son addition to the original Willis plat. The brothers formed a partnership and opened a large general store in which they managed the short lived post office, short lived because most people got their mail at Washington. The Richardsons erected houses, and for thirteen years from 1839 to 1852 ran a mill that was above average for size, quality of work and volume of production. When the partnership was dissolved, Aaron moved to Bloomington where he opened a lumber yard. James moved to Secor, where he died in 1875. Mrs. Martha Pyle, a daughter of James M. Richardson once related how her uncle Aaron was once carrying the mail on horseback from the Walnut Grove settlement through a winter storm, and when he arrived at Bowling Green he was frozen to his saddle and was carried, saddle and all, into their store to thaw out. The Campbells of the Roxan post office also told a similar story.

Names like Allen Hart, William C. Moore, Charles Moore, Hollenback, Isaac Hayes, Swearington, David Butler, Jacob Butler, Samuel Arnold, Dan Gingerich, John Bliss, John Bowman, Adam Hinthorn, John Nitwine, the widow Long, Amos and Warren Watkins, James McCord and others are in the history of Bowling Green and the territory it served. Reuben Carlock was its first overseer of the poor when Woodford County was formed in 1841, and also on the first grand jury. Sylvester Pearl's name is repeatedly on local land records, and he probably dealt in real estate. He started McLean County's first pork packing establishment when Bowling Green was part of that county. Helen Hazelton was the town's first school teacher in a log cabin schoolhouse. One pioneer lady recalled attending that school which was closed about 1858; then she had to get across Panther Creek at the dam to attend the King school. Often the creek was so high this couldn't be done and she would be forced to miss school. "That's why we didn't learn much," she explained.

One of the most colorful of the rugged individualists who left deep imprints on the frontier settlement of Bowling Green was Uncle Jimmy Robeson, a God-fearing man from Hopkins County, Kentucky, who read his Bible assiduously and wasn't afraid to express his convictions from the pulpit. He ventured into the mercantile business, managing a store for four years. From 1836 to 1840 he ran a rooming and boarding house which in those days was called a tavern, but Uncle Jimmy was a preacher at heart. Old timers remembered his hard hitting sermons and his flowing white whiskers and sideburns that gave him the appearance of a man lifted bodily from the Old Testament. A sturdy physique and clean living enabled Mr. Robeson to become a nonagenarian; he died in 1888 and is buried in the Secor cemetery.

W. R. Willis was twenty-one years old when he came to Illinois from Virginia in 1834. He had a wide range of activities. Arriving first in Walnut Grove, he farmed and in two years moved to Washington and became a teamster. He then moved to the Panther Creek settle-

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