Illinois Territory

Its capital was the former French village of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River (which is still a part of the State of Illinois).

During the American Revolutionary War, Colonel George Rogers Clark took possession of the region for Virginia, which established the "County of Illinois" to exercise nominal governance over the area.

Virginia later (1784) ceded nearly all of its land claims north of the Ohio River to the Federal government of the United States.

The Illinois Territory originally included lands that became the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, the eastern portion of Minnesota, and the western portion of the upper peninsula of Michigan.

[2] In the 1810 United States census, 2 counties in the Illinois Territory reported the following population counts:[3] Ninian Edwards served as governor of the territory during its entire existence.

Between 1818 and 1833, after Illinois became a state, the unincorporated land from the territory, plus a handful of other townships, was made part of the Michigan Territory.