![]() Plows buried any material remains left behind, and grazing livestock and crops covered most of the site. Census records and other historical documents tell us that New Philadelphia was a place where black and white villagers lived side by side, but we know that the town's dead lie buried in cemeteries separated by color.īy 1885, many villagers had moved away in search of jobs and better economic opportunities. A formerly enslaved man called "Free Frank" McWorter founded New Philadelphia in 1836 as a money-making venture to buy his family out of slavery. It was the first town platted and registered by an African American before the American Civil War. As in other frontier towns, smoke from cooking fires swirled from the dwellings that dotted small plots of land.īut New Philadelphia was not a typical pioneer town. Listen for loud clanging from the blacksmith's shop as hammers shaped hot metal into shoes for mules and horses. Picture farmers hitching mules and oxen to carts filled with vegetables, fruit, and grain to sell at markets. ![]() Imagine villagers filling baskets with a bounty of apples, corn, and wheat, while chickens clucked and pigs rooted in nearby pens. New Philadelphia looked like a typical west-central Illinois pioneer town to travelers cresting the hill overlooking the place in the mid-1800s. ![]()
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