USA > Illinois > Champaign County > A Standard history of Champaign County Illinois : an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, civic and social development : a chronicle of the people, with family lineage and memoirs, Volume II > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81
Benjamin Franklin Harris was born December 15, 1811, on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester and Harper's Ferry, Frederick County, Virginia. At the age of fifty-three he had retired from an ex- tremely active business life, but was keenly interested in business and public affairs for forty-two years more and was still strong in mental and physical vigor when he passed to the Great Beyond in his ninety-fourth year on May 7, 1905 ..
He was the second of ten children of William Hickman and Elizabeth (Payne) Harris. His mother was an own cousin of Dolly (Payne) Madison.
The family was of Scotch English extraction and Quakers and in this country became fighting Quakers, then Methodists. His great-grandfather William Harris with two brothers from England settled on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1726. His grandfather Benjamin Harris died and his will is recorded at Winchester, Virginia.
B. F. Harris grew to manhood on his father's Virginia farm, attending the country schools until sixteen years of age. At that time President Jackson's attitude towards the United States banks so seriously affected values that wheat declined from a dollar and a half to fifty cents and Virginia farm lands to less than one-third its former price. These de- clines so affected the father's obligations that he and his brothers each with a six horse team went into the "wagoning" or freighting business and for three years "wagoned" freight over that section and out through Pennsyl- vania and as far west as Zanesville, Ohio. This work they did in order to recoup their father's losses. On March 20, 1833, the Virginia farm was sold at forty per cent of its original cost. In a one-horse gig and a two- horse carry all the Harris family set out for Ohio, arriving at Springfield, April 8th and nearby purchased and settled upon their new farm.
Within the same year B. F. Harris commenced business for himself, buying and driving cattle overland to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and there disposing of them to cattle feeders.
In 1834 more than seventy years before his death, B. F. Harris started for Illinois by way of Danville, then through the present site of Sidney and Urbana (where was but one cabin) and on to what is now Monticello in Piatt County. During the ensuing year he began to accumulate farm- ing lands in Piatt and Champaign countics and to buy cattle through all this section and as far south and west as Mount Vernon, Vandalia and Springfield. For several seasons he bought for feeding purposes all the corn for sale in Macon, Sangamon and Champaign counties. Each year for nine years he drove these cattle overland by way of Muncie, Indiana, and Springfield and Columbus, Ohio, into Pennsylvania and then to New York and Boston, where they were sold. Subsequently St. Louis and Chicago furnished a market, requiring a thirty day trip, and still later the railroads broadened the outlet.
ยท
.
541
HISTORY OF. CHAMPAIGN COUNTY
When B. F. Harris came to this section of Illinois no stream was bridged, and only eleven families were on the Sangamon from its source to the limits of Piatt County. Fifteen years later not a half dozen men had erected their cabins a mile from the timber limits-the deer and Indians were still at home there. It was the frontier, with all freight by river or team. In 1840 B. F. Harris visited Chicago, a town of two thou- sand people, on stilts in a swamp. Nineteen days were required for the round trip and the corn and wheat he teamed there sold for twenty and thirty cents a bushel respectively. Fifteen years after he came, not twenty-five per cent of the land in this county had passd from government ownership and the first railroad came twenty years later. The first public religious services in the western section of this county were held in his cabin. Promptly he had hewed and built the first church, 22x24 feet, When it was necessary he and later converted into a permanent school. built the larger church, Bethel, dedicated by his brother-in-law, General Granville Moody. For many years his home was the shelter of all itinerant preachers through this section. He writes that "the church business was looked after as well as any other business; I never lost any- thing by looking after the church and school."
In those years it was customary to furnish farm laborers with whiskey daily, but he always refused to do this and instead added twelve and a half cents to each man's daily pay.
