Geneseo is an Indian word and it means "Pleasant Valley." It was to a small valley on the Illinois prairie wild with flowers and grasses in the summer and bleak and battered by cold winds in winter - that a small band of religious pioneers struck out for in the Autumn of 1836.
These hardy men and women founded our town and forged the enduring legacy and faith of our church. This is the history of what they created on the edge of the Great Plains.
The Rev. Jairus Wilcox, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Bergen, New York and John C. Ward conceived the idea of the Geneseo colony. After many consultations were held with others, an exploration committee was appointed on March 8, 1836 to search for a site in "The West."
Roderick R. Stewart, Cromwell K. Bartlett and John C. Ward were instructed to lay out a village and divide it into lots.
The committee started in May 1836 and went by way of Buffalo, New York, the Great Lakes and Chicago, then a town of 2,000 people, arriving there in June. There they met Judge, later Governor, Ford, who advised them to strike for what would become Henry County, then outside the Military Tract. It was said to have good soil and could be purchased directly from the government for $1.25 an acre.
The trio acted at once upon this advice and came on by way of Dixon's ferry on the Rock River to Brandenburg, later called Dayton's Corners, near Colona. There they met two young men casting about for land: James M. Allan, a young man from Alabama and Arba M. Seymore, a surveyor from New York employed by Mr. Allan to locate timber lands along Green River near the mouth of what would be later named Geneseo Creek.
Mr. Allan decided to join the colony, with the committee's consent, and they traveled to the present site of Geneseo, surveyed it and arranged to puchase 40 acres.
When they first approached Geneseo, they came to a grove two miles south of the Green River and were impressed with its beauty and set their stakes probably not more than 100 feet from where the church now stands. They set apart a public square (the park), church and school lots and a Gospel lot for the parsonage.
The committee then journeyed to the Land Office at Galena and entered the land, purchasing it for $2,875. After the legal and financial formalities were concluded, the committee returned to Bergen and the fall was decided upon for the westward move.
The history of Geneseo Colony and of the Congregational Church of Geneseo are so closely interwoven that, for many to speak of one meant the other also, for their interests were so in common. The Church was a court of Justice, settling community and family misunderstandings. At one time in the early days every adult but one, and most of the children, were members of this church, and for over eighteen years there was no other church affiliation in Geneseo, not until after the railroad went through, bringing in those of other denominations, also bringing some foreigners of different beliefs.
These Colonists were men and women of exceptional force, and exercised unusual influence in shaping the social, religious and educational happenings of their times.
This Congregational Church of Geneseo is one of the thirty four Congregational Churches in Illinois, organized prior to 1840, so it is worthy of being recorded in the history of Congregationalism in the State.