Twenty years before the first newspaper, the first settlers had come here, and the settlement had grown, as frontier towns grew in those times, until it had become of sufficient importance to wrest the county seat from Lyndon, and court was held here in 1844. By 1854 the com­munity had a population of 1,700.

The court house was on the west side of Broadway, north of Third street, and the business district centered about Broadway, with a growing tendency westward from the first "Main street," which was Sixteenth avenue. The court house was used for many purposes. Several lawyers had offices in the building. It was also used for school and church purposes for a time. Harrisburg and Chatham had been united under the name of Sterling for five years, but the city was not incorporated under I a charter until 1857.

Hugh Wallace, who was the only lawyer here prior to the coming of the court house, had been elected state senator in 1852. He owned lands west of Locust street and his inf1uence was swinging the settle­ment westward to "Wallacetown." The post office had been moved from the original site of the E.B. Worthington home on Sixteenth avenue to Broadway and then to the Crandall building in the 800 block on East Third street, in which the Gazette occupied the second f1oor. The town had spread out so much by that time that this move provided a fairly central service for "Tinkertown, Tylertown. and Mauney," as S.M. Coe had, just for the fun of it, dubbed the three settlements east of Broadway, around Broadway and west of Broadway. "Wallacetown" was just beginning to exert an inf1uence. which was to draw trade heavily to the west end when the railroad came. Houses with stores sometimes blocks apart, in between, straggled along the rough and uneven street from Nineteenth avenue to Locust street and beyond.

Mud was the bugaboo of the spring and fall seasons, and in rainy weather water flowed through ravines at Second avenue and Locust street. It was not possible to cross Locust street at the Third or Fourth street intersections and people went north to Fifth and Sixth streets to make the crossing. Bridges in the form of sidewalks were built across the street later, and the sidewalks along East Third street were built up high to keep them out of the mud, with walks similar to bridges at the Second avenue crossing and along the street for a ways east of Second avenue.

There were a few log cabins in the earliest days, but saw mills enabled the settlers to use rough boards a few years later and as early as 1839, the first two brick houses were built here. Harry Brewer building the first one on East Third street, southeast of Lincoln park, and Capt. Andrew McMoore built one the same year on the northeast corner of Second street and Fifth avenue. Many other brick buildings followed, Hezekiah Brink, the first set­tler, establishing a brick yard northwest of the present Community Athletic park.

Stone from the Sinnissippi quar­ries and from the river bed was also used to build other homes. Hugh Wallace erected the mansion of the town soon after the railroad came, the substantial stone on West Third street now used as the office of Frantz Manufacturing Co. The old stone David homestead next west of it dates back to about the time of the first newspaper. The James A. Galt estate brick home in the 800 block of West Fourth street was built for a farm residence before the coming of the railroad. A number of other old homes east of Broadway and a few west of Broadway are still standing in which The Sterling Times was read when it was first published.

The old business houses that clustered around Broadway and extended west several blocks were disposed of in various ways in later years, when the railroad caused the business center to move westward toward the depot. Some were burned a down, for most of them were of wood, others were moved westward, some as business places and others to be remodeled into dwellings in various parts of town. A few of the old brick structures are still standing.

City Not Organized

The strangest thing about the old town when the first paper was published, was that it was not a town at all in the legal sense, only a township, with township organizations and no village entity. Its supervisors, justices of the peace and constables were its officers of the law, with the town clerk the nearest approach to a mayor. Two years after the railroad came, Lorenzo Hapgood was elected the first mayor, in 1857, John Pettigrew and David H. Meyers were elected aldermen from the First ward, east of Broadway, Henry Bush and D.R. Beck, aldermen from the second ward, between Broadway and Locust, and James Galt and B.G. Wheeler for the third ward, west of Locust.

Had Only One Church

The only church building in the community was that of the Presbyterians, which was started in 1848 and finished in 1852, on the present township high school lot, facing East Fourth street west of Fifth avenue. The Presbyterians later sold it to the Catholics, who renamed it St. Patrick's church, the Presbyterians building a new church , on West Fifth street. St. Patrick's Roman Catholic church was organ ized in 1854, the same year the news­paper started. and services were held in a large building known as "Crandall hall," until the early sixties when a frame church was built which was used until the old­ Presbyterian church was purchased. The First Methodist church was the first religious organization formed here in 1838 but did not build a church until 1855, a year after the first newspaper.