B. F. Harris brought the first sawmill, mower, reaper, carriage, organ, brick, cook stove, to Champaign County. He never sought public office nor did he fill such office except in pioneer days as justice of the peace and supervisor, and as such helped hew the first courthouse. As justice of the peace he performed the few early marriages, dispensing simple justice on the one hand and calomel on the other. He came in the day of ox teams and lived to ride over his farm with his son, grandsons and great-grand- sons in an automobile. He voted for nineteen presidential candidates, beginning with Henry Clay.
For nearly three quarters of a century he bought, fed and sold five hundred to two thousand head of cattle annually. He established the First National Bank in Champaign in 1865, but of that institution and his connection therewith a separate article must tell. B. F. Harris was one of the chief movers in the plans to raise Union troops in Champaign County, to locate railroads, to oppose bond repudiation, and. to induce the location of the great State University.
Personally he was a sociable man, fond of his friends and companions, and was full of anecdote and reminiscence, growing out of a remarkable experience. Peter Cartwright, Abraham Lincoln, David Davis, Isaac Funk, John Gillet and many other well known men were his friends and guests. He and Lincoln were long time friends and at the outset of the war he went on to Washington to encourage him in his stand. He was the guest of the President and at Lincoln's request attended a cabinet meeting and discussed the war situation with them.
For all these things the true import of his career and its lesson was that life may be what we have the courage to make it-that the "will to labor" with true zeal will bring results, and that the chiefest of these results are "the character" and "simplicities." Distinguished as he was in Champaign County, Illinois, and the nation, B. F. Harris acquired the true distinction of breadth, nobility and simplicity of character.
As a livestock man B. F. Harris was precminent. The Pittsburg Live- stock Journal speaking of his death referred to him as the "grand old man of the livestock trade-the oldest and most successful cattle feeder in the world." This praise was well deserved. The New York Tribune in
2-2
542
HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY
October, 1853, referred to his prize winning drove of cattle averaging 1,965 . pounds, displayed at the New York World's Fair, then in session. His
most famous herd consisted of a hundred cattle, the finest and heaviest hundred cattle ever raised and fattened in one lot by one man. These were weighed on his farm by Doctor Johns the president of the State Board of Agriculture on May 23, 1856, and the average weight of a hundred was 2,378 pounds. Hundreds of visitors came from neighboring states to see these cattle. In the following February he sent twelve of these cattle to Chicago and the bunch averaged 2,786 pounds. A firm of Chicago butchers paraded these stock about Chicago's downtown streets. These were his conspicuous early achievements, but every few years he took cattle prizes or topped the market, and less than a year before his death his cattle re- ceived the highest prices for the season in the Chicago market.
Writing editorially in the Champaign Daily Gazette; May 8, 1905, J. R. Stewart said :"
"The death of a man devoted almost wholly to the private affairs of life will seldom attract the attention of so wide a circle of people as will that of B. F. Harris of this city. The reason is first that he lived to a remarkable age and second that he was a remarkable man. His long life journey was begun in 1811. He had few of the aids on which young men now so much rely. He had to rely on himself, a resource which seems never to have failed him, and one in which he had unlimited personal con- fidence. Life for him in its early age was not an easy battle. Nature, however, had furnished him with an extraordinary physical and mental equipment.
"Everything to which Mr. Harris put his hand flourished. His judg- ment was so trustworthy that he made few business mistakes. He applied himself to real things and eschewed what men now call speculation. He did business on a cash basis and was never in debt. Operating on these, his chosen lines, he was a rich man long before his race was run, and he enjoyed a period of ease and entire freedom from anxiety much longer than falls to the lot of most men who are accounted fortunate in the world. An equally remarkable and gratifying thing was the retention of his won- derful faculties to the end of his life.
"Thus came to his last account a man of extraordinary qualities in whatever light we may view him. He knew this portion of the state from the period of its rude, frontier aspect and he had a large share in its devel- opment into what we can see today. Every man has a niche to fill. No man could fill his better than B. F. Harris did. Measured fairly, we may say that nature does not often produce such a man. It will be long before this region sees another in all respects his equal."
Another tribute that deserves quotation was that of Andrew S. Draper, former president of the University of Illinois.
