- The Reverend Brich Roald Tweet 2:45
This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. On the ninth of March in 1837, the Reverend John Brich, an itinerant Presbyterian minister from England, froze to death after his horse fell through the ice of a creek near the Rock Island County border. Reverend Brich hung his saddle bags on a tree and wandered two miles into adjacent Henry County before succumbing to the cold. Had it been the other way around, the American Bible Society may have been five hundred dollars richer, and Rock Island County may have had to settle for a wooden courthouse as was common in other frontier counties, rather than the ornate brick structure with imposing columns and a winding staircase to the second floor that graced Rock Island’s courthouse square. Here’s what happened.
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