The late W. W. Davis is authority for the statement that the Rev. ~ Hazard, a Congregational minister, preached the first sermon in the settlement in 1837, but the Congre­gational church was not organized until 1856, the same year that the Baptist church was organized. ~St. John's Lutheran church was organized in 1854, the same year as The Times started.

No Public Schools

Though this was by no means a Godless community, even the court house being used for religious gatherings and many homes thrown open for regular or occasional meetings, the fact that only one church was standing here before the newspaper came suggests that the presence of the press has a good effect in stirring the people to organize and build churches.

But be that as it may, the newspaper certainly did, from the very start, begin to boost for schools, and the First ward school was organized two years later, in 1856, the Second ward school was organized in 1859 and the Third ward school in 1866.

Though there were no public schools when the first paper was published here. Mrs. E.B. Worthington had started a school as early as 1838 and the citizens had built a schoolhouse from hardwood lumber sawed at Wilson's mill. Mrs. Worthington was still teaching with the help of others in the old school on Broadway when her pupils read the first local paper. The Edwards seminary which many of the older citizens of today attended. was not started until 1875.

Not a Lodge in Town

Just how 1,700 got along without any lodges is hard for the joiners of today to imagine, but the Odd Fellows, the first fraternal organiza­tion here, did not organize until October of 1855, after the newspa­per had been published for nearly a year.

No Factories Here Then

Though Wyatt Cantrell had built a wing dam at an angle of 45 degrees trom the river bank at the foot of Sixth avenue as early as 1838, and obtained power enough to run a grist mill, the power dam in its present location was not started until 1854, the year the newspaper started, when the Sterling Hydraulic Co. was organized. and the dam was finished in 1855, at a cost of $7,000, giving a six-foot fall of water.

The year the dam was finished the first real manufacturing concern begin to make sash, doors. blinds, butter tubs, and other wooden articles. It later became the Sterling Manufacturing Co., incorporated in 1870, and gradually developed into an implement works, continuing until a few years ago

Though the Times and Republican and Gazette all "boosted" continually for factories, it was not until the 70's that the real industrial development of the community began to take permanent form. There were grist mills and saw mills, blacksmith and wagon shops, and brick yards in the earlier days but no real factories.

Farming Chief Business

Farming was the chief business of the community, and some of the be leading business men were as much interested in their farms as they were in their stores or little shops in the early days. The first dream of the community had been for steamboats on Rock river, and when the boats did not come, the community kept on "waiting for something to happen" until finally the railroad stirred them to start a newspaper and begin to start things.

If there are those who imagine that Sterling was behind the times, it is necessary only to remind them that hundreds of older towns than Sterling had not made the progress that this community had made even in its early days and the fact that The Sterling Gazette is the nineteenth oldest daily newspaper among the 154 dailies of Illinois shows that Sterling was not so slow. Among her citizens of the long ago were some of the brightest and most enterprising spirits of their time and when they finally saw the opportunity, they at once united their efforts and made the most of it. Many older towns than Sterling had not done half so well, while some others that were better laid out have since dropped out of the race altogether or have lost much of their old time prestige.

Some Old Stores

Among the few stores here was that of Galt, Crawford and which was just then changing over to the firm name of D.M. Crawford and Co. J.H. Boynton, who was known throughout northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin as the "Western Trader," having been a peddler with a wagon of that name before he opened a store in partner­ship with J. Woodburn here in 1847, was in business at the time, Mr. Woodburn having died some years before the paper was started here. H.A. Buckwalter and Edward Jameison conducted a store until 1858.

Happer and Mcllvaine had moved to Albany. J. Walker and Co. had a Variety store, Golder and Bush were druggists. Hall and Blakesley kept a hardware store. A.E. Moore sold books. stationery and fancy articles. Mrs. D.R. Beck was a milliner, M.S. Henry and Lorenzo Hapgood had a private bank, The Patterson and Witmer store, which became one of the city's best known stores for many years was not started until a year after the newspaper was started. Undoubtedly there were other small business concerns that did not appear in the advertisting or news of the few copies in the file of the earliest papers of that time.