future capital received that hackneyed title, when the distinctive and
musical name of Sangamon was ready to their hands. The same day they
agreed with John Kelly to build them a court-house, for which they
paid him forty-two dollars and fifty cents. In twenty-four days the
house was built--one room of rough logs, the jury retiring to any
sequestered glade they fancied for their deliberation. They next
ordered the building of a jail, which cost just twice as much money as
the court-house. Constables and overseers of the poor were appointed,
and all the machinery of government prepared for the population which
was hourly expected. It was taken for granted that malefactors would
come and the constables have employment; and the poor they would have
always with them, when once they began to arrive. This was only a
temporary arrangement, but when, a year or two later, the time came to
fix upon a permanent seat of justice for the county, the resources of
the Spring Creek men were equal to the emergency. When the
commissioners came to decide on the relative merits of Springfield and
another site a few miles away, they led them through brake, through
brier, by mud knee-deep and by water-courses so exasperating that the
wearied and baffled officials declared they would seek no further, and
Springfield became the county-seat for all time; and greater destinies
were in store for it through means not wholly dissimilar. Nature had
made it merely a pleasant hunting-ground; the craft and the industry
of its first settlers made it a capital.

[Sidenote: "History Of Sangamon County," p. 83.]

[Sidenote: "Old Times in McLean County," p. 235.]

[Sidenote: Ford, "History of Illinois," p. 53.]