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Fast Facts

Check here for fast facts, including geography, demographics, and links to information about the towns and villages within the county.

History

After 1685 Gallatin county was controlled by the French. They moved into the area to establish salt processing at the Saline Spring and Half Moon Lick. The first permanent French settlement was established in 1735 when the French built a blockhouse or fort at the present day town of Equality, about a mile from the salt springs. The French remained in control of the area until 1763 when they lost control of their claims in North America to the British. England remained in control of the region until George Rogers Clark and his band of Long Knives took the southern parts of what is now Illinois and Indiana from the British in 1779. The earliest recorded birth is found in a family Bible of the Barnett family. David and Judith Barnett recorded the birth of a daughter, Mary, on June 17, 1788. The family was living near the North Fork of the Saline River. David worked at the salt lick making salt.

Illinois was first a county of Virginia, then part of the Indiana Territory and later Illinois Territory under the Northwest Ordinance. William Henry Harrison recommended that, "The salt springs and salt licks, property of the United States ought to be leased for a term of years." In 1800, Harrison made treaties with the Indians agreeing to guarantee at least 150 bushels of salt to be given to them each year in order to gain control of all the land that had salt springs or licks. A reservation that measured ten by thirteen miles was set up. It was to have no settlements on it therefore no land could be sold in the reservation. The land was reserved for the production of salt. However, this was very difficult to enforce. Settlers who were already there would not move.

The salt industry became the primary industry of the county and the state. When Illinois entered the union in 1818 it was to enter the Union as a free state as established by the Northwest Ordinance. An exception to the exclusion of slavery was made in the Illinois Constitution for the area known as the Gallatin Salines. The growing new state needed the revenue from the salt wells. 

Michael Sprinkle came to the county in 1800. He and the others that followed him started a new town in the wilderness just south of where the Wabash river flows into the Ohio river. The town was not the first in the area, however. Shawneetown was named for the Indian tribe that originally lived where the new town was springing up.

By 1812 the federal government had created the Shawneetown Land Office. Gallatin County was officially organized that year. It was the second county in the state after St. Clair county. Out of the county grew the present day counties of Saline, White, Franklin, Hamilton, Hardin, and parts of Pope and Williamson.

After the 1937 flood of the Ohio River, Shawneetown was moved to a new location. Some residents remained in the old town while others moved to New Shawneetown.

Also established by 1812 was the town of New Haven. Property there was recorded by Johnathan Boone, a brother of Daniel Boone. By the time Illinois became a state in 1818 the county was booming, it was the point of entry into the new land. The Ohio river provided easy access to this "Wild West."

Other towns in the county were beginning to grow. Cypressville, now named Junction, was established in 1840.

Ridgway was founded in 1870 near the new railroad track.

Another railroad community of the mid-nineteenth century was Omaha. 

Illinoishistory.com provides extensive information on Southern Illinois frontier history, including research on Gallatin County's Old Slave House.

Genealogy

The Illinois Trails History & Genealogy Project is a valuable resource for census, land, marriage and war records.

Local sources include:

  
                      County Clerk of Gallatin County
                      Gallatin County Courthouse
                      Shawneetown, IL 62984
                      618-269-3025

    
                      Shawneetown Public Library
                       209 N Lincoln Blvd E
                       Shawneetown, IL 62984
                       618-269-3761

 
                       Asbury Cemetery Association
                       19001 Greenhouse Rd
                       Omaha, IL 62871
                       618-272-7391