"For Locating and surveying the one hundred and fifty thousand acres of Land granted by a resolution of Assembly to Colonel George Rogers Clarke and the officers and soldiers who assisted in the reduction of the reduction of the British posts in the Illinois; Be it enacted by the General Assembly that William Fleming, John Edwards, John Campbell, Walker Daniel gentlemen, and George Rogers Clarke, John Montgomery, Abraham Chaplain, John Baily, Robert Todd and William Clarke, Officers in the Illinois Regiment shall be and they are hereby constituted a board of Commissioners, and that they or the major part of them shall settle and determine the claims to Land under the said Resolution - That the respective claimants shall give in their claims to the said commissioners on or before the first day of April one thousand seven hundred and eighty four, and if approved and allowed shall pay down to the said commissioners one dollar for every hundred acres of such claim to enable them to survey and apportion the said lands ..."

The commissioners were charged with appointing a principal surveyor, and to contract with him for his fees, to lay off the 150,000 acres of land on the north west side of the Ohio River, and after surveying the land to lay out "one thousand acres at the most convenient place therein for a town."  They were to divide the land in fair and equal lots among the claimants, a patent would then be issued to the commissioners or their survivors, who would execute and issue deeds to the various claimants. The plat of the town above mentioned was to be returned to the clerk of Jefferson County, and who would grant the commissioners to lay out the township in half acre lots, with "convenient streets and public lots, which shall be and the same is hereby established a town by the name of Clarksville, who would then be empowered to sell the various lots at prices they deemed suitable or at auction. The purchasers to hold the land and build a structure upon it within three years, among other considerations and restrictions.

The document ends: I do hereby certify that the foregoing is a true copy from the original in my custody - Given under my hand (there being no seal of office) this 16^th day of Jan^y 1818 - (Signed) Wm. Munford¹ Keeper of the Rolls (Copy of Exemplification)"

The Treaty of Paris (1763) transferred the area of Illinois to the British. It was two years before they able to send a garrison to Fort de Chartres. From it the territory was ruled during the British period by military authority. Although, intermittently, private persons and ministers considered establishing colonies within the area of the state with a measure of self government, the Quebec Act of 1774 finally annexed the territory to the province of Quebec. July 4, 1778, George Rogers Clark took possession of Kaskaskia in the name of Virginia, and established Virginia's authority in the Mississippi River settlements and at Vincennes. Until 1782 the territory was included in the Virginia county of Illinois. Although Clark failed to occupy the whole territory of the present state, he kept the British out of it and maintained garrisons in the Illinois and Wabash villages. In 1783 the territory became part of the United States by the Definitive Treaty of Peace. It was part of the Northwest Territory, organized in 1788 under the Northwest Ordinance. It remained a part of Indiana Territory from 1800 to 1809, when Illinois Territory was established, including the present State of Wisconsin. At the outbreak of the War of 1812, the garrison at Fort Dearborn at Chicago was massacred by the Indians. Indian trouble continued in the state throughout the war, and one pitched battle was fought by the British and American forces near Rock Island.

At the end of the War of 1812 population flooded into the state. A series of Indian treaties between 1795 and 1833 cleared the state of Indians claims. On December 3, 1818 it was admitted to the Union, with a population of about 40,000. In disregard of the Northwest Ordinance, the northeastern boundary of the state was set so as to include the site of Chicago within it.

1. William Munford (1775-1825) lawyer, legislator, court reporter, poet and classicist, see Dictionary of American Biography, volume VII, pp., 326-327