Traveling on the Springfield Road (Part 1)

•November 5, 2025•

by Janet Roney

“It was four weeks yesterday since we started. I fear we shall all be sick before we get there, it is so very hot. I shant complain as long as I can stand up. I have dragged one foot after the other so long and hope for the best.”

These were the words of a young Ohio woman, Mary Parkinson, in letters to her sister from a few miles west of Paris, Illinois on the Springfield Road in July of 1837. Her letters, printed in 1909 in the Journal of American History, are the earliest account I have found of travelers on the Springfield Road across Moultrie County.

While still on the National Road in Indiana, they stopped at inns for the night, sometimes sleeping six in a bed or on the floor. “...it does seem we shall never get there...there is too many of us together...” They finally got cloth somewhere along the way and made a tent for all 26 of the group to sleep in outside. “It will be much cheaper to tent out...”

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