In 1832 Elisha Kellogg purchased 160 acres of land just west of the present Morgan-Scott County line, and he and his son-in-law John Williams laid out a town of 94 lots named Geneva on the well-traveled State Road from Springfield to Naples. The lots sold gradually, and in early 1839 a group of members of the Church of Latter-day Saints, who had come from Missouri after being mistreated there, purchased 200 acres half a mile east of Geneva. With Geneva residents, Mormons, and other nearby residents, the town became a busy small community with a post office, a hotel, several stores, a distillery, a corn mill, and a blacksmith shop, and Stephen A. Douglas made a campaign speech there. The Mormons began building the foundation for a tabernacle, but stopped in 1841 when Joseph Smith called upon them to gather at Nauvoo. After the last Mormons left in 1845, the population declined, the lots were taken off the tax rolls, and in 1868 the last home in Geneva was torn down; today only remnants remain visible at plowing time in the fertile farm fields.