USA > Illinois > DeKalb County > Sandwich > History of the Somonauk United Presbyterian church near Sandwich, De Kalb County, Illinois : with ancestral lines of the early members > Part 1
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THE SOMONAUK BOOK
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LIBRARY 'OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
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AUINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY LIBRARY
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
http://www.archive.org/details/historyofsomonau00patt
HISTORY OF SOMONAUK UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Sketch of the George Beveridge Cabin
-
-
--
HISTORY
OF THE
Somonauk United Presbyterian Church
near Sandwich, De Kalb County Illinois
With Ancestral Lines of the Early Members
BY JENNIE M. PATTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH ANDREW GRAHAM
Appended are documents, family letters, etc. tracing the Somonauk Colony to its origins in Washington County, New York, Scotland and the North of Ireland
PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR JAMES A. PATTEN AND HENRY J. PATTEN CHICAGO 1928
385.4
**
George Beveridge Charter Member
Mrs. George Beveridge (Ann Hoy) Charter Member
DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
GEORGE AND ANN HOY BEVERIDGE
Andrew Graham
Jennie M. Patten
FOREWORD
T HE materials for this book have been gathered by Jennie M. Patten during the course of a long life devoted to study of original documents and the records of a wide circle of families of this church community. We are in- debted to Andrew Graham who mainly wrote · the general history of the church community, in the preparation of which he has been very ably assisted by Estelle F. Ward. Large credit should also be given to Caroline M. McIlvaine who has co-operated in the preparation of the book for publication.
JAMES A. PATTEN HENRY J. PATTEN
February, 1928
CONTENTS
HISTORY
The Immigrants
1-6
The Pioneer
7-11
Reminiscences of John L. Beveridge.
12-14
Somonauk's Pioneer Days
15-18
Land Troubles
19-21
Church Records
22-25
Pastorate of Mr. French.
26-35
Commerce of the Prairies
36-39
The Gold Fever
40-43
Railroads
44-46
Later Settlers
47-48
The New Church Building
49-50
Doctrines
51-54
The Panic of 1857
55-56
The Underground Railroad
57-65
Later Church Records.
66-72
Dedication of the Tablet
73-75
ANCESTRAL LINES
Armstrong
79-83
McClellan
182-190
Beveridge
83-103
McEachron
190-196
Boyd
103-104
Mahaffey
196-198
Cole
105-107
McKee
198-199
Dobbin
107-115
Mercer
199-201
Ferguson
115-117
Moffett
202-203
French
117-123
More
203-204
Gilchrist
124-126
Morrison 204-206
Graham
127-143
Orr
206-207
Harper
143-148
Patten
207-224
Henry
148-154
Randles
224-226
Howison
154-158
Robertson
227-230
Irwin
158-160
Shankland
230
Kennedy
160-161
Stewart
231-234
Kirkpatrick
161-167
Thompson
234
McAllister
168-171
Walker
235-237
McCleery
172-181
White
237-239
APPENDIX
LINKS WITH THE PAST:
Scotland and Ireland.
243
Washington County, New York
243-245
Illinois
245
xi
APPENDIX
De Kalb County First Things 245-247
Chief Shabbona 247-249
Early Schools 249-250
Temperance Society 250-251
Oak Mound Cemetery
251
Members of Somonauk Church, 1849-1878.
252-257
FAMILY LETTERS :
Eleanor C. Pratt to Agnes Beveridge 258-263
Elizabeth Miller to Agnes Beveridge. 264
Mrs. Amanda Miller to Mrs. George Beveridge. 264-265
Nesbett to Agnes Beveridge 265-266
Andrew M. Beveridge, D.D., to Agnes Beveridge. 266-268
Martha Patten to William Patten 268-270
Alexander R. Patten to William Patten . 270-273
Alexander R. Patten to Agnes Beveridge Patten. 273-276
William Patten and Elizabeth Pratt Patten. 276-291
Mrs. William Patten to Her Sister 283-284
George Howison to Alexander Henry 292-294
J. M. Hummel to Andrew Graham. 294-296
THE REV. J. P. MILLER 296
THE ARGYLE PATENT AND DOCUMENTS:
i. Petition Dated October 17, 1738. 297-299
ii. Petition of 23d February, 1763, Report and Minutes . 299-302
iii. Report of Committee of the Council, 2d May, 1763. 302-305
iv. Memorial of Duncan Read and Others, 14th Sept., 1763. 306-307 v. Petition of Trustees for Emigrants, 1st February, 1764 .. 307-310 vi. The Argyle Patent 311-324
vii. Grantees Named in the Argyle Patent With Holdings. 324-325
viii. List of the Families Brought from Scotland, 1738-1740. 326-329
ix. Same as above. (Probably prepared in 1763) 329-335
x. A Further Account, 10th of May, 1763. 336-338
xi. Petition of Sarah Shaw, August 12, 1771. 338-340
xii. Deed to Lot No. 32 to Alexander McNaughton 340-346
THE TURNER PATENT 346
WASHINGTON COUNTY FAMILIES :
The McNaughton Family 347-352
The Livingston Family 352-353
The Savage Family 353-354
The Gillaspie Family 354-355
The Clark Family 355-358
"To the Pioneers of the West". 358
Index 359
xii
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
Sketch of the George Beveridge Cabin (Frontispiece)
V
George and Ann Hoy Beveridge. vii
Andrew Graham and Jennie M. Patten. ix
Somonauk United Presbyterian Church. 20
Oak Mound Cemetery .
