User:Akruc2/Greene County, Illinois

In 1821, three years after Illinois became a state, Green County was established, being carved out of what was previously Madison county and St. Clair county before that. Over the course of the next 18 years four Greene county four more counties were formed out of what was once Greene Country. These include Scott, Morgan, Macoupin and Jersey counties. This left Greene county with approximately 546 square miles of land located in wester-central Illinois near the Illinois River, which was an important resource that provided both a means for travel and to ship goods. Like much of southern Illinois the earliest settlers in the county came from the upland southern states such as North and South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. By the time of the Civil War, 1860, the population of Greene County had grown to 16,093 and 10% of the adult population had been born in the northeast, 15% were foreign born, 25% were born in southern states, and almost 50% had been born in the Midwest. Of the population born in the Midwest many could still trace their roots to the upland south, with almost 80% of them having a parents born in a southern state.