Thirteen Generations Plus Five Hundred
•January 7, 2026•

by Janet Roney

Generation after generation of people have found everything needed for life here in central Illinois. The first historic people were the French who  passed through Moultrie over three hundred years ago. At twenty-five years per generation, that’s at least thirteen generations ago.

My Uncle Cliff used the same Jonathan Creek fishing holes as those who built the ceremonial mound in the corner of his cow pasture. The shell casings left from our son-in-law Craig’s deer hunt mingle with arrowheads waiting to be found  along the eroded banks of the Kaskaskia. Our Uncle Vern and Aunt Ruth gathered poke shoots, sour dock greens, and sassafras roots for their spring “physic” on Grandpa Roney’s hillside just like ancient people did before them. The corn that now covers Moultrie’s prairies descends from the same type of corn raised thousands of years ago along the West Okaw in Cornbread Bottom. That’s where avid arrowhead hunter Randy found an artifact certified to be 13,000 years old. That’s five hundred generations ago!

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