Posted on: Hancock County, Il Query Forum Board URL: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Il/Hancock?read=1090 Surname: ------------------------- I found the following in "History of Hancock Co. 1968" p. 315, which begins a history of Hancock Township (section authored by Vesta Holloway & Mildred M. Nelson). "The first settlers began their immiration to the township in the early 1830's. In the spring of 1831 a group known as the Bloyd, McCubbin-Rupe party, consisting of thirty settlers, came from Green County, Kentucky. These families erected log houses, as close together as possible, on the land they homesteaded, in what is now the Oak Grove neighborhood. Shortly after the planted their first crops, there came an Indian Scare in that part of the country. Immediaterly they abandoned their homes, taking only the absolute necessities with them traveling as fast as possible with their slow plodding oxen, they went to Beardstown, on the Illinois River to the east. This town, fifty miles away, was their closest post office.... Also on p. 324. "Bloyd-Belknap Cemetery was one of the first to be extablished in what is now Hancock Township. It is located near the center of Northeast Section 33, about a mile north of the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Clay Miller. John Bloyd, Sr., the "Patriarch" of the Bloyd-McCubbin-Rupe immigration party, died in 1832 and was the first person buried in this cemetery......In 1967 there are very few markers and tombstones remaining." I am not researching this family and have no further information.