USA > Illinois > Madison County > Centennial history of Madison County, Illinois, and its people, 1812 to 1912, Volume I > Part 22
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to Illinois arriving at Shawneetown in Decem- ber of that year.
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REV. THOMAS LIPPINCOTT ยท
Mr. Lippincott was an early resident of Milton, a town on Wood river, now extinct. He was next a resident of Edwardsville, hold- ing various official positions. After Hooper Warren removed to Cincinnati he was, for a year, editor of the Edwardsville Spectator. It is not intended to follow his long and active career, but merely to introduce him to the reader. He was a voluminous writer and his contributions to the early history of the state are invaluable. In 1858 he contributed a series of papers to the Alton Courier entitled "The Conflict of the Century," relating the history of the anti-slavery contest of 1824. These papers were annotated by his friend George Churchill, who was a member of the legislature when Mr. Lippincott was secretary of the senate and who served longer in the senate and house than any other man ever elected from Madison county.
In 1864, at the request of Hon. W. C. Flagg, Mr. Lippincott prepared a series of papers for the State Historical Society on "Early Days in Madison County." These were published serially in the Alton Telegraph and the editor of this work has had access to them. They are
*A narrative condensed from the papers of Rev. Thomas Lippincott and annotations of George Churchill.
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invaluable as records of pioneer days and of the men who laid the foundations of the state. These were also annotated by Mr. Churchill. Mr. Lippincott acted an important part in the political and religious history of Illinois from the time it was a state until his death. He died April 13, 1869, at the residence of his son, Thomas W., at Pana, Illinois, and was buried in Oakwood cemetery, Upper Alton. His fu- neral was conducted by Revs. Albert Hale, A. T. Norton and W. P. Gibson, the first two his
REV. THOMAS LIPPINCOTT
contemporaries for many years. He left a distinguished family. Three of his sons served in the Civil war, one of them dying from wounds received at Vicksburg. His eldest son, Gen. Chas. E. Lippincott, was for- merly auditor of the state. His eldest daugh- ter married Winthrop S. Gilman, then of Al- ton, but later a wealthy banker of New York city.
LIPPINCOTT'S "EARLY DAYS IN MADISON COUNTY"
Mr. Lippincott's papers on "Early Days in Madison County," with Mr. Churchill's anno- tations would make a small volume. They . cover the decade from 1818 to 1828. I have gone through them carefully and prepared a running narrative therefrom, omitting what was not essential and often condensing a para- graph into a sentence, but preserving a con- nected history, as given below :
"I came to Madison county," writes Mr. Lippincott, "in 1818. My family and I started from Pittsburgh December 1, 1817, on a Mo- nongahela flatboat which I had chartered with another family, and on December 30th landed at Shawneetown. After a detention of several weeks we set out from that place for St. Louis, in a wagon across the country. The road was a mere path tlirough the woods, the trail indicated by 'three-hack trees.' It was almost impassable and we waded through it wearily. We started on the first of February, 1818, and arrived at St. Louis on the 17th, traveling all the time except two days spent at the hospitable home of Judge Lemen at New Design.
ALTON AND UPPER ALTON
"The only other towns we saw on the route were Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher and Ca- hokia. In a few days after my arrival in St. Louis I was employed to do some writing for Col. Rufus Easton, who had been the delegate in congress from Missouri. He had, during the previous year (1817), laid out a new town in Illinois, which he called Alton after one of his sons. One of the first jobs I did for him was to make a copy of a map of this place, de- signed for exhibition at the east in order to ef- fect the sale of lots. After a few months spent by me clerking in his store Colonel Eas- ton proposed that I take a stock of goods to the neighborhood of Alton and start a store.
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But it was not in Alton that I located (Alton was in embryo) but at Milton, four miles east on Wood river. When Colonel Easton brought me first in his gig to see Alton, there was a cabin not far from what is now the southeast corner of State and Short streets, occupied by a man whom the Colonel had in- duced to start a ferry in opposition to Smelt- zer's ferry, a few miles further up. Colonel Easton's plat fronted on the river, extended north as far as Ninth street and was bounded by Piasa street on the west and Henry on the east.
