Location of Le Roy inside Illinois Location of Le Roy inside Illinois Le Roy (also styled "Le - Roy") is a town/city in Mc - Lean County, Illinois, United States.
According to the 2010 census, Le Roy has a total region of 2.336 square miles (6.05 km2), of which 2.32 square miles (6.01 km2) (or 99.32%) is territory and 0.016 square miles (0.04 km2) (or 0.68%) is water. Le - Roy was laid out on 28 November 1835 by Asahel Gridley (26 April 1810 25 January 1881) and Merritt L.
Both would later serve in the Illinois General Assembly, and Gridley would eventually turn into Mc - Lean County's first millionaire. Le - Roy was the first of eight suburbs to be laid out inside the present boundaries of Mc - Lean County amid the great Illinois town-founding boom which peaked in the summer of 1836. Le - Roy was positioned on a low mound, on prairie land, where the Bloomington to Danville state road crossed the road from Shelbyville to Chicago.
It was positioned a mile and a half southwest of the new town.
Baddeley was offered twenty-seven prime lots in Le - Roy if he would move his store to the newly established town.
Like most Central Illinois suburbs of the 1830s Le - Roy was designed around a central "Public Circle".
The circle at Le - Roy featured streets which joined the enhance region midway along each side and is very similar to squares platted at Mt.
Gridley and Covell's "Original Town" contained twenty-five blocks, almost all with eight lots, for a total of 196 lots.
Early commercial expansion was along Center Street just east of the square, and this has continued to be the commercial heart of the town.
The initial street names chose for Le - Roy are virtually identical to those in the town of Lexington, which Gridley also co-founded: Center, Cedar, Cherry, Chestnut, East, Elm, Main North, Oak, Pine, Vine, Walnut and West.
In November 1835 Gridley and Covell set about selling lots in their new town.
They presented a lengthy advertisement in the Sangamon Journal which is both the earliest description of Le - Roy and a statement of why the two men had chose this locale for a town.
The reader is first told that Leroy was positioned on the north side of Buckle's Grove on Salt Creek.
The early expansion of Le - Roy was slow, but the town did better than many other suburbs laid out in the 1830s.
Only three of the eight Mc - Lean County suburbs laid out amid the 1830s boom still survive Danvers, Le - Roy, and Lexington.
Gridley persuaded Hiram Buck to move to Le - Roy and establish a hotel; in 1838 Buck became Post Master.
In 1836 Conkling and a partner laid out a vast new addition to the town that tripled its size.
Barnett in 1858 at a cost of $3,000. By 1850, Le - Roy had established itself as the second biggest town in the county.
It was incorporated as a town in 1853 and as a town/city 10 August 1874. After the Civil War, the people of Le - Roy were convinced that only a barns could assure the prosperity of their town, and they took the lead in campaigning for what would eventually turn into the Indiana, Bloomington and Western Railway.
In 1866 a meeting was held in Le - Roy to generate support for the barns .
The barns would pass through the southwest corner of the initial town, with the depot positioned five blocks west of the square in Block 44 of Conkling's Addition.
In practice this meant that the people of Le - Roy still had to pay each year, but had no say in the running of the barns .
Service was poor and rates exorbitant. Rather than simply complain, the citizens of Le - Roy decided to build their own barns .
It ran down the center of Oak Street eastward to Rantoul, in Champaign County, where it joined the Illinois Central.
Its populace was 1,629. Slowly Le - Roy ceased to be a barns town.
However, by the end of the century the populace of Le - Roy had more than doubled as the town increasingly became a residentiary center for both Bloomington Normal and Champaign Urbana.
Every August Le - Roy hosts the annual Le - Roy Fall Festival.
Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Mc - Lean County (Edited by Ezra M.
The other new suburbs were Lexington (1836), Concord (now Danvers - 1836), Hudson (1836), Clarksville (1836), Lytleville (1836), Peru (1836), Wilkesborough (1836) and Mt.
In addition, a several other suburbs were laid out in what was then Mc - Lean County but is now inside the limits of neighboring counties; these include Meridiansville (1836), Newcastle (1836), Bowling Green (1836) and Versailles (1836).
Shortly after the boom two other Mc - Lean County suburbs were added to the list: Livingston (1838) and Pleasant Hill (1840).
History of Mc - Lean County (Chicago: Le - Baron 1879) pp.
Combined Indexed Atlas 1856 1914, Mc - Lean County, Illinois (Bloomington: Mc - Lean County Historical Society and Mc - Lean County Genealogical Society, 2006) p.
A later advertisement for Le - Roy appeared in the Illinois Star Register, 27 January 1837.
Selling Location: Early Illinois Town Advertisements 1835-1837 (Normal: Department of Geography-Geology, 2010) https://geo.illinoisstate.edu/about_us/ILLINOIS%20 - TOWN%20 - ADVERTISEMENTS%201835-1837.pdf History of Mc - Lean, 1879, p.
History of Mc - Lean, 1879, pp.
History of Mc - Lean County, 1879, p.
History of Mc - Lean County, 1879, p.534.
Souvenir Program Le - Roy Historical Days, June 25, 1983 (Available at the Mc - Lean County Historical Society, Bloomington, Illinois) City of Le - Roy official website Le - Roy, Illinois Photos Artifacts and History Municipalities and communities of Mc - Lean County, Illinois, United States Allin Anchor Arrowsmith Bellflower Bloomington Blue Mound Cheney's Grove Chenoa Cropsey Dale Danvers Dawson Downs Dry Grove Empire Funk's Grove Gridley Hudson Lawndale Lexington Martin Money Creek Mount Hope Normal Old Town Randolph Towanda West White Oak Yates
Categories:
Cities in Illinois - Cities in Mc - Lean County, Illinois - Populated places established in 1835
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