sentences:  Ottawa and Peru prior to the Civil War was such that many German immigrants joined Illinois regiments during the war.In the late 1880s and early 1890s Irish and German migrants began moving into La Salle County; most of these later immigrants did not move directly from Ireland and Germany, but rather from other areas in the Midwest where they had been living, particularly the state of Ohio.Immigrants around the Peterstown, Troy Grove, Meriden, Mendota, and Earlville area were largely of German descent, with the Mendota area directly being the epicenter of the German community in the county.