Courthouses closed Monday for holiday

The Madison and St. Clair County courthouses and county government offices will be closed Monday, July 5 in honor of Independence Day.

They will reopen for normal business at the regular times Tuesday morning.

Independence Day, commonly called the Fourth of July, celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 by the members of the Second Continental Congress.

The American Revolution, however, had already been raging for more than a year, having begun in April 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord.

The last decisive battle of the war ended Oct. 19, 1781 with the surrender of the British at Yorktown in Virginia.

The official end of the war came with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.