Originally one of the largest townships in the county, Erin is now one of the smallest, owing to a division of its territory by order of the Board of Supervisors, which assigned its west half to Kent Township, at a meeting convened March 17, 1856, reducing its dimensions so as to comprehend but half the usual township limits. The division of the township caused intense feeling on the part of residents within the original survey, as they were not only deprived of the superior wood and water advantages previously enjoyed, but subjected to other inconveniences and hardships. Notwithstanding this alleged inequity, Erin township is one of the more prosperous in the county, inhabited by a class of people notably efficient, industrious and enterprising and liberal in every undertaking calculated to pro- mote the general welfare.

The surface of the ground is rolling, and a smaller proportion of prairie exists than in other towns. The openings are of an excellent quality of land, and peculiarly adapted to the growth of wheat, large quantities of which are raised during the year. The timber is not heavy, and the labor of clearing very trifling. A large number of springs are to be found in the town, also a limited number of stone quarries, furnishing material for building purposes. A portion of the town was settled by a colony of Irish farmers at an early day, hence the name ; many of the descendants of these pioneers still live in a settlement known as "Dublin," and furnish abundant evidence of the success that attends industry and attention to the business of life.

The first settlers of Erin Township are those who, also identified with the settlement of that portion of Erin afterward apportioned to Kent, are mentioned in connection with the history of that township. They include 0. W. Kellogg, James Timms, Jesse Willet and others. Among those who settled in the section reserved to Erin proper when the division already cited was made, and that among the first, were Bartholomew Boyle and Michael Murphey, the former on the present site of St. Mary's Catholic Church, and the latter one mile distant therefrom. Valorus Thomas is said to have come in 1837, and settled on the line between Harlem and Erin. James Fowler John Fiddler, John B. Kauflfman, Peter Vansickle, George W. Babbitt, Jonas and Palmer Pickard, Lewis Grigsby, F. Rosenstiel and others came between that date and 1840, and settled in the township ; Ebenezer Mullinix and • Helm in 1837, and located near the line in Harlem; Reuben Tower came in 1840, as also did William Schermerhorn, John Lloyd, Frederick Gossmann and John Hammond, and many others came about that time and began farming in the territory now included in Erin Township; Nathan Ferry, Amos Davis (who settled at Scioto Mills in 1837), E. H. Woodbridge and many more came into the township at a later date, and have since been identified with its rise and progress.

In earlier times, before the railroad became part of the township as an agency for its success and appreciation in the value of property, both real and personal, the experience of settlers elsewhere was duplicated in Erin. Their flour was ground at Andrews' mill, on Yellow Creek, etc., and their products sold and supplies procured at Chicago, Galena and other points accessible only after long drives and a constant repetition of annoyances ; and, as was not unfrequently the case, the load, hauled to market over roads that today would be condemned, and through weather that would place an embargo on the movements of the least cautious, would be sold for a sum insufficient to meet the demands of necessaries for home consumption. When the sales of land by the Government were begun, settlers came in more rapidly, and of a character that encouraged those already in possession. They were composed of horny- handed sons of toil, by whom the forests have been hewn down, the prairies broken up and transformed into fertile fields, and the wealth of the soil developed and increased, until today the West is not only the garden and the granary, but the treasury of the nation. When the railroad was surveyed, an additional impetus was given to immigration hitherward, greatly augmented when this connecting link between the West and East was finally cemented in 1854. Since that event, the population of Erin Township has only been measured by its capacity to afford accommodation for the number who have annually endeavored to become citizens within its limits. The acres devoted to farming are under the control of husbandmen ripe in knowledge and experience, and produce a yearly return entirely in harmony with the labor that has been employed in, and science directed toward, their cultivation ; and statistics establish the fact that in no township in the county have greater profits been derived from the ??? area of territory appropriated to agricultural purposes.

