At the Sugar Grove Historical Society, many inquire about why so many settlers pushed westward in the 1830s. That is a complex question with many contributing factors.
One thing that started the expansion was something entirely unexpected and filled the hearts of people along the eastern seaboard with terror: epidemics. Major flu outbreaks, cholera epidemics, smallpox, typhus, yellow fever, scarlet fever, dysentery, and tuberculosis were just a few of the diseases that spread through the many villages, towns, and cities during this period.
As America expanded, cities became overcrowded, lacking proper housing, sewage systems, and clean water sources, which led to the spread of diseases. As a result, many families decided to move to less populated areas with fresh air and open land. Most of these people were experienced in farming and knew how to cultivate the land. These early settlers who migrated to Illinois from the east had specific needs, such as access to fresh water, timber for construction, and vast areas of treeless land suitable for farming.
Our early “known” settlers started arriving in Sugar Grove in 1834, primarily from Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The canal systems, such as the Chemung Canal (NY), the Cayuga and Seneca Canal (NY), and the Erie Canal, contributed to the westward expansion, with over 3,326 miles of man-made canals built in our country between 1816 and the 1840s.
At the end of the Erie Canal in Buffalo, early settlers often took a steamboat to Chicago via Lake Erie and Lake Michigan, a thousand mile route. After 1833, another route opened from Detroit. Settlers could transfer their goods to wagons or stagecoaches and follow the Chicago Road. This path stretched from Detroit to Chicago across southern Michigan and around the south end of Lake Michigan. This route is the most documented way our Sugar Grove settlers came. For more information, read John Mason Peck’s A Guide for New Emigrants To The West (1836) and Samuel Mitchell’s Illinois (1837), both of which are available online. – J.L. Panagopoulos