Several years ago I created a webpage for a history and genealogy site called Illinois Trails. It has now grown and become a nation-wide site. By the time this happened, I had passed on the webpage to Wini Caudell, who was much more interested in the genealogy part of the page than I was. She ran with it and moved a good deal of the Illinois Trails site to her new site. You can see some of my information at: http://illinoisancestors.org/rockisland/index.htm Some of the history of Searstown didn't make the cut for Wini's page, however, so a section of this site will deal with Searstown, that part of Rock Island that was once home to the Sauk Indians known then as Saukenuk. Later it was a town in its own right, Sears, Illinois — named after David B. Sears, dam and mill builder par excellence. Sears even had its own post office.
