October 25, 2026
About the Champions
The Champion family left its mark on Belleville through medicine, business, civic life, and a family home that still anchors the story of this house. Their history comes into focus through an 1896 newspaper remembrance of Dr. Federal Champion, read alongside earlier obituaries, local notices, and…
October 25, 2026
Patience Champion and a Madison County Land Case
In 1853, a Belleville newspaper printed a commissioner's sale notice naming Patience A. Champion and others as plaintiffs in a St. Clair County Circuit Court cause. The sale was set to dispose of several rural parcels in Madison County, Illinois. The notice is a glimpse of Patience acting in a…
October 25, 2026
Maggie Champion and the Belleville Benevolent Society
In December 1860, a local newspaper named Miss Maggie Champion on a collection committee for Belleville's newly organized Benevolent Society. The committees were to gather and distribute money and clothing for people in need. It is a brief civic notice, but it gives Maggie a public role outside the…
October 25, 2026
Jane Champion Snyder: Scripture, Family, and an 1857 Marriage
One of the earliest glimpses of Jane Champion is a school report, not a family biography. In 1843, the Semi-Weekly Advocate listed Miss Jane Champion and Miss Mary Champion in the same Union Sunday School class. The report praised the girls' scripture memorization; the scan's tally is partly…
October 25, 2026
Frank Champion and the Pistol Accident
An August 1857 newspaper item reports a startling accident involving Frank Champion, a St. Louis druggist. He had dropped his pistol; when he picked it up, it discharged and wounded his foot. The paper said the bullet had not yet been extracted and that his foot was painful.
October 25, 2026
The Champion Family’s Belleville Legacy
The Champion name is attached to several strands of Belleville history: a nineteenth-century medicine business, a prominent family residence on Charles Street, and the descendants of Dr. Federal Champion and Patience Ann Treen. The story becomes clearer when those strands are connected carefully.
October 25, 2026
Remembering a Belleville Doctor, Nearly Fifty Years Later
On October 2, 1896, the Belleville Weekly Advocate published a long profile of “Dr. Federal Champion,” describing him as a physician who had flourished in Belleville nearly sixty years earlier. The article is valuable because it gathers business, family, and civic memories in one place. Its…
October 25, 2026
Mary Champion and Hiram Padfield
The 1896 biography of Dr. Federal Champion says his daughter Mary married Hiram Padfield. That one sentence opens a window onto another Belleville family—and toward newspaper accounts of horses, racing, and local life.
October 25, 2026
The Champion Children: Five Names, More Questions
The October 1896 biography of Dr. Federal Champion names five children: Mary, Belle, Jane, Maggie, and Frank. It gives several of them a glimpse of adult life, but another obituary suggests that this list does not tell the whole family story.
October 25, 2026
Patience Ann Champion: A Life Beyond the Doctor’s Biography
Newspaper accounts often introduce Patience Ann Champion through her husband, Dr. Federal Champion. Read together, the articles provide a few details of her own life—and show how much remains to be learned.
October 25, 2026
Two Champion Places in Belleville
The Champion story touches at least two different places in Belleville: an earlier medicine operation on High Street and a later family residence on Charles Street. Keeping them separate helps avoid a tempting but unsupported conclusion that Dr. Federal Champion lived in the house now known as…
October 25, 2026
The Pills and the Business Behind Them
Dr. Federal Champion’s medicines were more than a footnote in his obituary. They were a business, with products, stock, a laboratory, and people responsible for keeping the operation going.
October 25, 2026
A Physician Comes to Belleville
In 1840, Dr. Federal Champion moved to Belleville, according to the account of his life published after his death and a later newspaper biography. It was a consequential move for Champion and for a town that would become the center of his medical and business work.
October 25, 2026
Who Was Dr. Federal Champion?
For Belleville, Dr. Federal Champion belongs to the years before the house at 218 South Charles Street. A newspaper profile published in 1896 looked back on the physician and medicine maker who had flourished here nearly sixty years earlier. It offers a vivid sketch of a man whose work touched…
October 23, 2026
What Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Told Me About Our Front Porch
I used the 1884 and 1889 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps to investigate whether Champion House’s small front porch was original. The later map showed the porch was not there, but I decided to keep it.
October 19, 2026
A Narrow Escape from the Kate Kearney
Patience Champion’s eldest child, B. F. Champion, rode the Kate Kearney in February 1854 and narrowly escaped the steamboat disaster in St. Louis. A newspaper report later named him as builder of the family’s Charles Street residence.