Heide Settlement & Monument - Anchor Twp.

Germans were the largest immigrant group into McLean County in the last three decades of the 19th century. Many settled in Bloomington-Normal. Others, however, settled in hollow, rural areas with lots of open land. In the 1870's and 1880's, several German immigrants settled in rural Anchor Township. Over time, homes were built and even a German Lutheran Church. By 1892, enough Germans had settled in southern Anchor Township to form the small settlement of Hiede. 

German Immigration into McLean County

Heide is named after the large number of Germans who immigrated from Heide, Germany. Today, Heide is a small town of about 20,000 on the Jutland peninsula, just below Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein region. Immigrants to Heide in McLean County were probably part of a larger wave of emigrants from the Schleswig-Holstein region. In fact, between 1880-1893, 10% of the region's population emigrated to North America. Most emigrated due to changes in the region's economy and laws, including industrialization and strict inheritance laws that prevented some children from inheriting their family's land.

Heide was located in the southwest corner of sec. 23

Fr. 1914 atlas

Heide Post Office

In December 1892, a post office was established on the Schuster family farm, which had been owned by the Gish family for many years. The farmhouse also served as a small store, carrying groceries and other supplies. The route was a "star route." As the map below shows, Heide was off the mail rail line. Thus, the U.S. Post Office had to hire a private contractor to deliver the mail.

Fr. Pantagraph, 12/12/1892. 

U.S. Post Office Route Map, 1895 showing the postal route 
from Anchor to Heide. fr. Leventhal Map Center, 
Boston Public Library

The End of Heide

The Heide post office, and the settlement of Heide for that matter, didn't last too long. The post office was discontinued in December 1895, with mail routed to Anchor, about 5-6 miles to the north. In 1903, a rural mail system was established. 

The last remnant of Heide was the mail rack used to store people's mail in the Schuster home. After the post office closed and Heide disappeared, the rack sat in the shed of a local farmer. By the early 1970's, the rack had fallen apart and is presumably lost. Like many rural settlements, Heide disappeared into the prairie. 

The Heide monument is located about 5.5 southeast of Anchor,

just south of St. John's Lutheran Church. I do not have any

information about the history of the monument itself.

Location Information

• Township & Section: Anchor, Sec. 24
• GIS (click on numbers to view on Google Maps): 40.51616, -88.497305

Sources

• Flick, B. (2014, January 1). 31 Things About the B-N Area You Might Not Have Known. Pantagraph.
• Hoffman, Muriel Martens. (1976, April). History of Lawndale, Martin, & Anchor Townships and the Villages of Colfax & Anchor, McLean County, Illinois (A Project of the Bi-centennial Committee). Fairbury, IL: Cornbelt Press.
• Immigration Explorer. (2009, March 10). New York Times.
• Meyer, Douglas. (1998). Foreign Immigrants in Illinois: 1850. Illinois History Teacher, v. 5. 
• A New Post Office. (1892, December 12). Pantagraph, p. 5.
• Schleswig-Holstein Emigration and Immigration.
• United States Post Office. (2012, November). The United States Post Office: An American History. 
• Von Haake, A. (1895, December). Post Route Map of the State of Illinois showing Post Offices with the Intermediate Distances on Mail Routes in Operation on the 1st of December, 1895. Digital copy at the Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library.