As Tazewell County approaches our Bicentennial in April of 2027, current Tazewell County Clerk John C. Ackerman and former County Clerk Christie A. Webb will be honoring and recognizing the previous 22 community leaders to have held this position. The office of Tazewell County Clerk was the first Countywide Office established on April 10, 1827. Each month on the 10th, as we approach the Bicentennial, we will be placing a floral wreath from The Greenhouse Flower Shoppe in Pekin at the gravesite of these 22 individuals. 

This month we recognize the first of two Civil War surgeons to serve as Tazewell County Clerk, Dr William Cromwell, 1847 - 1849, of the Democratic Political Party.

Dr. William Cromwell was born on the 2nd of October 1812 near Hagerstown, Maryland, to Nathaniel (1785-1836) and Mary Zeller Cromwell (1790-1824). Nathaniel and his second wife, Ann Eliza, moved the family to Illinois about 1824 and was famous as an early landowner in Pekin. Ann Eliza Cromwell had a street named after her and is credited for giving Pekin its name in 1829.

In 1829, William returned to the East Coast and studied medicine. Dr. William Cromwell settled in Pekin and practiced medicine. He served as Tazewell County Clerk from 1847 to 1849, 35 years old at the time of his election.

Dr. William Cromwell is famous for the national landmark litigation in his attempt to collect between 1838 to 1849 on a note given to his late father by David Bailey in exchange for Nancy Legins-Costley, who at that point was enslaved within the Cromwell household. The legal case Cromwell vs Bailey would make it all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1841 with a then young attorney Abraham Lincoln serving as the defense attorney representing David Bailey and winning the freedom from slavery of Nance Legins-Costley and her children.

William Cromwell married Caroline Enos (1824-1910) on the 15th of March 1849 in Bloomington. The couple relocated to Bloomington permanently in 1850 were they raised their children Charles (1849-1922), Elizabeth (1852-1899), Clara (1856-1943), and Mary (1860-1885).

During the Civil War he had a position with the Quarter Master and was stationed in Kentucky. Later he served as a surgeon in the Army of the Potomac and had charge of a hospital out east during the Civil War. He resigned that position to become a clerk in the Auditor’s Office of the US Treasury where he remained until 1867 when he was appointed Postmaster at Bloomington and returned to Illinois.

William Cromwell died on December 7, 1874, in Bloomington and is buried in Evergreen Memorial Cemetery. His wife and daughters moved to Chicago to live with her son, who had taken a position with Marshall Field & Co. before his father’s death.