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Show 300 Early Western Travels [ Vol 26 village of Carrolton appeared before me among the trees. 10 I was struck with the quiet air of simple elegance which seemed to pervade the place, though its general outlines are those of every other Western village I have visited. One broad, regular street extends through the town, upon either side of which stand the stores and better class of private residences; while in the back- ground, scattered promiscuously along the transverse avenues, are log- cabins surrounded by cornfields, much like those in the villages of the French. Three sides of the town are bounded by forest, while the fourth opens upon the prairie called " String Prairie. 19 In the centre of the village, upon the principal street, is reserved a square, in the middle of which stands the courthouse, with other public structures adjacent, and the stores and hotels along its sides. One thing in Carrolton which struck me as a little singular, was the unusual diversity of religious denominations. Of these there are not less than five or six; three of which have churches, and a fourth is setting itself in order to build; and all this in a village of hardly one thousand inhabitants. The courthouse is a handsome edifice of brick, two stories, with a neat spire. The neighbouring region is fertile and healthy; well proportioned with prairie and timber, well watered by the Macoupin and Apple Creeks, 1" and well populated by a sturdy, thriving race of yeomanry. This is, indeed, strictly an agricultural village; and, so far as my own observation [ 46] extended, little attention is paid or taste manifested for anything else. About a dozen miles north of Carrolton is situated the 10 The first settler in Carrolhon was Thomas Carlin, who arrived in the spring of 1819. In 18a 1 the place was chosen as the seat of Greene County, and surveyed the same year, although the records were not filed until July 30,1825. See History of Greene and Jersey Counties, Illinois ( Springfield, 1885).- ED. m Apple Creek, a tributary of Illinois River, flows in a western trend through Greene County.- ED |