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1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The members of the General Assembly are proud to
3designate a section of Interstate 57 that encompasses an area
4where the first non-Native Americans in Illinois settled as the
5"French-Canadian Heritage Corridor"; the majority of settlers
6in the area were French-Canadian pioneers who immigrated in
7large numbers to what is now Kankakee and Iroquois Counties
8from the late 1820s to 1850s; those settlements included
9Bourbonnais Grove (now Bourbonnais), Le Petit Canada (gone now,
10but the site is located in the Davis Creek area of Kankakee
11River State Park), Rockville (gone now, but the site is located
12in the northwest section of Kankakee River State Park), St.
13George, L'Erable, Papineau, and St. Anne; after the Potawatomi,
14the first significant ethnic group to make contributions in the
15Kankakee area were the French-Canadians; and
 
16    WHEREAS, The French were no strangers to the heartland of
17North America; as early as 1543, France established the colony
18of New France, which eventually covered about half of the North
19American interior; the nineteenth-century French-Canadians
20were very familiar with the land south of the Great Lakes; they
21knew about Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de la Salle's (1643-87)
22quest to explore the rivers of New France that flowed into the
23Mississippi; he and 33 men made a portage from the St. Joseph
24River to a marshy river's headwaters; in 1679, the party

 

 

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1continued paddling into the "Great West" along a new
2"connecting river" with 8 canoes; the party eventually
3completed the journey from Montreal to the mouth of the
4Mississippi; La Salle named the "connecting river" between the
5St. Joseph and Illinois Rivers, the Seignelay, in honor of
6colonial minister of France; the name was later changed to the
7Theakiki and is now called the Kankakee; the native Potawatomi
8called the land adjacent to the river "Te-yar-ac-ke"
9("wonderful land"); the word "Ky-an-ke-ke" evolved; some
10Indian tribes called the land "Te-ok-e-kee" ("wolf") while some
11coureurs de bois (French "runners of the wood") used the name
12"Quin-que-que"; and
 
13    WHEREAS, The Kankakee River Valley of the Illinois Country
14was sparsely settled until Noel Levasseur (1799-1879) began
15recruiting settlers from his native Quebec Province, Canada;
16hundreds of French-Canadians soon came to settle and farm along
17the fertile Kankakee River in an area they called Bourbonnais
18Grove-extending from today's Kankakee River State Park to Cobb
19Park in Kankakee - an area 12 miles long by 1 mile wide; at the
20age of 19 in 1817, Levasseur was employed by the American Fur
21Company (headquartered in Astor, New York with a recruiting
22station in Montreal) along with his friends Dominique Bray,
23Henri Boucher, and 15-year-old Gurdon Hubbard (1802-86); after
24the Black Hawk War of 1832, Levasseur and Hubbard purchased
25land from the Potawatomi and opened the Chicago to Danville

 

 

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1Road through the Grand Prairie along the Kankakee River (now
2Route 102), and the Hubbard Trail which Illinois highway 1 now
3follows; in the late 1820s and early 1830s, 2 other notable
4French-Canadians joined Noel Levasseur in the settlement along
5the Kankakee: the brothers Francois Bourbonnais, Sr. and
6Antoine Bourbonnais "Bourbonnais Grove" was named after them;
7and
 
8    WHEREAS, By 1846, there were at least 22 French-Canadian
9families living in Bourbonnais Grove; the records of St. Leo's
10Parish in Bourbonnais Grove (later to become Maternity of the
11Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Bourbonnais) in 1847 noted 77
12French-Canadian families or 471 people; when Canadian-born
13George Letourneau (1831-1906) - destined to become a renowned
14statesman - arrived in Bourbonnais Grove in 1848, he attended
15church at St. Leo's Chapel, a wooden structure which had been
16built in 1841; a new church (Maternity of the Blessed Virgin
17Mary) replaced the chapel in 1849; this was the church in which
18Letourneau was married to Elodie (Langlois) Letourneau in 1852;
19it burned to the ground in 1853; work began 2 years later on a
20new church to be constructed of local limestone; construction
21was completed in 1858; over 150 years later, Maternity of the
22Blessed Virgin Mary Church appears much the same as it was back
23then; and
 
