Niles Township Historic Documents Digital Collection
The Niles Township Historic Documents Digital Collection comprises documents, primarily meeting minutes, treasurer’s accounts, and property tax assessments, from the beginning of Niles Township, Illinois, and its governing bodies, such as the Drainage Commission, Highway Commission, and School Board of Trustees.
Dates range from the Niles Township School Trustees Treasury accounts from 1843 to 1861; the first documentation of Niles Township Officers in 1850; to voter registration forms in 1927; to Budget and Annual Appropriation Ordinances from 1945 and Commissioner of Highways for Niles Township Minute records from 1936 to 1949, though the majority of documents are from the late 19th century.
These primary source materials document the necessary activities of Niles Township and its growth from a sparsely settled collection of family settler homesteads, following the 1833 Treaty of Chicago in which the Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Chippewa tribes ceded their territory and were expelled to land west of the Mississippi (not documented here), to a Township of incorporated towns and villages interconnected by roads, some paved, irrigation canals, and school districts.