EARLY MACOMB
Macomb was founded in 1830. Its settlement history and that of the larger Western Illinois area derive from the War of 1812. This was the “military tract” that was created by the U.S. government to give land to soldiers in gratitude for their service. That land, of course, had prior occupants: Native American people, the conflict with whom – between the Anglo newcomers and Indigenous people – played out very dramatically in the Black Hawk War.

THE MILITARY TRACT

Macomb is named after Major General Alexander Macomb and is the county seat of McDonough County. The county is named after Commodore Thomas MacDonough (this is not a typo – note the difference in spelling). Macomb and MacDonough were national heroes of the War of 1812, but neither fought or lived near their namesakes. Their fame, however, was so great that the newly settled area chose their surnames for the town and county.

1914 was the hundredth anniversary of the victorious battles fought by Macomb and MacDonogh in New York State against the British. Commemorative plaques were placed on Macomb’s War of 1812 monument in Chandler Park for the occasion (see images below). Local historian John Hallwas argues that the War of 1812 monument connects the community to its local and national past as public memory. The monument was restored and rededicated in 2016, thus indicating “a great deal about what what we stand for in our local culture …residents and visitors … are committed to thinking about, and appreciating, what matters in our national past, and relating it to our lives in this place.“

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THE TIME OF THE CIVIL WAR
Macomb was the scene of tremendously important events in the political and racial history of the United States before and after the Civil War. As explained by historians Timothy Roberts (WIU) and John Hallwas (emeritus, WIU), the county and Macomb itself were ideologically divided on the slavery issue between those favoring abolition and those who supported the southern secessionists. Macomb’s population included settlers from the East (“Yankees”) and from the South. The Democrats (as the term was then applied) were the pro-slavery party. Republicans (as the term was then applied) were the abolitionists. Indeed, Macomb had two newspapers representing these divergent points of view, with their offices on opposite sides of the town square. Their locations still exist. The Macomb Eagle newspaper expressed the Democrats’ view and the Macomb Journal expressed that of the Republicans. The forces cleaving the country in two were playing out in this small area of Illinois.

In the Macomb area the Blazers and the Allisons were two heroic abolitionist families who were active as conductors on the Underground Railroad. This area received fugitive slaves heading north from Quincy. A harrowing account by D. N. Blazer recounts his family’s secretive activities and vividly depicts the struggle and pathos of the escaping slaves. READ IT HERE: https://uofi.box.com/s/hki7tyihou56ju05k8sxzroof1e7ma3j Members of the family are buried in Oakwood Cemetery.

In 1858 Abraham Lincoln arrived in Macomb and was immediately embraced by his fellow abolitionists who lodged him overnight, August 25, at the Randolph House Hotel. Lincoln engaged with James Magie of the Republicans’ Macomb Journal and with Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune. In the hotel they constructed the question that Lincoln would put to Stephen A. Douglas on August 27 in their second debate, to take place in Freeport. That question became known as “the Freeport Question.” Lincoln would pin Douglas down on the ownership of slaves. Although Lincoln lost the senate election, he won the presidency two years later and remembered the support he had received in Macomb from the abolitionists such as Randolph, Magie, Medill and the Blazers and Allisons.

It was also during this visit that Lincoln was induced by James Magie to have his photograph taken at the studio of William Painter-Pearson. It is a candid shot. Macomb marks this candid image with a historical marker and a “Looking for Lincoln” planel.

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That visit to Macomb was not Lincoln’s only one in 1858. He spoke at the courthouse at least twice – once inside and once outside. A “Looking For Lincoln” upright panel on the courthouse grounds marks this aspect of Lincoln’s association with the city.

Notwithstanding the town’s discord on the race issue, African Americans did live in Macomb during the Civil War and after. This is a significant fact given the “sundown towns” existing elsewhere in Illinois in which African Americans were not permitted to live or, indeed, to be present after dark. The most prominent member of Macomb’s early African American community was William Ball who opened a barber shop in Quincy and then came to Macomb in 1865 to pursue that business. It is reported that he was very successful with an elegant establishment that likely serviced the city’s well-to-do white men. A historic plaque on the façade of the building that today is H&R Block commemorates his presence in town. Ball was a leader of his community. For instance, he established the first African American church. Although Macomb was becoming more diverse after the Civil War, Ball and his family lived in an African American neighborhood.

Charles V. Chandler played an enduring role in Macomb. After serving in the Union army at age twenty and quickly being wounded and invalided out, he returned to Macomb where he built a small empire. Among his economic activities were a pottery factory, making wagons, producing clocks and banking. Most important for Macomb was his philanthropy and the ideology he expressed in the post-Civil War period. Chandler changed the urban design of Macomb by purchasing and then demolishing buildings so as to create a beautiful city park that is known by his name. He built an opera house. And in 1899 he funded a statue for the park that was a memorial to the Union soldiers of the region who had fought in the Civil War. The statue still stands. Historian Tim Roberts observes that the community was still affected by the divisions of the Civil War and that ceremonies and public works, such as this statue, were intended to heal.

AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE TODAY
The great Civil Rights leader, C.T. Vivian, spent his childhood in Macomb (1929-1943) through his college years at Western Illinois University. He returned in 1949-1951. The city honored him in 2020 with a historical marker on the site of his home and in 2022 with a giant mural downtown tracing his career and depicting his receipt of the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama.

Thus we see that Macomb played a significant role in the settlement of Western Illinois and political dramas of the nineteenth century. Those events are physically manifested on Macomb’s urban landscape, assisted by historical markers and the media produced by the area’s outstanding “Unforgettable Forgottonia” tourism bureau.

