Green Plains was a thriving community established in the early 1830s in Hancock County, straddling four townships and including log homes, a store, a blacksmith shop, a post office, and several cemeteries. Levi Williams, a prominent settler who moved there in the early 1830s, served as county road commissioner and later as postmaster. In 1840 he was commissioned a colonel in the 59th Regiment of the state militia, commanding the Carthage Greys, and he played a prominent role in military actions against the Latter-Day Saints and their leader, Joseph Smith. Williams died in 1860 and was buried in Green Plains Cemetery one-half mile north, and the community was abandoned in the 1860s. Green Plains was also home to Mormon refugees, including the family of William W. Taylor, who was born in 1787 in Martin County, North Carolina, married Elizabeth Patrick in 1811, moved with his family to Monroe County, Missouri, in 1831, and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Taylors were forced to leave Missouri in 1838 under Governor Lilburn W. Boggs's extermination order. Taylor died on September 9, 1839, leaving Elizabeth a widow with 14 children, and was buried 300 feet east of this spot with about 40 others in the Old Pioneer Cemetery on land once owned by Levi Williams. Elizabeth emigrated with most of her children to Utah, where she died in 1880.