USA > Illinois > Knox County > Annals of Knox County : commemorating centennial of admission of Illinois as a state of the Union in 1818 > Part 3
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During the next year, 1829, came the McMurtry brothers, and Reed, Lewis, Davis and Maxwell. In that same year a widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Owen and children settled in what be- came Haw Creek township, the first settlers to locate outside of Henderson. In 1830 the population increased rapidly. Fraker, Owen and Fitch settled in Lynn township in the edge of a beautiful grove, still known as Fraker's Grove, the first white settlers in the northeast part of the county. Mr. Fraker found an Indian village on the land he had bought from the government. The Indians disputed his right to the land as they said theirs came direct from the Great Spirit. They fin- ally removed to Indian Creek, seven miles east and built an- other village, but made friendly visits to the Frakers and acquired the habit of coming to the grove in the spring to make sugar and raise "squaw corn."
There was only one traveled road in the county, the Galena trail or State road from Galena to Peoria, through Victoria and Walnut Grove townships.
The law required three hundred and fifty legal voters to live in a county before it could be organized as such, yet there was scarcely that number of individuals within the boundaries . of Knox county. When Illinois became a state in 1818, the land now comprising Knox county was a part of Madison county. In 1821 it was placed in the boundaries of Pike county, the oldest county in the Military Tract. In 1826 its present boundaries were determined and it was attached to Fulton county for judicial and recording purposes. In July, 1830, Knox county was formally organized as at present except that two townships were included which, when Stark County was organized in 1837, were severed from Knox and became a part of that county. The town of La Fayette is located in that sec- tion.
The first business meeting of the county and the elec-
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tion of county commisioners were held at the resdence of John B. Gumm, Henderson township, about four miles northwest of Galesburg's present site near the south edge of Henderson Grove. This house was a one-story double log cabin, each divi- sion containing but one room. This building served as dwell- ing, hotel, post office, also temporary seat of justice until the log court house was later built at Knoxville. I am told that this same historic building or at least one part of it, is still used on a farm in this county in sufficiently good condition to serve as a corn crib in spite of its being nearly one hundred years old. How appropriate it would be if the county could purchase and restore it to its former condition and place it in Lincoln Park near its first location, to be furnished with mementoes of those early days, so that the descendants of the pioneers might have some idea of the way their ancestors lived !
During this same July, 1830, the county of Knox was divided into two districts for election of justices of peace and constables in each. The first, or Henderson district, included fourteen townships north of a line separating Galesburg town- ship (as known at present) from Cedar township. The second or Spoon River township, included all south of the same line and contained eight townships.
The citizens of the county soon aspired to the erection of a court house and the building of a town. They therefore, in 1831, procured from the State Legislature an act defining the loction of the county seat and authozing commissioners to lay off the town which was on the S. W. Quarter of Section 28, Knox Township. This county seat was christened "Henderson" by the Legislature but re-named Knoxville by that same body two years later in honor of General Knox. The county bought the land on which the business and much of the residence por- tion of Knoxville now stand for $200, at one dollar and a quar- ter an acre, being government or congress land, as it was called. In the spring of 1831 lots were staked out and publicly auc- tioned off, seventy-nine lots being sold, varying in price from two dollars to sixty, aggregating $1,256.
That portion of Illinois known as the Military Tract in- cludes all land between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers south of the north line of Bureau and Henry counties. It was given to the soldiers of the war of 1812 in quarter sections. When it was laid off into counties most of them were named after mili- tary heroes of the nation. Our county was named for the statesman-general, Henry Knox, Secretary of War under Washington and a warm personal friend of his·
If a line be drawn from Galesburg through Vincennes, Indiana, and extended to Kentucky, it will penetrate the heart of the "Blue Grass Country." Along that line as a main chan-
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nel poured the tide of emigration from Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
Up to 1832, the year of the Black Hawk War, Knox county settlers came mainly from these states or from temporary homes in southern Indiana and Illinois. Emigration from the Eastern states started in full force in 1836, the year of the arrival of the Galesburg Colony at Log City. From that time southern emigration began to decline and New England, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio supplied the majority of the emi- grants. The first considerable European accession was a Scotch settlement in the northeast part of the county, mostly in Copley township. Later influenced by Rev. Jones Hedstrom, a Methodist clergyman, who came from Sweden and then lived in Victoria, a large number left the Bishop Hill colony of Swed- ish settlers in Henry county and settled on farms near Vic- toria. Steady immigration from Sweden followed, the descend- ants of whom form a large and valued part of our population.
