John C. Kirkpatrick
John C. Kirkpatrick was born in Pickaway County, OH, on October 5, 1825, to James and Jane Kirkpatrick. His grandfather Benjamin had been one of the earliest settlers in that state. As a boy, Kirkpatrick was trained to work on the family farm and bought and shipped livestock with his father. He purchased a large number of cattle in the winter of 1849 and fed them on Col. M.W. Busey’s farm in Urbana, IL, where he met the colonel’s daughter Miss Mary C. Busey, and they quickly married. Upon returning from their honeymoon in the fall of 1850, they purchased a 160-acre farm in West Urbana (now Champaign), where the couple oversaw the construction of the first frame house in Champaign (1850).
Kirkpatrick and John Campbell filed the first land plat (1853) for the area that would eventually become Champaign. J. C. Kirkpatrick became one of the largest landowners in the region and established himself as a successful agriculturist noted for his superior quality of livestock. Due to his early settlement of the area, when the Illinois Central Railroad came through in the mid-1850s, he sold 100 acres in city lots to the railroad.
In the 1880s, the Kirkpatricks moved to Urbana, where Mr. Kirkpatrick, in partnership with his son Jesse and son-in-law Charles Barricklow, operated the Fair, a successful general merchandise store located at 5 W Main Street, Urbana. A member of the Methodist church beginning in 1852, J.C. and his wife were among the founders of the First Methodist Church of Urbana, where all their children were baptized, biological and fostered alike. He died on January 17, 1899. His second child, Albert James (A.J.), continued his agricultural legacy and became the sole proprietor of the Blue Mound Farm in Stanton Township.
