CARTWRIGHT- Cartwright is in the northwest corner of the county and is the largest of the townships territorially and one of the best cultivated. It comprises all of government township 16 north, range 7 west and fractional parts of townships 16 and 17 north, ranges 7 and 8 west. It is bounded on the south by Island Grove, east by Gardner and Salisbury, north by Menard county and west by Morgan and Cass counties. The township is mostly prairie, and its chief water courses are Richland and Prairie creeks. Pleasant Plains, the only considerable village, is on the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern railroad, which traverses the township diagonally from east to west.

Population of the village - 575, and of the entire township - 1,775.

Cartwright township was organized in 1861 and was so named in honor of Peter Cartwright, the celebrated pioneer Methodist preacher, who died there September 25, 1872, aged eighty-seven years. The first white settlement in the township was made on Richland creek in 1819. Among the early and prominent settlers of this section were Roland Shepherd, Dallas Scott, Solomon Price, John P. Broadwell, William Carson, Samuel Irwin, Robert Milburn, William Crow, Edward Pirkins and M. K. Anderson.