Lost Towns of Illinois - Old French Village - Today's Peoria.

The Peoria area is perhaps the least understood French locale in Illinois. Although it was the site of the first French military post, Fort de Crévecoeur (later known as Fort St. Louis du Pimiteoui) in the Illinois County and occupied by French soldiers, traders, and families for over a century, few written records of life at Peoria during the eighteenth century are known. In contrast to the wealth of information provided by court, parish, and military records associated with the French communities in the American Bottom region, Peoria has been practically silent. The archaeological record of these occupations has been even more elusive, and prior to 2000, archaeological testing had failed to locate any traces of "French Peoria."

In the fall of 2001, a proposed realignment of Adams Street in downtown Peoria presented an opportunity to archaeologically investigate an area believed to have been the location of an eighteenth-century French village. The Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program (ITARP) conducted an investigation in the fall of 2001 under the direction of the author and David Nolan. These excavations encountered the first archaeological evidence of eighteenth-century French activity in the region. The first domestic French settlement at Peoria, known as the "Old Village," is the focus of the research summarized here.

THE FIRST FRENCH SETTLERS
In January of 1680, the noted French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (Sieur de La Salle being a title only), constructed Fort de Crévecoeur on the east bank of Peoria Lake, then called Lake Pimiteoui. Later that winter, while LaSalle was away, the fort was looted by his men and abandoned. French activity was redirected to the Starved Rock area, building Fort Saint Louis du Rocher on the top of the rock.

In 1691 the French returned to Peoria, where Henri de Tonti and Pierre Deliette constructed a new fort called Fort St Louis du Pimiteoui.

"Henri de Tonti, founder of Peoria, at Lake Pimiteoui, 1691-1693."
painting by Lonnie Eugene Stewart (1900)

A mission was soon established at this post, surrounded by as many as 300 Peoria Illini houses. The post and its mission were prosperous for a short time. Changes in colonial trade policy and the aggressions of Indians led to the abandonment of the fort complex shortly after the turn of the century, and The Peoria themselves left the area around 1722.

The Peoria reoccupied the lake in the 1730s, although the French does not appear to have returned until the late 1740s when an unlicensed trader constructed a small post. By the late 1760s, a cluster of French houses had been constructed in the vicinity of this post, and by the late 1770s, several farms were located in the area. This locale ultimately became known as the "Old Village." In 1778 a second village, "La Ville de Maillet" (the "New Village"), was established less than two miles downstream, and by the 1790s, most of the residents of the Old Village had moved to this new location.

Excavations in the fall of 2001 were conducted at the locale thought to have been the site of the Old Village. Contemporary histories relate that a domestic French settlement began here as early as the 1730s. This data is based in part on assumptions that Tonti's Fort St Louis du Pimiteoui had been located nearby and that domestic trading activity followed the abandonment of the fort and the subsequent reoccupation of the Peoria area after the close of the Fox Wars. The origins of this village are poorly understood, however, and the assumptions of pre-1750 settlement there are substantiated by few primary sources.

It is not until the 1760s that primary documents begin to suggest a domestic occupation of Peoria. Perhaps not coincidentally, these references follow the passing of control of the lands on the east bank of the Mississippi to the British in 1765. This resulted in an exodus of French families from the older villages in the American Bottom to villages on the west bank of the river. The true settlement of Peoria by French farm families may have been part of changes in the cultural landscape of Illinois in the 1760s.

Residents of the French villages at Peoria first attempted to claim land grants from the United States Government under ancient claims acts that allowed land grants to heads of families, militiamen, and those who had improved land before 1783. The first Peoria claims were apparently made prior to 1806 but were not immediately granted due to Peoria's location outside of Kaskaskia treaty boundaries and the vague descriptions of individual property boundaries.

In an 1807 memorial to Congress, twenty-three inhabitants of "the Illinois and village of Pioria" asked Congress to reconsider the land claims made previously. The residents of Peoria apparently received no action on their claims until 1820, when Edward Coles, registrar at the Edwardsville Land Office, issued a report to Congress regarding the French claims at Peoria. In his report, he listed 70 claims related to both the old and new villages. Support for these claims was also included, consisting of testimonies from various residents and their descendants.

