Cane Creek, Gallatin County, Illinois
Cane Creek is the name of a creek in Gallatin County, Illinois.
It also refers to a former village in Gallatin County and a former township of Gallatin County.
In 1818 Gallatin County was reduced to a size roughly twice its current size; due to the rapid influx of settlers into the Illinois territory just before statehood, counties were constantly being split off from other counties as the populations of the original counties became too large to effectively administer.
On 19 April 1819 Gallatin County was divided into five townships: the names were Rock and Cave, Shawanoe, Cane Creek, Saline, and Monroe Township. I have not been able to find a map that shows the boundaries of these townships, although I am sure one can be found somewhere in Illinois.
In 1847 Saline County was split from the western part of Gallatin County, and an area of the southern part of Gallatin county was transferred to Hardin County. As far as I can tell this did not change the boundaries of the townships that remained within Gallatin County, other than to make them smaller if part of their territory was no longer within the new borders of the county.
The 1850 census refers to the Cane Creek Precinct, which I believe was coterminous with Cane Creek township.
At that time there was also a village named Cane Creek, as listed in the the following passage from A New and Complete Gazetteer of the United States by Thomas Baldwin & J. Thomas, published in 1854:
Cane Creek, a village of Gallatin County, Illilnois, 17 miles N.N.W. from Shawneetown.
Over time the village of Cane Creek apparently disappeared, and the township name may have fallen out of use even before the townships were reworked on 5 November 1890. In the 1860 and 1870 censuses the area that had formerly been called Cane Creek in the census was now referred to by the grid designations Township 8 Range 8 and Township 9 Range 8. By 1900 the area shows up in the census records as North Fork township.
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