USA > Illinois > Knox County > Annals of Knox County : commemorating centennial of admission of Illinois as a state of the Union in 1818 > Part 16
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The first crop was oats and wheat and the farmer was Wm. Morris.
The prairie sod was very tough and hard to plow. The plows were made almost wholly of wood, there being an iron shire and I suppose an iron clevis. Usually the plows were attached to wagon wheels as a man could not manage one of them and they were drawn by oxen, generally two or three yoke to a plow. The sod was often left to rot over winter. One man planted corn on freshly broken sod by using an ax to make the holes and cover the corn.
The first crop did not need tending but after that the weeds were too bad to let go. One man in speaking of this fact said that he trusted to providence to raise a crop one year and got a good crop, so he tried it again and got nothing and he was not going to trust to providence again.
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After the sod was rotted the soil could be furrowed out with a shovel plow, and then a man by walking across the furrows could drop the corn so that it would be in rows both ways. Sometimes they would cover it with a hoe, sometimes with a plow and sometimes with a harrow.
The first corn planter was made about 1851, but they were not in general use until in the sixties. The first check-rower was a rope but it was soon replaced by the wire as the rope would shrink and stretch too much. The check-row planter came into use about 1875.
The sowing, harvesting and threshing of the small grains has improved as much as the planting of corn. In the early days small grain was all sown by hand. A man would take from 1-2 to 1 1-2 bushels of grain in a sack and carry it across the field, reaching his hand into the sack every second step, taking thence a certain amount of seed and scattering it in front and to one side of him. Finally the hoe drill was in- vented, which was used mostly for seeding fall grains. Later the broadcast seeder came into use, being used mostly for seed- ing spring grains. Finally in the end of the nineteenth century the endgate seeder and the disk drill came into use.
The cradle was used for cutting the grain for many years after this country was settled. A man could cut and bind and shock about an acre a day in those days. After the cradle came the dropper, the hand rake reaper, the self rake reaper, the Marsh Harvester, the wire binder and finally the twine binder, which has been without a competitor for almost forty years.
For threshing their grain the earliest settlers were obliged to use the flail. Then they began using horses. A small piece of ground would be smoothed off nicely and some grain would be unbound and scattered on this smooth spot. Then a man, or sometimes two men, would mount a horse and leading 2 or 3 other horses he would go around and around on the grain until the grain was all trampled out of the heads, when they would dismount and cleaning away the straw with forks would gather up the grain and put it in sacks ready for cleaning.
The first threshing machine was called a ground-beater. It was only a cylinder. The grain and straw and chaff all came through onto the ground together and had to be separated by pitch fork and fanning mill. It was run by horse power, the power being made for six horses. Tumbling rods were used. The first threshing was done on what was then the Parkins place, on the hill near the center of the place. The place is the south 1-2 of the S. E. of Section 32. The man who owned and ran the machine was named Pittner and he lived near Canton, Fulton county. Milton Lotts helped thresh.
Great improvements have been made in the kind of power
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used and in the handling of the straw so that the thresher is now almost as well perfected as the binder.
At the present time the gas tractor is very much talked of and is used to a limited extent, but its place as a mode of power is not yet established.
Plows have been greatly improved upon from the wooden plow of the pioneers to the two-bottom gang drawn by four horses.
The manure spreader is another very practical farm machine.
The tiling of land has been a great improvement to much of the land here. It is quite generally conceded that 4-inch tile is as small as should be used.
Fertilizing the soil is coming more and more into vogue and we believe that the practice will increase very rapidly in the next few years.
The use of concrete on farms is increasing very fast also.
Corn is considered the banner crop in this township but wheat has been doing very well for several years, at least it has averaged better than it used to do. A great many fields of wheat made 30 bushels to the acre in 1918. Some fields made better than 40 bushels to the acre. The price of wheat was fixed by the government at $2.26 per bushel for the 1918 crop at Chicago. The farmer got $2.08 at his station.
Unusual Events
The country is subject to sudden changes of temperature. The most notable was perhaps in the winter of 1836-7. It was a warm, misty day, with the wind in the south until about 2 o'clock P. M., when the wind suddenly changed to the north- west and the two inches of slush which was on the ground was turned to ice in fifteen minutes. In some instances hogs and cattle were frozen to death standing up. Some people took their horses into their houses to keep them from freezing.
