|
The History of Princeville
 William Chase Stevens
Daniel Prince was a conservationist. He plowed furrows and burned the grass early in the season to prevent massive prairie fires from endangering the stands of trees where he built his home on the high prairie a few miles West of the Illinois River. On June 22, 1837, William C. Stevens, Benjamin Clark and Jesse M. McCuthen acknowledged Daniel Prince's contribution to the settlement of the area and filed a plat of the original town of Princeville. Two years later, Mr. Prince left for Missouri telling friends things were just too crowded for his taste. As late as 1841, the town had only nine families.
Princeville was incorporated on March 24, 1874. Trains began visiting the village during the next decade as the line connecting Peoria and Rock Island was completed.  
|
The area of Princeville was home to the Illinois people until the late 1600s
- early 1700s when they were pushed west by the Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and
Potawatomiafter a murder of the Ottawa Chief Pontiac sparked a war between
these people. It was probably the Potawatomi or the Kickapoo that Daniel
Prince first encountered when he came here from Indiana in 1821. Said to be
the first European to live among the native Americans in the area later
known as Prince’s Grove, he appears to have been accepted as a friend as
well. The Native Americans saved his life after a deadly rattlesnake bite
and he was able to remain in the area, unmolested throughout the Black Hawk
War, when the other European Americans took refuge in the Fort at Peoria.
Founders Clark and McCutchen were land speculators while Stevens lived in
nearby Rosefield Township. Before the railroad was built, Princeville was
one of the stopping places on the stage coach route running from Peoria and
Chillicothe through Southampton to Princeville and on to the west and
northwest. The stage, which carried mail as well as passengers, first came
just once a week...then twice and later three times a week. It stopped at
the Bliss-Millen Hotel.