The Irish first appeared in numbers much later, in 1854, with the advent of the railroad, and now occupy large holdings in the county.
After the founding of Galesburg with its strong anti- slavery sentiment, the town became known as a prominent station of the "Underground Railroad," and so many colored people received help and kindness on their way farther north to freedom that when it was no longer necessary for them to cross the border into Canada to insure safety, it was not strange they came in increasing numbers, largely from Mis- souri, to make their homes in a neighborhood in which public sentiment had always been favorable to them. However, they have not been widely scattered through the county, evidently preferring to live near their churches in Galesburg.
But before many more years pass, Knox county can cele- brate the centennial anniversary of her settlement. How great have been the changes in conditions during the three genera- tions embraced in one hundred years! It may be interesting to consider some of the prominent characteristics of pioneer life as the old settlers of this county knew it.
They universally settled in the timber or along its edge, the trees furnishing not only material for their cabins, but that protection from the driving storms which was greatly needed, as many of the homes were hastily built and not fin- ished thoroughly at first. The timber also sheltered stock until sheds and outbuildings could be put up. Here, too, was nature's lumber yard, where the settler could find material for home-made furniture to add to the small stock he had brought with him. The fuel supply also was close at hand. And two
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kinds of sweetening were secured from the timber, the sap which when boiled down furnished maple syrup and sugar, and the wild honey found in the bee trees containing many gallons, sometimes a barrel or more. The same natural storehouse supplied casks for it, made from hollow basswood logs, some times three feet long, one end of which was plugged up, and the casks were used for years. A similar method was used in mak- ing the hand corn-mills used by many of the original settlers ; these were made by boring a hole in the top of a large stump. then burning it out in the shape of a mortar. Attaching a
pounder to a long, bent spring-pole, they pounded their grain and corn, making unbolted meal or flour. This when mixed to a dough was placed on a smooth board or piece of iron, placed slanting towards the fire-place. When lard was abundant the well-shortened bread was called "Johnny Cake." Sometimes the dough was baked in lumps called "Corn Dodgers." If the dough was raised with yeast and baked in a "Dutch oven," it was called "Pone." Hominy, roasted corn and mush and milk were eaten commonly also.
The timber gave shelter to many wild animals which made good eating for the settlers. Wild fruits and nuts added to the family bill of fare and nuts and acorns formed no small part of the food for the hogs they raised.
There being no mills to grind the grain of the first crops those who could grind by hand power did so, while others grated corn in the ear before it became quite hard on tin graters made from old buckets or pans closely perforated and nailed on a board. Mr. Fraker, whose settling in Lynn town- ship has been mentioned, made a hand mill for grinding grain which stood in the living room and had burrs about two feet in diameter, made from stones, which were called "hard- heads."
The women as well as the men had their share of arduous labor to perform. Spinning was a common household duty. The "little wheel" was used for spinning flax, the "big wheel" for spinning yarn, while quite a number of homes had looms set up on which they did weaving for themselves and for others.
But not all the labor and privations of the early settlers were a series of unmitigated toils and sufferings. They had their times of fun and enjoyment and managed to break the monotony of their daily life with "quilting bees," "apple par- ings," when the fruit was pared, cored and quartered, strung like bead chains and festoonel on the walls to dry; "corn-husk- ings," when both sexes gathered, chose sides, husked fast and furiously to see which side finished the allotted work first, variety being furnished by the occasional finding of the cov-
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eted red ear with its osculatory reward.
