10. The Stouts did not enter their land as it was not yet surveyed. The pattern indicated the land was surveyed as the demand for patents came. Thus the first lands were entered around Shawneetown in 1814.

The survey system is older than we had supposed. It was established by an act of the Continental Congress approved May 20, 1785, and that year the first "geographer" was appointed for the Illinois country in the person of Thomas Hutchins of Fort Chartres. He is probably the real author of the system usually accredited to Thomas Jefferson. (See: Moses, History and Statutes of Illinois, p. 183.)

Moses says Hutchins was a British citizen and a former member of the King's Sixteenth Royal Regiment, but that he became a colonial sympathizer and was imprisoned for this fifth column activity. He somehow got out of jail, and we find him serving the colonial cause against the British in General Nathanael Greene's units, being soon rewarded after the war with an appointment in the Illinois country. We find no record that he did more than improve the crude western maps of his day, and possibly plan the survey system we now use.

11. Josephine post office was just west of the trail in the northwest corner of the southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section twenty-five in Greene Township, at that date not formed. The Leo Render abstract shows an old metes and bounds survey upon which we feel certain was the Josephine office.

12. Illinois State Historical Society Journal for October, 1937. McLean County Trails Map in McLean County and Its Schools, Wm. B. Brigham.

13. Thomas and Elizabeth Campbell's son, John F. Campbell, was living near Fort Scott, Kansas, at the time his parents ran this old stage post office. On the morning of May 17, 1858, about thirty raiders rode into town, seized some of the citizens, John F. Campbell among them, and they were ordered shot for no reason at all except that the leader, a man named Hamilton, stated they were "free staters."

The Campbells were originally from Campbell's Mills, Blacklick, Pennsylvania, where General Charles Campbell, Thomas' father, was once an influential citizen. Thomas Campbell's sister married a near relative of President Buchanan.