A history of Edwardsville,
since 1818
Postcards, papers and photographs of Edwardsville from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Edwardsville was incorporated in 1818. The first European-American settler was Thomas Kirkpatrick, who came in 1805, laid out a community, and served as the Justice of the Peace. He named the community after his friend Ninian Edwards, then territorial governor of Illinois. (Illinois did not become a state until 1818.) The Edwards Trace, a key trail in the settlement of Central Illinois, used Edwardsville as a northward launching point.
In 1868 The Bank of Edwardsville was founded. It was purchased by Champaign, Illinois-based Busey Bank in 2019.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Edwardsville’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewRalph Griffin House, 1915: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Edwardsville
See all 22 →
Edwardsville, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Ralph Griffin House (1915) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.