20
Rev. Rensselaer W. French, First Pastor
22
William Patten, First Elder
24
David Miller Dobbin, First Elder
24
George Beveridge House, 1851-2
34
Dedication of Church Tablet.
34
Rev. William T. Moffett, Second Pastor
66
Rev. David S. Kennedy, Third Pastor
66
The Donation Visit.
68
The Parsonage
70
Schoolhouse
70
Church Tablet
74
Rev. Andrew M. Beveridge and Wife.
92
John C. Beveridge and Wife. 92
94
Simon N. and Edward M. Patten .
94
Jennie M. Patten
94
James Hoy Beveridge and Wife.
96
John L. Beveridge and Wife.
96
Andrew Beveridge, Wife and Son
102
William French and Wife
120
James Henry and Wife.
120
Andrew Graham and Wife
134
Mrs. George Howison
134
Mrs. R. W. French.
134
Golden Wedding of James and Jennett Henry.
149
Alexander R. Patten
210
Mrs. James Patten.
210
Mrs. William Patten, First
210
Mrs. William Patten, Second
210
Robert Patten and Wife.
218
Sarah French 218
Charles, Anna and Jennie Patten
218
Alexander R. Patten and Wife. 222
James, George, Thomas and Henry Patten 224
John Walker and Wife. 236
Daniel N. Boyd. 236
William Robertson 236
xiii
Thomas G. Beveridge and Wife.
ILLUSTRATIONS
South Argyle Church, on page. . 241
344
Signatures on Deed of Lot 32, on page.
MAPS
FACING
Washington County, New York.
7
Vicinity of Somonauk, De Kalb County, Illinois 76
The South of Scotland and North of Ireland. 243
The Argyle Patent. 296
xiv
HISTORY
SOMONAUK CHURCH
The Immigrants
S C IOMONAUK UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, standing as it does today five miles north and two miles west of the town of Sandwich, De Kalb County, in the midst of a prosperous farming community on the prairie lands of northern Illinois, is in reality a memorial to the racial char- acteristics of its founders. Strong in simple Christian faith, loyal and persistent in the path of duty as they saw it, wisely frugal and industrious, yet with an idealistic strain which found expression in the service of their church, these pioneers preserved the traditional qualities of the Scotch and Scotch-Irish from whom they were descended. The tribal instinct of the Highland clan, dominant in their blood, had kept them together in com- munities made up of their own people, generations after other racial groups of the early American settlers had lost their identity. Such were the founders of Somonauk Church and such were the people of Washington County, New York, the first American home of their forefathers.
Forty years previous to the American Revolution a group of Highland Scotch and Scotch-Irish immigrants came to America and settled in eastern New York. A hardy, independent and high-principled people, accustomed to carry arms, they were a type of immigrant particularly encouraged by the colonial governors as settlers of the border territory where they could be depended upon to furnish a degree of protection from the Indians and French to the communities farther to the south.
They occupied a tract of land lying east of the Hudson River in Washington County, covering some forty square miles of farming lands in the foothills of the Green Mountains, which constituted what is known today as Argyle Presbytery,
1
SOMONAUK CHURCH
comprising the congregations of Salem, Argyle, South Argyle, Greenwich, Cambridge, Coila and West Hebron.
