Dowell, Illinois
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Dowell is a village in Jackson County,
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
,
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. The population was 368 at the 2020 census, down from 408 at the
2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...
census.


History

Dowell was founded as a
coal town A coal town, also known as a coal camp or patch, is a type of company town or mining community established by the employer, a mining company, which imports workers to the site to work the mineral find. The company develops it and provides reside ...
and named by Du Quoin attorney George Dowell and William Lafont. They requested bids for property development as early as 1917. In 1922, the town's population was over 2,000. In February 1920, the Dowell State Bank was opened in the town. Town founders George Dowell and William Lafont were among the first directors of the bank. It was the scene of a bank robbery on September 30, 1924. The bank closed in 1932 following embezzlement charges against its president, William Lafont. In late 1920, construction began on a railroad depot serving the
Illinois Central Railroad The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, is a railroad in the Central United States. Its primary routes connected Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, and thus, ...
. At one time the rail line had a spur into the Kathleen Coal Mine Coal mining brought many eastern European immigrants to the village, including
Rusyns Rusyns, also known as Carpatho-Rusyns, Carpatho-Russians, Ruthenians, or Rusnaks, are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group from the Carpathian Rus', Eastern Carpathians in Central Europe. They speak Rusyn language, Rusyn, an East Slavic lan ...
. At one time there was a
Russian Orthodox The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...
church located east of the railroad tracks on Vogel Avenue. This church was closed prior to 1989. The area is still served by the Holy Protection Church church in nearby Royalton. In the 1930 census, 30% of the respondents indicated they descended from Eastern Europe and/or spoke a Slavic language. The village was host to violence in the 1920s and 1930s, including robberies and murders. Bootlegging was common in the village during
Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...
. Bootlegger Charlie Birger and the Shelton Brothers Gang operated in and around Dowell.


Kathleen Coal Mine

The town has supported miners from local
coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...
mines. The Kathleen Coal Mine was located northeast of the village. It was opened and operated by the Union Colliery Company. It was the scene of a disaster in 1921 and again in 1936. In early 1937, it was the largest producing mine in Jackson county, producing over 5,000 tons of coal per day and employing over 500 men. The mine workers were members of the
United Mine Workers The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American Labor history of the United States, labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing work ...
union led by
John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American civil rights activist and politician who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...
. Its miners went on strike from 1933 to 1937. They struck for the right to join the Progressive Mining Union. The period was marked with occasional violence related to the unionization movement. The mine was closed in November 1946 after the coal vein was no longer accessible. On the site as of December 2021 is Cobin's Salvage Yard. There are few remaining signs of the mine that once built the village of Dowell. A small concrete structure, the mine tipple, is the only structure that remains from the mine. A second mine, known as the "New Kathleen", was opened in January 1946. This second mine closed by 1958., Land scars are still visible from this mine. At one time, oil companies conducted research to determine if oil could be extracted from the coal seams around the Kathleen.


Baseball team

The town hosted a baseball team that consisted of players who worked in the Kathleen Mine. The team was named the ''Dowell Kathleens''. They occasionally played against the
St. Louis Browns The St. Louis Browns were a Major League Baseball team that originated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the Milwaukee Brewers. A charter member of the American League (AL), the Brewers moved to St. Louis, Missouri, after the 1901 season, where they ...
, a professional team, as well as the Belleville Stags, a minor league team.


Dowell today

With the departure of the Kathleen Mine, Dowell has become a quiet residential community. The mine has been suspected of causing
sinkhole A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are also known as shakeholes, and to openings where surface water ...
s in the village.


Demographics

As of the 2020 census there were 368 people, 158 households, and 93 families residing in the village. The population density was . There were 191 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the village was 89.40%
White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
, 2.17%
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
, 0.82% Native American, 0.27% Asian, 0.00%
Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe th ...
, 0.82% from other races, and 6.52% from two or more races.
Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...
or Latino of any race were 1.63% of the population. There were 158 households, out of which 12.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.57% were married couples living together, 6.96% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.14% were non-families. 25.32% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.39% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.69 and the average family size was 2.25. The village's age distribution consisted of 13.8% under the age of 18, 16.3% from 18 to 24, 27.3% from 25 to 44, 24.4% from 45 to 64, and 18.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39.1 years. For every 100 females, there were 104.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 108.8 males. The median income for a household in the village was $36,111, and the median income for a family was $36,250. Males had a median income of $25,833 versus $21,250 for females. The
per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...
for the village was $19,340. About 20.4% of families and 25.3% of the population were below the
poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...
, including 63.3% of those under age 18 and 9.2% of those age 65 or over.


Geography

Dowell is located in northeastern Jackson County at (37.939545, -89.239553).
U.S. Route 51 U.S. Route 51 or U.S. Highway 51 (US 51) is a major south–north United States highway that extends from the western suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana, to within of the Wisconsin–Michigan state line. As most of the United States Numbered Hi ...
passes through the eastern side of the village, leading south to De Soto and north to Du Quoin. According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Dowell has a total area of , of which (or 99.74%) is land and (or 0.26%) is water.


Notable person

* Rudolph Wanderone Jr. (a.k.a. Minnesota Fats), noted
billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . Cue sports, a category of stic ...
player, Wanderone met and married his first wife, Evelyn Graff. A Dowell resident, she was a waitress at a DuQuoin steakhouse, The Perfection Club. They married two months after they met and resided in Dowell for several years.


Gallery


References


External links


Minnesota Fats stories
{{authority control Villages in Jackson County, Illinois Coal towns in Illinois Populated places in Southern Illinois Rusyn-American history Villages in Illinois Ethnic enclaves in Illinois Ukrainian communities in the United States Rusyn-American culture in Illinois