Excerpt from The Woodford County History In the early 1800's, as the population of the eastern states increased, available land for homesteading sites became hard to find. So those who sought to avoid the crowd set out to conquer the prairies of the West in the new state of Illinois they sought a new life. Woodford county was organized in 1841 by a committee of pioneers, headed by Thomas Bullock who came to Walnut Grove (now Eureka) in 1835 from his birthplace in Versailles, Woodford County, Kentucky. The county and its first county seat, Versailles, were both named by Mr. Bullock in honor of his boyhood home. Versailles village ceased to exist many years ago. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.