It was not until 1837 that the land office made official reconstructed surveys of the old and new villages. That year, surveyors were sent to the sites, sometimes accompanied by the descendants of former residents. The result was a series of land office documents, including original and reworked survey logs, plats of individual lot claims, and reconstructed village plats anchored to section lines.

The layout of the Old Village, as interpreted by the General Land Office in 1837, consisted of ten rectangular residential lots fronting a street that paralleled the river. Behind the western row of lots lay three large "out lots" and two additional lots situated away from the main block of the village. The lots and streets that were resurveyed in 1837 were posthumous interpretations of what would originally have been a cluster of improvements and lot lines that had developed over decades and which may have been altered and realigned during the life of the settlement.

The plats of the Old and New Villages are unique to French villages in the Illinois County, as they do not consist of what Ekberg has described as the "tripartite" of French colonial village design. This traditionally consisted of residential lots, long lots, and commons. True long lots are lacking at the Old Village. Instead, residential lots are backed by three out lots, which differ from the traditional long lots used for cultivation. Out lots are thought to have been a late eighteenth-century development, reflecting changes in the traditional agricultural and land ownership practices. In most cases, our lots were located away from the nucleated village itself, as are two such lots at the Old Village. At Peoria, however, even those lots connected directly to the residential lots are described by the land office as out lots and claims testimonies suggest that they were used primarily for cultivation.

Contemporary understanding of the location and limits of the Old Village of Peoria is based primarily on the work of Percival Rennick, who examined French land claims records associated with the Old Village in the 1930s. Rennick superimposed General Land Office survey data on then-modern maps, concluding that the limits of the Old Village as interpreted in the 1830s lay between modern city streets of Caroline, Hayward, and Jefferson and the shore of the Illinois River.

Based on an overlay of the 1837 land office claims surveys onto modern topographic maps, the 2001 project area was situated on a double-wide residential lot fronting the main street running northeasterly through the village and bounded on the north and south by two side streets. This was claimed both by Louis Chatellereau Jr. and the heirs of Gabriel Cerre. Testimonies stated that Louis Chatellereau Sr. built a house, cultivated the lot in 1778, and occupied it until his death in 1795. After Chatellereau's death, the lot was briefly occupied by Marie Josephe Tieriereau until the property was sold by the Chatellereau estate to Gabriel Cerre. Cerre was an influential merchant in St. Louis and was originally from Montreal.

Although few archival records pertaining to the residents of the Old Village are known, the estate of Louis Chatellereau is better documented due to the presence of a probate record and a mortgage agreement found at the Byron Lewis Historical Library in Vincennes, Indiana, and transcribed by Judith Franke and Richard Day. Chatellereau died in July of 1795. His estate included three horses, 25 heads of cattle and oxen, and seven hogs. He also had 56 bushels of wheat and 500 pounds of flour on hand, probably produced at his mill. His estate included "1 Negro fellow," who perhaps replaced the "red slave" he owned three years earlier. At his death, he also owed wages to nine men for their work as engages and one as a clerk.

Two principal eighteenth-century archaeological features were encountered during the excavations. Feature One was interpreted as a long wall trench, into which upright logs were once placed and which was used to enclose an agricultural field or mark a lot boundary The feature was found to cross at least nine city lots and measured over 270 feet long.

Feature 2 consisted of the wall trench outline of a small rectangular porteaux en terre structure. The structure measured roughly 13 by 20 feet and appears to have been divided into two nearly equal-sized rooms. Evidence of a wall trench foundation for a gallery (open exterior porch) or narrow addition was found on the west wall of the building. This structure probably served as a dwelling, but it was small for houses in French colonial Illinois. Its location away from the main street and near a field fence (if they were contemporary) suggests that it might have functioned as a dwelling for a farm hand, laborer, or slave. With this in mind, it may have been occupied only seasonally.

Feature 2 at the Old Village is only the fifth French wall trench domestic structure to be tested archaeologically in Illinois. Wall trench dwellings have been investigated in the towns of the Village of Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher, and the Village of Nouvelle Chartres. In present-day Missouri, a wall trench dwelling was encountered at the Krelich Site, south of Ste. Genevieve.

