History of Maeystown
(The following is
taken from "The Significance of the
Village of Maeystown, Illinois" by
Gloria Bundy.)
The picturesque
village of Maeystown, nestled in the
hills and among the spring-fed streams
in one small spot of Southern Illinois
was founded in 1852 by Jacob Maeys, who
was born in Oggersheim, Bavaria, in
1828.
Although the village
was founded in 1852 and settled entirely
by German immigrants of the
Forty-Eighter movement, its historical
significance begins in 1782, at the time
of the Moore settlement at La Belle
Fontaine, at what is now Waterloo,
Illinois.
 Captain
James Moore, a native of Maryland, was a
soldier under George Rogers Clark and
was with him at Kaskaskia when he
captured the Illinois Country for
Governor Patrick Henry, making it a
county of Virginia. Having seen the
advantages of the Illinois Country, he
returned with his family and four other
pioneers and their families and spent
the winter of 1781 in Kaskaskia. In
1782, Moore and his party moved
northward on the Kaskaskia Trail and
settled at a place the French called La
Belle Fontaine because of the beautiful
spring there. This was the first
permanent American settlement made in
the Illinois Territory. Other pioneers
subsequently followed, stopping briefly
at the Moore settlement until they
staked claims for themselves elsewhere.
One such young pioneer
was James McRoberts, a Revolutionary War
Soldier, who joined the Moore party and
then staked a claim of 100 acres (Survey
704; Claim 316), which he received for
an improvement right. He left his claim,
went to Tennessee, where he married Mary
Fletcher-Harris and came back to Monroe
County in 1797, receiving another 100
acres, presently owned by Mr. and Mrs.
Dan Mueller (Survey 703; Claim 315),
from the government as a militia
donation. This claim was about one mile
north of the first one. It was on the
second claim that he built his dwelling
out of cedar logs. Here his ten children
were born. Samuel, the eldest, "was the
first native-born Illinoisan elevated to
the United States Senate."
Following the elder
McRobert's death in 1844, his Survey
704; Claim 316, now known as the
McRoberts' Meadow, was sold and re-sold
in rapid succession. It was a hilly,
wooded tract of land, not suitable for
cultivation. It contained three streams
and a large spring, with limestone
deposits protruding out of the hillsides
and along the creek banks.
In 1848, Jacob Maeys
purchased the Meadow from James O. Hall
because of the large spring upon it.
Young Maeys intended to use the water
power from the spring to run a saw mill.
Here he built his log house to which he
brought his bride, Barbara Fischer, also
a native of Germany.
Purchasing this 100
acres was very timely, as it was just
when the Forty-Eighters were coming up
the Mississippi River from the port of
New Orleans, stopping briefly at St.
Louis and then spreading by the
thousands into the surrounding areas of
Missouri and Illinois.
For more information
about Maeystown, contact the Maeystown
Preservation Society, P.O. Box 25,
Maeystown, IL 62256 or by calling
618-458-6660. Group tours are also
offered.
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