Settlement in this area began in 1822 with Keg Grove, which was known as Blooming Grove by the time a post office was established in 1829. McLean County was organized in 1830, and Bloomington, laid out in 1831 just north of Blooming Grove on 22 acres donated by James Allin, was chosen as the county seat. It was incorporated as a town in 1843 and as a city in 1850. Illinois Wesleyan University was chartered there in 1853, and in 1857 Normal University, the first state-supported school of higher education in Illinois, was established in North Bloomington, which soon took the name Normal. Bloomington also became an important political center when the State Republican Party was formally organized there in 1856 at a convention protesting the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and the possible westward extension of slavery; at that convention Abraham Lincoln delivered his 'Lost Speech,' so called because no record was kept. Local residents closely associated with Lincoln included Jesse Fell, credited with founding Normal, Leonard Swett, a lawyer and campaigner for Lincoln, and David Davis, whom Lincoln appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1862 and who later served as a United States Senator. Other notable residents included Governors John M. Hamilton and Joseph Fifer, Adlai Stevenson I, Vice-President under Cleveland, and Adlai Stevenson II, Governor, twice a presidential candidate, and United Nations Ambassador.