Their forebears, mostly Presbyterian Highland Scotch living in the glens and mountains of western Scotland, had found the times of the early eighteenth century grown intolerable. The rising of 1715 on behalf of the Stuart heir to the throne had brought some of them into disrepute with the House of Hanover. Unfavorable economic conditions also had their share in the general discontent and, above all, the theological dis- sensions within their own Church of Scotland, which was riven into innumerable factions, made a change of home highly desirable. Some sought refuge in northern Ireland. Others, it is not surprising to find, looked beyond the sea to the American colonies where in the wilderness they might hope to find polit- ical and religious freedom.
In 1738 a group of Argyleshire families belonging to the Scotch Presbyterian Church came to consider with favor an offer made by the Provincial Governor of the New York Col- ony to Captain Laughlin Campbell, of the Island of Islay, the ancient dwelling-place of the Lord of the Isles. The Governor offered a thousand acres of land to every adult person, and to every child who paid passage, five hundred acres, if Captain Campbell would engage to bring five hundred persons to settle the frontier near Lake George. "Loyal Protestant Highland- ers," the provincial proclamation read, "should make a reliable corps of defenders on our northern border."
In consequence, in the years 1738, 1739 and 1740, groups of prospective settlers, totaling four hundred and seventy-two persons, were brought by Captain Campbell to the new world. Unfortunately, by the time these settlers had arrived, the pro- vincial authorities, for various reasons, had changed their plans and so failed to keep their part of the contract. Captain Camp- bell, ruined by the expense which he had incurred, died of a broken heart. His sons, however, persisting in their demands
2
THE IMMIGRANTS
that something of the contract must be kept, were joined by a large number of colonists led by Alexander McNaughton, and in 1764 succeeded in securing a grant of forty-seven thou- sand four hundred fifty acres, known as the Argyle Patent, in the township of Argyle and in parts of the towns of Fort Edward, Greenwich and Salem, in Washington County, upon which the Scotch colonists and their descendants took up their abode.
The same year a group of Scotch-Irish, some of them related to the settlers on the Argyle Patent, came from Pelham, Massa- chusetts, and settled near them.
On May 10, 1764, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Clark, a Scotchman born in Galloway, left Cahans, near Ballibay, County Monaghan, Ireland, accompanied by his entire con- gregation of three hundred souls, and journeyed to the port of Newry. Here they set sail for New York. Their arrival on the following 28th of July was announced in the New York Gazette of August 6th, as follows:
"Last week in the Ship John, from Newry, Ireland, Luke Kiersted, master, there arrived about three hundred passengers, a hundred and forty of whom, together with the Rev. Dr. Clarke, embarked on the 30th ult., with their stores, farming and manufacturing utensils, in two sloops, for Albany, from whence they are to proceed to the lands near Lake George, which were lately surveyed for their accommodation, as their principal view is to carry on the linen and hempen manufacture to which they were all brought up."
Not all of the group of settlers embarked on the journey up the Hudson. During their brief stay of two days in New York, a few of the members were induced by real estate agents to go to the South, where they settled at Cedar Springs and Long Cane near Abbeville, South Carolina.
Dr. Clark and his congregation are said to be the only eccle- siastical body that came to America as an entirety, pastor, ruling
3
SOMONAUK CHURCH
elders, and communicants, with no break in their religious services. They landed at Stillwater, near Albany, and as their original objective, the lands near Lake George, proved unsat- isfactory, they remained there only until further arrangements could be made for their permanent settlement. For this purpose Dr. Clark purchased an undivided half of the land, known as the Turner Patent, which the legislature of New York had granted, August 7, 1764, to Alexander Turner and twenty- four other citizens of Pelham, Massachusetts. Of this land, originally containing twenty-five thousand acres, nearly all of which was in what is today the township of Salem, Washing- ton County, New York, the grantees immediately conveyed twelve thousand acres to Oliver Delancey and Peter Dubois, who sold it to Dr. Clark September 30, 1765. The Turner Patent was divided into three hundred and four lots of eighty- eight acres each and was distributed by lot between the New England settlers from Pelham and Dr. Clark's colonists, in the spring of 1767, free of rent for five years, after which time a yearly rental of one shilling per acre was to be paid.
The country was then an unbroken wilderness without roads. The only means of travel was on foot or horseback. The men of Dr. Clark's colony cleared the ground, put in crops and built cabins, and in the spring of 1767 the congregation, with the exception of two or three families, removed to Salem. Dr. Clark preached the first sermon in Washington County in the cabin of James Turner in Salem. Mary McNaughton, later the mother of Chief Justice Savage, walked seven miles, stop- ping on the way for her sister, Mrs. Eleanor Livingston, to attend this service.
