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Gc 977.301 L33ho 1378349
M. L
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00878 0063
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017
https://archive.org/details/historyoflasalle00hoff 0
HISTORY
OF
La Salle County, Illinois
BY U. J. HOFFMAN, COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, 1894-1906.
TOGETHER WITH
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
OF MANY OF ITS PROMINENT AND LEADING CITIZENS AND ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD.
ILLUSTRATED
CHICAGO: THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING CO. 1906
Dedicated to the Pioneers of La Salle County.
PREFATORY.
The compiling of this history has been a labor of love. The purpose in its writing has been to set forth the sterling qualities of mind, heart and labors of the pioneers, to awaken in the reader an appreciation of their heroism and worth. Care has been taken to use language that even the youth of thirteen may comprehend. If to some there may seem a lack of statistical information, the reason for it is, that I wished to present the subject in a form that would be read and produce results, in awakening a patriotic appreciation of our country and people near home.
1378349
Acknowledgment is due the writer of the history of the county in 1886 and that of Hon. Elmer Baldwin. The apology for quoting so extensively from them is that their work was so well done that I thought the readers of today should have the benefit of it. That the purpose of this book may be realized is my fondest wish.
1 August II, 1906.
U. J. HOFFMAN.
1
И дарим
HISTORICAL
GEOLOGICAL HISTORY.
THE FIRST LAND IN NORTH AMERICA.
The first land which rose from the bottom to the surface of the ocean in North America was north and west of the Great Lakes known as the Height of Land. Then rose the Appallachian in the east and the Rocky Mountains in the west. This left an inland sea, the extension of the Gulf of Mexico to beyond the Great Lakes. This in- land sea received the debris which came from the weathering of the lands on its shores. These washings from the land became stratified rocks at the bottom of the sea, and have been estimated to be from five to ten miles in thickness.
The order of the strata exposed in La Salle County. I. Limestone from which cement is formed; 2. St. Peters sand stone from which sand is obtained; 3. Trenton limestone; 4. Shale; 5. Coal No. 2; 6. Coal No. 3; 7. Coal No. 4 ; 8. Coal No. 5 ; 9. Coal No. 6; 10. Streator limestone ; II. Coal No. 7; 12. Newton sandstone ; 13 Croddock limestone; 14. Coal No. 8; 15. Coal No. 9; 16. La Salle limestone ; 17. Coal No. 10; 18. Pink Shale ; 19. Drift. The diagram No. I will help give a clearer idea.
These strata are not everywhere present. Their absence is accounted for by their having been re- moved by weathering or other natural causes, or the region may, at the time of their formation, have been dry land forming an island. The strata could be formed only at the bottom of the sea.
It must not be thought that the bottom of the inland sea or the lands that formed its shores re- mained stationary. In the millions of years that elapsed it rose to the surface and again sank, the earth's crust being thin and less stationary than now. At last North America took permanent shape much as we now see it.
THE ROCK FORMATION EXPOSED IN LA SALLE COUNTY.
Geologists are able to study the rocks by deep borings, but this enables them to penetrate scarce- ly more than a mile below the surface. In the
cooling of the earth's crust it cracked and the great weight on the molten mass below caused the crust to be pushed up where it cracked form- ing mountains. Here miles of the crust were pushed into view.
The contraction of the lower parts of the crust caused the surface to form great wrinkles. The tops of these wrinkles in time weathered and were carried away. This exposed the lower strata of rocks. Such a fold or wrinkle occurred in La Salle County. It seems to extend from the mouth of Deer Park Glen to beyond Millington. It is this fold that exposes the rocks in this region. At the mouth of Deer Park Glen and at the tunnel east of La Salle the rocks assume almost the per- pendicular. Eastward the dechine is more grad- ual. Here the cement rocks which in other parts of the county are from 800 to 1,000 feet below the surface are brought to view.
No doubt the rise of this ridge was gradual. It may have taken thousands of years before the rising of the rocks ceased. But had the top of the ridge not been removed it would have quite the appearance of a mountain. The diagram of the strata of rocks as exposed by the Illinois river from the western limit to Ottawa will give a fair idea of the lifting of the lowest rocks to the sur- face as well as of the material that has been re- moved from the highest parts.
