The town of Bath, Illinois was settled in 1828 by John Stewart
and John Gillespie, soon to be followed by other Kentuckians.
Abraham Lincoln surveyed the town in 1836. The second house and
first mansion, a two-story red brick Italianate four-square, was
built by Major Benjamin H. Gatton in the 1840s. The town name is said to
have originated with some English settlers, who thought the area
looked like the land around Bath, England. Bath was the Mason
County seat from 1843 to 1851. The town was the site of one of
Abraham Lincoln's "a house divided...cannot stand" speeches in
1858.
The first businesses in Bath included several blacksmith's: Guy
Spencer, John Hortsman, and George Steigleder. Other establishments
were Gatton and Ruggles flourmill, Cragg's sawmill, replaced in
1975 by Bath Mill, manufacturer of "Queen of Mason" flour, and a
newspaper, the Bath Journal, W.W. Stout, publisher, founded
in 1860.
The industries of musseling,
button-cutting, duck hunting and fishing caused the town's
population to swell to more than 1,000 during the first decade of
the twentieth century. Fishing became the largest industry in Bath,
on the Sangamon and Illinois Rivers, and Wilcox Lake and Cuba
Island. Trucks came from as far as Chicago and Louisville,
Kentucky, to pick up fish. Seine fishing continued through the
1950s, as the fish population waned. In 1953 a two-day seine
yielded 40,000 pounds of carp and buffalo that were sold locally
and in St. Louis.
Close-up of Sign Announcing Fish Fry in Bath
Courtesy
of the Illinois Natural History Survey
In 1911, the town inaugurated its first annual free fish fry to
celebrate Lincoln's Diamond Jubilee. Five thousand pounds of fish
are fried and eaten each year at this event.
Bath was a stop of the showboats until 1927. The Goldenrod,
Cotton Blossom, Frenches' New Sensation, and the Majestic
brought entertainment to the small town. Local activities and
entertainment included band concerts, square dances, quilting and
husking bees, traveling medicine shows and later, silent
movies.
Duck hunting clubs sprang up the length of the southern half of
the Illinois River. They ranged in size from 200 to 2,000 acres
each. The market hunters complained that the land was all bought up
by millionaires, who then closed it to public hunting, impairing
the river residents' livelihood.
In the 1980s, the quiet town of 400 included the Grand Island
Duck Hunting Club, former market hunter Dale Hamm's
Floating Tavern
