Biohazard Cleanup Near Stark Princeville, IL

Princeville is a village in northern Peoria County, Illinois, within the Peoria metropolitan area, covering about 1.66 square miles.

Princeville had a population of 1,728 at the 2020 census, a stable small-town count for a village that has stayed between roughly 1,400 and 1,750 residents since 1990.

The village is named for Daniel Prince, a Vermont native who settled on the site in 1822 and became legendary for feeding any neighbor in need, with payment expected only whenever — if ever — the neighbor found it convenient.

Princeville was formally platted on June 22, 1837, by William C. Stevens, Benjamin Clark and Jesse M. McCutcheon, who named the new town in Daniel Prince's honor.

Ironically, Daniel Prince himself left the area about two years after the town was named for him, saying things had become "too crowded" for his taste.

Princeville's founder William C. Stevens donated the village's central public square — Stevens Square — as open space "for light and air, and for the beauty of the village and the health of its inhabitants," and when officials tried to build a village hall and lock-up on it in 1874, residents won a perpetual injunction that keeps the square a park to this day.

Before the railroads, Princeville was a stagecoach stop on the routes running from Peoria and Chillicothe toward the west and northwest.

Local history records that Princeville was an Underground Railroad stop — founder William C. Stevens and Dr. Cutter harbored runaway slaves in the village and helped them on toward freedom.

The Princeville Heritage Museum is a 30,000-square-foot facility displaying antique farm equipment, steam-powered tractors and threshers, and it includes the Akron Townhouse School, a one-room schoolhouse built in 1900 that classes still visit as a living-history classroom.

The Lillie M. Evans Library District serves Princeville from its building on North Walnut Avenue, a notable civic institution for a village of under 2,000 people.