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How Montgomery IL Began Montgomery Info
The earliest settler to come to the area that later became Montgomery was Jacob Carpenter, who came to Chicago first in 1832. In the following year, having spent the summer and fall at Naperville, which then contained some half a dozen families, he took up land and built a log house on the east side of the Fox River. This house was the first in Aurora Township and one of the first in Kane County, and was occupied by Carpenter and his family.
In the following year, Carpenter's father-in-law built a second shanty on the same side of the river and nearer the bank than Carpenter's. For years this served as an inn for travelers, although it had only one room that served as kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom.
In 1835, Daniel S. Gray, from Montgomery County, NY, visited the area, where his brother Nicholas Gray had located the previous spring.
Pleased with the new country, he made immediate preparations to settle there, and in 1836, having removed his family from NY, he built the first frame house in the Village. It was located in the south part of what is now Montgomery, near the west bank of the river, and was about 22 x 38 feet.
Daniel Gray was a man of much energy and enterprise. No sooner had he settled in the place than he commenced improvements on a grand scale. A store, foundry, reaper and header manufacturing shop over 100 feet in length, a second foundry built of stone, and one of the best stone grist-mills in the country, appeared in rapid succession. Mr. Gray was making preparations for still more extensive businesses when he died in 1855.
Today, Daniel Gray is considered to be the founder of Montgomery IL, as he purchased several land grants from the Federal government, and owned large sections of land.
Fittingly, the settlement was called "Graystown" for several years, but eventually Gray persuaded the other settlers to call the little village "Montgomery" after the county in New York that he and several other settlers had come from.
In 1858, the Village of Montgomery was incorporated.
