Fountain Green is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

located about eleven miles northeast of

Carthage, Illinois Carthage is a city in and the county seat of Hancock County, Illinois, United States. Its population was 2,490 as of the 2020 census. Carthage is best known for being the site of the 1844 murder of Joseph Smith, who founded the Latter Day Saint ...

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 ...

in Fountain Green Township,

Hancock County, Illinois Hancock County is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it has a population of 17,620. Its county seat is Carthage, Illinois, Carthage, and its largest city is H ...

History

One of the earliest settlers in this area was Mordecai Lincoln, who prior to 1830 led a group from Kentucky in an attempt to establish a

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

settlement in this part of Illinois, presaging by several years the

Mormon Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...

settlement in nearby Nauvoo. He was followed by other southerners who were mostly

Baptist Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...

in faith, including Baptists who had lived close to Mordecai near

Springfield, Kentucky Springfield is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Washington County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 2,846 at the 2020 census. History Springfield was established in 1793 and probably named for springs in the area. ...

. Some of the Baptists settled along Baptist Creek to the northeast of Fountain Green. The Catholic settlement foundered, in part because of the difficulty in obtaining a parish priest. The Baptist theology was better able to cope with such problems on the frontier. In the 1850s coal was discovered, and railroads were extended into the area. With the railroads came coal miners from Pennsylvania. The coal miners were mainly descendants of Northern Irish Protestants who had fled the

Irish Rebellion of 1798 The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ''The Turn out'', ''The Hurries'', 1798 Rebellion) was a popular insurrection against the British Crown in what was then the separate, but subordinate, Kingdom of Ireland. The m ...

. An Irish Protestant church (

Calvinist Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Protestantism, Continenta ...

) was soon established in Fountain Green, attracting members from the earlier groups. This seems to have been a local manifestation of the general movement in the North away from the Baptist church, which, in the 1850s, supported slavery. By 1880, Irish Catholics began settling in the area to work the mines, establishing new Catholic churches and cemeteries in nearby communities, with no apparent recognition of the earlier settlement, which seems to have been forgotten. The original Catholic settlers are buried in the Old Catholic or Lincoln Cemetery near Fountain Green.

References

* "Creating a Farm Community: Fountain Green Township, 1825-1840", Susan Sessions Rugh, Western Illinois Regional Studies 13 (Fall 1990) * "The Bootlegger", John E. Hallwas, 1999 * {{authority control Unincorporated communities in Illinois Unincorporated communities in Hancock County, Illinois Populated places established in the 1820s