First buyers of Rochelle-area land

Here are the names of the patent holders for the lands that eventually became the town of Lane, and later, the city of Rochelle. Patents were granted to those who first bought the land from the U.S. government, and here their names are placed on the 1840-41 township survey .

Information on patents came from Bureau of Land Management General Land office records (links for Section 23, Section 24, and Section 25 patents) and Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales Database (link here).

Click on maps to enlarge.

Modern-day landmarks (using Ogle Co. GIS) for comparison:

Map compiled from 1840-41 survey, 1853 Lane plat, 1872 Krause map, and GIS property ID number data (the third part of the ID numbers indicate which quarter-section and which quarter-quarter section a parcel lies within).

Observations:

• The higher ground seems to have sold earlier, and to have been improved (with fields) earlier than the low-lying ground. This isn’t surprising, but it helps explain why Rochelle was settled where it was and not a few hundred yards west or east or south.

• Sheldon Bartholomew died 9 Dec. 1846, according to the 1878 History of Ogle, page 507, just two months after applying for the land patent on two of his parcels listed above. He was the second one buried in the cemetery he had established, located just southwest of the intersection of 7th Street and 8th Avenue. The 1878 history says Sheldon was the second person in this “burying grounds,” as it was called in an 1856 deed. It would seem that the Bartholomew family dedicated property at the far north edge of their property, and that this burying grounds also lay next to the Ottawa-Rockford road. These grounds also occupy land that is elevated a few feet above other parts of the town.

• Sheldon’s wife, Charlotte, remarried to “Mat” Powell and, as Charlotte Powell, she sold to R.P. Lane most of the land that would become platted as Lane, and later, Rochelle.

• But the plat of Lane extended into land originally owned by William Fulton. I would need to do more research to see if Lane owned that Northwest Quarter of the Southeast Quarter when the plat was filed 30 July 1853.

• In making this map, I was surprised to see that all of Lane south of about 4th Avenue had been part of the grove of hickory trees. I suspect that those trees were cut down and removed by the time the town of Lane and the G & CU railroads were constructed, in 1853.