24    WHEREAS, George Letourneau became mayor of Bourbonnais in

 

 

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11875 and mayor of Kankakee in 1892; he was present at the first
2Illinois State Republican Convention in Bloomington in 1856,
3and listened to Abraham Lincoln's "Lost Speech" - this
4reference denotes the few notes taken by the audience which was
5spellbound as Lincoln delivered an impassioned condemnation of
6slavery; the address was the precedent for his famous "House
7Divided" speech delivered in Springfield on June 16, 1858;
8Letourneau served in just about every Kankakee County political
9office, and was elected State Senator in the Illinois 38th and
1039th General Assemblies from 1892 to 1996; and
 
11    WHEREAS, French-Canadian priests and brothers of the
12Viatorian Order and French-Canadian nuns of the Congregation of
13Notre Dame were instrumental in the religious and educational
14development of the Bourbonnais Grove community; in the later
15part of the nineteenth-century, girls attended the new Notre
16Dame Convent and School after it was built in 1862; boys were
17instructed by the Viatorian priests and brothers in the
18Bourbonnais Grove public school and then St. Viator Academy
19after 1868; young men could attend St. Viator College when the
20Viatorians were granted a university charter in 1874; when
21Letourneau became mayor of the Village of Bourbonnais, when it
22was incorporated in 1875, the community was already a thriving
23educational center; a new boy's school, another St. Viator
24Academy, was built in 1891; and
25

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, The French-Canadians Noel Levasseur, George
2Letourneau, and Captain Francis Seguin spearheaded the
3organization of Kankakee County in 1853; the new county had a
4population of 8,000 people; the population would soon shift
5from Bourbonnais to Kankakee with the arrival of the railroad
6in 1853; Kankakee was originally platted as the "town of
7Bourbonnais" in 1853; 2 years later, the name was changed; the
8population of Bourbonnais Township in 1850 was 1,720 with 81%
9or 201 out of 248 families of French-Canadian descent; other
10French-Canadian settlements in Kankakee and Iroquois Counties
11were St. George (1848), L'Erable (1854), St. Anne (1851), and
12Papineau (1872); and
 
13    WHEREAS, At about the same time as the formation of
14Kankakee County in 1853, Canadian-born Father Charles Chiniquy
15(1809-99) was pastor of Maternity Blessed Virgin Mary Church in
16Bourbonnais Grove; after disagreeing with the Bishop of Chicago
17over the bishop's treatment of Catholics in Chicago,
18particularly French-Canadians, Fr. Chiniquy led an exodus of
19Bourbonnais Grove French-Canadian Roman Catholics to the
20village of St. Anne; this crisis split many French-Canadian
21families; older French-Canadians in the Kankakee area still
22today resent Fr. Chiniquy's schism; Fr. Chiniquy was
23excommunicated in 1856; he then left the Roman Catholic Church
24and formed the Christian Catholic Church of St. Anne; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, Up until the 1950s, French was a primary spoken
2language in Bourbonnais; French-Canadian family names still
3abound in the telephone book, and the fleur-de-lis is the
4symbol of Bourbonnais - as the village symbol and all street
5signs testify; therefore, be it
 
6    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
7NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we
8designate a section of Interstate 57 as the "French-Canadian
9Heritage Corridor" with one sign located on 1-57 for southbound
10traffic just north of the Manteno exit 322 and another sign
11located on 1-57 for northbound traffic just south of Ashkum
12exit 293; and be it further
 
13    RESOLVED, That the Illinois Department of Transportation
14is requested to erect 2 signs on a section of Interstate 57,
15consistent with State and federal regulations, giving notice of
16the name, "French-Canadian Heritage Corridor", with one sign
17located on I-57 for southbound traffic just north of the
18Manteno exit 322 and another sign located on I-57 for
19northbound traffic just south of Ashkum exit 293 by July 15,
202015.