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977.3465 Sch97h Mrs.T.J. SCHWEER ,
HISTORY OF BEARDSTOWN AND AND CASS COUNTY
(1925)
LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
977.3465 Sch97h
Illinois Historical Survey
- iv. Of Ill. Library
53 2116 3.1
HISTORY OF BEARDSTOWN AND CASS COUNTY
-BY- MRS. T. J. SCHWEER
1925
Written for Use as a Text Book in the Third Grade Beardstown Public Schools
HISTORY OF BEARDSTOWN AND CASS COUNTY
-- BY- MRS. T. J. SCHWEER
1925
Written for Use as a Text Book in the Third Grade Beardstown Public Schools
Acknowledgments are due Mr. P. C. Croll for assistance in gathering material and to Hon. Henry Shaw, who delivered the Fourth of July oration in 1876, on the History of Beardstown.
Presented by Mrs. Ledre J. Schaeffer Beardstoure 2 el
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
9773 465 Sal 17%
CHAPTER I
Illinois dates its white settlements among the first in North America. Four years before the settlement of Ply- mouth, Le Baron had explored Upper Canada, and twenty years later the hardy and ambitious French voyageurs and traders, and the zealous missionaries had erected trading-posts and missions along the rivers and upon the lake shores of the land that now comprises the present states of Illinois and Wis- consin.
At that time the surface of Illinois was much lower than it is at the present time, and our early settlers of two hundred years ago navigated the Mississippi and Illinois rivers to the Great Lakes.
Two hundred years ago northern and central Illinois was inhabited by two very powerful nations of Indians, the Illinois and the Miami. The Miami occupied the northern part of the present state of Illinois and a part of Wisconsin and their chief town was where the city of Chicago now stands. The Illinois occupied the country bordering upon the Illinois river and all the country between that and the Mississippi. The principal tribes of the Illinois were the Muscootens and their town was upon the present site of Beardstown, on the eastern bank of the river at the foot of Muscooten Bay and was called by the French, Mound Village. The Peorias, another tribe of the Illinois, occupied the country between the rivers, having their town on the west bank of the Illinois river, four miles above the present town of Frederick.
The present site of Beardstown was at that time an island surrounded on the north, east and south by almost impassable swamps containing dangerous quick sands and quaking bogs, which could be crossed only in canoes, and on the west by the Illinois river.
The Indian town of the Muscooten's was a beautiful place. It was built upon a series of wonderful mounds, which had been built so long ago that no one remembered anything about then! For the people who built them. These mounds were covered with grass and partially shaded by tall trees, but so placed as not to obstruct the view of the whole town from the river. The island had been selected not only on account of its natural beau- ty, but for its easy defense and safety from the enemies. The two villages of the Muscootens and Peorias stood in plain sight of each other, the broad river forming a straight sheet of water
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between, while north of Mound Village and directly in front of the Peorias was Muscooten Bay, separated from the river by a narrow peninsula which we now call Wood Slough.
Back of the swamp which protected the rear of the town, was a wide belt of rich prairie bottom land and beyond six miles rose the Sangamon bluffs between which and the island in the day time all approaching foes could be seen. This island town was a favorite resting place for the tired voyageurs and devout missionaries; a large cross was erected here and friendly rela- tions established between the Indians and white men. But this friendly feeling on the part of the French toward the Illinois Indians excited the jealousies of the Miami and they determin- ed to have revenge. In vain did the missionaries try to pre- vent war. The Miami invaded the country of the Illinois, and took some prisoners. At this time the brave chevalier LaSalle, who had built a fort where the present city of Peoria now stands, made a journey alone down the river to the Muscooten village but his effort amounted to nothing and the war con- tinued. Moreover, the Muscootens thought La Salle was act- ing as a spy for the Iroquois Indians at that time the most pow- erful Indian tribe on the North American continent, who had formed an alliance with the Miami for the purpose of extermi- nating them. Many battles were fought between these hostile nations, but because of the greater number of Iroquois and Mia- mis the Illinois were defeated and beseiged in their towns.