Very few eighteenth-century artifacts were found in block excavations around Features 1 and 2 or in the trenches' fill. Feature 2 produced a hand-forged nail, four pieces of burnt limestone, and a larger slab of unburned limestone. The wall trenches of the structure also produced six pieces of dried mud chinking (or bousillage) and a small quantity of animal bone. The soils adjacent to Feature 2 produced a fragment of a wine bottle that appears to date between 1780 and 1820. The heel bone of a bison was also recovered from Feature 2. Having likely been deposited after 1780, the Old Village archaeological context for the bison specimen is one of the latest known in Illinois.

If a French village in The Illinois County is defined as a cluster of traditional houses and farms situated on lots with known or recorded boundaries, then the Old Village of Peoria was a small and short-term example of such a community. However, if the definition of such a village is broadened to include less formal, hybridized, "Metis" type settlements reflecting a greater degree of aboriginal influence, then the settlements at Peoria can probably be regarded as much older.

As described in the early nineteenth century, Peoria served as the crossroads between the settlements and societies of Canada and Louisiana. The settlement on the lake's west bank would have been familiar to many Canadian fur traders who made seasonal rounds through the lower Great Lakes and was probably considered somewhat wild by the farm families living at Cahokia and Kaskaskia. Those villages, however, conducted fur trading business at Peoria on a regular basis.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Rough and Ready in Illinois. Zachary Taylor's daring exploits in the Prairie State.

President Zachary Taylor

Before becoming Commander-in-Chief, Zachary Taylor spent most of his life securing or expanding our nation's frontier. From the Mississippi and Rock rivers to the Rio Grande and Lake Okeechobee, Taylor commanded troops in battles against Indians, the British, and Mexicans. He was the first President not previously elected to any other public office and when inaugurated on March 5, 1849, had yet to cast a ballot in any election. He was the last Whig elected President and the last Chief Executive to own slaves.

Born in Virginia in 1784, Taylor was raised on a plantation in Kentucky. Although rarely there, he called Baton Rouge, Louisiana, his home, but grew cotton in Mississippi. While President, he fought the expansion of slavery and warned Southern secessionists in 1850 that he would personally hang any rebels against the Union, yet his only son later served as a general in the Confederate Army. Muscular, stocky, and sometimes crude in manner, he gained the nom de guerre "Old Rough and Ready" while fighting the Seminoles in Florida. A year before Taylor was elected President, an Illinois soldier described him during the Mexican War as "short and very heavy, with pronounced face lines and gray hair, wearing an old oilcloth cap, a dusty green coat, a frightful pair of trousers and on horseback looks like a toad."

Taylor was not so seasoned when he served in Illinois. But he was always ready for a good skirmish. He was indicted in 1814 in Edwardsville, Illinois for assault and battery.

IN GOOD COMPANY
In the summer of 1886, the Philipson Decorative Company of Chicago won the contract to finish decorating Illinois' new capitol with eight historic scenes. When one of the State House Commissioners suggested that the Black Hawk War be memorialized, Philipson Secretary Theodore Stuart wrote to former Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis for "any information of your personal connection with that event and any reminiscences that would be useful in making a spirited & truthful group." Stuart felt compelled to remind the aged Davis that he was one of "three Presidents" who "fought" in that war, Abraham Lincoln and Zachary Taylor being the others.

In 1832, Captain Abraham Lincoln served in the Illinois Militia for eighty days under the command of U.S. Army Col. Zachary Taylor. Lincoln was proud of his service but was always self-effacing in his reminiscences. In a speech, during his one term in Congress, he confessed that he never fought any Indians, but he did have "a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes." Sixteen years after his Black Hawk War service, Lincoln protested America's war with Mexico and demanded to see the "spot" where blood was shed on American soil. However, in December 1847 (while the war was still in progress) he started a "Taylor for President Club" and campaigned heartily for this Whig war hero the following year.

When the Black Hawk war began, forty-eight-year-old Taylor had been fighting Indians in Indiana, Missouri, and Minnesota for most of his twenty-four-year army career. (His first combat with Black Hawk in Illinois took place in 1814.) Leaving his wife and family in Galena, Taylor took command of the U.S. 1st Infantry on April 4th and tried to coordinate the use of federal army regulars with the 1,700 Illinois volunteers under Brigadier General Samuel Whiteside in the pursuit of Black Hawk and his followers. Taylor felt that the militia was generally undisciplined and performed poorly under fire. The rout of Isaiah Stillman's force along the Rock River in May of that year confirmed Taylor's suspicions; he would later write that the retreat was one of the most shameful acts the troops had committed.