Regarding the pioneers' schools it may be readily under- stood the accommodations were not good at first, as the homes were not, but they felt the education of their children could not wait for better buildings. A "mud-and-stick" chimney in one end of the building, with earthen-hearth fireplace, wide and deep enough to take in a four-foot backlog and smaller wood to match, served for warming the school house in winter. For windows, part of a log was cut out on either side and the hole was filled with a few small panes of glass or maybe greased paper. Writing benches were made of wide planks or else puncheons, resting on pins driven into two-inch auger holes, bored into the logs beneath the windows. Seats and flooring were also made from puncheons. Everything was plain and rude, but many of America's greatest men have gone out from just such school houses, who have become an honor to their country.
In the summer of 1833, in Section 14 of Henderson Town- shtp, the first school in that vicinity was taught and second in the county. It has some peculiar characteristics; there were no regular hours for recitations, but the teacher began school with the arrival of the first pupil, closing about sun-down. The boys "made their manners" and the girls made a "curtsy" on entering and leaving. This was known as a "loud" school, because all studied aloud. When studying arithmetic they were permitted to go into the woods, where it was more quiet, to get their lessons.
No mention of the public schools of Knox county should omit the name of Mary Allen West as being inseparably con- nected with them. Born in the county in 1837, truly a child of the Galesburg colony, educated entirely in the Galesburg dis- trict schools and in Knox Seminary, she was in a position to realize the deficiencies in the earlier system of public instruc- tion and later devoted her influence as an instructor prominent among state and national educators to upbuilding and im- proving the system of county schools. In this work her efforts were second only to those of Professor Geo. Churchill and Dr. Newton Bateman.
Those who are seeking homes will always select those communities in which the school house and the church find a special recognition, rather than those in which they are not found. It has been said that the early establishment of relig- ious institutions in new settlements is a prominent feature in the history of this county. With the very first settler came good old Elder Gumm, who preached almost every Sunday in some of the cabins at Henderson. The oldest religious organ- ization in the county was known as the "Henderson Church,"
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organized at Henderson Grove in 1830, under the Old School Predestinarian Baptists, the church building being in Rio township.
Knoxville was made an appointment on the Henderson Mis- sion of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1831. Abingdon M. E. Church was organized in 1833, with seven members. Ab- ingdon Cumbreland Presbyterian Church was organized at Cherry Grove in 1835. In Salem township a M. E. Church was organized in 1836. The history of the old "First Church of Christ," founded by the Galesburg colony is unique, having passed through no period of infantile growth but being strong from the time of its organization. More than thirty families were located in cabins on the south side of Henderson Grove in the fall of 1836 in what they called Log City, waiting for the following spring when they were to begin the erection of buildings on the prairie site bought and platted by them as Galesburg. Before the arrival of their regular minister one or another of the men of the company read a sermon in one of the most commodious homes each Sabbath to a crowded house, as the congregation included colonists not only, but also the earlier Southern settlers along the edge of the grove. The following spring the Galesburg colony began to build and occupy their prairie city homes and in 1837 their church was declared organized as a Presbyterian body, al- though it became known as a "Mother of Churches" from the number of other denominations that have become outgrowths and off-shoots from the parent body.
This brings this introductory sketch to a close, as the object of the writer has been to give a brief outline of those pioneer settlements which preceded the advent of the large Eastern colony, as after that time the "course of empire" took its way westward with rapid strides. Also as others have writ- ten more particularly of other townships of Knox county, the object of this article is to make especial mention of the early settlements of Henderson and Knox townships.
No more fitting expression of the spirit that actuated the early settlers of this county could be given than is found in the following beautiful sentiment .:
"With widening vision in the plain they stood, And gazed with eager eyes the country o'er ;
Beheld her prairies and pronounced them good, And rested, satisfied to seek no more.
For them the sowing and the toil, the tear, Where others reap with laughter and delight,
So cooling springs refresh the desert drear
From sources hid in some far mountain height."
(From "The Pioneers" by George Candee Gale.)