In the winter of 1874-5, one morning in January, the weather was very nice until about 10 o'clock a. m., when it be- gan snowing. Immediately afterward the wind began blow- ing from the northwest and in one hour the mercury fell 24 degrees.
On June 5, 1844 occurred one of the most destructive storms of wind, rain and hail. The crops were almost totally destroyed. There was no wheat left to cut and my grandfather told me that his corn crop that year was only a ten bushel box full of nubbins in which was only five bushels of corn. The hail stones were as large as goose eggs.
What has been known as a hurricane occurred in 1857.
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It was a straight wind with rain. The storm was 40 miles wide and was severe enough to blow the roofs off of many buildings and blow some of them down. I do not know what time of the year this storm was but it must have been in the spring as I have never heard that it destroyed any crops.
About the first of August, 1875, a tornado passed through the township from west to east. A two-story house which stood a short distance west of the Flynn school house in Court Creek bottom was picked up and carried two or three rods and dashed into kindling wood. A good deal of other damage was done but fortunately no one was injured, although this was not the case in Knox township.
On the 21st of May, 1918, another tornado started ap. parently on Section 28 and proceeded in a direction a little north of east, wrecking buildings and uprooting even the larg- est trees and passing about 1/2 mile north of Dahinda. One man, a Mr. Walker, pump man at the oil pumping station, was killed and the pump house, a concrete building, was completely wrecked. Another man, the name unknown, was blown a distance of ten or fifteen rods and was found after the storm pretty badly bruised but not seriously hurt. Very little dam- age was done to the crops by this storm as it was so early in the season. The farm buildings of Henry Anderson and the dwelling house of Harry Little were very badly wrecked and Mr. Little was himself unconscious during the storm. He showed no marks where any object had struck him and he does not know what rendered him unconscious.
Some winters we have lots of snow and many of the roads are drifted so as to make them impassible. In the spring of 1881 the snow lay on in sheltered places until the first of May.
Dwellings and Furnishings
The first houses in the township were of logs. The first one is supposed to have been that of Wm. Morris on Section 26.
About 8 years afterwards there seem to have been three frame houses built at about the same time. Edmond Russell built a frame house on his farm on section 31 in 1841. It was burned down in 1886. Captain Taylor, who emigrated here from Nova Scotia, built the first frame house in Trenton in 1841. The frame of this house was sawed from native white pine which grew on what was called Pine Bluff about 1/4 mile north and east of Trenton. (The logs were said to have been sawed at the Whitton mill at what is now known as the Sumner bridge in the northeast corner of Haw Creek township.) The third frame house and the first house to be painted white was built on the Bethel corner at the center of Section 30. It was built by a Mr. Davenport for his daughter, whose name was Easley.
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James M. Maxey built the first brick house in 1851, mak- ing his own brick. The first brick building was a smoke house built by T. D. Butt. The Stevens house has stood the longest of any brick house in the township. It has stood about 60 years. The brick for it were burned on the Biggerstaff place just across the road from where Henry Wesner lives. Sam Conaway burned the brick for this house.
The frame house seems to be the most healthful and com- fortable dwelling made although it is not so substantial as some other materials.
Some great improvements have been made in the furn- ishings of the dwellings. The fireplace has given place to the range and the furnace, the washboard to the power washer, tallow candle to the incandescent electric light in a great many cases, the needle to the sewing machine, the melodeon to the piano and the talking machine, the straw bed on the floor to the spring bed and mattress, the husk rug to the Brussels, the Axminster or the Wilton rug, the home-made lounge to the hammock and the costly couch and davenport, the old fashioned chair to expensive elegance but not to comfort.
The writer is not posted on early amusements, but he has heard his people tell of some of the things they did in the early days. There were the quilting bees, the shooting matches, the debating societies, the singing schools, the Fourth of Julys, the corn huskings and the wool washings. As I have never seen the wool washing described I will try to do so. The young people would be invited to a home to spend the evening. Sev- eral tubs would be secured and in these would be placed wool and water. Then the young people (young men and women) would gather around a tub, as many as could conveniently do so, remove their shoes and stockings, put them into the tub and work them up and down until the wool was thoroughly scoured. The washed wool would then be removed and fresh wool put in its place and the performance would go on until the wool was all washed or until it was time to go home.
