Wanborough
CITY:
Albion
COUNTY:
Edwards
DEDICATED BY:
The Illinois Foundation for Frontier Studies and the Illinois State Historical Society
DEDICATION DATE:
September 1, 2007 at 5:00:00 AM
The marker is located 1.5 miles west of Albion and 0.25 miles below IL 15 on the north side of the Old Fairfield Road (County Road 850 North)in the Wanborough Cemetery.
The former village of Wanborough, Illinois, was established in August 1818, by English settler an entrepreneur Morris Birkbeck. A center of commerce for his fellow countrymen emigrating to the English Settlement in Edwards County, Wanborough once included two taverns, a grist mill, two stores, a pottery, a blacksmith, and one of the State’s first breweries. The town, however, lasted for only a short time and was all but abandoned by 1840. Competition from the nearby town of Albion and Birkbeck’s accidental drowning in 1825, contributed to the community’s demise. This cemetery is all that is left of the village.