WARSAW, IL

Warsaw was an important  town in early 1800s, located at the westernmost point of Illinois along the Mississippi River. Much of the information below comes from an article on the Warsaw Park District web page.

The location of today’s Warsaw was significant in the War of 1812 although the town itself was not platted until 1834. But here two forts once dominated the eastern shore of the river. The first fort was Fort Johnson, built in September 1814 as ordered by Major Zachary Taylor. The fort was opposite the mouth of the Des Moines River, “situated at the foot of a series of rapids in the Mississippi” according to the Illinois State Archaeological Survey. In other words, the location was strategic as a key interruption point for river travel. Fort Johnson was occupied for only eight weeks. Taylor ordered its destruction because the remote location could not be provisioned in the winter. Nevertheless, during its brief life Fort Johnson was attacked by Sauk warriors of Chief Black Hawk and his allied British soldiers.

The other fort was Cantonment Davis. Quoting ISAS: “The following autumn, after the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, a second garrison of men was sent to establish a winter encampment, or cantonment, on the former site of Fort Johnson. Cantonment Davis was used as a winter staging ground for assembling the men and materials to build … at a nearby and more accessible location the following spring.” That facility became Fort Edwards.

Fort Edwards was built in 1814 (some sources say 1817) in order to protect the movement of goods up the Mississippi River. It was a more elaborate structure than its predecessors. Zachary Taylor was in command of Fort Edwards.  
                                 model of Ft. Edwards in Warsaw Museum

Ft. Edwards was sited to surveil the union of the Des Moines River with the Mississippi and to watch the Sauk and Fox Indians. 

    
view from Ft. Edwards

The Black Hawk War in 1832 did not directly impact the Warsaw area. After Black Hawk’s capture in 1833 Fort Edwards no longer needed to perform a military function. It flourished as a fur trading post to which white trappers, settlers and Indians came to engage in commerce.

The two earlier forts – Johnson and Davis – were located archaeologically, hence the work of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey in 2003 and 2009. Lovely Ralston Park in Warsaw is said to be the area behind the stockade of Fort Johnson. Fort Edwards was commemorated with a tall obelisk erected in 1914. 

The fort is named for Ninian Edwards who was Governor of the Illinois Territory from 1809 -1818 (statehood), then U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1818-1824 and then Governor of the State of Illinois from 1826-1830.  The Edwards plaque on the front of the obelisk is his portrait. Today Ninian Edwards is a controversial figure because he pursued Indian removal from Illinois and dispatched the Illinois militia against the Native population during the War of 1812. He forced the Illinois tribes to cede land to the State through so-called treaties.

Going around the other three sides of the obelisk are plaques for Zachary Taylor, a plaque showing the presumed appearance of the fort, and the dedication itself.     

On the grounds of the monument site is a large boulder also with a dedicatory plaque. The discrepancy or discord over the date of construction of Ft. Edwards is evident at the site if we compare the plaque above to the plaque below.

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Warsaw honors Edwards. The fort is featured in the series of decorative wrought iron lampost adornments in-town.  The fort is easily access from Main Street. A model showing the presumed appearance of the fort is on display in the little Warsaw Museum.

   

Cindy Lutzi of Keokuk’s Daily Gate City newspaper recounts the history of Warsaw itself. Major John R. Wilcox built a log cabin in 1827 “just below the original site of Fort Johnson. His home is believed to be ‘the first house in what was later to become the town of Warsaw’. Nine years later, Wilcox started a ferry that enable the movement of people and commodities across the Mississippi from Warsaw … and vice versa.” Wilcox’s home was followed by that of Major Mark Aldrich, in 1832. 

By 1834 Warsaw was a town with about twenty-four residents. Meanwhile, river traffic on the Mississippi River exploded with passenger boats carrying thousands of people including immigrants from Ireland, Germany and France. Warsaw continued to grow as its commerce flourished with “three distilleries, a tobacco factory, flour mills, brickyards, scores of cooperage shops.” Lutzi indicates that in 1857 “20,000 bushels of grain were delivered to Warsaw for use by its three distilleries and three flour mills.” And “thousands of barrels [hence, cooperage] were made yearly for the shipment of lard, meat, apples, cider, flour, whiskey and wine.” It is reported that in 1837 there also was a saddler shop, a tailor shop and a grocery. By 1850 Warsaw had a population of 850. French immigration began in the late 1850s and continued through the 1870s. Warsaw was a boom town in the nineteenth century, including because it benefitted from the dangerous Mississippi River  by being a transshipment point.

The Mississippi River is known to have flooded in 1835, 1851 and 1853, though its impact in Warsaw is undocumented. In 1880, however, a historian of Hancock County observed that the Mississippi was “by slow degrees gradually diminishing in volume” with flooding becoming less frequent. Nevertheless, recently, in 1993, there was a flood so great that U.S. Army Corps of Engineers labelled it a “500-year flood.” The massive engineering of the river with dams and locks, undertaken by the USACE, began and continues to control the river. Opposite Warsaw is the Keokuk Lock and Dam No. 19, built in 1952-57 and responding to efforts that began as early as 1837 to control the Des Moines Rapids, which had been an effective northern barrier for traffic on the river. 

Warsaw is famous for the brewery that began in 1861 and operated as such for more than one hundred years. Although the brewery no longer functions, the building has been reconverted to a popular restaurant along the river thath operates during the benign months of the year. 

The entire downtown of Warsaw was inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. One can see that Warsaw was once a lovely town.

But today, Main Street is severely challenged, with many abandoned and decaying buildings as well as empty lots where buildings once stood.

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There is a small Warsaw Illinois Historical Society and Museum at 401 Main Street. At the time it was was organized in 1980, Warsaw was in much better shape and this was reflected in the fact that the new organization had 144 charter members. Today there is dire need of larger space in which to create a coherent script. Some of the materials in the museum are quite interesting but they are lost amid the clutter. As with many small community museums, most of the key supporters are interested in family genealogy and the focus is family histories with an extensive collection of photographs.

In 2019 the Hunziker Winery Site was added to the National Register of Historic Places. As explained in the Hancock County Journal-Pilot (February 10, 2020): when functioning, the winery site “aided in the establishment of … commercial wine production in the vicinity of Warsaw and Nauvoo in the 1870s. The site contains remnants of above-ground structural features and well-preserved remains of a large subterranean cellar … [the site] may provide an understanding of the modernization of [wine] production from a predominately hand-powered to a steam- and/or electric powered facility.”