Cooksville was laid out under the name "Kochsville" on December 4, 1882, by Frederick Wilhelm Koch (1829 – 1900). Within a year of its founding the name was changed to Cooksville. Koch was a Bloomington real estate dealer. He was born in Westphalia, in what is now Germany, and arrived in the United States on November 6, 1854. Koch was in Bloomington by 1860. He sold thirty or forty lots near his home in west Bloomington, and this neighborhood soon became known as Kochsville, giving Koch the distinction of having two McLean County places named in his honor. Cooksville was founded when the Clinton, Bloomington and Northeastern Railroad was finished from Colfax to Bloomington; in 1880 the part of the railroad from Kankakee to Colfax had been finished, resulting in the 1880 founding of Cropsey, Anchor, and Colfax; but the remainder of the railroad was delayed for two years. The railroad was…
Passages that mention Cooksville, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of McLean County, Illinois1924 · page 89Read the page →
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One was Cooksville on the eastern border, the other Fletcher, on the western. Cooksville was named after F. W. Koch of Bloomington, who owned land in the vicinity. The German form of the name was anglicized.
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1836, known as White Oak Grove, but after fifty-three years of existence it passed out and the membership transferred to Carlock. Colfax has had a church since 1867, and in 1907 the present building was erected. John R. Golden formed a congregation at Cooksville in 1902, succeeding the Blue Mound Church. Ellsworth Church succeeded the Old Town Church in 1867, and Heyworth Church was organized in 1872. In 1906 the present modern building was erected in Heyworth. A Christian Church has been at Holder since 1877, and at Hudson since 1877. Leroy Church was formed
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Timeline
Cooksville, 1869 to 1957
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