"Alton had a rival in Upper Alton, laid out in 1816 by Joseph Meacham. There was some dissatisfaction with this place, on account of it being two miles from the river, whereupon Meacham purchased the Bates farm, east of Henry street and advertised it as 'Alton on the river.' This last enterprise was purchased by Maj. C. W. Hunter in 1819 and became known as Hunterstown. Vexatious litigation kept Easton's Alton from improving for ten or twelve years. Ninian Edwards, Nathaniel Pope and others possessed titles adverse to Colonel Easton's claim, but after a long legal warfare the contestants compromised by divid- ing the disputed territory. Edwards, Pope & Company got the northern portion, which afterwards became known as Middletown be- cause it lay between Upper Alton and Alton on the river (hence Edwards' addition, Pope's addition, etc., on our city maps). Litigation being settled by about 1829-30 improvements commenced and the village of Alton began to be. In commenting on the above Mr. Church- ill made the following annotation: 'It was either in 1818 or 1819 that I attended at Colonel Easton's Alton, where the proprietor was to offer some city lots for sale and for that purpose displayed a beautiful map which had been prepared in accordance with the ad- vice of the poets of the day
'The most important point, perhaps, Lies in the drawing of the maps,
By mingling yellow, red and green,
To make the most delightful scene That ever met the eye.'
"There were Gospel lots, an Observatory Square, College lots and I know not what other reservations for public and charitable purposes delineated on the map. The com- pany attending at the sale was not numerous but included two gentlemen from Albany, N. Y., Reuben Hyde Walworth, afterwards Chan- cellor of that state, and E. S. Baldwin. I think no lots were sold. There were then three or four buildings east of Little Piasa, but no improvements west of that stream.'
"In the latter part of 1819 and forepart of 1820 John Pitcher advertised that he kept the Fountain ferry at Alton. His advertisement was succeeded February 22, 1819, by that of Enos Pembroke, who advertised that he also kept a tavern. Both ferrymen announced that the road by Fountain ferry was three miles shorter to Madame Griffiths, near Portage des Sioux, than any other road now traveled be- tween those points. I know not by which ferry emigrants for Boone's Lick, mentioned by Parson Flint, crossed the Mississippi to St. Charles county.
"I said my store was not opened at Alton but my goods were landed there. Some time in November, 1818, I stepped out of a keel boat on the shore of the Mississippi and found myself and my goods under a magnificent grove of sycamore trees reaching from what the proprietor called Fountain creek (better known as Little Piasa) to the point where the bluff jutted out to the river, on the side of which the old penitentiary was afterwards built. I think there was no house there then but the ferry house and a cabin somewhere about the corner of what is now Second and Alby streets.
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WILLARD CUTTING FLAGG
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MILTON
"There was a busy, active village, even then, at Milton. A firm consisting of John Wallace and Walter J. Seely had laid out the town, called it Milton, and had there three mills, two saw mills and a grist or flour mill. A distill- ery, a few rods up the river, was equally active. Mr. Seely afterward moved to Ed- wardsville where he kept a public house. He died there January 13, 1823. The Star of the West said he was a native of Orange county, New York. A W. Donohue had put up a store building at the bridge in Milton and placed it in charge of R. T. McHenry, but be- fore I came he had closed up and gone to St. Louis. McHenry was later cashier of the bank at Edwardsville and was highly es- teemed. It was to this vacant building, by di- rection of Colonel Easton, that I brought my dry goods and groceries and put up the sign of Lippincott & Company. I remember I sold coffee at fifty cents a pound and salt at three dollars a bushel.
"To return to Alton : A contract was entered into by Colonel Easton with Daniel Crume and William G. Pinckard for the erec- tion of four log houses on the town site. Two of these were afterwards combined in one. It stood on the square afterwards bounded by Second, Third, Piasa and Market streets. It was long occupied by Thomas G. Hawley. (This building was taken down, some thirty years ago, and rebuilt on the premises of Hon. H. G. McPike at Mt. Lookout, and stood until 1910 when it was destroyed.)
"I have an indistinct recollection," contin- ues Mr. Lippincott, "of some small tene- ment in 1820, under the sycamores along what is now Second street west of Piasa, oc- cupied by several families. It was as ephem- eral as it was humble. I seem to remember a yard and garden fences in a small way. In order to draw travel a road was necessary from Alton to Milton and a bridge over
Shields' branch was indispensable, and Col- onel Easton made a contract with Joel Finch to build it. It was built very near the present crossing of Second street over the branch.
