You can’t explore Delavan’s early history for long without meeting the man whose name the town bears—though he never set foot here. The story begins in September 1836, when a group of Rhode Island settlers, led by Jonas R. Gale, traveled west in search of new opportunities on the Illinois prairie. During that journey, they selected a tract of land in southern Tazewell County as the site for a future community. Back in Rhode Island, the newly formed Delavan Association—named in honor of Edward Cornelius Delavan, the prominent New York temperance advocate—organized a formal bid for the land. Their purchase was completed on November 24, 1836, and the settlement that would become Delavan was officially founded the following year, in 1837.

Many readers already know the familiar milestones of Delavan’s early years—the first marriage, the first house, the first businesses—details preserved in state and local archives. What the records don’t describe, however, is how his prominence and philosophy shaped how the town’s founders chose his name to signal their moral aspirations.

Edward Cornelius Delavan did not begin his public life as a temperance crusader. In fact, his early wealth came from the very industry he would later renounce. As a young businessman in New York, Delavan invested in wine importation and liquor distribution, building a substantial fortune in the alcohol trade. That financial success eventually funded his philanthropic work, including the temperance campaigns that made him a national figure—and ultimately inspired the founders of Delavan, Illinois, to name their new prairie town in his honor.

“It is my opinion could the real truth be known, the whole community, with the exception of those whose appetite has already become depraved by indulgence, would abandon forever the use of intoxicating drinks,” Edward Cornelius Delavan wrote in his book Adulterations of Liquors,. Edward C. Delavan was a religious man who notably attacked the usage of wine for communion as he believed biblical wine was unfermented grape juice. The prior quote led into one of his twelve-page publication dictating his disdain for alcohol, its consumption, and how it hasn’t a place in religious proceeding despite there being conflicting ideologies on this matter. His conflict with wine actually led to him leaving the Presbyterian church in favor of joining the Episcopal church.

He was against alcohol ingestion in any scenario. This husband and father of five took it upon himself to take on the New York State Temperance Society to adopt the same zero-tolerance view he held but upon failing to do so on multiple occasions it prompted him to leave the society. Though parting from the society didn’t part him from his pursuit of achieving temperance.

The Delavan Association founded the town in the pursuit of creating a dry space. That’s right, Delavan began as an alcohol free town! The dramatic irony of which does not go unnoticed seeing as most of Delavan’s most successful and well-known businesses present-day are its bars. Just a mere two years after Gale surveying the area that would become Delavan, Illinois, Delavan sailed to Europe to preach temperance across the continent. He returned home to New York where in 1845 he erected Delavan House, one of the country’s first temperance hotels. “The hotel, however, lost money, and, much to Delavan’s annoyance, the manager used a loophole in the lease to introduce liquor.”

Though we may know him as the namesake of our town, Edward Cornelius Delavan’s biggest legacy is his relentless propaganda campaign. He wrote publication after publication and claimed to have personally financed “the publication and distribution of over 36 million anti-alcohol tracts and magazine issues”. His propaganda and lobbying directly lead to New York legislature enacting local option prohibition in 1846 which voters across the state voted to make 80% of the state’s towns dry – while this only lasted in most of them for a year, it was a sizable show of power and impressive victory for Delavan whether you agree with his beliefs or not.