At the tunnel east of La Salle the St. Peters sandstone disappears and the cement limestone stratum comes to the surface beneath it. At La Salle, a mile west, it is more than six hundred feet to the St. Peters sandstone. At Seneca it is eight hundred feet beneath the Illinois River. The St. Peters is a stratum about two hundred feet. Trenton limestone is over two hundred feet thick at Streator. £ If this, the St. Peters and the coal measures, were on top of the ridge it would make a mountain-like eleva- tion. The coal measures which are on top of the Trenton are over six hundred feet. But it seems most probable that the ridge existed before the carboniferous era forming a ridge of dry land. So these measures were not deposited upon it but they appear to the east and west of it. The Trenton was removed from the east-
8
PAST AND PRESENT OF LA SALLE COUNTY.
ward of the ridge except in hollows between ridges before the carboniferous era for it is not found as it is to the westward. The coal meas- ures rest on the St. Peters to the eastward. The table arranged by J. W. Huett contains much useful information.
THE CARBONIFEROUS ERA.
The carboniferous era was a period in the world's geological history noted for the frequent disturbance of the earth's surface. For a time the bottom of the inland sea would rise to the surface and become dry land. Vegetation grew in great luxuriance and then all sank and the sea came in. Shales, clays and rocks were formed covering the previous beds of vegetation which became beds of coal. Again the land rose above the sea level and for another period vegetation flourished, when the land again sank beneath the waters. Ages elapsed and deep beds of clay or strata of rocks formed over another bed of coal.
In La Salle county there are ten veins of coal although they are not everywhere present. In some places a vein becomes only a few inches in thickness. In other localities it disappears entirely.
THE GLACIAL EPOCH.
The glacial epoch is most interesting because the surface of the county as well as the state was formed by it. On every hand one sees evidence of its work. The boulders or "nigger heads," the gravel beds, the low hills and the broad stretches of level prairies are all evidence of this epoch.
A glacier is a vast field of ice. It may cover thousands of square miles and be several thou- sand feet thick. In a great mass ice is not what it seems to be in a small piece, a solid. In large quantities it is like wax. Give it time and it will move of its own weight. If it is on an in- clined surface it will slowly move down the in- cline. If it is confined the higher parts will set- tle down until the level is attained. Today the greater part of Greenland is covered with such an ice cap which is slowly moving into the sea where great pieces break off and float southward as icebergs.
In the mountains of Alaska and Switzerland we can study the work of glaciers. From what we learn from these the surface of Illinois was surely formed by glaciers.
At one time all of North America north of the Ohio river was covered by an ice-sheet 2,500 feet in thickness. This .melted at the southern ex- tremity until it retreated several hundred miles
to the northward. Again it moved down cover- ing nearly all the ground previously covered. Again it retreated to the northward and again it moved forward.
HOW THE ICE-SHEET WAS FORMED.
How could such an ice-sheet form ? It is well known that as we rise from the sea level the temperature decreases. Even at the equator perpetual ice and snow are seen on the mountains five thousand feet high. As we go northward and approach the pole the perpetual snow line descends until it reaches the sea level. If then the land north of the Great Lakes about Hudson Bay were elevated a few hundred feet, the cold would be so intense for most of the year that all moisture in the air would descend as snow, form into ice and in a few hundred years would become thousands of feet thick. This would then move slowly southward to lower land until it reached a temperature where it would melt as fast as it moved southward.
Such a sheet of ice, high as a mountain and wide as an ocean, moving forward, could not be successfully resisted by anything in its path ex- cept a mountain range. The central part of North America was comparatively level, being formed by sediments at the bottom of the inland sea. When the ice-sheet moved southward it carried the hills with it and plowed deep to the hardest rocks. All this debris was carried for- ward and dropped where the ice-sheet melted. In its movement it ground to powder most of the material. This formed beds of clay in still water. In running water the larger particles would be dropped forming gravel beds. The large masses of rock would be rolled and rubbed and finally dropped as boulders.
The boulders which are scattered over the prairies of our country were carried from Canada, where we find the rocks from which they were broken by the moving ice-sheet. In our gravel beds we find not only stones that are a part of the rocks in Canada, but we also find copper and gold which could have come from nowhere else.
In the surface of the rocks over which the ice- sheet moved we find deep scratches all in the same direction. These grooves were cut by hard stones imbedded in the ice that was moving slowly over the rock.
The glacier pushed southward until it reached a climate warm enough to melt the ice as fast as it came on. Where the ice ended and melted, all the earth and stones imbedded in it were dropped. In the course of time this became a great ridge or range of hills of gravel, clay, sand and stones. These were probably several
UNIVERSITY
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(CHIEFLY AFTER F. LEVERETT'S GLACIAL MAP.)
