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HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.
general shipping interests. It has several distilleries, besides grain elevators, malt-houses, brick and tile works, lumber yards, planing mills, marble works, plow and wagon works, and a factory for corn products. Its banking facilities are adequate, and its religious and educational advantages are excellent. The city has a public library, park, steam-heating plant, three daily and four weekly papers. Pop. (1890), 6,347; (1900), 8,420.
PEKIN, LINCOLN & DECATUR RAILROAD. (See Peoria, Decatur & Evansville Railway.)
PELL, Gilbert T., Representative in the Third Illinois General Assembly (1822) from Edwards County, and an opponent of the resolution for a State Convention adopted by the Legislature at that session, designed to open the door, for the admission of slavery. Mr. Pell was a son-in-law of Morris Birkbeck, who was one of the leaders in opposition to the Convention scheme, and very naturally sympathized with his father-in-law. He was elected to the Legislature, for a second term, in 1828, but subsequently left the State, dying elsewhere, when his widow removed to Australia.
PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD. As to operations of this corporation in Illinois, see Calumet River; Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago; South Chicago & Southern, and Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railways. The whole number of miles owned, leased and operated by the Pennsylvania System, in 1898, was 1,987.21, of which only 61.34 miles were in Illinois. It owns, however, a controlling interest in the stock of the Toledo, Peoria & Western Railway (which see).
PEORIA, the second largest city of the State and the county-seat of Peoria County, is 160 miles southwest of Chicago, and at the foot of an expansion of the Illinois River known as Peoria Lake. The site of the town occupies an elevated plateau, having a water frontage of four miles and extending back to a bluff, which rises 200 feet above the river level and about 120 feet above the highest point of the main site. It was settled in 1778 or '79, although, as generally believed, the French missionaries had a station there in 1711. There was certainly a settlement there as early as 1725, when Renault received a grant of lands at Pimiteoui, facing the lake then bearing the same name as the village. From that date until 1812, the place was continuously occupied