"Everyone recognized the fact that he had sterling qualities of heroic mold. He did things in days and circumstances when the doing of things required stalwart men and when the doing also made men still more stalwart. In this way the fine physical frame and splendid moral character with which nature endowed him were developed and seasoned to an extent which made him a notable man in the Mississippi Valley. It was a small number of such men as he who laid the foundation of the history of the Middle West, that great region of our country which is the richest in the resources and the most prolific in productivity. It is doubtless within the fact to say that no man within a hundred miles of you-if, in- 1
deed, in the State of Illinois, has been so richly entitled to be permanently and gratefully remembered. I am sure that it will be so for the common feeling of the people will have it so."
543
HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY
The significance of his life as a farmer and its weighty contribution to the dignity of that calling, were happily expressed by the Breeders' Gazette as follows :
"In literature, art, professional life, or politics a man with a record of achievement equal to that of the late Benjamin Franklin Harris would deservedly have numerous biographers. Many a man has been made the subject of bulky biography who might not measure up to him on any score. This is not because the most inviting and interesting personalities are found outside the farmer's calling, but largely because until recent years agriculture as a vocation had not been adequately appreciated by the public. It had not been sufficiently dignified to become the source of life histories. Other professions have furnished the candidates for the Plutarchs, and contributed the heroes and heroines famous in fiction. Farming has been drawn on principally for Philistines. Its great men, its geniuses, its Harrises have been overlooked by almost all writers worthy of putting their useful lives into books.
"It is gratifying to all friends of agriculture that this vital and lionor- able occupation at last has begun to take its rightful place in the list of man's employments. For the extremely gradual process which has wrought such a wholesome change in the popular estimate of farming, we are indebted to men of the Harris type-farmers whose lives and work are a convincing reply to all the derogatory references ever made to agriculturists and their business."
And the grandson in his address chose to find in this the proper sig- nificance of the occasion. He said: "Out of the sentiment and spirit expressed by the Breeders' Gazette 'has come the Hall of Fame-this desire on the part of the men of Illinois to put agriculture and the farmer in the high place that is theirs-to make him and all our citizenship realize that the farm is the greatest place that God ever made on which to live honest, helpful, wholesome lives-lives to be reckoned with, and without which we would not be here or elsewhere."
Benjamin Franklin Harris was married June 17, 1841, to Elizabeth Sage, daughter of Colonel Harley Sage of Circleville, Ohio. He brought his bride to Champaign County and they located in their log cabin on the western limits of the county. On April 27, 1844, in this cabin their only child Henry Hickman Harris was born. Some years later B. F. Harris married Mary Heath of this county, the only living child of that marriage being Mrs. D. A. Phillippi of this city.
HENRY HICKMAN HARRIS, who followed in his father's footsteps as a farmer and cattle feeder, and who, accepting the character and principles which his father had introduced into the First National Bank of Cham- paign at its founding, took it upon himself to apply these principles and broaden them for forty years, was born on the Sangamon River farm in Champaign County, where his father first settled.
Hc was born on April 27, 1844, and lived seventy useful years, passing away July 15, 1914.
Henry H. Harris was a stalwart citizen and under his skillful hands the fortune of his father had greatly increased and he had managed his varied interests and affairs, including the First National Bank in which he succeeded his father as president, in such a way as to justify his steward- ship, and all that came to him in the way of fortune and influence. His good judgment and wise administration carried the bank successfully through several financial panics. He was one of the organizing members of the Illinois Bankers Association and served as its president in 1908-09.
He was for many years a member of the city council of Champaign
.
544
HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY
and to his aggressiveness and good judgment the city is indebted for many of its best improvements. He served for a number of years as president of the Champaign County Fair Association and established that organiza- tion on a sound financial basis, having taken it in a bankrupt condition.
While he was a man of decided opinions and a patriot, he was of a rather retiring disposition, never accepting any political office and refused some possible opportunities to become a public servant. He was especially helpful to young men, recognizing business acumen and honesty, and encouraging it in a substantial way.
