Caroline Fleming
Caroline Fleming (B: 1832) The only female Belleville resident to receive a U.S. Patent in the 19th Century. In 1868 she was awarded a patent on her improvement of an agitating clothes washing machine.
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Molly Bunsen
Molly Bunsen - President of the Ladies Union of Belleville in 1851 and a member of the Committee on Teachers of the Belleville School Association in 1850. Molly shared the Bunsen family interest in education and reform.
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Carrie Bahrenberg
Carrie Bahrenberg (1861-1929) Received national recognition for her social activism. Her activities in the Women’s Relief Corp and the women’s suffrage movement made her a close friend of Jane Addams, the famous Chicago suffragette. Bahrenberg was elected a Univ. of Illinois trustee in 1900. She served 12 years. In 1915, she was elected national president of the WRC and in 1919 Chairman of the Civic League which replace the Equal Suffrage Assoc. of Illinois.
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Henry Dietrich
Henry Dietrich was born at Belleville in 1872 and at the age of 13 he was on his own. His father was a coal miner from Germany. Henry’s working career began with a printing apprenticeship to Hans Schwarz, Editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. Schwarz, a spirited and vigorous editor of the German language newspaper was continually involved in the controversial labor issues of the time and active in the Illinois Association of German-American Press. Dietrich, also a labor activist was elected President of West Belleville’s Workingman Society and Typographical Union 18. He was elected City Assessor in 1902, a position he held until 1920.
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Colonel John Thomas
Colonel John Thomas - The Thomas family emigrated from Wales to Virginia and arrived in Illinois by 1807. The family constructed a portion of the old stage-coach road from Vincennes, IL to St. Louis, MO (known as the Great Western Mail Route and later the National Road). Thomas participated in formulating the first State of Illinois Constitution and in the formation of the Republican Party.
Three generation of the Thomas family were capitalists who were influential in the manufacturing and business life of Belleville. Colonel John Thomas built Main Street’s Thomas House in 1854 and became President of the Pump & Skein Works in 1877. In 1880, he published the Advocate Newspaper, and he became the owner of the Short Line Railroad in 1884. Thomas family members served as Circuit Judges and members of the State Legislatures.
