Litchfield, Illinois

City: Litchfield

County: Montgomery County

State: Illinois

Lat/Long: 39.1667, -89.6500

Located in central Illinois, forty-five miles south of Springfield, Illinois, Litchfield, Illinois, grew out of a need for shops and a terminal along the St. Louis, Alton, and Terre Haute Railroad . Company executives decided on land that would become Litchfield in the summer of 1853. Named after the owner of the land, E.C. Litchfield, the shops offered the manufacture and repair of cars owned by the railroad company. The village of Litchfield, organized in 1856, did not last long before it was dissolved and replaced by the city of Litchfield in 1859. The city leaned Democratic in the early years and flourished economically in the immediate post-Civil War years.

Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Montgomery County, ed. by Alexander T. Strange (Chicago: Munsell, 1918), 2:921, 924-26; Webster's New Geographical Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1988), 676.