The Muscootens were at last beseiged in their island town, and after many fierce battles were finally defeated. It was savage fighting savage, and death was dealt with relentless vigor on either side. The Muscootens began to fall back to- ward the river and their enemies, with yells of victory, rushed upon them with tomahawks and scalping knives and ended the battle. A few of the Muscootens swam the river and conceal- ed themselves in the high swampy grass. A small number fled in canoes to the village of the Peorias. The women and child- ren were taken prisoners.
The victorious Iroquois buried their dead in the great mound on the bank of the river with their bows and arrows and tomahawks together with the silver and flint crosses of the mis- .sionaries. After these ceremonies were over the Iroquois re- turned to their own country. The Miamis with their prison- ers and sick and dying encamped upon the present site of Chandlerville.
Some years later Mound Island was taken possession of by the Kickapoo Indians upon which they built their village, known as Kickapoo Town, although still remembered by the French as "Beautiful Mound Village." This became a fa-
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vorite trading post and missionary station, and continued in possession of the Kickapoos until its settlement by Thomas Beard in 1820.
About 1830 the great mound at Beardstown began to be dug into by spade and pick-axe of the white man. The decay- ing bones of the Indian Warriors as they lay in their lovely and quiet resting places with their bows and arrows, the silver and flint crosses of the missionaries, even the beautiful mound it- self which should have been preserved was all shoveled away and nothing now is left of this once beautiful mound.
During the early part of the nineteenth century immigra- tion was greatly retarded to this part of the country because of severe earthquakes. From 1811 to 1813 they were as severe as ever happened on this continent and the few settlers here were in constant dread from these disturbances. Then too the Kickapoo Indians, fierce and powerful as they were, while friendly to the French, had no use for the Americans and dis- couraged their settlement in this part of the country. Finally, negotiations were entered into with the Kickapoos and on the 30th of July 1819 the tribe ceded to the United States an im- mense tract of land known as the Sangamon County.
CHAPTER II
The first permanent white settlement within the present limits of the city of Beardstown was made by Thomas Beard, who came here on horse back when it was a Kickapoo town in 1819. Mr. Beard built his cabin upon the steep bank of the river at the present foot of State street and began business as a trader among the Indians. He was rather unfortunate in se- lecting the site for his cabin, because the next spring he found that he had built it upon a den of snakes and (the next spring) when the weather was warm many thousands of them of all kinds came out upon the bank by his cabin. Soon after he built a two story brick hotel where our post office now stands and this old hotel stood at the foot of State street for 85 years. Many of the early immigrants going and coming across the river stopped at this hotel.
Mr. Beard was the father of our town. He came here as a young man twenty-four years old on horse back from the state of Ohio. His parents did not want him to go so far from home but he had the pioneer instinct in him and wanted to seek new and strange lands, so he came west as far as Alton and Edwardsville at first, and while in the latter place he made the
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HISTORY OF BEARDSTOWN
acquaintance of a young man by the name of Enoch C. March. They soon formed a strong friendship for each other and came to Beardstown together. The first land entry was made by Thomas Beard and Enoch C. March jointly. Mr. Beard's cab- in marked the western most out-post of civilization at this point. He thought it such a wonderful country and wrote most alluring descriptions of it home to his parents and so interest- ed did they all become that the whole Beard family moved to Beardstown, and now most of them lie buried in the Beard cem- etery at the top of Seamon Hill just five miles out of Beards- town on the Chandlerville road.
The first licensed ferry across the river was granted Mr. Beard by the County Commissioners of Schuyler County, upon his paying six dollars into the treasury of that county. There was no road from Beardstown through Schuyler County in that day. Mr. Beard managed the ferry himself using a pole to propel it. It was so small that only one wagon and a single team of horses could be accommodated at one time and very little room was left for passengers.
On the 28th day of October, 1827, Beard and March made another land entry which extended their river front down low the great mound. The original town of Beardstown con- sisted of 23 blocks fronting the river, three blocks deep, reach- ing from Clay to Jackson streets, of which the block between the park and Main street and State and Washington was the central one. The town was laid out and platted by Thomas Beard and Enoch March, and was named after Mr. Beard.