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TOWNSHIPS
CEDAR TOWNSHIP By Mrs. A. I. Sargent
A township is not large, yet, he who tells its story realizes how many people live within its borders and how much has been lived during the decades that are past. It is impossible to tell it all. I will sketch briefly the first ten years of the township's settlement as the pioneer days, will tell something of the schools and churches that have been influential in its development and of the men and women who started them, will gladly pay tribute to those who went from its borders at their country's call, and will mark a few of the noteworthy enter- prises in which its citizens have had a share. Most of the story will center around Abingdon and its vicinity, for here the first settlement was made and here is the larger portion of its population.
Cherry Grove, our fathers thought to call this township, because of the abundance of wild cherry trees, but, finding that name already pre-empted, they changed to Cedar, a name suggested by a certain cedar tree, which, as a seedling, Joseph Latimer had dug up on his journey into this new, wild country and had planted with the planting of his home.
Some government claims had been taken in the township and land transfers made before the time of permanent settle- mnt, so that some of the early settlers bought or traded for their land and some filed claims. Government land was $1.25 per acre. In those early days, most of the Western and East- ern borders of the township were irregularly but heavily tim- bered. Much has been cut away but beautiful timber may still be found in these sections. Between its wooded borders, stretching from north to south, were miles of fertile prairie.
Pioneers
Henderson Township is always spoken of as having the earliest settlers in the county. It is not probably fully realized that Cedar was settled the same year and only a few months later.
Among the families I shall mention as pioneers in Cedar Township, it is interesting to note that more than half are from the middle southern states, Maryland, Tennessee, Ken- tucky, Virginia and the Carolinas. These settlers were very largely of the sturdy Scotch-Irish stock, to which the Histor-
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ian, Fiske, pays such warm tribute of praise, in showing their enterprise as pioneers and their prominence in legislative life.
The first recorded settlers in Cedar Township were Rev. Hiram Palmer, a Methodist preacher, and a little later, Azel Dorsey, who settled in 1828, as near neighbors on Sections 7 and 18. In less than a year, Dorsey sold out his claim to a Mr. Finch, who also soon sold out and both men left for other places. Hiram Palmer moved four years after his coming onto Section 32, where the Abingdon cemetery now stands. The first settlers whose life was built up surely and lastingly into the life of the community was Abraham D. Swartz, who arrived with his wife in 1829, settling at first on Section 17, but moving soon, perhaps with Hiram Palmer, onto Section 32. It was Mr. Swartz who laid out Abingdon, but that was seven years later.
The winter of 1830 is always characterized as the "winter of the deep snow." There are no records to tell how these first lonely settlers weathered the storms of that notable winter but there is no doubt about the glad welcome they ex- tended to Joseph Latimer when he arrived with his family early in 1831. Joseph Latimer, who settled on Section 29, came to Illinois from Robertson county, Tennessee, having gone thither many years before by ox wagon from the family home near New London, Connecticut. As a young boy he had watched the burning of New London by the British and cried because he was not old enough to bear arms. His father, Jonathan Latimer, served in the French and Indian War and was a Colonel in the Revolutionary War. Six sons, older brothers of Joseph, also served in the Revolutionary War, all of them at some time under their father's command. Two, one a Major and one a Captain, died in the defense of Bunker Hill.
Mrs. Joseph Latimer, who shared the pioneer days in Cedar township with her husband, came from North Carolina and used to tell the story as she remembered it, of the raid of Tarleton's men on her father's home and how the British car- ried off everything they wanted from the house and cut the cim of her mother's spinning wheel. Six sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Latimer had been married in Ten- nessee, all but one of whom later followed their parents to Knox county. Five children came with them and as they all figure in this story, I will name them: George, John, David, an unmarried daughter, Susan, and a widowed daughter, Mrs. Sarah L. Boren.
Mrs. Boren at once took up a claim of her own and settled with her children near her father on Section 29.
