Decatur

City and administrative headquarters of Vermilion County, east-central Illinois, 65 km/40 mi east of Springfield, on the Sangamon River and Lake Decatur; population (2000) 81,900. It is the commercial and distribution centre for the area's corn and soybeans and its dairy farms. Local manufactures include lift trucks, ballasts, aerosol products, welding and mining machinery, and confectionery. It is the home of James Millikin University (1901).

Originally a Piankeshaw village at a trail crossroads, it was settled by traders and others interested in local salt deposits. Decatur was founded in 1829 and incorporated as a city in 1855. The city is named after the US naval hero Stephen Decatur. Abraham Lincoln once lived here.

Decatur

City and port in northern Alabama, USA, 124km/77mi north of Birmingham, on the Tennessee River; population (2000) 53,900. It is the seat of Morgan County. Products include man-made fibres, chemicals, refrigerators, vehicle parts, air-conditioning equipment, copper and aluminium tubing and processed agricultural goods; nearby there is a large nuclear-electric power station operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The settlement was first incorporated in 1820 as the town of Rhodes Ferry, but was renamed when it became a city in 1826, after Stephen Decatur, an American naval officer. Following 1832, when Alabama's first railway reached the city, Decatur developed as a centre for large-scale cotton traffic. Although the city was severely damaged during the American Civil War, it recovered and increased in size substantially in 1927 through amalgamation with Albany, an adjacent settlement, previously known as New Decatur.