In all respects, indeed, Erin Township has been blessed. Its schools are conducted by an efficient and intelligent class of instructors, the increase in the country's wealth enabling the people to properly reimburse such valuable services ; the opportunities for attending public worship are superior to those of many other sections, and the features of excellence visible in cultivated communities, are reproduced by the inhabitants, who have kept pace in science, morality and religion with the almost unexampled progress made in matters of a pecuniary character. ??? that it was in active operation a year earlier. This latter assumption is possibly correct, for it is averred in Freeport that during that year " houses of frame were erected by the company," of which William Kirkpatrick was an important factor, the material for which was fashioned at the mill of that party, located on Yellow Creek. While he was building this mill, it should be observed, Mr. K. had no house wherein to live, and was obliged to accept the rather equivocal accommodations to be found in a wagon- box inverted and thatched to protect its occupant from the rain. Soon after the grist-mill was completed and operated, competing for patronage with Van Valzah's mill at Cedarville. Settlers began to come into Loran slowly, and, while the majority of those who made their advent into this section continued their explorations further west, a limited number entered claims and began to prepare farms.

Among those who came in about this time, according to the memory of the proverbial oldest inhabitant now living, was Smith Giddings, John Shoe- maker, who opened a farm in Section 19 ; Albert Curry, Sylvester Langdon, who took up a claim on Section 15, and some others, though the number of inhabitants could have been counted, it is said, within a circuit of twenty-five miles without the possession of an unlimited knowledge of mathematics. These new settlers had all the difficulties peculiar to new countries to contend with, in defiance of which, however, they have left their mark upon the history of the times, and created from an almost uninhabited and inaccessible wilderness, a domain of cultivation unsurpassed in Stephenson County.

The precedent established by Kirkpatrick and his succeeding colleagues was emulated by the Babb family and others in 1840. This family consisted of Samuel, Solomon, Reuben and Isaac Babb; Mathias Ditzler came in the same year, but reached his claim in advance of the Babb family, and was followed by his brother Christian Ditzler, who settled here, also, during the year mentioned. George House came in about 1841, John Lamb soon after ; Warren and Anson Andrews in 1839 or 1840 ; they erected a mill in Section 3 ; Horace Post opened a farm near Andrews' mill ; a man named Slocum, Truman Lowell, Moses Grigsby, a man named Pointer, William Barklow and Thomas Foster, both of whom settled in Section 17 ; Joseph Rush, in the southwest corner of the township ; Samuel Shiveley, west of the mill ; John Apgar, east of the mill ; Henry Layer, etc. There were many others who came in, doubtless, between the date of Kirkpatrick's arrival and that of those who settled in Loran subsequently, but their names and the date of their arrival, not having been preserved, are lost to posterity.

In 1848, settlers began to come more numerously than before that date. The township was generally prairie except Mill Grove and a " thicket in Section 21, and the opportunities for cultivation, thereby increased, were availed of quite rapidly. The wheat and corn of the inhabitants were mostly ground at . Mount Carroll and Cedarville ; the trading, however, wag done at Freeport, which was a postal town and contained four stores. The settlers at this time were mostly from New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio sturdy, industrious, thriving men, who laid the foundation for the prosperity to be witnessed today in all sections of the township. \par

At the time the Illinois Central Railroad was completed to Freeport, Loran Township was behind other townships in the county in its settlement and improvements. But with the completion of this enterprise came a tide of emigration which was generously distributed over Loran, adding to its population and developing new sources of wealth. One cause of this alleged failure on the part of settlers to remain permanently in Loran was the unhealthy surroundings ; fever and ague prevailed along the streams, while in the interior the inhabitants suffered with fevers of a pronounced and enervating type. As a consequence, until these maladies were to some extent dissipated, and their causes remedied, settlers were indisposed to venture their health and that of their families in this section. In time, though, they became incidents of days long gone, and to-day Loran is as entirely free from measures which produced the effects cited as any township in the county. \par

The first marriage of which any information could be obtained occurred in the fall of 1840, between Thomas French and Polly Kirkpatrick, and the wife of a man named James is reputed as the first death. But the first birth is not of record, as also the first fete, and many other important events, without which a history of every settlement is incomplete. Inquiry in these connections failed to elicit any testimony bearing on the subject, and to this latter fact is due the failure of their mention. With regard to the first school taught in the township there is a conflict of opinion, one party maintaining it to have been at Kirkpatrick's as early as 1840, while others insist with much emphasis that it was not established until 1841, when Reuben Babb, William Kirkpatrick and Anson Andrews as Trustees, located a school in Section 2, near Babb's Church, where they employed a teacher by the name of Allison to superintend the education of their children.\par

No village of importance is to be found in Loran Yellow Creek, in the northern portion of the township, contains a post office, blacksmith-shop, mill and two or three stores, but, as its importance.