Golconda

In 1796 Major James Vance Lusk, a Revolutionary War veteran, and his wife Sarah, daughter of Gen. James McElwaine, led a party of 35, half of them children, from Washaw, South Carolina, to a site in Kentucky opposite the mouth of Lusk Creek. Lusk obtained a license from Kentucky and operated a ferry until 1798, when he established an unlicensed business on the Illinois bank in protest of Kentucky's slave status. He built a two-story house of keelboat timbers near the mouth of the creek that still bears his name, and this Ferry House or Tavern House was visited by many important travelers. In 1803 Major Lusk died after completing a narrow road from Tennessee to Green's Ferry on the Mississippi. In 1804 Sarah Lusk was granted a license by Gov. Wm. Henry Harrison of Indiana Territory, and she operated the ferry and a store until 1805, when she married Thomas Ferguson, later a member of the First and Second Territorial Legislatures. Ferguson took control of the business and sold it in 1816. In 1798 this was the only Illinois settlement between Kentucky and Kaskaskia. Records of 1807 show three small stores, one tavern, one saloon, and twenty dwellings. The name changed from Lusk's Ferry to Ferguson's Ferry, Sarahsville, and finally to Golconda in 1817.

Golconda, Illinois · United States