The original owner, who purchased it with 629 acres in at the Federal Land Office in Danville, Illinois, was then future founder (along with Anna, or Annie, as he liked to call her), of Millikin University. The federal patent could take some time to receive in those days, Franklin Pierce was President, but purchased on May 10, 1854 was duly recorded, and patent was issued on March 1, 1855. Purchased for 1.25 per acre. He had already sold a 73-acre portion of his near $800 purchase to Josiah Hunt, Chief Engineer for the Great Western Railroad, on October 30, 1854, for $300 cash and a stipulation that "provided the Great Western Rail Road Company shall establish a depot near the center of the south line of the premises herein conveyed.” Bement's first railroad station was built as his location specified. Mr. Millikin sold an additional 80 acres for $1 to the railroad.
Mr. Millikin was just one of several investors who were able to purchase property along the former Northern Cross Railroad, the bold (but ultimately doomed) attempt to develop infrastructure through the Internal Improvements Act of 1837. A railroad was proposed to begin at Quincy and proceed west to the Indiana state line. The railroad line route was surveyed in 1838-39. A twelve-mile line between Meredosia was built, but the economic panic of 1837 stopped progress. By 1842, the state had built the line from Springfield to Jacksonville. After 10 years of woeful operation, the state sold the original line to Nicholas H. Ridgley, who paid $21,000 for it, which had cost the state $750,000 to build. Ridgley and his partner, Thomas Mather, would rename the railroad the Sangamon and Morgan Railroad Company, and it would connect Springfield to Decatur in 1854. By 1853 the road was renamed the Great Western Railway.
Land purchased by Lucius Wing of Charlemont, Massachusetts, Joseph Bodman and Henry Little of Williamsburg, Massachusetts, and James Millikin was purchased by Josiah Hunt to form the original town of Bement. Hunt was also involved in the development of other towns along the railroads, including Mattoon, Litchfield, Fairmont, Catlin, and Cerro Gordo. Each sold portions to Hunt between October 1854-January 1855. It was Hunt who laid out the streets, alleys and gave the public park property for church or school. Since each landowner negotiated with Hunt at different times, it is probable that the four "founders" never met face-to-face beyond with Hunt himself negotiating on behalf of the Great Western Railroad. Only the Bodman family remained in the area.
Anecdotal stories have a tendency to become "fact" while the historical record is filed away in government offices. The lore of Mr. Millikin's investment in Bement's development as a railroad town, including the placement of its first railroad station, became "history" in which a portion of his later fortune had been acquired from his land purchase of (or near) Bement.
There is no record of James Millikin visiting Bement. In 1856, he arrives in Decatur, as Anna Aston has settled with her father and mother, Rev. Samuel Aston and Hetty (Bartlett) Aston on a farm that stood at the northeast corner of Harryland and Turpin roads. Samuel would die at the farm in November 1856 of "lung fever," an old description for pneumonia. James, age 30, would ride out with Rev. E. W. Thayer, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Decatur, to marry Anna on January 1, 1857, at the farm. As part of their honeymoon, the Millikin's traveled from Decatur to Council Bluffs, Iowa, as Mr. Millikin later recalled, where the couple stayed with various families just setting out farms in western Iowa, and inspected and surveyed his other federal land purchases in the area. It is during this trip that Anna Millikin ties her handkerchief to the wheel of the buggy and counts the revolutions to measure the land while James Millikin watched a compass to keep the wagon going straight north. After opening the bank on Merchant Street in 1860, Mr. Millikin gradually sold his land holdings, acquiring the fortune of $75,000.
I never knew as a child that my childhood home was once part of a federal patent received by James Millikin of Danville, Vermillion County, Illinois. I did not know of this connection even while attending Millikin University! The original street names given by Josiah Hunt on his village of Bement plat filed January 1, 1855, still include "Bodman" and "Wing" today. But not Millikin, or even James. The railroad station was later built at another location, west of town where the Chicago and Paducah Railroad ran along. Village historians would recall Wing, Bodman, and Little as "founders" of Bement. They would recall Edward Bement's promise to donate a bell to the first organized church in the village. A pledge left unfulfilled due to Edward Bement's death but redeemed by the Wabash Railroad for the village's centennial in 1955.
I now wonder if there are other communities in Iowa and Illinois that James Millikin once had property. Is he mentioned as part of their history? Or is he, like the village lore of Bement, a silent "founder" who saw what the railroads could do for a village, invested along its surveyed route, and received a due profit in selling land for another man's dreams?
