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Subject: [IASCOTT] 1910 In the Legislature
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2003 11:40:21 EST

IN THE LEGISLATURE

The opportunity speedily arrived.  Among those elected to the session of the
Illinois legislature following the Black Hawk war was Colonel Strode, his
ability to run in any line being thus demonstrated.  Before that legislature
came for sanction the plat of a new city on the Mississippi to be named
Davenport.  Here ascended Colonel Strode into the air several feet and popped
his heels together.  He made a better rally than he had done at Stillman's
Run, and shot away from the handsome plat in evidence the illuminated title
in the corner.  In vain Colonel Davenport's friends gathered to his standard.
 They defeated the name suggested by the Strode faction, but could not save
the name of Davenport.  The only way out was a compromise and the name
written on the plat-by the delegated wisdon of the Sucker state was
Stephenson, the name of still another Colonel-colonels were thicker in
Illinois after the Black Hawk war than in Kentucky at her best-a sort of
receiver at the lead mines.  So Stephenson, the new town became and continued
until wish men gave it the title of the best known island in the Mississippi
valley, and the island, and the arsenal, the city and the railroad-all Rock
Island-are known from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and then some miles.

>From Colonel Davenport' disappointment came greater pride.  In the fall of
1835 a company of men seated one evening on the porch of his handsome home
looked across the swiftly rolling river to the incomparable site confronting
them and planned a new Davenport which in later years crowned the bluffs in
beaurty, a town whose scenic loveliness of situation inspired the poet Taylor
to write the tribute which began, "Seated upon her hills like a queen upon
her divan," etc.  Rock Island is all right-a lovely sister in the trinity of
Davenport, Moline and Rock Island, but she never could have been Davenport,
for Davenport is Davenport, and that is something better.


Debbie Clough Gerischer
Iowa Gen Web, Assistant CC, Scott County
<A HREF="http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/">http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/</A>;
IAGENWEB: Special History Project:
http://iagenweb.org/history/index.htm
Gerischer Family Web Site:
<A HREF="http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/">http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/</A>;

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