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Late Wisconsin glaciation
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GENERAL SURVEY SOIL MAP OF ILLINOIS
Investigation of Illinois Soil. BY
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OF ILLINOIS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION
Effingham I 3
9
PAST AND PRESENT OF LA SALLE COUNTY.
TABLE OF THE GEOLOGICAL AGES, FORMATIONS, PERIODS, AND EPOCHS OF THE WORLD AND THOSE OF ILLINOIS AND LA SALLE COUNTY, WITH REMARKS, THICKNESS, ETC.
AGE
ERA
PERIOD
EPOCH U. S.
EPOCH ENG.
ILLINOIS
Cenozoic, 200 to 2,500 ft.
Mammals
Pliocene.
Tertiary, 100 to 2,000 ft.
Miocene, 700 ft. in N. J. Eocene, 10,000 ft. Rocky Mountains.
Upper. ) Middle, Eocene Lower,
Occurs in Southern Illinois, Not in La Salle Co.
Cretaceous. 1,000 to 10,000 ft
Upper Cretaceous, 800-2.000 in Texas. 5.000 to 6,000 on the Rio Grande.
Laramie, Montana, Colo- rado, Dakota, Mass., Fredericksburg, Trinity.
Up. Chalk or Gault, Lower
Up. Green S. & Noe- comia11.
Mesozoic, 5.000 ft. above
Jurassic, 4,000 ft. Nevada. Often Wanting
Oolyte, Liassic.
Up. Oolyte or Port- land, Mid. or Oxford, Lower Oolyte. Up. Lias. Marlstone, Lower Lias.
Triassic, 2,000-3, 000, Rich., Va., 2.000-15,- 000 WV. of Rocky Mt.
Permian.
Permian.
In some localities. noted for remains of fishes; 5 to Io ft. thick.
Upper Carb,
These beds cover inore than one-half the area of the State.
Carbonic, Io to 15,000 ft.
Carboniferous, 20 to Lower Carb. 2,000, Illinois; 31,000 Millstone Grit. and more in Penn.
Upper or Mauch Chunk. Lower or Pocono.
211 ft. at Streator, 25 at Ottawa, 800 at La Salle.
Sub-Carboniferous, 5, - Chemeny & Catskill. 660 Pen11.
Portage & Genesee. Hamilton.
Old Red Sandstone. Devonian1.
Hamilton beds are found along the Mississippi S. of Rock Island.
Paleozoic, 30,000, 40,000 in Penn.
Devonian, 31,000 N. Y., 13,900 Penn.
Lower Helderburg. Onondaga. Niagara.
Lower Helderberg, Salina and Waterlime, Niagara. Clinton, Medina.
U'pper Silurian, 6,500. Joliet, Limestone 200.
Upper Silurian, 2.600 N. Y .; 9.300 Trenton, Pennsylvania, 6, - Canadian. 500.
Hudson, Utica, Trenton, Chazy, 732, Calciferous.
Lower Silurian, 13,000.
Trenton. Hudson 750 ft. at Cin. O. Galena, 250, Iowa. Trenton, 350, 5 to 40 ft. 203 at Streator. St. Peters, Sandstone. 125-275, 225 at Streator; Utica, Cement Beds: 223 at Streator.
Lower Silurian, 2,250 N. Y .; 7,800 Middle. Pen1.
Upper. 3,000 R. M.
Potsdam, Acadian and Georgian.
Not Exposed. Cambrian, 12,000 ft. ill Not Exposed. Wales.
Not Exposed.
Archean, 10,000 to 40,000
Cambrian, o to 35,000 ?
Huronian. Archean, 10,000 to |Laurentian. 40,000?
Not Exposed.
Quarternary, 200 to 250 ft.
Recent. Champlain. Glacial.
Soil & Alluvions, Clays, Sands, and Gravels, from o to 75 ft. thick.
Does not Occur in Illinois.
New Red Sandstone.
Not found in Illinois.
Upper { Devonian. Middle Corniferous. Oriskany.
Corniferous, Marcellus, Schoharie, Cauda-Galli. Oriskany.
Lower, 1,800 R. M.
10
PAST AND PRESENT OF LA SALLE COUNTY.
hundred feet high and covered an area from a few rods to five or ten miles in width and extended for hundreds of miles around the edge of the melting ice-sheet. These are known as terminal Moraines.
