Peter Logan (ABT. 1780-1866)

Born into slavery in Virginia about 1780, Peter Logan was the first formerly enslaved person to own land in Tazwell County. Logan purchased his own freedom in Arkansas, also buying the freedom of his sister Charlotte Hurst and her daughter Nancy (Hurst) Williams. They then settled in the 1820s in the Elm Grove Township. Respectfully known in the area as ‘Uncle Peter,’ at first he was an employee of the Dillons, who were noted abolitionists. By a deed of sale dated Jan. 15, 1837, Logan purchased land in sections 22 and 29 of Elm Grove Township for $880. He built his homestead, believed to be a station on the underground railroad, on section 22 just west of what is now the corner of Franklin Street and Springfield Road. His land in section 29 was a timber lot along the Mennonite Church Road just north of Red Shale Hill Road. Following his sister’s death in 1857, Logan sold all but 10 acres of his homestead to Thomas A. Prunty in March 1859. He sold his timber lot in 1860, but it was quit-claimed back to him in 1861, and it remained his until his death. In the early 1860s, Logan moved to Peoria, where he died March 21, 1866, and was almost certainly buried in Peoria’s old city cemetery. Logan named Peoria abolitionist Moses Pettengill as executor of his estate, all of which he left to his niece Nancy, his only living heir.