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HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.
meanwhile (1843) becoming a licentiate of the Providence Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. From 1848 to 1854 he served as Principal of the Providence Conference Seminary at East Greenwich, K. I., when he was appointed Commissioner of Public Schools of Rhode Island -also serving the same year as a Visitor to West Point Military Academy. Between 1857 and 1859 he filled the chair of Ancient Languages in the State University at Athens, Ohio, when he accepted the Presidency of the Wesleyan Female College at Cincinnati, four years later (1863) becoming President of McKendree College at Lebanon, Ill., where he remained until 1ST4. That position he resigned to accept the Presidency of the Southern Illinois Normal University at Carbondale, whence he retired in 1893. Died at Carbondale, Jan. 7, 1894.
ALTAMONT, Effingham County, is intersecting point of the Vandalia, Chicago & Eastern Illinois, Baltimore & Ohio S. W., and Wabash Railroads, being midway and highest point between St. Louis and Terre Haute, Ind.; was laid out in 1870. The town is in the center of a grain, fruit growing and stock-raising district; has a bank, two grain elevators, flouring mill, tile works, a large creamery, wagon, furniture and other factories, besides churches and good schools. Population (1890), 1,044; (1900), 1,335.
ALTGELD, John Peter, exJudge and exGovernor, was born in Prussia in 1848, and in boyhood accompanied his parents to America, the family settling in Ohio. At the age of 16 he enlisted in the One Hundred and Sixtyfourth Ohio Infantry, serving until the close of the war. His legal education was acquired at St. Louis and Savannah, Mo., and from 1874 to '78 he was Prosecuting Attorney for Andrew County in that State. In 1878 he removed to Chicago, where he devoted himself to professional work. In 1884 he led the Democratic forlorn hope as candidate for Congress in a strong Republican Congressional district, and in 1886 was elected to the bench of the Superior Court of Cook County, but resigned in August, 1891. The Democratic State convention of 1892 nominated him for Governor, and he was elected the following November, being the first foreign-born citizen to hold that office in the history of the State, and the first Democrat ele
