about 1740 as a four-room private residence by Jean le Poincet
and later purchased by Francois Saucier, son of the designer of
Fort de Chartres, the Cahokia Courthouse is an example of the
French Creole poteaux-sur-solle (post-on-sill) construction
method which French settlers brought over their native Normandy
in northern France. In this method upright hewn logs are seated
on a horizontal log sill and the spaces between the logs are
filled with stone and mortar chinking. This type of construction
is different from the more familiar horizontal Anglo-American
style and is quite rare with only about thirty buildings of this
type left in North America. When the Treaty of Paris was signed
in 1783 ending the American Revolution, the Illinois Country
came under control of the United States. In 1789 the Northwest
Territory was created by the Continental Congress and in a
ceremony in 1790 in Cahokia a proclamation issued by Governor
Arthur St. Clair, the new governor of the territory, was read
laying out the county t