Tuscola is a city in Douglas County, 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,...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The population was 4,480 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat

County seat

A county seat is an administrative center, or seat of government, for a county or civil parish. The term is primarily used in the United States....

 of Douglas County.

Geography

Tuscola is located at 39.797682°N 88.281564°W (39.797682, -88.281564).

According to the United States Census Bureau

United States Census Bureau

The United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data...

, the city has a total area of 2.1 square miles (5.4 km²), of which, 2.1 square miles (5.4 km²) of it is land and 0.47% is water.

History

The founding Supervisor of Tuscola township was O. C. Hackett

O. C. Hackett

- Vital Statistics :Oliver Cromwell Hackett was born March 29, 1822 in Scott County Kentucky. His father was John Hackett, and his grandfather was noted Kentucky frontiersman and militiaman of the American Revolution, Peter Hackett. John Hackett moved the family, including young O. C., from...

, elected in 1868. Hackett was elected Supervisor with a majority of only one vote over W. B. Ervin. O. C. Hackett was the grandson of noted Kentucky frontiersman and Boonsborough resident Peter Hackett

Peter Hackett

Peter Hackett was born in approximately 1763 or 1764 in the English colony of Virginia. It is believed that Peter was the son of Thomas Hackett, likely of Montgomery County, Virginia...

. O. C. planted Hackett's Grove, a sassafras grove situated on Section 31, Township 16, Range 9, on the east side of the township. This 20 acres (80,937.2 m²) grove is traversed by a branch of Scattering Fork of the Embarrass River, long known as Hackett's Run, and according to the History of Douglas County (1884), the grove had been owned by the Hacketts since long before Douglas County had an existence. O.C. Hackett's father, John Hackett, settled in nearby Coles County in 1835. Family legend holds that Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

 stayed at the Hackett farm during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858

Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858

The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, and the incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and...

.

From the 1890s to the 1940s, Tuscola had a sizeable number of African-American citizens, including Arthur Anderson, the "most graceful walker" at the 1898 Colored Folks Cake Walk in
Tuscola; his partner Cozy Chavous; the musician Cecil "Pete" Bridgewater, father of internationally-known musicians Cecil Bridgewater

Cecil Bridgewater

-Biography:Bridgewater was born in Urbana, Illinois and studied at the University of Illinois. He and brother Ron formed the Bridgewater Brothers Band in 1969, and in the 1970s he was married to Dee Dee Bridgewater. In 1970 he played with Horace Silver, and following this with Thad Jones and Mel...

 and Ronnie Bridgewater; the educator and musician Ruth Calimese, daughter of automobile worker "Big Jim" Calimese; musician Solomon "Sol" Chavous; mail carrier and war veteran Bruce Hayden (father of distinguished violinist Bruce Hayden, Jr.); Lemuel and Nettie Riley; football star and garage owner Tommy Wright; and dozens of other people. Tuscola had two churches with mainly black congregations, the African Methodist Episcopal Church on North Niles, and the White Horse Riders church on Houghton Street. Unlike the neighboring town of Arcola, Tuscola did not have the ordinance, common in small Illinois towns at the time, that a "negro" person could not be on the streets after sundown. The black and white people of Tuscola got along well; however, between 1922 and 1924 two large Ku Klux Klan gatherings were held in Tuscola. The 1924 rally consisted of nearly 2,000 Klan cars, a hundred marching Klansmen, burning crosses, and a naturalization ceremony in Tuscola's Ervin Park.

Demographics

As of the census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

of 2000, there were 4,448 people, 1,885 households, and 1,261 families residing in the city. The population density

Population density

Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans...

 was 2,084.9 people per square mile (806.3/km²). There were 2,000 housing units at an average density of 937.5 per square mile (362.5/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 98.11% White, 0.31% African American, 0.40% Native American, 0.52% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.20% from other races

Race (United States Census)

Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, as defined by the Federal Office of Management and Budget and the United States Census Bureau, are self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify, and indicate whether or not they are...

, and 0.43% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.06% of the population.

There were 1,885 households out of which 30.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 54.1% were married couples

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

 living together, 9.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.1% were non-families. 29.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 14% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.35 and the average family size was 2.93.

In the city the population was spread out with 25% under the age of 18, 8.1% from 18 to 24, 29% from 25 to 44, 21.2% from 45 to 64, and 16.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 91.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.3 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $39,608, and the median income for a family was $44,816. Males had a median income of $35,063 versus $22,090 for females. The per capita income

Per capita income

Per capita income or income per person is a measure of mean income within an economic aggregate, such as a country or city. It is calculated by taking a measure of all sources of income in the aggregate and dividing it by the total population...

 for the city was $19,465. About 2.3% of families and 4.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 3% of those under age 18 and 5% of those age 65 or over.

Notable people

• Smiley Burnette
  Smiley Burnette
  Lester Alvin Burnett , better known as Smiley Burnette, was a popular American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who could play as many as 100 musical...
  
  , actor.
• Philip Deaver, author.
• Jennie Garth
  Jennie Garth
  Jennifer Eve "Jennie" Garth is an American actress and director, best known for starring in the prominent role of Kelly Taylor throughout the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise...
  
  , actress.
• Joseph Gurney Cannon
  Joseph Gurney Cannon
  Joseph Gurney Cannon was a United States politician from Illinois and leader of the Republican Party. Cannon served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1903 to 1911, and historians generally consider him to be the most dominant Speaker in United States history, with such...
  
  , longtime speaker of the US House.
• Fred Wakefield
  Fred Wakefield
  Frederick Douglas Wakefield is an American football guard who is currently a free agent. He was signed by the Arizona Cardinals as an undrafted free agent in 2001. He played college football at Illinois....
  
  , NFL football player.
• Gary Forrester
  Gary Forrester
  Gary Forrester is a New Zealand-Australian musician, composer, novelist, poet, and memoirist. He was profiled by Random House Australia as one of the major figures in the Australian music scene during the 1980s and 1990s...
  
  , author.