John Jacob Hayes

John Jacob Hays was born in New York circa 1770 to a family that had emigrated from the Netherlands to North America in 1720 and belonged to Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. Around 1790 he left New York and settled in Cahokia, where he worked as a merchant trading with Native-American tribes in the Mississippi River Valley. After moving to Cahokia, he joined the militia, serving under Francois Saucier alongside his French neighbors. He married Marie Louise Brouillet in Vincennes in 1801, and although little is known of his immediate family, the 1810 census recorded three children under age 10 in his household. He was appointed sheriff of St. Clair County in 1802 and justice of the peace in 1806, served on the county Board of Commissioners when the county seat was moved from Cahokia to Bellville in 1814, and was appointed collector of the internal revenue for the Illinois Territory by President James Madison that same year. When Illinois gained statehood in 1818, he was the sole Jewish resident of the new state. In 1820 he was appointed Indian agent for the Potawatomi and Miami tribes in northeastern Indiana, and in 1823 he returned to Cahokia, where he died in 1836.

Cahokia Heights, Illinois · United States