Taylor's forces followed the Sauks into Wisconsin and were present at their defeat in August at the Battle of Bad Axe. When Black Hawk was captured three weeks later, Colonel Taylor ordered his adjutant, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, to assist Lieutenant Robert Anderson (later the defender of Fort Sumter) in taking the prisoner to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. With the cessation of hostilities, Taylor returned to his command of the frontier along the northern Mississippi River. West Point graduate Davis transferred to the First Dragoons and spent the next two years serving in the greater Midwest. In June 1835, Davis resigned from the Army, married his former commander's daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, and moved to Mississippi to commence careers in agriculture and politics.

General Zachary Taylor led Illinois troops into battle in Mexico. At various times in 1846 and 1847, future Illinois governors William Bissell and Richard J. Oglesby were under his command. Long before the Black Hawk and Mexican wars, however, Taylor's first experience with Illinois soldiers took place in 1814 on the Mississippi River.

CALL TO ARMS
On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain because England had harassed our merchant marine and interfered with our frontier settlements. The Potawatomi, Sauk (Sac), Mesquakie (Fox), and other tribes in and around the Illinois Territory allied themselves with the British in hopes of protecting their hunting lands from the Indians. In response to the killings of Americans at and near Fort Dearborn and other attacks on isolated white settlers, Territorial Governor Ninian Edwards recruited hundreds of volunteer militiamen and rangers. Meanwhile, the U.S. sent federal troops to Missouri to prevent Britain's Indian allies from attacking St. Louis and settlements in today's west-central Illinois.

During the early stages of this conflict, Captain Taylor served admirably in Indiana at Fort Harrison and late in 1812 was breveted a major by General William Henry Harrison. Brevet Major Taylor was sent to St. Louis in April 1814 and took up his duties as second in command. In August, he was ordered to lead a force up the Mississippi to Rock Island to destroy Indian crops and build a fort to control the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers. Two previous expeditions that year had failed.

Departing on August 22nd, the expedition consisted of 8 large fortified keelboats with 40 army regulars and more than 300 Illinois militia serving under captains Samuel Whiteside and Nelson Rector. For the next two weeks this small armada sailed and rowed against the current without encountering the enemy, their only casualty being a private who fell victim to measles and later died. The expedition reached the mouth of the Rock River on a windy Sunday, September 4th, and settled in for the night on one of the many islands between Illinois and Iowa. The largest of these was Credit Island, so named because Indians received manufactured goods there each fall on "credit" and each spring paid back the debt to French and British traders with bundles of plush furs.

While Taylor's force landed and prepared for battle, the British under the command of Lieutenant Duncan Graham transplanted a battery of 30 men on a knoll in Iowa across from Taylor's keelboats. Graham had arrived a few days before with orders to "stir up" and support the Indians, but also to keep their "barbarity" in check and to prevent the scalping or the mutilation of prisoners. He reported to his superiors that his arrival gave the Sauks great satisfaction and convinced them "that their English Father is determined to support them against the ambition and unjust conduct of their enemies."

Before first light, Indians (including Black Hawk) opened fire on Taylor's troops and a pitched battle began on the islands and in the river. Major Taylor instructed Captain Rector to drop down river, ground his boat on Credit Island's western shore, and pour broadside after broadside from his swivel guns into any foe in range. The British battery then opened fire on the Americans, the first shot blasting through the bow of Taylor's boat as a "thousand" Indians appeared from nowhere, howling, shrieking, and firing.

Whiteside, under Taylor's orders, went to rescue Rector whose boat was adrift. After Rector's men had driven back a large number of Indians, Illinois Ranger Paul Harpole leaped into waist deep water to secure a cable to Whiteside's craft. He rapidly fired fourteen rounds from muskets handed to him by his sheltered comrades until he was shot in the forehead and sank below the waters. Taylor, for the only time in his career, gave the order to retreat.

The flotilla raced down river firing on the enemy for two miles. After enemy sightings had stopped, Tavlor landed to treat the 14 wounded (3 would later die) and repair his riddled boats.