Now at this time there was not a bushel of corn to be had in central Illinois. The settlers lived on venison, blackberries and milk. The men had to go down into the southern part of the state to buy corn. The southern part of our state was called Egypt; it was older and longer settled and they gather- ed corn down there like the sands of the sea, and so the immi- grants went down there to buy corn as the children of Isreal in their want went to Egypt to buy and bring forth from thence corn that they might live.
Money was very scarce in those days and often the early settlers would gather a lot of bee's wax and loading it in canoes would take it to St. Louis and sell it to raise money with which to buy their land.
The winter of 1830 was a remarkable one and will always be remembered by old settlers as the most terrible for suffer- ing within their memories. The snow fell at first about 30 inches deep then the weather settled and another snow fell and another, until it was from four to six feet deep. In drifts it was much deeper. Fences were covered and lanes filled up.
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There was much suffering everywhere. Stock died for want
of food. Deer stood in their tracks and died. Prairie chick- ens and quails having alighted in the snow could not get out. Man was the only animal that could walk, and game alone or the food kind was all he had in plenty. That could be had for the picking it up from the snow for it was helpless. But finally even game became so poor from starvation that it was unfit for food. The snow stayed on the ground nearly all winter until March and people ran short of everything parti- cularly fuel. Thomas Beard remembering a widow with a small family living at the bluffs, generously walked out there and found her and her family on the verge of starvation and hovering over the last remnants of a fire, she having used all of her fuel. Mr. Beard tore up some fences and chopped a large pile of wood for her and afterwards carried provisions to her through the snow on foot, a distance of seven miles, as a horse could not travel.
In 1831 the Indians became very troublesome and threaten- ed to over-run the white population. They were led by Black Hawk their chief and prophet who pretended to have powe: given him by the great spirit to destroy the pale faces. He at- tacked the whites with so much vigor that Governor John Rey- nolds who was governor of the state at that time, issued a call to arms. He asked for seven hundred able-bodied men, who were willing to fight the Indians, to come to Beardstown on the tenth day of June 1831. On that day three times that num- ber came to Beardstown. They were at once organized and Enoch C. March was made quartermaster. March was equal to the occasion; he soon furnished the necessary supplies but the governor was at a loss to know how to arm those who had not brought rifles. However a man by the name of Francis Arenz, one of Mr. Beard's good friends came to their aid. He was a merchant here and a short time before had purchased some light brass barrelled fowling pieces, that had been manu- factured in the east for a South American government, and not answering the purpose for which they were made, they were shipped west to shoot birds with. These served the purpose very well and the troops were encamped above the town where Mr. R. B. Glenn's Ice and Fuel Plant now stands. Some of the best men in this vicinity assembled here and we are told that Abraham Lincoln was among them serving as a privateer.
There is one instance connected with the Black Hawk War which is interesting because it relates to the settling of Chand- lerville.
David Ephler, a resident of the North Prairie district came to Beardstown to purchase two barrels of salt. He drove two
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beautiful horses well harnessed and a good wagon, altogether just what Colonel March wanted for war material. He ac- cordingly seized them under the law that might makes right, and took them from Mr. Ephler. But Mr. Ephler refused to give them up and with his face livid with anger declared that he would defend them with his life and that the Colonel with his troops would have to walk over his dead body before he would give up his best team, at least until he was paid their value. Colonel March then offered to pay what two disin- terested men should say they were worth. This was agreed to. There were then stopping in Beardstown two comparative strangers, Dr. Charles Chandler and a man named Crawford. To them the cause was referred. They having come from the east were wholly in ignorance with the low prices of this new country and priced the team at eastern values, which Colonel March felt in honor bound to abide by and the consequence was Mr. Ephler got $350 for his team, which was a large price theu. This incident recalls the fact of how Dr. Chandler came here. He left Rhode Island where he had a good practice in his profes- sion and a new house which he had just built, and started west with his family with the intention of settling at Fort Cla- where Peoria now stands. When the steamer upon which he came up the Illinois river arrived at Beardstown the hostile at- titude of the Indians in the vicinity and the preparation for a general Indian war induced the captain to discharge his pas- sengers and freight at Beardstown, thinking it unsafe to go any farther north with his boat. While here Dr. Chandler tock a ride up the Sangamon bottom with Thomas Beard and he was so well pleased with that part where Chandlerville now stands that he determined to go no farther north and settle there. This was in the spring of 1832. The bottom of the bluffs had burned over and new fresh green grass and beauti- ful flowers had sprung up and the trees and vines and shrub- bery were dressed in their most inviting foliage, indeed it was a most beautiful sight. Later he took his wife and little daughter to see their future home and they too were delighted with it. So the doctor entered sixty acres of land that spring and although it was late in the spring he raised a crop of buck-wheat upon it. There was a universal custom among the settlers at that time, that every man should be entitled to eighty acres of land on each side of the land already entered by him. He could have the right to this land until he was able to enter it at $1.25 per acre from the government, and it was considered stealing for another man to claim it.
