FAYVILLE

Alexander County/Illinois Genealogy Trails

This community was first known as McElmurry Station. Then it was changed to Commerce Landing and later Santa Fe and finally Fayville. It is possibly the oldest settlement in Alexander County. An act of March 26, 1804 established a land office at Kaskaskia and John McElmurry, Joseph Standlee, Abraham, Joshua and Thomas Flannary's claim to the Spanish French Surveys of this ground were registered then. A post office was established here in 1879.
--Source: HISTORY OF ALEXANDER, UNION AND PULASKI COUNTIES, ILLINOIS, edited by William Henry Perrin, 1883, Chicago: O. L. Baskin & Co., Historical Publisher, 183 Lake St. Reprinted in 1969.

Old Santa Fe Gets a New Name

Transcribed and submitted by Darrel Dexter 

          The old town of Santa Fe in Alexander County will now be known as Fayville. The change was made at the request of the Miami Powder Company.

(Jonesboro Gazette, Jonesboro, Illinois, Saturday, 13 Jul 1906)

NOTE:  The post office was discontinued June 30, 1928. During World War I there was a Powder Plant here which made the town grow, but after an explosion at the plant, many people moved away.

MIAMI POWDER MILL EXPLODES

Fayville, Ill.--The press mill of the Miami Powder mills at Fayville, Ill., explodes in the morning (January 21, 1911), demolishing the building and instantly killing three workers: dead are Hiram Pettit, Phil Malone and Walter Burns.  (Source:  A Cape Girardeau newspaper.)