George added to the early settlement in the following
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manner: In the Fall of 1831, some business necessitated a trip to Vandalia, at that time the capitol of the state, and George Latimer was sent on this errand. In Sangamon county a few miles south of Springfield, he stopped over night at the home of William Drennan, a man of prominence in that com- munity, where the guest was served by Mr. Drennan's seven- teen-year-old daughter. They had not met before and did not meet again until just a year from the time of his first visit George Latimer went back to claim her as his bride. Their wedding journey was the trip on horseback through the glory of the October woods from Sangamon county into Knox county where he had a log cabin ready for his bride on Section 29. Here they established a rarely happy and influential home.
The same year, Jonathan Latimer and family, Joseph's oldest son, came up from Sangamon county where they had temporarily resided and settled on Section 28. With them, and settling near them on the same section, came Mrs. Latimer's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob West. Jonathan Latimer was a man of marked character, who figured largely in the commun- ity for many years. He began his business career in the town- ship by trading a horse for the land upon which he settled. He was ever a trader but combined a shrewd knowledge of values with a kind and generous heart. He has one son still living in Cedar township, Hon. Joseph F. Latimer, three times elected to the Legislature, whose home stands right where his father's log cabin was built in 1832.
In 1833, Dennis Clark, then a young man, afterwards Knox County Judge, came up from . Sangamon County and found a home with Mr. and Mrs. George Latimer. He had known Mrs. Latimer before her marriage.
In 1833, Susan Latimer married Urban D. Coy, the first marriage to take place in Cedar Township. Soon afterwards, they settled on Section 21.
The same year, John Latimer left the parental roof and became the first permanent white settler in Indian Point Township·
Another married son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Latimer, Alexander, arrived with his family in '34 and settled on Section 21. About the same time, came a son-in-law, Israel Marshall, and his wife Mary Latimer or "Aunt Polly" as she was gener- ally known. They settled on Section 31. Israel Marshall brought with him from Tennessee some fine-blooded stock, the first to be brought into a township which later had a wide repu- tation for its high grade stock.
There were thus, in the first four years of the decade from 1 1830 to 1840, six Latimer families all settled near each other
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in the Cherry Grove neigborhood and one just over the line in Indian Point Township.
About this time, other settlers were arriving in other parts of the Township. Josehua Bland came in '33, settling with his family on Section 16. The story comes down to us of a "corn cracker mill" owned by Mr. Bland. It stood near where the Heller School house now stands and although a primitive affair, run by horse-power, it ground many a grist of corn for the scattered neighbors who were thankful not to be obliged to go as far as Ellisville, on Spoon River, to get their corn ground. A few years ago, Stewart Williamson, a grandson of Mr. Bland's, had the old mill post around which the horses or oxen plodded their monotonous way, dug up and made into canes.
Early Comers
There was early a scattering settlement along the eastern timber border. The year 1834 saw the arrival in the township of seven families with staying qualities. All but one settled in the eastern portion of the township. The one exception was Wm. Kays, who, with his wife, came from Kentucky, stopping temporarily in Indiana, and established his home on Section 8, about three miles north of the Latimer settlement.
Hugh A. Kelly, prominent in township life for many years, and his wife, came from West Virginia and settled on Section 15.
The Castle brothers, coming also from West Virginia with temporary stops along the way, took up claims, Reuben and Henry on Section 12 and George on Section 26. They were all prosperous farmers and good citizens. Two grandsons of George Castle, George and Thomas, sons of Vinton Castle, are living now in Abingdon.
Onto Section 1 came William Thomas Williamson with his wife and family of young people. He came here from Indiana where he lived for a time, but his boyhood home was in New England. His father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War and once when he, with others, was hard pressed by the British; he had dropped out of sight behind a log and the British had passed him by unseen, he thus escaping capture. Mr. Thomas Williamson's sons and daughters married and many of them settled around him where they were highly respec :ted citizens. His son, James, married a daughter of Mr. Bland's and they, with their married sons and daughters, later became, and some still are especially identified with the neighborhood around Warren Chapel. Squire Frank Williamson and Stewart Williamson, of Galesburg, are the sons of James Williamson. He also has descendants in and around Abingdon. Children and grandchildren of James Williamson were fond of
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