Consulting with the other officers, Taylor decided that "334 effective men" could never defeat the British guns and the 3-1 advantage held by the enemy. He ordered his command to fall back to the DesMoines confluence and construct a fort on the high bluff of the eastern bank of the Mississippi, the present site of Warsaw, Illinois. Taylor named it Fort Johnson in honor of his friend Richard Johnson (later Vice-President under Martin Van Buren). Fort Johnson was built in 19 days. Captain Callaway wrote his wife on September 25th saying he had provisions for only ten more days. The construction, occupation, and abandonment, due to running out of provisions, totaled only 42 days. In 1816 a new fort was built 1/2 mile to the north, named Fort Edwards, which also served as a fur and trading post, in honor of Territorial Governor Ninian Edwards.

Sometime after September 7, 1814, Major Taylor left Captain James Callaway in charge of Fort Johnson, and returned to St. Louis with the main body of troops. When he arrived in Missouri he found that General Howard had died and now Taylor was suddenly interim commander. By early October Callaway and his troops had to burn down what they had just built and returned to Jefferson Barracks.

On September 29, 1814, somewhere in Madison County (at that time the county stretched from Collinsville to Vincennes in the south clear to the Wisconsin territory) one Simon Bartrane was assaulted "with force and arms." He was so beaten, wounded, and ill-treated "that his life was greatly dispaired." Indicted for this crime by the October session of the Madison County Grand Jury were Francois (Francis) Valle of St. Louis (formerly of St. Genevieve), Byrd Lockhart of Goshen Township in Edwards County and Major "Zachariah" Taylor of St. Louis.[1]

History does not reveal how Taylor reacted to his indictment or even if he knew he was charged. All of his personal family correspondence was destroyed when Union soldiers burned his family's plantation during the Civil War.

Military records show that he seemed to carry out his normal duties in St. Louis. In November 1814, Taylor accompanied his new commander 250 miles up the Missouri River in response to a perceived Indian threat to a remote settlement. At the end of the month Taylor was sent to take command of the troops at Vincennes, Indiana. With the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, the War of 1812 was effectively over and Illinois had been held as American territory.

The onset of peace brought about an immediate reduction in the standing army. Seeing that he could not hold his rank, nor support his family without promotion, Taylor applied for a discharge and was farming in Kentucky in June 1815 when it was approved." There is no record of his returning to Illinois until the Black Hawk War seventeen years later.

But as Taylor prepared his papers for early retirement from the army, the wheels of justice turned slowly in the Illinois Territory. On January 24, 1815, Madison County Sheriff Isom Gilham was ordered by the "Supreme Court" in Edwardsville to "take Major Zachariah Taylor, if he may be found within your Bailiwick and him safely keep so that you have his body before the Judges (on March 27th)... to answer an indictment... for an assault & Battery on the body of Simon Bartrane... and against the peace and dignity of the United States."

Felix McGlaughland (McGlaulin), a sometimes Illinois Ranger, was called as a prosecution witness to this incident and testified in the cases of Taylor and Valle. Francis Valle came from one of the oldest French families in Missouri and was an officer in the 24th U.S. Army Infantry with Taylor at the battle of Credit Island. Although we don't know what McGlaughland said under oath, the prosecuting attorney dismissed the case against Zacheriah Taylor on June 1, 1815. Byrd Lockhart, who also had served as an Illinois Ranger and Madison County Coroner, was later found guilty. He left Illinois in 1818 and eventually became the namesake of Lockhart, Texas.

It now appears that while a Major in the United States army, future U.S. President Zachary Taylor witnessed or abetted the beating of French descendant Simon Bartrane on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. British war correspondence reveals that in late August 1814, "some French gentlemen from St. Louis" warned the Sauks that Taylor's forces had left to attack Rock Island. Could knowledge of this leak have triggered an assault on Bartrane? Even with the newly found Madison County court documents, we may never know if Bartrane was suspected of espionage or simply the victim of a petty quarrel.

History does show us, however, that although the Illinois militia won no major military victories in the War of 1812, it helped prevent the British from making any territorial claims east of the Mississippi. Whenever called upon, Zachary Taylor and the Rangers proved rough and ready to fight in Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] Documents recently processed at the Illinois State Archives now reveal an event concerning future President Taylor that has never previously been known.

How two Illinois men helped keep Adolph Hitler from developing the atomic bomb.

