USA > Illinois > Brown County > Versailles > A history of the first white settlers in Versailles Township, Brown County, Illinois > Part 3
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Black Hawk Visits Versailles Indians Depart for War
"In the month of February. 1832, while all the men of the settlement had gathered at the cabin of John Stone, one of the settlers, along the bluff just be- low Isaac Vandeventer's cabin for a barn raising, several In-
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HISTORY OF VERSAILLES TOWNSHIP
dians from the camp on the river came up to watch the men at work. They were accom- panied that day by a distin- guished visitor, none other than the famous Indian Chief, Black Hawk. They told the men at work who their visitor was, but Black Hawk didnt make
a speech, or in fact, talk to any of the whites that day that I ever heard of. He was here for a different purpose we found out afterwards, for in just 'so many moons" after his visit you couldn't have found an In- dian in the county. They had all vanished. No one saw them go or knew where they went, but we understood it all when a rider rode into the settlement and left word at all the cabins for every man and boy who could carry a gun to shoulder his arms and come to Beards- town to go fight the Indians un- der Black Hawk. Cornelius Van- deventer and Stephen Ham- baugh went from our settlement.
"Of course, we all know what happened, but that was the last of the Indians in our settle- ment. There had been a good size camp of them along up to this time on the river near the mouth of Crooked creek (Indian Ford). A lot of these Indians came back following this upris- ing and one of these Indians told a white man by the name of Naught, who was a friend of the Indian, that they were plan- ning a massacre against the whites, adding, 'Red men kill whites and when we kill, we kill good.' Naught spread the alarm, and the settlers swooped down on the camp and killed all of their dogs, the worst insult you could show an Indian and then drove them out of the country, following for miles. That episode marked the last for 'Mr Indian' along the Illi- nois river.
"Of course we don't know how much they hated to leave here. It was their home, and
love of home is a human passion and it may have been so with them. Upon these old bluffs all along the river are the graves of their dead. They buried thein here that the spirits might look down on the prairies below, or watch the passing canoes along the river."
Homeward Bound
As we rode home that night, Uncle Nelson pointed out to me the site of the Vandeventer saw mill on Camp Creek erected in 1833. "They used a ship saw," he said, "and it was operated by water power. Much of the work was done at night by aid of fire light. None of the men possess- ed a time piece and they kept track of the hours by the aid of a tallow candle. Elihu Vande- venter had a notched stick and he could tell within 15 minutes of the correct time by placing this stick along the side of this burning candle.
"The material for Squire Van- deventer's early mansion built in 1863 was turned out by this mill, as was much of the lumber for the early homes built in Versailles, among them the old Ravenscroft dwelling north of the M. E. church."
He talked of early roads and when George Finch's stage line ran between Meredosia and
Quincy, and how Hamilton Neighswonger stopped hunting with the Indians long enough to show the settlers, who were en- gaged in helping a newcomer with his cabin, something they didn't know. He told them to al- ways put two doors in the cabin exactly opposite and they could drag up a big log to one door and by passing a rope or chain through from the opposite door and hitching on the oxen, the log could be pulled into the house and easily rolled into the fireplace, a plan adopted in building all the cabins after
that.
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He told me how after the second cabin was finished that the first one was then used as a sort of "boy house"-sleeping quarters for all the boys in both families.
Peter Vandeventer, a brother of Cornelius, had arrived in the fall of 1832. The late Dr. Saul Vandeventer was a son of Peter and was almost 15 years of age at that time. Peter died three weeks after their arrival and as the mother had died previous to the family's coming, Saul, it was decided, was to make his home with his Uncle Cornelius and he thus became a member of "the family of boys in the cabin."
One night that winter, the boys were all gathered in front of the fireplace cracking nuts and popping corn, and were in a good-natured argument as to whose night it was to go after water to the spring a quarter of a mile away, when suddenly a panther screamed just outside of the cabin door, "Well," he laughed, "I thought then we would go to bed thirsty that night, but pretty soon the argu- ment was resumed. You know how thirsty a fellow gets eating parched corn, well, they start- ed the argument again because we had to have water and they finally decided Saul and hadn't carried any water for a I week. So Saul took the rifle down and I got the bucket-we just had it to do. There was a fresh skift of snow on the ground and a pale moon and by these we could see the ani- mal's tracks, and he was head- ed for the spring too. I tell you we were feeling 'pretty creepy,' but we kept going and before we reached the spring, the tracks took over the hill to the north. We got the water, and decided before we went to bed to start at daylight on its track. We did but a man living north of where the DeWitt school house now stands had just kill-
ed it before we reached there. It had killed some of his young stock and he shot it while it was standing at its kill."
