The Sturdivant Gang was a multi-generational group of counterfeiters whose criminal activities took place over a 50 year period from Colonial Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

 to the Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 frontier. Although they did not follow the same frontier settlement pattern as most of the "Ancient Colony of Horse-Thieves, Counterfeiters and Robbers".

By the 1810s third-generation counterfeiter Roswell S. Sturdivant led the gang that was based partially at Manville Ferry in St. Clair County, Illinois

St. Clair County, Illinois

St. Clair County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. In 1970, the U.S. Census Bureau placed the mean center of U.S. population in St. Clair County. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 270,056, which is an increase of 5.5% from 256,082 in 2000. Its county seat is...

 (modern-day New Athens

New Athens, Illinois

New Athens is a village in St. Clair County, Illinois, United States. Based upon common usage, the 'A' is always sounded with a long vowel, rather than a short vowel, by its residents, unlike the most commonly used English pronunciation of the city in Greece....

) as well as at Sturdivant Fort in what was then in Pope County, Illinois (and is now in Rosiclare, Hardin County, Illinois).

Although they didn't base their operations at Cave-in-Rock, they are considered part of the second wave of outlaws associated the cave. Their fort downriver sat on a bluff that is visible from Cave-in-Rock Bluff. They were contemporaries with James Ford

James Ford (pirate)

James Ford was an American civic leader and business owner in western Kentucky and southern Illinois at the turn of the 19th century. Despite his clean public image, as a "Pillar of the Community", he was also, secretly, a river pirate and the leader of a gang that would come to be known as...

 and the Ford's Ferry Gang.

The gang was often confused with John Duff's

John Duff (counterfeiter)

John Duff was a counterfeiter, hunter, and scout who assisted in George Rogers Clark's campaign to capture the Illinois country for the American side during the Revolutionary War. He had been leading a group of hunters returning from Kaskaskia, Illinois, when intercepted by Clark's soldiers near...

counterfeiting operations by 19th and early 20th Century historians.