Tag Archives: st louis mo
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 [...]
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Ferdinand Braun
Ferdinand Braun, a malster from Germany, owned coal mine lands, a dairy and a brickyard on the north side of Belleville where his father, Lorenzo, and George Bressler built a distillery in about 1840. In 1863, Ferdinand was the sole owner. By 1874, his interests turned to transportation, and he incorporated the Belleville City Railway Company. Belleville is credited with the first electric rail line in the State of Illinois. Braun and his wife, Wilhelmina, returned to Germany in 1891 [...]
