Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Below: old-book passages.
The Newark post office opened in 1837, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Newark’s history is told.
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Newark yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Newark is a village in Kendall County, Illinois, United States. The population was 973 at the 2020 census.
Its first post office opened in 1837. Its population held steady between the last two censuses: 992 in 2010, 973 in 2020.
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
Passages that mention Newark, cut from the printed page as they were published.
came West in increased numbers. In the town of BIG GROVE, John C. Phillips and Geo. B. Hollenback laid out the village of Newark, calling it Georgetown. Major Hitt, now living in Ottawa, was the surveyor, and made his corners by running out from the Indian boundary line on the south end of Dr, Sweetland's farm, by Kellogg's
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
of being the bustling junction of the Chicago and Plainfield Railroad and the Joliet, Newark and Mendota Railroad, is only Newark still. The latter road was to be the Eastern Division of the Illinois Grand Trunk Railway — and thus we were at once to be in the middle of the world. At a town meeting, held in October, Big Grove, by a vote of one hundred and eighty to ninety, voted to issue bonds for twenty thousand dollars in aid
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Weddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
The Newark post office opened in 1837, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
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 Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, 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.