Christ Church
Built of native sandstone by skilled English stone masons, this early Anglican Church was erected to meet the spiritual needs of a group of people who came over from England in the 1830’s to settle the prairies of western Peoria county here in Illinois. One of the oldest churches in the area, there are sister churches to this one in Brimfield and Robin’s Nest (Jubilee). With Bishop Philander Chase nearby and a seminary for training young ministers established at Robin’s Nest, it looked like there was a fair chance that the western Peoria county prairie would be modeled after Yorkshire England. In Southern Illinois at a place called Albion, there was already an earlier successful English prairie settlement started by a man named George Flowers. At this early date the prairies of Illinois were completely up for grabs because they were considered undesirable for settlement due to a shortage of available wood for building housing and for heating and cooking. The English with their extensive knowledge of building with stone and heating with coal which is very abundant in Illinois were undeterred by the prairie conditions which caused American settlers to shun the prairies in their search for inhabitable lands. To this day a glance at the telephone book will reveal a large number of English surnames among the local population. These people came to stay and are an important part of the state’s establishment though they seem to be largely forgotten in discussions of early Illinois settlement. They were educated, skilled, and religiously devout.
Christ Church
Built of native sandstone by skilled English stone masons, this early Anglican Church was erected to meet the spiritual needs of a group of people who came over from England in the 1830’s to settle the prairies of western Peoria county here in Illinois. One of the oldest churches in the area, there are sister churches to this one in Brimfield and Robin’s Nest (Jubilee). With Bishop Philander Chase nearby and a seminary for training young ministers established at Robin’s Nest, it looked like there was a fair chance that the western Peoria county prairie would be modeled after Yorkshire England. In Southern Illinois at a place called Albion, there was already an earlier successful English prairie settlement started by a man named George Flowers. At this early date the prairies of Illinois were completely up for grabs because they were considered undesirable for settlement due to a shortage of available wood for building housing and for heating and cooking. The English with their extensive knowledge of building with stone and heating with coal which is very abundant in Illinois were undeterred by the prairie conditions which caused American settlers to shun the prairies in their search for inhabitable lands. To this day a glance at the telephone book will reveal a large number of English surnames among the local population. These people came to stay and are an important part of the state’s establishment though they seem to be largely forgotten in discussions of early Illinois settlement. They were educated, skilled, and religiously devout.