These groups of colonists possessed a strong common bond in their allegiance to the Presbyterian Church. This feeling was intensified by the fact that many of these families had been related before coming to America, and in the passage of years through inter-marriage the ties of kinship had become even closer.
4
THE IMMIGRANTS
The outbreak of the American war for independence found a goodly number of men of the community ready and willing to take up arms in the cause of liberty. Only here and there among the later comers was a Loyalist who found it impossible to throw off allegiance to the British Crown.
With the coming of peace and independence, the little com- munity had found a certain prosperity and comfort on their arid farms or in the villages which marked the boundaries of their settlement. They had, however, lost nothing of their austerity of life, stern purpose and steadfast Christian faith by their migration to America nor by their subsequent freedom from Britain.
The church was still the center not only of their religious life but of their social life as well. Here they attended two services on Sabbaths and on week-days found relief from toil in attendance at catechizing or weekly lecture. On Sacrament Day the young men took their sweethearts in an "elegant horse and wagon looking very smart," as an early letter records. Later, if all went well with true love, it was on Sabbath Day at meeting that the newly wedded pair made their first public appearance. Perhaps the very marriage itself had taken place one Sabbath "after meeting." But even on such an occasion the bride's cake was not omitted from the celebration. Occasions more secular also took place in the meeting house. When a singing-master chanced that way all the young folk came to singing school, and if the sleigh turned over in the deep snow- drifts, so much the merrier was the evening.
Second only to the church was the schoolhouse. Here were studied grammar, philosophy, spelling, Latin grammar and Virgil. When Examination Day came, the minister himself condescended to attend and from the platform questioned the pupils. Then was the simple one-room building made gay with greens from the neighboring hills, "little twigs of hemlock fixed together like evergreen hung down the curtains and
5
SOMONAUK CHURCH
branches round all the windows." Against this setting the young girls read their essays, their subjects, "Our Creator," "Selfish- ness," "Education," and "The Shortness of Life," reflecting the trend of thought about them.
Now and then murmurs of the outside world crept in, despite parental vigilance. "Mary Dunlap (who had gone to Princeton) is almost perfectly happy," sighs her envious girl friend, "she is a Sabbath School teacher, Tract Distributor and enjoys the advantages of the best society."
The Fourth of July was the great patriotic day of the year. After the parade, the temperance society served a dinner on "six long tables, each seating sixty people, set out very tasty and in nice style. There was more present than at the fair," the correspondent exults. Later the company adjourned to the "bower which was better than the church" where "the choir sang beautiful cold water songs." Here William Russell read the Revolutionary address and one Pritett, of Union Village, "gave a short address unprepared. There was the greatest huzza- ing ever I heard."
6
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Li HE George Trt
The Pioneer
N TOT far from the center of the Argyle community, on a farm at Cossayuna, lived George Beveridge and his wife, Ann Hoy. Lakeville is the early name of this village. Their white clapboarded house, looking toward the mountain, held their family of seven children surrounded by homely comfort.
The family joined fully in the community life. The chil- dren attended the district school and completed a term or two at the academy at Cambridge.
"My parents," says their son, John L. Beveridge, "were members of the Associate Church, a factor of the United Pres- byterian Church. They sang Watt's Metric Version of the Psalms and had no affiliation with other denominations. They were rigid in their religious views. They detested the Catholics and had little use for other sects. My mother, however, thought there were good Christians in the Catholic and other churches.
"My parents were members of the South Argyle Church, located in Argyle about two and a half miles west. Two services were held each Sabbath, and all the family except one, attended, riding in the farm wagon and taking a lunch. The children memorized Psalms, verses and chapters of the Bible, and the shorter Catechism. The latter was repeated every Sabbath eve- ning. Blessing was asked and thanks returned at every meal. Family worship was observed night and morning. Children may have deemed such discipline severe, but it made for good citizenship."
While the Beveridges brought up their children to be God- fearing citizens, they at the same time had come to a realiza- tion that after a century of settlement Washington County was no longer the land of opportunity. They viewed the future
7
SOMONAUK CHURCH
of their children with growing apprehension. Times were hard. Andrew Jackson, having wrecked the United States banks, left behind him a country swept by the results of financial panic, which Martin Van Buren, then President of the United States, had not succeeded in stemming. In Wash- ington County, with its narrow margin between comfort and poverty, wise parents, such as were the Beveridges, knew that unoccupied lands had become few and expensive. They fore- saw for their sons a loss of the independence which they them- selves had enjoyed and a future which offered nothing but a bare living. In this crisis they turned their thoughts to the new world beyond the Alleghanies.
