Mason Locke Weems in his biography of General Francis Marion, published in 1809. Newton received a post office in 1833, and the General Assembly confirmed the selected location for the town two years later. Newton is located about twenty miles north of Olney.

Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1997), 819; Edward Callary, Place Names of Illinois (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 176; James N. Adams, comp., Illinois Place Names (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1989), 453; “An Act Establishing the Counties of Jasper and Effingham,” 15 February 1831, Laws of Illinois (1831), 50-52; An Act to Organize the County of Jasper; Charles Curry Aiken and Joseph Nathan Kane, The American Counties: Origins of County Names, Dates of Creation, Area, and Population Data, 1950-2010, 6th ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2013), 150.