(another recycled post from 2022)
[Discussed in an earlier post, The Cherokee Agency Reserve]
In the early 1800’s, the Illinois Bayou was a meandering stream istead of what we see today.
Dwight Mission was a missionary settlement along the bayou’s bank. Part of its actual site may be below the lake.
Indian Agent William Lovely’s widow, Persis, at the request of the Cherokee, was to be allowed, in an 1817 treaty “to remain for life” at her home next to the agency. In the May 6, 1828, Treaty with
The Western Cherokee that relinquished the Arkansas lands of the Cherokee, that provision was missing. In an 1830 letter, she wrote, “in consequince i am a houseless wanderer at sixty years of age.”
Norristown was on the river and, during the 1830s, would see displaced thousands crossing on the Norristown ferry to follow the military road laid out by Lieutenant Jefferson Davis to the Indian Territory.