Events

1836 First Election Lake Precinct

The first election ever held in Lake Precinct — an early electoral district encompassing both Elgin and Dundee — took place circa 1836 at the home of the father of Thompson, M. H., shortly after the Thompson family relocated to Dundee. The event marks one of the earliest acts of organized civic life in what would become Kane County's northern settlements.

Date & Context

The election is believed to have occurred around 1836, coinciding with or closely following the Thompson family's arrival in Dundee that same year. At the time, the area was organized under the designation of Lake Precinct, a single electoral unit that grouped together the nascent communities of Elgin and Dundee — a pairing that reflects how sparsely settled and administratively consolidated the region still was in the mid-1830s.

The precise date of the election within 1836 is not recorded in available sources. It is not known which office or offices were on the ballot. (Source: Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois (1878))

Participants

The election was hosted at the residence of the father of Thompson, M. H., whose family had emigrated originally from Plattsburg, New York, in 1834 and removed specifically to Dundee in 1836. The use of the Thompson home as a polling place suggests the family occupied one of the more substantial or centrally situated properties in the area at the time.

No roster of voters, candidates, or election officials has been identified in available sources. The broader Lake Precinct electorate would have been drawn from the settler population of both Dundee and Elgin. (Source: Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois (1878))

Significance

As the first election held in Lake Precinct, this event represents an early milestone in the formal civic organization of the Dundee and Elgin area. The choice of a private residence as the polling location was typical of frontier communities, where public infrastructure had not yet been established.

The fact that this detail was preserved in the 1878 biographical sketch of Thompson, M. H. in The Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois suggests the event retained some local memorability into the postbellum period, at least within the Thompson family's recollection. M. H. Thompson himself went on to become a civil engineer, farmer, and Secretary and Treasurer of the Elgin Gas Light Co., and owned two of the largest farms in Dundee Township. (Source: Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois (1878))

Sources

  • The Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois (1878). Biographical entry for M. H. Thompson. Available at: https://archive.org/details/pastpresentofkan00peir#offset-2555749