The Town She Left Behind - Frances Hook's La Moille, Illinois

Mark and I stopped by woman soldier Frances Hook's hometown yesterday.  Located in Bureau County in northern  Illinois, La Moille was settled in the 1830's and named for the Lamoille River Valley in Vermont.  Yes, Lamoille is another spelling.  I have also seen it listed as LaMoille with no space.  As for the pronunciation - well, I discovered I had been saying it "wrong" the whole time.  Down here along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the French Canadian influences can be readily seen and heard in the names of our towns and surnames of the people.  So I naturally wanted to pronounce La Moille like what I was used to.  Nuh uh.  It's la - MOIL, as in the last part rhymes with oil like you put in your vehicle.  And now it's going to be difficult to change the way I say it because I had been pronouncing it a certain way for so long.  Plus, we  Southerners have problems saying "oil."  Just ask us.

La Moille, Illinois
Population 750

With a population of 750, the town today is a very small farming village.  After all, La Moille is French for "the soil" or "the dirt." Its largest cemetery is Greenfield where visitors will find a military section which includes soldiers from the Civil War and Spanish American War.

Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh

Some of Frances Hook's relatives are buried here as well.

La Moille is the home of an annual festival called Buffalo Days.  Last year's slogan for the event was "Where Everyone Knows Your Name."  Over 150 years prior, at least one resident did not want that to happen so she went by several names.  The teenager had crossed the boundary of what was socially acceptable when she traveled over 100 miles east to Chicago and enlisted in the 90th Illinois Infantry disguised as "Frank Miller."

Frances Hook so desperately wanted to avoid anybody knowing who she was  that she gave newspaper reporters wrong names after she was discovered.  Frances Hook isn't even correct.  Nor was Eliza Miller, another alias she used.  Her real name was Elizabeth Quinn.  But Frances Hook is what readers will most commonly recognize as that is what appears in books and articles about her because that's what appeared in period newspapers.  Therefore, that is the name I commonly use when referring to her.

Library of Congress

I have not been able to find when exactly Frances left La Moille, but when she did depart for Chicago, it was more than likely for good as I do not think she returned there following the war.  She had no relatives left.....at least decent ones.  So what was there for her?  Her brother enlisted in 1864 and eventually moved to Iowa.  So he was no longer there either.

During the conflict, "Private Miller" was wounded and captured in the vicinity of Florence, Alabama in the fall of 1863, and ended up in a hospital in Nashville following her exchange.  By the summer of 1864, with her wound sufficiently healed, the army discharged her and sent her north.  Frances initially went to Cincinnati and then eventually ended up in Gallia County, Ohio where, in 1866, she married another soldier, Sergeant Matthew Angel of the 2nd Ohio Heavy Artillery.

Here are some post-war images of La Moille, Illinois.  They provide a glimpse of what the town generally looked like when teenager Frances "Hook" left it in search of adventure.  Images restored by Jayson Tuntland. www.jaysontuntland.com.

Main Street, 1911

circa 1899

Part 2 continues [HERE].


You can read previous articles I wrote about Frances Hook by visiting the following links:

 https://forbiddenhiddenforgotten.blogspot.com/2017/08/colors-of-erin-flag-of-chicagos-irish.html

https://forbiddenhiddenforgotten.blogspot.com/2015/03/frances-hooks-hospital-stays-and.html

https://forbiddenhiddenforgotten.blogspot.com/2015/01/annie-wittenmyers-encounter-with-woman.html


Until next formation...rest.