Henry Hickman Harris married Melissa Megrue, who was born near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 19, 1846, and is still living at Champaign. To them were born two sons, B. F. and Newton Megrue Harris, respectively president and vice-president of the First National Bank and worthy sons of a worthy father.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN HARRIS, grandson of the late B. F. Harris and son of Henry Hickman Harris, was born on the old Harris farm in Cham- paign County, where his father was also a native, on September 30, 1868. He had of course liberal advantages during his youth and every incentive to make the best of his personal talents. Besides the common and high schools he attended the University of Illinois 1887 to 1889, and in 1892 was graduated from the law department of Columbia University. The law was only part of his preparation for life, not a profession. He returned home to assist in the management of farm lands and business enterprises, and he has continued the work of his father and grandfather as livestock farmers and bankers. From 1892 to 1899 he owned and developed and consolidated all electric street railway, lighting, power and gas plants in the twin cities. He succeeded his father as president of the First National Bank of Champaign, and in 1911-12 he served as presi- dent of the Illinois Bankers Association and has identified himself actively with many of its most important committees. He has also served as chairman of the Agricultural Commission of the American Bankers As- sociation, and president of the Conference Committee on agricultural development and education of all state bankers associations. It was he who inaugurated the banker-farmer movement in 1908, and as the organizer of the Agricultural Commission of the American Bankers Association he held the post of chairman for five years. Mr. Harris also organized and edited the Banker-Farmer Magazine, which has a nationwide circulation.
In addition to his part in this notable movement Mr. Harris has a further distinction which is likely as time goes by to become greater than any other. This is the distinction of being "the father of the county agent movement," which has rapidly spread all over the country until the county agent or agricultural adviser can be found in practically every progressive agricultural county in the country. While the need of systematic advice and cooperation between state and federal government and the individual farmer has been long recognized, it was Mr. Harris who definitely formu- lated the plan for such cooperation in the person of the county agent, and the great agricultural journals, including the Breeders' Gazette, the Prairie Farmer and others, have taken pains to emphasize Mr. Harris' leadership and the credit due him for inaugurating this movement.
Mr. Harris has for many years been active in the propaganda in Illinois for securing the adequate supervision of private banks by .the state gov- ernment. He has written and spoken on banking and agricultural subjects and in that field he is without question one of the most competent author- ities in America today. He served three terms as president of the Cham- paign Chamber of Commerce.
-
545
HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY
Mr. Harris is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, is a thirty-second degree Scottishi Rite Mason, belongs to the University, the Union League and South Shore Country clubs of Chicago and is a member of the Methodist Church. He married December 5, 1895, Miss May Melish of Cincinnati, and to them were born Henry H. Harris, William Melish Harris, B. F. Harris, Jr., and Elizabeth Harris. He is vice-chairman of the Illinois State Council of Defense.
NEWTON M. HARRIS, vice-president of the First National Bank of Champaign, was born in that city July 27, 1872, a son of the late Henry H. Harris and a grandson of B. F. Harris, Sr. He was liberally educated, being a graduate of Yale University with the class of 1895, and for fully a quarter of a century has been actively identified with the interests of the Harris family as farmers, stock raisers and bankers. During his father's life he shared the responsibilities of vice-president with his brother of the First National Bank, and still fills that post.
Newton M. Harris married Mary Bruce Burnham, of the well known Burnham family of Champaign County elsewhere referred to. Mr. and Mrs. Harris are members of the Methodist and Presbyterian churches, respectively. Their three children are Bruce, Barbara B. and Mary Julia.
Mr. Harris is a member of the Sons of American Revolution and is a thirty-second degree Mason and a Shriner.
FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF CHAMPAIGN. In celebrating its semi-cen- tennial the First National Bank of Champaign issued a handsome booklet under the title "The Story of an Institution which is Fifty Years Old," written by Mr. Louis M. Tobin. This story with some condensation properly belongs in the History of Champaign County. The bank is entitled to it, and the public likewise.
