Governor Edward Coles Historical Marker

Dedicated in 1999, this historical marker commemorates the site where Governor Edward Coles was once convicted of "illegally freeing his slaves." This site is on the location of the former Lincoln School, an institution that was vital to the Black community in this area. Many early histories of Madison County maintain that Edward Coles bought land for the people he formerly enslaved east of the city of Edwardsville, near Hamel, Illinois, a community that is now Pin Oak Township. These histories argue that Coles’s anti-slavery convictions led him to create the “Pin Oak Colony” in 1819 to establish a life away from America’s “peculiar institution” of slavery. While much of this is true, like most histories of slavery, the story is complicated.

Coles began his journey to Illinois from Virginia in 1819 with at least 16 enslaved people. We know that Coles’s slaves included Ralph and Kate Crawford and their four children, Ralph Crawford’s brother and sister, and two other adults, Tom Cobb and Nancy Gains. Coles freed the enslaved people on the Ohio River, and after arriving in Edwardsville, filed the paperwork in the Madison County Court House on July 4, 1819. Coles initially purchased 80 acres of land in the southwest corner of present-day Pin Oak Township and hired the Crawford family to farm the land. Coles’s farm eventually grew to almost 500 acres. Records indicate that Coles also purchased 480 acres of unimproved land in what is now Knox County, Illinois (Madison County borders at that time extended north to the Wisconsin line). He gave 160 acres each to Robert Crawford, Kate Crawford, and Tom Cobb. None of the three tried to settle on this land and eventually sold their holdings in the 1830s. The Crawford couple used their money to purchase land in present-day Pin Oak Township.

Local historian Charlotte Johnson's meticulous research of maps, census records, and land deeds found that Robert Crawford, son of Ralph and Kate, became a preacher while continuing to work Coles’s farm. He was the pastor of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church (also known as Ridge Prairie Church). In 1843, the Crawford family sold their land in Pin Oak Township and moved to East Litchfield in Montgomery County, Illinois. Other individuals freed by Coles left Madison County, with one family settling in Decatur, Illinois, and another living in St. Louis.

Many of the 20^th century institutions important to the Black community in Edwardsville have their roots in Pin Oak Township. The Lincoln School, Mount Joy Missionary Baptist Church, and Wesley Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church had precursors in the 19^th century Pin Oak Colony. According to Centennial History of Madison County, Illinois, and It’s People (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1912), Pin Oak had a population of at least 300 residents at its height around the time of the Civil War.

[sources: https://madcohistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2020-Jan-MCHS-News-Pin-Oak-Colony-PDF.pdf

https://www.lib.niu.edu/1999/iht0619941.html

https://madcohistory.org/online-exhibits/edward-coles-champion-of-freedom/life-in-illinois/. Accessed December 11, 2022.

The original entry was written by Dr. Stephen Hansen and edited by Jessica Guldner.