Lee Enterprises purchased the "Southern Illinoisan" and other Lindsay-Schaub papers in 1979. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. He was co-editor/founder of the Illinoisan newspaper in Jacksonville in 1837. The region was inhabited by Illinoisan Indians when the first white explorers arrived. Illinoisan horseshoe crab fossils are only known from the Pennsylvanian of the Mazon Creek area.