Reminded of hunting, he told of how he had captured a young fawn and how it had become domesticated. He had strapped a small bell about its neck after it had taken to leaving for sev- eral days at a time and when it would return, it would usually bring a wild deer back with it. He would kill this and in a few days the same thing would be repeated until the tame deer lost its bell, then he supposed some hunter killed it. After that if he wanted venison he had to go hunt for it but in those days he could always get it.
Among other things, he told of the siege the settlers went through the winter of the deep snow, 1830-31. Most of the set- tlers were not prepared for so desperate a storm and they nec- essarily suffered untold hard- ships. The storm, he said later, lasted for three weeks and he didn't suppose that the ther- mometer raised above 10 or 12 below zero during all that time.
And then came the cholera epidemic in 1833. He did not know how many died in this section of the country, but seven or eight in their immediate set- tlement died from May 31 to June 20. Cornelius Vandeventer lost three children, the two old- est boys, William whose age was 26 and Peter, 24 and Eliza, a daughter, 13. In several instances a strong healthy man would die in the same day he would get sick. A kettle of boiling water was kept at each cabin. A continuous bath in very hot water was the best remedy known. Dr. Isaac Vandeventer never slept during this time and saved many of the settlers' lives, and again when the epi- demic reappeared in 1844 and again in 1849 he was even more successful. But during the last siege of this terrible plague in
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1851, the good doctor appeared to have a premonition that he left as though he would be per- mitted to take his patients through but probably loose his own life. And such proved to be the fact. He came home late in the evening from visiting a pa- tient when he was suddenly stricken with the disease and was a corpse before morning, his death occuring in Aug. 1851, at the age of 52 years. His resi- dence and office stood on the corner where Reid's store now stands. Dr. Saul Vandeventer, who was then practicing at Cooperstown, came to Versailles and succeeded Dr. Isaac and he too, went through numerous hardships.
"You of your age can only have a meager conception of the hardships endured, the struggles and trials and anxie- ties experienced back in those days by the early settlers. There were no roads, just a sort of a path or winding trail here and there to avoid a hill or marsh or find a place to ford a stream. In farming wheat was sown broad- cast and cut with a reap hook or cradle, threshed over the top of a barrel or tramped out on the barn floor by horses or cat- tle, corn was planted by hand, plowed with a one-horse plow or tended with a hoe, and most of these first settlers hadn't reached middle-age when they came here. Cornelius Vandeven- ter was 42 when he arrived, his first wife was then 37, my mother, her sister and Cornel- ius' second wife, was 34, Isaac Vandeventer was 26, and Jane, his wife, was only 20. Hamilton Neighswonger was in his early forties and that is about the way it averaged.
"Back in those days when clothing was all "homespun" and about everything home- made, there was not many "society events." Though the "husking bee," old fashioned spelling school and the occas-
ional religious gatherings in
some settler's cabin served to draw the people together. And the first sermon your grand- father, Rev. Granville Bond, the old Methodist minister ever preached, was delivered in the door yard at Dr. Isaac Vande- venter's under the bluffs in the early thirties. All these gather- ings afforded the settlers en- joyment and then for further amusement, the young folks could ride horseback, take long strolls together and during the winter slide down the hills,
crack nuts and pop corn by the fire in the big, old fireplaces, which all brought as much hap- piness to the youngsters in those old days as are enjoyed by the younger generation of this age." He spoke of the early struggles of his own early married life and its sunshine and sorrows- the parting of loved ones.
He had lived it all over again that day and before we reached our homes, we had made plans for a tour down the road to the Hambaugh settle- ment. But unknown to us then, we were returning from the last trip we would ever take to- gether. Mr. McFarland, however, lived five years after this, but during his last years he was always poorly, and on July 16 1906, passed to the Great Be- yond, where, we trust all of those who were here with him in these early pioneer cabins back in the days so long ago, stood ready to greet him as the Shores of Eternity received his soul.
The End.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA
977.347864H C001 A HISTORY OF THE FIRST WHITE SETTLERS IN
3 0112 025391787
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