Batavia, Illinois history

At the first precinct election held in this house in 1836, E.S. TOWN and IRA MINARD were elected Justices of the Peace.

He became a permanent resident of Batavia in 1848.

Judge Samuel D. Lockwood, who lived across the street from the West Batavia Cemetery in the 1850's, was a friend of Abraham Lincoln.

The Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad Depot was the first-of-its-kind built in 1854, and is recognized on the National Register of Historic Places.

April 26, 1856, twenty-seven votes were cast in Batavia in favor of village incorporation and eleven against.

In 1867, Richard J. Patterson established a sanitarium for women in a former high-school building.

Following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, quarries in Batavia shipped Niagara limestone to help with the city's rebuilding.

In 1875, at Bellevue Place Sanitarium on South Jefferson Street, Mary Todd Lincoln, then the widow of the late President, was a patient for a brief period of time.

Three major windmill factories joined the wagon company and were so productive that by 1890, Batavia was recognized as the leading windmill manufacturing city in the world, generating a nickname, “The Windmill City.”

Inspired by the “can-do” entrepreneurial spark that carried the USA through World War II, Larry Dempsey founded Batavia Enterprises, Inc.(BEI) in 1959.

The former Appleton building, which today is Batavia's city and township government center at 100 North Island Avenue, was previously used in the 1960's as an industrial complex where many of the rocket components were actually manufactured which first took United States astronauts to the moon.

Congress approved a site east of Batavia for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in 1966.

Doctor Bernard Cigrand, the originator of the American Flag Day observance on June 14 of each year, also called Batavia his home as did the Reverend Faye Arnold Moon, grandfather of Colonel Edwin Aldrin, one of the first American astronauts to land on the Moon in 1969.

The Batavia Depot Museum opened in 1975 as a cooperative effort between the Batavia Park District and the Batavia Historical Society.

Inhabitants of the city are proud of the completion in 1998 of a downtown riverwalk built entirely with volunteer help and funding.

By the census of 2000, Batavia's population had reached 23,866.

In March 2017, the Batavia Historical Society launched the Depot Expansion Project, with the goal of adding a new, modern exhibit space, storage and reception area to welcome Batavians and introduce visitors to the city’s rich history.