of Menard and Mason Counties
By T.G. Onstott
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CHAPTER XXVI Page 275 Much ill-feeling was engendered by the location of the county seat. The settlement of the county was always north of Bath. The county south of Bath, where the county ran down to a wedge, was the best land for settlement and lay east and north of Havana. Bath, by strategy, managed to hold the capitol for several years. The agitation was kept up for several years. Finally, an act was passed authorizing an election to be held in February, 1843, and as Bath received a majority of the votes, the county seat was moved to that place until February, 1851, when another election was held, and Havana got the plum by a decided majority and the question was settled for all time. The people of Havana did not wait until a court house was built, but rented the upstairs of Dr. Loveland's new building, also some other rooms for offices, and taking a couple of wagons, went to Bath and moved the archives up to Havana. The court house in Bath was sold for a schoolhouse. There is a beautiful cemetery in Bath that was surveyed by General Ruggles. Bath has been crippled in its business since the C.P. & St. L. Railroad was built, as a great part of the trade that it used to get from Whitehall and Field's Prairie now goes to Kilbourne. The water navigation is too slow and uncertain, while the railroads are swift and sure to receive and deliver freight. Matanzas and Moscow were two important towns. Matanzas being laid out in 1839, but they have been wiped off the map of Mason county as shipping points along the river. Matanzas Lake used to be a great fishing point. We saw a man by the name of Menturn make a haul once with a seine, in which the catch was estimated at thirty thousand pounds. They were mostly Buffalo fish, some weighing fifty pounds. It was before the German carp had been introduced into the Illinois river. The introduction of the English sparrow and the German carp into this county might have been all right in theory, but its results have not been good, as the sparrow has whipped out most of our feathered songsters and the carp has destroyed most of our game fish by rooting up the bottom of our rivers and eating all the fish eggs they could find. Sidora, in the south part of the township, has hardly attained the dignity of a village. It is a grain station, and is situated on land owned by Joseph Adkins. Considering the close proximity to Bath and Chandlerville, the shipments of grain are large.
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