When the land northward subsided the temper- ature became warmer and the ice melted rapidly, dropping the debris evenly north or behind the Moraines. The water from the rapidly melting ice-sheet formed a great lake, the shore of which was the terminal Moraine. The debris dropped behind the Moraines in the lake was uniformily distributed and the action of the waves tended also to distribute it evenly over the bottom. In time the outlets of these lakes cut their channel so deep as to drain the lakes, the bottom of which became level prairie land, while the Moraines be- came the rolling prairie.
The great ice-sheet of North America was made to disappear by the subsidence of the earth's crust at the north. Following the Glacial Period came the Champlain Period which was a time of subsidence of the earth's crust northward. Within the terminal Moraines were great lakes. Their outlet at first was to the southward through open- ings in the Moraines. But as the ice retreated and the crust subsided northward, their waters found an outlet northward and finally formed the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, Susquehanna and the Mekenzie rivers. The Illinois river was at one time the outlet to this vast ocean of water. It was then that its wide and deep channel from Joliet to Hennepin was cut first through the Mo- raines and then through the rock.
When the water was diverted northward through the St. Lawrence the supply for the Illi- nois came from the great Kankakee Lake which at that time covered a large part of northern In- diana. After this it cut its present channel and left wide stretches of bottom land in the old chan- nel which reached from bluff to bluff.
FORMATION OF THE GREAT LAKES.
Geologists have strong evidence that the Great Lakes were river beds during the times preceding the Glacial Period. The great ice-sheet coming down from the north filled up this channel, dug deep into its bottom and carried away its banks until a deep and wide groove was cut into the earth's crust. The material thus plowed out was carried southward and spread over the country. At first it may seem impossible that so deep a groove could be cut into the earth's crust. But when we consider that Lake Michigan is 300 miles long, 60 miles wide and 800 feet deep, maintaining the same ratio, a lake one mile long, a fifth of a mile wide would be only 32
inches deep, we realize that the scratch on the earth's crust is not so deep after all. If Lake Michigan were drained its bottom would form a level prairie, a long wide valley. The eye could scarcely detect the slope of its floor.
THE ILLINOIS MORAINE.
An inspection of the soil map prepared by the University of Illinois reveals the fact that the rolling and the level prairie lands of Illinois are not haphazard, but are as systematically arranged as the mountains and valleys of the eastern or western states. In the extreme southern part of the state, a narrow strip in the western on the peninsula between the Illinois and the Mississippi and in the northwest corner are areas marked unglaciated. The soil here is formed of the na- tive rock. There is no evidence of any surface soil having been carried there from elsewhere. This is the southern limit of the ice-sheet.
The glacier that extended farthest south is called the Illinois. There are three parts of it, the lower, the middle and the upper. These soils differ decidedly. The lower Illinois glacia- tion is the soil of "Egypt".
THE SHELBYVILLE MORAINE.
The second ice-sheet is known as the "Early Wisconsin". It extended as far south as Edgar County and in a curve to Shelby, northward to Peoria, Bureau, northeastward through Lee De Kalb and Kane. The Moraine is from five to ten miles wide and is known as the Shelbyville Moraine. Beyond it, southward. is the soil of the Illinois glaciation, behind it is the black soil peculiar to Illinois. Passing over the Moraine in Coles County, one suddenly leaves the black soil and enters upon the white soil of Egypt. North of the Moraine the houses are on foundations and have cellars underneath them. South of it the houses are on pillars, for cellars cannot be drained. North of it land is worth one hundred dollars and upwards, south of it land can be bought for thirty to fifty dollars per acre.
The Moraine no doubt formed the shore of a great lake which was not drained until the barrier was cut through at Peoria. For thousands of years the clay subsoil was forming at the bottom of the lake. When the Illinois river cut its way through and deep into the rim, the lake was drained but for thousands of years remained a swamp in which the black soil was formed by the decaying vegetation. This lake origin also accounts for the level broken only by the valleys since cut by the streams.
Sur
Drift
Coat No 2.
Coal Measures
Coal
coal
1
1
1
1
/
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Profile of Bluff from LaSalle to Ottawa
ILLLLE
1
ferie
11
Lesalle Livist
CoalNoIo
Pink Shale.
Drift.
-
-
.
-
Sand Stone
r.
11
111
Trentonlimest
Shale
Coal No 2
Coal Nos.
Coal No.4.
Coord No.5.
Coal No 6
...
StreatorSandst
Coal No.%.
Newton Sand Stone
111|||1/2
Haddock Limpse
Coal No 8.
Coal No.9.