Horse racing on the road was also one of the incidentals of the day. In the early days the wagon boxes were put to- gether with pins and could be easily taken apart and some- times when the wagon was being driven very rapidly the pins would bounce out and let the box come to pieces of its own accord. One man who had been to Peoria and was coming home with his groceries in the wagon box got into a race with some other people who were coming in the same direction. The race began somewhere east of the Spoon River and lasted until Trenton was reached. When this man stopped he had neither groceries nor wagon box, both having been lost on the way and he was sitting on the coupling pole of his wagon. He
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might not have stopped there if his horses had not run into a tree and stopped themselves.
Politics
Politics in Persifer has sometimes been very interesting although mostly in a small way.
Before the township was organized, G. W. Manley was Justice of the Peace. The first election was held April 5, 1853, at the White school house, now known as the Union or District No. 90. The following officers were elected :
G. W. Manley, Supervisor; Richard Daniel, Clerk; James McCord, Assessor ; Williams T. Butt, Collector ; Wilson Fearce, Overseer of the Poor; Francis Wilison, Caleb Reece and David Cobb, Commissioners of Highways; Thomas Patton and R. W. Miles, Justices ; L. A. Parkins and David Russell, Constables. G. W. Manley was moderator and Richard Daniel, clerk of the meeting.
The writer does not know when the custom began but when he was a boy the elections were held at the Union school house one year and the next at the Wyman school house.
About 1892 or 1893, Mr. E. J. Steffen offered his carpen- ter shop in the town of Appleton for election purposes and it was used until the Town Hall was built in 1895. Mr. E. J. Stef- fen built the hall for the township at a cost of $540.00. The elections have always been held at the hall ever since that time.
At the time of Lincoln's second election feeling ran very high in this part of the country, and it was not considered safe to count the ballots at the school house so they were brought to my father's home for counting. Abram Rambo, James Dos- sett, William Patton and my father, R. W. Miles, sat around the dining table with big navy revolvers lying handy and counted the ballots. Mr. Patton, being a long ways from home, did not go home that night, but Mr. Rambo went home on horseback and said he was going to carry his revolver cocked all the way. Mr. Dossett went home on foot across the fields. He also carried a revolver and he was one of the kind that would have shot first and made inquiries afterwards if any one had tried to molest him on that trip. We can hardly imagine that such times have ever existed in this peaceful country.
The following men have been Supervisor of the township: G. W. Manley, R. W. Miles, James M. Maxey, John Biggerstaff, James Dossett, R. C. Benson, E. J. Wyman, J. R. Young, W. H. Montgomery, J. J. Patton and Geo. A. Gibson. R. W. Miles and J. R. Young each held the office for about 20 years, Mr. Young holding it for 20 years continuously without opposition. Mr. Miles was for many years chairman of the board.
Mr. Gibson, our present supervisor, has been quite severe-
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ly tested in caring for the Liberty loans and the Red Cross and other war work organizations, but he has responded loy- ally and royally to the calls.
The present township officers are: Geo. A. Gibson, Su- pervisor ; Leonard Harmison, Town Clerk; E. W. Farquer, As- sessor; Roy Stevens, Commissioner of Highways; E. J. Stef- fen and W. H. Montgomery, Justices; Roy W. Manley, Con- stable, Arthur Berry having recently resigned from the office of Constable; Arthur Berry, Bert Wagher and C. W. Harmi- son, Trustees of Schools and J. W. Miles, Township Treasurer.
This is the first year that we have had but one commis- sioner of highways.
Old Settlers
So far as we have been able to learn there is no one living in the township now who has lived here continuously since 1850. Mr. G. W. Sargeant came to the township with his par- ents in 1845 and settled on the north 1-2 of the northeast 1-4 of Section 14. The Sargeants have always owned this farm since then but have not always lived there, although they have never lived very far away. Henry Butt, W. H. Montgomery and Jacob Lorance each came to the township in the early fifties.
So far as we know Mr. W. G. Sargeant and Dr. J. R. Bedford are the only old soldiers of the Civil War who are living in the township at this time.