Shortly after this a man named English came to this vici- nity to settle. He too was much pleased with the prospect of
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living in this new country. The Doctor assisted and befriend- ed him all he could offering to give up his claim to one-half of the eighty acres tract next to the land that English wanted and let him enter it. English told the Doctor that he was going to Springfield and enter the whole tract, that he did not care for the customs of the country, that he was going to have it right or wrong, and started for Springfield. 3 All the Doctor's ef- forts to keep him from doing it availed nothing. The Doctor went to his cabin and looked over his little pile of money and found that he had fifty dollars. He thought that his neighbor might have some money and so he saddled his best horse. He rode to this man's house and borrowed fifty dollars more. Thus provided, he took a different route through the woods and prairies from that chose by English and putting his horse to his best speed started for the land office.
When about ten miles from Springfield, Dr. Chandler over took two young men on horseback and as his horse was foam- ing with perspiration and really tired out he rode slowly along with the young men, as well to rest his horse as to relate to them the cause of his haste. When he told them of the meanness of the man, one of the young men was so indignant that he of- fered the Doctor his own fresh horse that he might make all haste and thwart the efforts of English, while the young man would ride the Doctor's horse slowly into town. But the Doct- or rode his own horse, got safely to the land office and entered the land before English got there. Sometime after that he wanted to have his land surveyed and the county surveyor liv- ed at Jacksonville but a neighbor told him that there was a bet- ter surveyor living at Salem in Sangamon County named Abra- ham Lincoln. So the Doctor sent for him and when he came with his implements to do the surveying the doctor found that Abraham Lincoln, the surveyor, was the same young man that lad so kindly offered to lend him his horse so that he might defeat the rascally man named English.
Dr. Chandler was the first physician in Illinois to adopt quinine in his practice as a remedy. The first to introduce the practice of the infliction of bodily pain as a remedy for an over- dose of Opium, and the first who opposed bleeding as a remedy. When he went to Sangamon bottom he was called into practice before he could build a stable and for weeks when at home tied his horse to a tree and pulled grass to feed him for he had no scythe to cut it with. He built the first frame house within the present limits of this county. It was ten by twelve feet, one story and shingled with split and shaved oak shingles, which made a good roof for twenty-five years-a fact worthy of no- tice. He built it for a drug store and office, and up to 1876
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it was still in existence. In 1836 he built a large residence. His reason for building so large a house at that time was that it was exactly like the one he had built and left in Rhode Island and as his family had sacrificed so much in leaving their com- fortable home for the wilds of the west, he wished to make a home as near like their former one as possible
CHAPTER III
In 1833 when Andrew Jackson was president of our conn- try and John Reynolds governor of our state Beardstown was a flourishing town and port on the Illinois river. The reason for this was because of its transportation facilities. It was a great grain and provision market. Most towns from the in- terior of the state got their supply of goods here and from here they shipped their supplies to market.
Chicago and Springfield were just small settlements. But Beardstown really won its public attention chiefly through the busy scenes at its hog-pens and slaughter houses for this was its chief industry. As many as seven firms were located here at one time, Beardstown possessed the most extensive pork trade of any city west of Cincinnati. ' The average number of hogs slaughtered was from fifty to sixty thousand every spring.
