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The story of Frank McWorter and New Philadelphia is one of daring and hard work, luck and shrewd family leadership—all aimed at freedom.
Born a slave in South Carolina in 1777, Frank McWorter moved to Kentucky with his owner in 1795. He married Lucy, a slave from a nearby farm, in 1799. Later allowed to hire out his own time, McWorter engaged in a number of enterprises, notably a saltpeter works, that enabled him to buy his wife’s freedom in 1817 and his own in 1819.
Frank and Lucy McWorter and four of their children left Kentucky for Illinois in 1830, the year the Thomas Lincoln family, with son Abraham, came to Illinois from Indiana. McWorter bought a farm in Pike County’s Hadley Township and platted the town of New Philadelphia in 1836. Excellent information on maps, surveys, and land records of New Philadelphia is available at Historical Landscapes of New Philadelphia. McWorter promoted New Philadelphia strenuously, and engaged in other enterprises, managing to buy the freedom of at least sixteen family members. The town itself became a racially integrated community long before the Civil War, the 1850 and subsequent U.S. Census data showing black and white families living there. (See New Philadelphia Census Data.) Frank McWorter died at New Philadelphia in 1854. A son, Solomon, assumed family leadership. Bypassed by the railroad in 1869, the townspeople slowly dispersed from the scene from the late 1880s. Today, the town site is an open field. New Philadelphia Map with Deed Information shows the town lots and streets of Philadelphia.
The New Philadelphia Association
The New Philadelphia Association, a not-for-profit organization formed by area residents, seeks to appropriately preserve a substantial portion of the town site in honor of a remarkable man and family of the antebellum Western Illinois frontier. For information about becoming a member, click on Join or donate! or write to Carol McCartney, Secretary, NPA, Route 1, Pittsfield, IL 62363.