LIZZIE MAGIE AND MONOPOLY
Recently, Unforgettable Forgottonia has done something truly extraordinary in Macomb. It has
scripted the charming town square into a Monopoly board, so to speak. There are four aluminum sculptures, one on each side of the square. And there are large painted “Macombopoly” icons around the square, inviting people to play the digital game. This intervention in the town square refers to Lizzie Magie, as explained below the images.
  LIZZIE on NW corner

COMBINED BOARD GAMES on NE corner
 DICE on the SW corner

  TOP HAT on SE corner

How does Lizzie relate to Macomb and the Western Illinois Trail? It is through a remarkable woman from Macomb, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Magie, who was the daughter of James K. Magie, owner of the anti-slavery Macomb Journal and one of the abolitionists who hosted Abraham Lincoln in 1858. Indeed, James K. Magie “accompanied Abraham Lincoln  as he traveled around Illinois in the late 1850s debating politics with Stephen Douglas. He was with Lincoln in Macomb, when a significant strategy for the debates was settled upon, subsequently paving the way for Lincoln’s future presidency.” (We encourage you to read the entire story: https://www.visitforgottonia.com/james-k-magie/). It was from her progressive father that Lizzie’s political disposition was set and then evolved, aided by her own exceptional technical, literary, and artistic creativity.

Lizzie was born in Macomb on May 9, 1866 at 222 North College Street and the town claims her as their own. In 1890 Lizzie moved on her own to Washingon D.C. By then she was well educated, had fully embraced her father’s ideology and had inherited her journalist father’s flair for writing. In 1892 she published a collection of poems reflecting her keen sense of self as a thinking being, as well as herself in the immensity of the world and universe. In 1893 Lizzie’s dear father died. But his ideals of equality and activism did not die with him. Lizzie had already absorbed them. 

Lizzie was a feminist before the concept existed. She believed in education for women and gender equality in the workplace – that working women should earn the same as men for the same kind of work. She established herself as a typist and stenographer, with ads in the local newspapers for these services. Remarkably, she was an inventor and created a typewriter feed so that it was easier to insert paper into the machine, for which she took out a patent. And now we come back to Macomb.

In 1903 Lizzie pursued a patent for a board game she invented, called The Landlord’s Game and whose layout iterated the town square of Macomb. She received the patent in 1904 and started to sell her game. Fewer than 1% of patents were held by women.

Lizzie’s board game was influenced by the American political economist and journalist, Henry George, who believed that land and natural resources should belong to society, not to individuals.  He argued that owners of land should be taxed and that people should not be taxed for the creations of their endeavors. George termed this idea “Single Tax Theory.” Lizzie had been introduced to George by her father and she understood and agreed with George. She created The Landlord’s Game as a way of educating the public about Single Tax Theory and to illustrate the abuses of monopolies (bear in mind that this was the era of the Robber Barons). Her game vividly demonstrated that the renter could never get ahead.

Meanwhile, in 1907, Lizzie took out a startling ad in a New York newspaper (and the story was picked up by the Macomb Daily Journal and across the country) saying she was going to auction herself off as a white slave: “young woman for sale to the highest bidder, intelligent, educated, refined, true, honest, just, poetical, philosophical, broadminded and big souled and womanly above all things. Brunette, large gray-green eyes, full passionate lips, splendid teeth, not beautiful but very attractive. Features full of character and strength yet fully feminine. Height five feet three inches, well proportioned, graceful, supple. Age, well she isn’t very old but she wasn’t born yesterday.” Why did she do this? She was working as a secretary and not pleased with her salary and what women had to do to make a living. The ad is obviously satirical yet given who her father was and the history of the Civil War and slavery that had been inculcated in her, we can see how she was putting her background, education, and creative talent together. The plight of the exploited worker – specifically underpaid women – that her ad was addressing intersected the renters’ trap that forms the basis of “The Landlord’s Game”, underpinned by the anti-monopoly ideas of Henry George. 

In 1921 Lizzie’s original patent for “The Landlord’s Game” expired. She did not renew it, so it became public domain. But in 1924 Lizzie decided to improve “The Landlord’s Game” and she applied for a patent for the updated version. In her instructions, the game could now be played toward the general welfare or toward the monopolistic acquisition of all properties. Charles Darrow discovered the updated The Landlord’s Game in the Depression and seized upon the notion of “monopoly”. He created a rule book, re-illustrated the board with the properties we all know, and offered the game to Parker Brothers, which eventually paid him millions of dollars. Parker Brothers discovered that Lizzie had 1904 and 1924 patents for a board game whose form was clearly the origin of their Monopoly.

Parker Brothers offered Lizzie $500 for her patent, which she accepted. In 1937, however, Lizzie wrote an article complaining that Parker Brothers had plagiarized her game and paid her too little. (Obviously, her argument was not gong to work belatedly). What Lizzie did hope was that children playing Monopoly would learn the evils of capitalist property accumulation. Clearly, that message never got through.

MACOMB IS TRULY UNFORGETTABLE
Macomb is one of the most interesting and attractive towns in downstate Illinois. The efforts of  Unforgettable Forgottonia (Macomb’s Convention and Visitors Bureau), and the luck of Macomb having preserved much of its downtown architecture – combined with its location in this western Illinois region – make Macomb a tremendously worthwhile place to visit. The dire socioeconomic conditions of the region that led to the 1970s label of Forgottonia in an attempt to attract the attention of the state government certainly do not apply to Macomb today. To the contrary, the brilliant redesign of the courthouse square features Lizzie Magie, The Landlord’s Game and Monopoly, and builds on the walkable history of Macomb, discussed above.

And the CVB has created a delightful digital game called Macombopoly using a QR code for entry.

The curious visitor also can take advantage of the exceptional Western Illinois history archives housed in WIU ‘s Malpass Library. The building itself is an architectural gem and well worth visiting.