Townships

Townships are an important, but not necessarily well-known part of our local government. They have three main directives: 1. Assessing property 2. Maintaining roads and bridges (over 71,000 miles!), and 3. Financial Assistance.

Beyond these functions, they also offer a variety of social services, including taking care of cemeteries.

On the second Tuesday of April, each year townships host, by law, the annual township meeting for the transaction of the business of the township.

Township Formation

DeKalb County was formed on March 4, 1837.

At the election of 1849, seven hundred and fifty votes were cast in favor of the adoption of the township organization and only one against it. The Township System would prove a more expensive and more ambitious method of administration for the growing county. The complicated and highly detailed 1851 Illinois Act to Provide for Township Organization—among the earliest Township statues—consisted of 306 sections contained in 25 articles and 5 supplements that ran for 44 printed pages.

December 1849 the County Commissioner’s Court appointed William A. Miller of Kingston, William Hunt of Sycamore, and Robert Sterrett of Somonauk to divide the county into townships. To do this, “They visited the different sections of the County, heard the statements of those citizens who met them, and divided off the County into 13 towns[hips].” The 1850 Census of DeKalb County represents these 13 townships.

Organization Complete

The township organization now complete, after choosing township supervisors, the first meeting of the board of Supervisors was held in Sycamore in October 1850. By 1857, other townships were added by paring land from the existing 13 townships “which completed the organization of the county into 18 townships, each six miles square.”

In July 1886, Sandwich Township split from Somonauk Township after decades of political disagreement and tax-money disputes. The split itself was disputed and was finally decided by the Illinois Supreme Court in early 1899 resulting in today’s 19 townships.