For pork-growing few regions were so favorable as the Illinois prairies. The hogs were allowed to run at large and they multiplied very rapidly and it was often a difficult matter to decide to whom a lot of grunting porkers owed allegiance. There was no hog cholera at that time or other disease until the spring of 1859. Hogs were a good means of converting the corn of the state into good marketable form. In those early days Beardstown was often called Porkopolis.
Thus in the early days Beardstown was the commercial center for miles around. Great wharfs lined the river banks. Huge side-wheelers brought merchandise from New Orleans or St. Louis and on the river bank were seen boxes, barrels, and crates.
These goods were hauled from Beardstown by six or eight spans of long horned sturdy oxen or steers attached to huge four wheeled wagons, high in the front and rear with concave sides, to towns in the state where merchandise and food were needed.
A plank road was built from the sand ridge to the bluffs and sometimes caravans of wagons would stretch in an unbrok- en line from here to the bluffs.
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But the coming of the railroad in 1859 changed the busi- ness life of Beardstown somewhat. More of the hogs were taken to Chicago to be slaughtered and the river was not used so much for transportation. So for some years Beardstown was at a great disadvantage and desperate efforts were made by its citizens to secure railroad facilities. Large sums were subscribed by the corporation and large amounts were subscrib ed by private citizens and finally the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, and The Baltimore and Ohio railroads came through Beardstown.
The first newspaper north of Jacksonville and south of Chicago was the Beardstown Chronicle and Illinois Military Bounty Land Advertiser. Francis Arenz was editor of this newspaper and J. B. Fulks publisher. This was the only news paper published here until 1845.
It is interesting to note some of the prices of staples pub- lished in an 1833 edition of this newspaper. Flour, imported, per barrel $4.25, wheat, in 90 days per bushel, $.50. Wheat cash, $.45. Salt, per bushel, $.75. Corn, per bushel $.12 to $.16. Beans, per bushel $.50. Whiskey, per gallon $.48. Pork, per pound $.0212. Butter, per pound $.10. Beef per pound $.021%. Cigars per 1000 one dollar.
Cigars per box, the best, $1.00.
The first church in Beardstown was erected in 1841 at the corner of Fifth and Washington Streets and was called "The German Evangelical Church at Beardstown."
Everybody attended this one church no matter to what church they belonged before. It is said that every Sunday it was crowded, people coming from far and near to worship. During the week days it was used as a school.
The second church in Beardstown was erected at the cor- ner of Third and Washington Streets in 1845 as a Presbyterian Church, but in February 1850 it became the First Congregation- al Church of Beardstown.
The Methodist Church was organized in Beardstown at the early day of 1837 and a church was built on the corner of Fifth and State Street in 1849, but before it was dedicated to divine worship, it was used as a hospital during the cholera epidemic of that year.
The first school house in Beardstown was built in 1834 on the site where the residence of Dr. W. D. Pence now stands. It was built by Mr. Beard and Mr. Arenz and presented by them to the town.
Thomas Beard did a great deal for Beardstown. He pre- sented the Park to the city, a spot that has been made historic by many public meetings where such orators as Abraham Lin- coln and Stephen A. Douglas were heard.
LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
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But the most noteworthy gift was our City Hall and the -sound upon which it was built. This building should be as dear to this city as Faneuil Hall or Old South Church is to Bos- ton or Independence Hall, and the Betsy Ross house is to Phil- :delphia. Built in 1844, it was Cass County's first courthouse. Here Abraham Lincoln tried many cases, most notable among them was the Armstrong murder case.
In 1836 Mr. Beard purchased 560 acres of land at the bluffs about six miles northeast of town just a little east of the Brick school house on the Chandlerville Road. The property is now owned by Mrs. Ella Seaman. Here Mr. Beard built his summer home of oak and walnut, a very substantial house. Here he planted choice orchards and vineyards, kept open house and enjoyed life.
The first general Illinois Thanksgiving feast was celebrat- ed in the Beard homestead.
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