Farmer City: Three Names Before They Got It Right

The DeWitt County farming community now called Farmer City went through three names before it settled on one. Dennis Hurley arrived in the eighteen twenties and called the area Hurley's Grove. As more settlers arrived, the community renamed itself Mount Pleasant.

But Illinois already had a Mount Pleasant, so the post office refused the name and the community adopted Santa Anna instead, apparently inspired by the Mexican general who was in the news around that time. For thirty years the town carried that borrowed name while the surrounding township kept it permanently. Then in eighteen sixty-nine, Jacob Swigart, a local member of the State Legislature, introduced a bill in Springfield to rename the town once more.

The residents were almost entirely farmers and proud of it. They chose Farmer City, a name that announced exactly what the place was and who lived there, and the name has stuck for more than a hundred and fifty years.