11/11
-
1
-
Order
of
Strata.
tiq. I.
6K.
St Peters
Coax No 8
No 7
NO 2
Stone
OTTAWA.
Tu
Trenton Lines
Fig 2
le
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
11
St.Peter's
11117
/
1
11 La Salle Lime Stone.
1
13
PAST AND PRESENT OF LA SALLE COUNTY.
THE BLOOMINGTON MORAINE.
After the formation of the Shelbyville Mo- raine the ice seems to have retreated northward. This was caused by the sinking of the earth's crust to the north. This increasing temperature melted the ice far to the north. This tilting of the land northward helped to keep the south and west shores of the lake intact.
In the course of time the land to the north- ward again rose and the ice came southward. This time it halted farther north and formed the Moraine reaching from Vermillion County through McLean to Peoria and northward paralleling the Shelbyville Moraine. This is known as the Bloomington Moraine. This range of hills no doubt formed long narrow islands in the great lakes north of the Shelbyville Mo- raine. The sand banks on these hills are strong evidence of their having formed a lake shore.
THE MARSEILLES MORAINE.
The ice-sheet again retreated and again ad- vanced, forming the Marseilles Moraine. It ex- tends from Kankakee County westward through Livingston, northward throught La Salle, north- east through Kendall and Kane. It crosses the Illinois River at Marseilles from which it receives its name. To the eastward of the Marseilles Moraine there was in late geological time Kan- kakee Lake which extended as far eastward as South Bend, Indiana, and southward to beyond Watseka. Its first outlet was probably the Ver- million River which runs along the outside of the Moraine. This fact explains how that river was large enough to cut its bed into the hard rock from the Illinois River to Bailey's Falls and beyond. When the Marseilles Moraine was cut through at Marseilles, the Illinois River became the outlet of not only Lake Kankakee but Lake Michigan as well. Then came down that flood of water from the melting glacier to the north that cut out the broad Illinois valley deep into the St. Peters sandstone from Ottawa to La Salle. The Kankakee swamp is what remains of the bottom of Lake Kankakee.
Nature in her own way drained off the water. Man's hand and intelligence are now redeeming what is left by dredging and draining. When the ice-sheet had returned to beyond the Great Lakes much of the water found its way southward through the Wabash from Lake Erie, through the Susquehanna, from Lake Ontario, through the Mohawk and Hudson. By a further tilting of the land northward all the waters of the Great Lakes flowed through the St. Lawrence. The water of the Kankakee basin was all that was
left of the once mighty Illinois, greatest of the rivers of the world in its prime. It dwindled to a mere rivulet that a boy could wade across at the rapids at Marseilles. Man has entered into its history, has shoveled out a little earth and cut a mere scratch into the rock, the drain- age canal, and again the waters of the Great Lakes find their way into the Illinois River, mak- ing it a respectable stream.
In a few years the waters of this new Chicago outlet will produce millions of horse power which will do the work of mankind and light the cities of the lakes and the Illinois valley. It will furnish the water for a ship canal which will carry the product of the Mississippi valley south- ward to the Gulf, to Europe and South America and through the Isthmian Canal to Asia, north- ward through the Great Lakes and the St. Law- rence to Europe.
The uplift of St. Peters sandstone west of Ottawa will furnish glass for the world. The wealth locked up in the cement rocks about La Salle and Utica will find a market in the civilized world. The rich prairie land will produce the food stuffs for a hundred men where they now produce it for one. If universal education keeps up with the progress of the times and society is established in right living La Salle County will be a glorious place in which to live in a hundred years from now.
THE SURFACE OF THE COUNTY.
A glance at the soil map will show that most of the county lies in lake bottom formed by the Shelbyville and Bloomington Moraines. This is the richest and most tillable land in the state. A small part is occupied by the Bloomington Moraine in Troy Grove, Mendota and Meriden townships. One can stand on the hills in Men- dota township and look over a vast plain. And from the top of the Marseilles Moraine beyond the Fox River one can overlook the plain which forms Serena, Freedom and Adams townships. Most of Allen and half of Brookfield are covered by the Marseilles Moraine. An arm extends off toward the northwest over the southwest of Grand Rapids, across Farm Ridge and South Ottawa townships known as Farm Ridge. From the railroad between Ottawa and Streator one can see from this ridge to the main part of the Marseilles Moraine in Brookfield. Where this Moraine crossed the river west of Ottawa, gravel beds thirty feet deep are shown on the South Bluff.
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