Grand Detour, IL
Exhibit Home | Acknowledgements
The St. Peter’s Episcopal Church woodblock card
The card’s interior
The Centennial of Saint Peters Episcopal Church in Grand Detour, Illinois, was celebrated on June 12, 1949. St. Peters, the second oldest Episcopal Church in Illinois, was built in 1849 of native limestone and black walnut.
Grand Detour might have been a metropolis. Major Leonard Andrus of Vermont settled there in 1834 and built flour and saw mills; John Deere came from Vermont in 1837 to become the village blacksmith. They formed a partnership in 1841 to manufacture the steel plow invented by Deere in 1837. Failure of the railroad to come to Grand Detour led to the removal of the factory and the village declined.
Grand Detour is now an unincorporated census-designated place with a population of 429, according to the 2010 census. The Turners’ full research on the Church is accessible in their Christmas 1949 note.
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