One reason Adolph Hitler was so anxious to invade Norway during World War II was that it offered him access to heavy water, or D2O, a key ingredient in his plans to build an atomic bomb. In the mountainous region of southern Norway, near the village of Vemork, the Fuhrer in 1941 commandeered a hydroelectric plant to separate heavy water (deuterium oxide) from its common cousin, H2O. Allies and Norwegian resistance fighters were aware of the plant. It was sheltered under a rocky ledge, though, and could not be bombed from the air. Thus the Nazis were able to separate the heavy water and ship it to Germany. Had it not been for the efforts of a small-town pastor and an editor from Gardner, Illinois, they might have been able to build their bomb and drastically alter the outcome of the war.

Reverend Christian Christiansen
outside his home in Gardner, Illinois.

Christian Christiansen was born in Sandnes, Norway, not far from Vemork, in 1859. As a child, he became intimately familiar with the Fjords, rivers, and mountains of his native land. As a young man, he joined Norway's massive merchant marine fleet and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean several times. 

In 1881 he crossed the Atlantic one last time and settled in Chicago. There he worked all day for up to $1.50. At night, he attended a Lutheran seminary.

Ordained in 1888, Christiansen became a circuit rider between York, Illinois, and Gardner, about 60 miles south of Chicago. Near the turn of the century, he accepted a call to pastor churches in Gardner, Gardner Prairie, and Grand Prairie. After a decade there, a dispute with parishioners drove him to northern Wisconsin for 23 years.

When his Gardner congregation asked him three times to come back, he finally agreed to spend the twilight of his career there. Among his neighbors when he returned were the Parkinsons, publishers of the Gardner Chronicle since 1865. He became particularly good friends with young Burt Parkinson, who would soon become the third generation to head the paper. 

Although Burt was in his 80s, he still has a vivid memory that separates editorial wheat from the chaff.

Burt Parkinson and his Heidelberg Press, 1985.

"My grandfather once published a daily paper in Braidwood," he said. "It was a much bigger city then because of coal mining. Anton Cermak was his paperboy. I remember we used to visit him after he moved to Chicago. My grandfather would set me on that big desk while the two of them went to work on memories. Later Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was shot and killed in an assassination attempt while shaking hands with President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt during an event in Miami, Florida in 1933.

"Walt Disney used to be a good buddy of mine, too," Burt continued. "We used to go drinking once in a while. He was with the Chicago Herald and Examiner, a Hearst newspaper. They were the first ones to publish his Mickey Mouse strip. The Chronicle then was eight pages long. We bought prepared inserts from Chicago. They were four pages of world news about a month late. The other four pages we did ourselves."

"The old reverend was a friend of mine," Burt said. "I loved him. Every morning he would come in the office and we'd sit there and chat. One morning he came in with a Chicago Tribune article about the plant "Look here, Burt," he said. The English had been bombing it, but that shelf of mountains protected it. The reverend said, "I can show them how to get up underneath and bring a warship in." Nobody knew the depth of the fjord or anything that might be in the way. I said, "Let"s call the Navy." I knew one of the guys up there. The reverend said, "Fine."

"The next Sunday morning after the sermon, the reverend invited me over. A line of cars was parked out front. Out on his kitchen floor two admirals, one from England and one from the U.S., had laid out a map as big as a dining room table. We all got down on our hands and knees. The reverend took a red pencil and drew his own map on the bigger map. Then they left."

The Vemork Hydroelectric Plant (1935) - Heavy water was produced in the Hydrogen Production Plant (the front building).

Burt believes that English warships destroyed the heavy water plant within a week of the Gardner meeting that he arranged. This cannot be easily documented. What is known is that Allies and Norwegian commandos attacked and seriously damaged the plant on at least three separate occasions. These operations—codenamed Grouse, Freshman, and Gunnerside—finally managed to knock the plant out of production in February of 1943.

In Operation Grouse, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) successfully placed four Norwegian nationals as an advance team in the region of the Hardanger Plateau above the plant in October 1942. The unsuccessful Operation Freshman was mounted the following month by British paratroopers; they were to rendezvous with the Norwegians of Operation Grouse and proceed to Vemork. This attempt failed when the military gliders crashed short of their destination, as did one of the tugs, a Handley Page Halifax bomber. The other Halifax returned to base, but all the other participants were killed in the crashes or captured, interrogated, and executed by the Gestapo.

