City History

HISTORY excerpts from "Moline, the Early Years"…

When David B. Sears arrived in Rock Island Mills in 1836, there were three houses. He brought his family and household effects, and he purchased from Michael Bartlett for $1,600 a strip of land opposite the island of Rock Island, beginning about First Street in Moline and extending along the Mississippi to about the present 15th Street. By 1838, David Sears owned title to 1,160 acres of land.

John W. Spencer once said, "the water power made Moline, and D.B. Sears was the father of the water power."

At about the same time that Sears, Spencer and White were building their first brush dam, John Deere was leaving his native Vermont to settle in Grand de Tour (now spelled Grand Detour), leaving his wife and children behind. During his first year in Illinois, Deere developed a plow to cut the tough prairie soil and its luxuriant grass. He decided a steel mold board was needed, and with no source for the steel, made his first plow from a worn-out saw blade, shaping it by hand over a log. Some reports say this blade came from the Sears mill, but the timing makes it seem unlikely. The steel did not clog, but polished brighter with use, ending the days of the plowman's cleaning paddle and opening the prairie states to agriculture. Deere made two or three plows the first year, ten in 1839.

In 1843, still unnamed, the town was platted by David B. Sears, Spencer, White, Joel and Huntington Wells, Charles Atkinson, and Nathan Bass. The county surveyor, P.H. Ogilvie, wrote "Hesperia" on one plat and "Moline" on the other. Asked the meaning of the names, he said that the first meant "Star of the West" and the second was an adaptation of the French word for "mill town." Charles Atkinson is then supposed to have said, "Moline, let it be called." This plat, acknowledged on June 6, 1843, before Justice of the Peace Nathanial Belcher, was approved the same day by the county commissioners, but the records were destroyed by fire, so Moline wasn't legally incorporated until the spring of 1848.

There were thirteen buildings here when Moline was platted in 1843. David B. Sears opened the first store in 1843, after Joseph Huntoon had opened the first shoe shop in 1842. In 1843, Moline's first school building was erected on 16th Street near Fourth Avenue. David B. Sears was the first postmaster, appointed in 1844, with the post office in his home at Third Avenue and Ninth Street. The first train came through Moline in February 1854.

In 1855, Moline was reincorporated. First annual elections for President and 5 trustees were held. The first liquor laws were established, and the first volunteer fire department was established.

In 1872, Moline was incorporated as a city. The first Mayor, Daniel L. Wheelock, was elected.