"It was founded by B. F. Harris. It has been carried on by his descendants upon his principles. It has become more than a bank-it is an institution. That is what I would say if I had to write the story of the First National Bank of Champaign in a single, crisp paragraph.
"The story of the First National is more than a mere chapter of material success. It is the reflection of the character of the men behind it. It is a personal story, because the bank was founded by B. F. Harris. A son and a grandson have followed him as its head. The third generation of his family owns it. It is the 'Harris' bank in fact. For fifty years it has reflected the principles and character of its founder."
The historian of this bank must inquire: What have these fifty years meant to the community that has dealt with this bank? What has been the public spirit of this bank? To answer these questions it is necessary to go back to the beginning, the Champaign of 1865, then hardly more than a frontier hamlet, with a population of fourteen hundred. B. F. Harris had decided to establish a bank. The decision in itself was not remarkable. Almost any one in that young community who desired could call himself a banker and open a bank. The importance of the decision was in the character of the man who made it, and in the kind of bank that he decided to establish.
Banking in Champaign in 1865 was a precarious business-for banker and depositor alike. Those were the days of "wildcat" currency, issued at the will of the banker, curtailed only by his credit at the printer's. The farmer and merchant encountered not only exorbitant interest rates but also faced constantly the prospect of bank failures. The legal interest rate was ten per cent, but real interest rates ranged from two to five per cent a month. Two banks in Champaign County had recently closed their
546
HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY
doors, and in 1862 another bank had opened at Champaign, but it was operated on much the same old lines and in a few years it shared the fate of its predecessors.
"B. F. Harris was not satisfied. A man of large interests he wanted a bank where his own money would be safely administered. A man whose character had been marked by deeds for the general good, he wanted a bank where the money of the people would be free from hazard. He knew that there must be another kind of banking from the current system. Men living here today will tell you that above everything else this pioneer abhorred the general custom of exacting as large an interest fee as could be secured from the needy borrower. Had B. F. Harris done so, there would have been no criticism. It was an accepted custom. But when he loaned his own money, he accepted the legal rate of interest, nothing more.
"A national banking act had been passed, creating national banks under laws and regulations practically unchanged today. While many of the moneyed men of the county regarded the regulations imposed by the Government as an unjust interference with their business, the law did appeal to B. F. Harris. It was the kind of bank he wanted for his own money and for the people's money. He called together the men of the community he considered most likely to be interested. A charter was secured from the United States on January 30, 1865. It was signed by a man who counted B. F. Harris as a friend-'A. Lincoln.' It was numbered 913.
"The new bank was located on Main Street in a frame building on the site of the Kuhn Building. The big 'cannon' stove defied the cornbelt winter. Around it often grouped the men of Champaign. A small safe, innocent of combinations, was the most important accessory. That safe is still preserved at one end of the banking room of the First National Bank Building.
"It was not the intention of B. F. Harris to be the active head of the new bank. His interest had been to see a safe institution established. He was content to have another-Harry Thomas-serve as president. But in a year he took over the presidency. Some of the stockholders irked under the restrictions of the National Banking Act, pointing out the larger profits being made by the private banks and disliking the unexpected appearance of the bank examiner. But B. F. Harris set his foot down flat. The bank was to keep on its sober path. It was to charge only the legal rate of interest. It was to earn only reasonable dividends to its stockholders. It was to go along slowly and surely. It was to serve the community-not to speculate on its funds or exact a heavy profit from its necessities. That was to be the policy of the First National. The dis- gruntled stockholders parted company. B. F. Harris took over the presi- dency. Within three years there were three private banks competing with the First National. But as Judge J. O. Cunningham's History of Cham- paign County states, the First National 'came to the front as the first financial institution of the county.'
"By 1872 the bank was moving into a new building of its own on its present site. So well was the policy of honest profit and service paying. And Time, the great adjuster, soon demonstrated that the theory of the other banking school was wrong-the three private banks ingloriously passed out of existence.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.