SLABTOWN
Where did the name Slabtown come from? The question happens to have a plausible answer. An old man ran a store there, the first and only one. It was really a cabin that housed a small stock of goods. To keep it warm in winter and dry during rainstorms, the owner, whose name has been lost, weatherboarded it with slabs from a nearby sawmill. This store and mill stood just about where Mackinaw Dells stands today.
FARNISVILLE
This early settlement, sometimes spelled Farneysville, was on the side of the Mackinaw River in Montgomery Township, as was its neighbor Slabtown on the opposite side. It was named after the Farni family who owned the land. There was a mill built in 1835 by Joseph Gingerich and Christian Farni, the first in that immediate neighborhood. Since Farnisville lacked a distillery, a St. Louis firm, Carey and Butkin, decided in 1847 to place one in that thirsty community, and they added a grist mill to grind their own grain.
By 1850 there was a store which the Minor Brothers operated, and a second store was then opened by Frederick Niergarth. A post office lasted only about five years.
These timber towns served the needs of our community when it was very young. They were on the transportation routes of that day, but they could not survive when these early trails went out of existence with the coming of the railroad and the establishment of a fixed system of roads on the square mile boundaries of the newly surveyed land out on the prairies. The competition of the new towns on the rails was too much and the inhabitants of these old towns knew it. It was no use to resist what in that day was modern change. The timber towns died.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
Data used in this chapter is from the El Paso journal of July 13, 1889, and from a number of conversations and old letters. Helpful has been the Wm. LeBaron Jr. & Co. Publication of 1878, The Past and Present of Woodford County, Illinois.
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