At the close of the Revolutionary War, a great many soldiers were discharged and sent home without their pay. To remedy this, the Continental Congress passed an act granting to every such discharged soldier one hundred acres of land, to be selected by him within a prescribed territory; and on October 22^nd, 1787, that congress set off as a reservation for that purpose, a portion of land in the Northwest Territory, described and bounded as follows:

“Beginning at the mouth of the Ohio River; thence up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Au Vase; thence up that stream to a line running straight west from the mouth of the Little Wabash; thence east along that west line to the Wabash; thence down the Wabash and the Ohio, to the beginning.”

Au Vase is a contraction of “a le vase,” the French name of Big Muddy; and that was Big Muddy’s common name at that day. In those days, this territory was popularly called “The Old Soldiers’ Reservation.”

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(Extracted from the book, “A Story of Southern Illinois, The Soldiers’ Reservation” by William Nelson Moyers)