The people of Persifer are mostly prosperous and happy. They are situated on the main line of the A. T. & S. F. R. R., having a direct route to the Chicago market for their produce. They have good homes and are pretty well fixed as to this world's goods. Nearly all have some kind of a motor vehicle and some of them have two or three of them. They always went over to top when it came to Liberty loans and Red Cross and all other forms of war work and they also furnished their full quota of men to face the German bullets.
One of Persifer's boys, a son of N. I. Cherrington, was one of the first Knox county boys to give his life for his country in France.
Not in the road of the cannon, Not in the roll of the drum, But with love and honor in our hearts, Let their requiem be sung,
Respectfully submitted,
J. W. MILES.
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HISTORY OF RIO TOWNSHIP By Heber Gillis
Joseph Rowe is acknowledged as the first man to settle in Rio township. He built some sort of a house, the first one a white man put up in the township, but his future is lost to the history of Rio.
Some squatters made temporary light camp stops in the early 20's at Rio, and a family that had built a cabin on the slope of Pope Creek near where the State Aid Road now crosses had their house burn in the late thirties while they were at the fort at the Snodgrass house near Henderson on the Mc -. Murtry farm.
John McMurtry, whose daughter was the first white woman to be buried in Rio, came from Kentucky by way of Indiana to Section 33 in 1829. He served as a soldier in the Black Hawk War. His descendants occupy a large space of farming land near North Henderson; the Piatts of Gales- burg, together with the Heflins of Rio, are among those now living.
In 1833 Reece, Sam and James Jones likewise came from Kentucky. Both Kentucky families brought good oxen and horse teams with them and also drove in good loose animals of all kinds. Reece Jones permanently settled in a home, de- fended it from the Indians, and when they burned one cabin he built another better than before. He educated his family in the best schools of that day within his reach, and they moved socially in the best circles in the state. The Jones family built the first school house in Rio township, aided by the subscrip- tions of other settlers in labor and money. A Miss Jones was the first teacher.
In the early thirties Erasmus Hall settled on Pope Creek, where he operated a saw mill. Noted Indians called at his home and the trader Le Claire was. an acquaintance of his. Hall's Ford was on the trail from Peoria to Rock Island as was also Bruner's cabin near the southeast part of the township.
Bennet Fleharty came to Section 6 just west of the Jones family in 1834. He afterwards kept a store on his farm where Fred Anderson now lives.
Geo. Simms settled about the same time as Fleharty on Section 6 in Rio, and Section 1 in North Henderson township, Mercer county, building his house, which consisted of one large room, with one end of it in Rio, Knox county, and the other in Mercer county. At dances held here it was not uncommon to have the music in one county and the dancing in the other. When marriages were solemnized in this house, care was taken
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to have the bride and groom stand well over in the county that issued the license. Mr. Simms gave public addresses to the older people on the subject of slaveru, outlining the history of the Rebellion in advance, and made quite good guesses concern- ing the result.
Joseph Hahn came from Pennsylvania in 1835 and settled in Section 33 on a farm extending from the south line of the township to the center, much of the way one mile wide. It sloped gently to the south and was a most excellent farm with good drainage, fine soil, good timber and was close to the store of Goff, the Baptist church, and the second school house built in the township. All of these public buildings Hahn assisted ยท in building and maintaining. He had served in the War of 1812 and was well fitted to engage in pioneer enterprises.
About this same time Mr. Westfall came to Section 6. The year 1835 also marks the advent of several other Rio pioneers. Pedro Epperson and his brother, Edly, settled on the section south of Westfall. Their brother-in-law, the father of Dr. John N. Cox, came in the fall of that year, but soon moved to some very good farm land near Old Oxford, where he spent the greater portion of his life. During the Civil War he was given a commission by Governor Yates. Pedro Epperson, a man of great energy, soon had good buildings and fences. Im- mediately after locating he made a large rail crib like a house and was able to entertain his sister and her family royally. While the Jones and McMurtry families were forward in school building, the Simms and Epperson families did their share in maintaining same. Pedro Epperson and his descendants are reputed to have owned at times a strip of six sections a mile wide across the township.