Since the beginning of the century the peoples of the eastern states, more especially New England, had migrated in in- creasing numbers to the Western Reserve and even farther to the wilderness beyond. However, to the conservative Scotch- Americans of the Argyle Patent lands the call of the West had been unheeded. Now, however, their children's need turned their thoughts to the prairies.
Mrs. George Beveridge was a woman of unusual ability, of rare judgment and vision. By means of arguments we can- not now know, she persuaded her husband to undertake the long journey to the West to "spy out the land." Strangely enough, it was the middle-aged father and fourteen year old John L. Beveridge, not the eldest son, well merged in early manhood, upon whom this adventurous duty devolved.
At length one autumn day in 1838 George Beveridge set forth on his inland voyage of discovery. A pair of stout horses drew his wagon, wherein was loaded a stock of woolen cloth manufactured in a new mill in which he had an interest. With this stock he proposed not only to finance his expedition but to create a market for the product of the mill.
In leisurely fashion he crossed the state of New York, and passed through the well-settled farming region of Ohio and
8
THE PIONEER
less-peopled Indiana. Then rounding the end of Lake Michigan he arrived at the struggling little city of Chicago. It was a journey of a thousand miles, and yet George Beveridge had not found the place where he cared to settle.
With his face still toward the west, he left the world he knew behind him, passed into the broad stretches of the valley of the Mississippi, and took the newly-opened stage road lead- ing by way of Dixon's Ferry toward the lead mines of Galena.
Some sixty miles to the west of Chicago he came to the rolling prairie lying between the Fox and the Rock rivers. It was a land which, before the Black Hawk War of 1832, had been Indian country and in consequence had not long been open to settlers. The land was fertile, with streams bor- dered on either side with timber promising wood for fire and building. The many little creeks stood ready to provide water until wells could be dug.
One October evening George Beveridge came to the ford on Somonauk Creek. On the northern grassy bank stood a log cabin. The stage road ran before its door. The cabin had been built by a trapper in 1834 and was the first white man's house in De Kalb County. It had been used as a station on the mail route to Galena for a few months and afterward abandoned. During the winter it had been inhabited by another trapper named Robinson. The following summer the cabin was kept as an inn by a man named James Root. Still later it had been taken over by the present owner, John Eastabrooks, who con- tinued to serve as innkeeper on the western trail. Eastabrooks at the same time made squatter's rights to the land on both sides of the Somonauk, thus obtaining sufficient timber land and a large tract of fine level prairie. Before long a son-in-law of Eastabrooks built a second cabin joining the east side of the original house and in time the two cabins were connected by a hallway. In consequence it was double the size of the usual cabin of the time and place and, although it was now
9
SOMONAUK CHURCH
some eight years old and had been used as an inn under various landlords, it still possessed advantages that could not be dis- regarded.
Before George Beveridge slept that night he had exchanged what remained of his stock of woolen cloth, together with his wagon and horses, for the log cabin on the brink of the ford at Somonauk Creek with squatter's right to four hundred acres lying on either side of the stream. After making this purchase, Mr. Beveridge remained for about a year on his claim and endeavored to make the house as presentable and comfortable for his family as the possibilities of the isolated country would allow. He turned his face homeward in the late summer or autumn of 1839. The return journey was made by stage to Chicago, then by boat through the Great Lakes to Buffalo, thence by Erie Canal to Albany and so by way of Greenwich to the farm home in Cossayuna.
Once more at home, the traveler related to family, kinsfolk and neighbors the story of the journey and the prospects and advantages of the western country. It was not, however, until the spring of 1842 that Mr. and Mrs. George Beveridge fin- ished preparations for the journey to the new home. The re- moval of a large family with such household stuffs and stock as it was possible to take with them was a difficult undertaking in the early '40s.
There is something valiant, courageous, in the picture of this middle-aged pair, planning to break with all the traditions of life as they knew it, to leave their comfortable house and a lifetime's associations to set out for a new country, a veritable wilderness to their eyes, and begin anew as pioneers at a time of life when they might have thought only of rest and surcease from labor.
Finally all was in readiness and in the month of May, 1842, the Beveridge family set out upon their pilgrimage. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. George Beveridge and four of their
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