In February 1943, a team of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in destroying the production facility with a second attempt, Operation Gunnerside, later evaluated by SOE as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II. These actions were followed by Allied bombing raids. The Germans elected to cease operation and remove the remaining heavy water to Germany, but Norwegian resistance forces sank the ferry carrying the water, SF Hydro, on Lake Tinn in late 1944.

The U.S., meanwhile, was able to develop its A-bomb without using D2O.

In September of 1946, in a letter from the Norwegian Embassy in Washington D.C. advised Christiansen's family of his valuable service to the war effort. It read, in part:

"It gives me great pleasure to inform you his Majesty the King of Norway has instructed me to present to you a Diploma in recognition of your valuable services for Norway during the last war... May I extend to you my heartiest congratulation upon this well merited award."

The letter was signed by the Ambassador of Norway.

The specific impact of Reverend Christiansen's contribution to the war effort has never been officially detailed. This is due in large part to its classified nature. However, Burt has a copy of the diploma from the King of Norway thanking the reverend for his "valuable services" to his native country during World War II. And he also has the surety that he and his old friend did the right thing at the right time.

Christiansen died in 1947 and is buried in the Norwegian cemetery near Gardner, Illinois.

The movie, The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris is roughly based on this event was released in 1965. It was filmed on location in Norway with former members of the underground serving as technical advisors.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The History of the Illinois Country from 1673-1782.

The Illinois Country (1673-1782), sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana, was the vast region of "New France" (hereinafter called Canada). These names generally referred to the entire Upper Mississippi River watershed. The French colonial settlement was concentrated along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers in what is now the states of Illinois and Missouri, with outposts in Indiana. 

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The word "Mississippi" comes from the Ojibwe Indian Tribe (Algonquian language family) word "Messipi" or "misi-ziibi," which means "Great River" or "Gathering of Waters." French explorers, hearing the Ojibwe word for the river, recorded it in their own language with a similar pronunciation. The Potawatomi (Algonquian language family) pronounced "Mississippi" as the French said it, "Sinnissippi," which was given the meaning "Rocky Waters."

Explored in 1673 from Green Bay to the Arkansas River by the Canadien expedition of Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, the area was claimed by France. It was settled primarily from the Païs d'en Haut [French: "up country" or "upper country"] in the context of the fur trade. Over time, the fur trade took some French to the far reaches of the Rocky Mountains, especially along the branches of the broad Missouri River valley. The French name, Pays des Illinois, means "Land of the Illinois [plural]" and is a reference to the Illinois Confederation, a group of related Algonquian tribes (usually referred to as  "Illinois" or the "Illiniwek" or "Illini." who were a group of Indian tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley. The tribes were the Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Moingwena, Michigamea, Chepoussa, Chinkoa, Coiracoentanon, Espeminkia, Maroa, and Tapouara).

The Illinois Country's landscape of today's Illinois boundaries was a patchwork of prairies, forests, marshes, and swamps. Bison and elk roamed the upland prairies, bears and mountain lions prowled the forests and swamps, and the skies were often darkened by large flocks of pigeons. Bordering the land were three large streams: the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash rivers. One of the world's largest freshwater lakes, Lake Michigan, lies to the northeast. These and other aquatic and wetland environments teemed with many different species of waterfowl, fish, and freshwater mollusks.

FRENCH FORTS BUILT IN ILLINOIS:

1680 - Fort Crèvecoeur, Creve Coeur, Peoria County
1682 - Fort Saint Louis du Rocher, North Utica, La Salle County
1691 - Fort Pimiteoui, Peoria County
1720 - Fort de Chartres, Randolph County
1729 - Fort Le Pouz, Joliet, Will County
1757 - Fort Massac, Massac County
1759 - Fort Kaskaskia, Randolph County 

Païs des Ilinois (Illinois Country) in this 1717 French map.

Until 1717, the Illinois Country was governed by the French province of Canada, but by order of King Louis XV, the Illinois Country was annexed to the French province of Louisiana, with the northeastern administrative border somewhat vaguely on or near the upper Illinois River. The territory thus became known as "Upper Louisiana." By the mid-18th century, the major settlements included Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Chartres, Street  Philippe, and Prairie du Rocher, all on the east side of the Mississippi in present-day Illinois, and Ste. Genevieve across the river in Missouri and Fort Vincennes in what is now Indiana.

Due to the French defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), the Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River was ceded to the British and the land west of the river to the Spanish. Following the British occupation of the east shoreline of the Mississippi in 1764, some Canadian settlers remained in the area, while others crossed the river, forming new settlements such as St. Louis.