Geo. W. Weir built a flat-boat and floated down the Miss- issippi River to New Boston in 1835, where he chopped wood for the original Drury of that place. In the winter of that year being in need of bacon he walked to the home of the original Jones family in Rio township. On his return trip with the bacon on his back, the wolves bothered him considerably. As a result of this trip to Rio he hired to Sam Jones for $3.00 a month and stayed two or three years. As part of his pay he took a pair of steers and some wheat, putting the latter in a rail pen chinked with straw. Two or three years later he drove the steers to Milan and traded the wheat for log chains. He also acquired another breaking team of oxen. Mr. Weir lived to be over ninety years of age.
In 1835 Isaac M. Wetmore came to Rio with John Wycoff on horse-back by way of Chicago where he partly bargained for 160 acres of land. Later he relinquished it for more till- able land on the Rio and Ontario line. Dearborn St. is on the Chicago land which he contemplated buying or is a boundary
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of it. Mr. Wetmore ran a store in Rio on the slope south of the Washington school house and afterward established a very fine farm on both sides of the township line with extra fine buildings on the Ontario side of the line.
In 1835 Michael Bruner drove a pair of oxen from Breck- enridge county, Kentucky, to Rio, bringing his wife and young family. Later Mrs. Bruner died. In 1839 he drove a pair of oxen to the same place in Kentucky and brought a second wife, his father, Adam Bruner, and his uncle, Peter Bruner, with him to Rio. Both the elder Bruners had spent long years preaching the gospel. They with their two brothers had served in the Revolutionary War and all four were later buried in a cemetery on the Bruner farm. Knox county now owns this site and has erected a monument to their memory. The Bruner farm in 1850 had a licensed tavern upon it and possessed un- usual buildings for that day. It was on the trail from Peoria to Rock Island and during the Civil War fruit from its fine orchard sold for $50 per tree on the stem.
About this time Michael Loveridge, an English educated veterinary, settled about one mile west of Joseph Hahn. He was a useful and highly respected man in this community, preaching the plain truth of the gospel in a fearless manner during the forties and up to 1862, when he moved to Oregon. Hahn, Loveridge, the Deatherages and Lewis Goff built the second school house in the township, also a Baptist church which, with the store of Goff's, made the south central part of the township quite a public settlement.
Samuel Brown came about this time to the west of these and is the only one of this group now living, being more than ninety years of age.
Soon the Woodman's, the Larkin Robertson family, the two Coe's, Lewis and Nelson, with Benjamin Harvey and Luther Fitch, settled more centrally in Rio township.
John D. Bartlett and family came in 1842. Wm. Dailey, James Hinchliff, Philip Prior and David Woodman built near the center, with Wm. Barnard a little farther north.
The first period when the very early settlers came was a ranch life. Cattle and hogs ran loose on the open prairie. The small grain fields were fenced. A law of "common field" pre- vailed ; everybody gathered his corn and the cattle were turned on the fenced section to feed at will. Later, as the farms were cultivated, the law caused the stock to be taken from the highways and no open prairie grass was left. The cows that the early settlers brought were good stock. The Kentucky settlers later brought fine beef sires.
The pioneer traveled in wagons, on horse-back, and on foot.
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He was wont to stop at the nearest house for dinner or lodging and was always welcome. He brought the news of his locality and they told him of their affairs so that he was a medium of intelligence at his next stopping place. The amusements were dances, foot races, ball games, horse races, military training etc. There were no more capable men at caring for their af- fairs than the first settlers. They met every emergency. They fed, clothed, nursed and buried their neighbors with their own hands. A common bond bound the various settlements to- gether. The pioneers in the forties lived in substantial log houses. About all the money they could spare was for door latches and "trimming salt," which was scarce. Health failed without it, and expeditions were planned to get it.
Many interesting things could be related concerning the early pioneers. A. J. Streeter herded some cattle in the cen- tral part of Rio township and watered them at the Collins spring. Later he was nominated for President of the United States on the National ticket. Quite a number of his planks came to be beams and stringers in suggesting improvement of the present national policy.
Frank Hickley and Peter McCartner, Jr., also herded cattle and drove them to the same spring. The former one day walked into a railroad auction sale, bid off an entire railroad, and paid cash for it. The latter after quitting the cattle indus- dustry engraved some fine greenbacks which the United States treasury afterward unwittingly accepted as genuine.
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