Chicago attracted Manx settlers particularly after the great fire of 1871, when reconstruction work brought over many Manx builders and carpenters. By the mid-twentieth century, the city contained a substantial population of Manx descent, with about half of the North American Manx Association's Illinois membership residing in and around Chicago.

The Manx had reached Illinois well before the city drew them. Although the state entered the Union in 1818 its settlement was not rapid, because access from the east was awkward until the railway got through to Chicago from Detroit in 1852. The easier way in was from the south, by New Orleans and the Mississippi, and that was the route the first recorded Manx settlers took: the Kelly family from Onchan. Small groups of farmers from the Island arrived at Brimfield in 1848 and 1849 and spread from there into the adjoining counties, so the Galva and Peoria districts can claim to be the oldest Manx settlements in the state. Most of the association's Illinois members outside Chicago still lived in those districts in the 1950s.

Chicago itself drew Manx people from other parts of North America as well as directly from the Island. One of them turned the city's growth to account: in 1884 John J. Keig from Ballaugh was opening trading posts and carting produce to and from Chicago along the old plank roads. No estimate has ever been made of how many people of some Manx descent the city holds, and they are found in a wide variety of occupations.