Eventually, the eastern part of the Illinois Country became part of the British Province of Quebec, while the inhabitants chose to side with the Americans during the Revolutionary War. 

Although the lands west of the Mississippi were sold in 1803 to the United States by France—which had reclaimed possession of Louisiana from the Spanish in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso—French language and culture continued to exist in the area, with the Missouri French dialect still being spoken into the 20th century.

Because of the deforestation that resulted from cutting down forests for wood for fuel during the 19th-century age of steamboats, the Mississippi River became shallower and broader, causing severe Mississippi flooding between St. Louis and the confluence with the Ohio River. Consequently, many architectural and archaeological resources were lost to flooding and destruction of early French colonial villages near the river, including Kaskaskia and St. Philippe.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Cahokia Mounds and the Indian Village of Cahokia.

The name Cahokia is a reference to one of the Indian tribes of the Illinois Confederation, a group of related Algonquian tribes (usually referred to as "Illinois" or the "Illiniwek" or "Illini," who were a group of Indian tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley. The tribes comprised the Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Moingwena, Michigamea, Chepoussa, Chinkoa, Coiracoentanon, Espeminkia, Maroa, and Tapouara) who were encountered by early French explorers to the region.

Early European settlers also named Cahokia Mounds after the Illinois Confederation, an extensive prehistoric Mississippian urban site located north of present-day Collinsville in Madison County. Cahokia Mounds is the site of a pre-Columbian Indian village directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies between today's East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park covers 2,200 acres, or about 3.5 square miles, and contains about 80 mounds, but the ancient city was much larger. In its heyday, Cahokia covered about 6 square miles and included 120 manmade earthen mounds in various sizes, shapes, and functions.

Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture, which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the central and southeastern United States, beginning more than 1000 years before European contact. The city's original name has yet to be discovered.

The mounds were later named after the Cahokia tribe, a historic Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 17th century. As this was centuries after Cahokia was abandoned by its original inhabitants, the Cahokia tribe was not necessarily descended from the earlier Mississippian-era people. Most likely, multiple indigenous ethnic groups settled in the Cahokia Mounds area during the time of the city's apex. It is a World Heritage Site and an Illinois State Historic Park.

The "New France" (hereinafter called Canada) association with Cahokia began over 320 years ago, with Father Pinet's mission in late 1696 to convert the Cahokia and Tamaroa Indians to Christianity. Father Pinet and the Seminary of Foreign Missions of Quebec built a log church, and it was dedicated to the Holy Family. During the next 100 years, Cahokia became one of the largest French colonial towns in the Illinois Country.

Cahokia had become the center of a large area for trading Indian goods and furs. The village had about 3,000 inhabitants, 24 brothels, and a thriving business district. The nearby town of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi became the region's leading shipping port, and Fort de Chartres became a military and governmental command center. The 50-mile area of land between the two cities was cultivated by farming settlers, known as habitants, whose main crop was wheat. As the site expanded, the relationship between the settlers and the Indians became peaceful. Settlers were mostly Canadien migrants whose families had been in North America for a while.

In the following years, Cahokia suffered, mainly from the French loss in the French and Indian War in 1763. Defeated by Great Britain in an extension of the Seven Years' War in Europe, the French were forced to cede large parts of the Illinois Country to the victors. Many Cahokians fled in fear of the British or because they wanted to live in a Catholic province, Louisiana, where they founded new Canadien villages west of the Mississippi River, such as St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.

The Odawa leader Pontiac was assassinated by other Indians in or near Cahokia on April 20, 1769. The Potawatomi blamed the local Illinois Indians and took revenge on them at Starved Rock by cornering them on the top of Starved Rock, waiting for their food and water to run out -- then killing all of them. (Fact or fiction? Click the link to read the article.) 

In 1778, during the American Revolutionary War, George Rogers Clark set up a court in Cahokia, making Cahokia an independent city-state even though it was part of the Province of Quebec. Cahokia officially became part of the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Soon after, the 105 Cahokia "heads of household" pledged loyalty to the Continental Congress of the United States.

In the 1800s, a Trappist Priest built a church on top of what they called "Monk's Mound." The New Madrid Earthquake of 1811-1812 was why this structure was vacated.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.