"There were two families then living be- tween Milton and the Bates farm or Alton. The first was owned by the widow Meacham who had lived there during the War of 1812, and she told me her place was visited by In- dians on the same night as the Wood river massacre, in July, 1814. She had two grown sons and two or three daughters, one of whom married a Mr. Whitehead of St. Louis, after- wards a wealthy citizen and an elder in the First Presbyterian church of that city. The other family on the road was that of James Smith. One of his daughters married Jubilee Posey, afterwards a prosperous farmer of Troy. There were besides two families, the Gillhams and the Pruitts on the American Bottom below Milton. Isom Gillham was the last sheriff of Madison county under the terri- torial government. He owned a fine farm and a ferry on the bank of the Mississippi opposite the mouth of the Missouri, most if not all of which farm has gone down the river. In the summer of 1818 or 1819 I saw several steam- boats lying at Mr. Gillham's farm, more than I had seen at one time at St. Louis. They were small boats employed by Col. James Johnson, brother of Vice President Richard M. Johnson, to carry government supplies to Fort Osage on the Missouri river. (It is a curious coincidence that Crawford Fairbanks, a brother of another vice president, is now one of the proprietors of a great strawboard fac- tory within two miles of this Gillham ship- ping point .- Ed.) Mr. Gillham died April 2, 1824. His successor as sheriff was William B. Whiteside. The other Gillhams were settled near Long Lake.
"The Pruitts occupied farms along the bluff from Wood river to where the Edwardsville road ascends the bluff at W. T. Davidson's. There was a farm and a horse mill adjoining
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Truly yours Gershom Has
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Wood river, and several fine farms strung along the prairie for three or four miles. Above the bluffs on the table lands were sev- eral farms which were old settlements when I came to the state. In the forks of Wood river were three brothers, George, William and Abel Moore. The last two had each built a brick house, but George still occupied the. old log house considerably enlarged, and near it still stood the old block house to which the inhabitants resorted in time of danger, and the powder mill in which the settlers prepared their ammunition. (Not over two miles from this point now stands the great plant of the Equitable Powder Manufacturing Company, showing the progress of a hundred years- Editor.)
"The inhabitants between the forks of Wood river grew apace if I may judge from the following incident: In 1819, being then a justice of the peace, I was called upon to marry a couple from that settlement. The ceremony was performed under the shade of a primeval forest tree. Some years afterward I called to see this couple at their home on the Woodburn road and found them a pros- perous family with sixteen children. I had occasion to travel that year to the Sangamon country. Starting from Milton and ascend- ing the bluffs and skirting the Wood river timber I passed through Rattan's prairie, so- called, to the road running north from Ed- wardsville. The farm of Jesse Starkey was the last passed in that region. Of the dwellers on the prairie I recall William Montgomery, Richard Rattan, Thomas Rattan and Rev. William Jones.
"When I first came to Milton there was a public house kept by Joel Bacon in a cabin near the bridge. In the summer of 1819 he built a frame house a little higher up to which he removed his tavern. It was not a drinking house, and entertained travelers comfortably. His wife was a notable and excellent woman.
I think it was in the summer of 1819 that Robert Collet, of St. Louis, bought out the in- terest of Mr. Seeley in Milton and thencefor- ward Wallace & Collet became the proprietors of the mill and other business interests of Milton. Mr. Joel Bacon dying, the big frame house, still unfinished, was taken down and removed to Upper Alton where it was the residence of George Smith (afterwards state senator).
"Perhaps I ought not to omit so trifling a circumstance as the gathering of about a dozen or twenty children in our house every Sabbath morning for religious instruction. My wife who had had much experience in teaching, could not be satisfied without this effort-and it was made. It got the name of the first Sabbath school in Illinois. But there was a Sabbath school organized the next sum- mer which deserved the name. It was in Upper Alton and was the enterprise of Enoch Long and Henry H. Snow.
"Upper Alton soon began to grow into a village. While Milton, with its saw mills, grist mill, work shops, distillery and store (part of the time two) was bustling and busy for a little season, Upper Alton was quietly gaining accessions of industrious inhabitants and as- suming quite a village air. But some of its people were more busy than industrious, and if Milton manufactured whisky Upper Alton was no less busy in selling and drinking it. Yet a good proportion of the people of both places were sober and industrious. Both set- tlements were stopping places for immigrants. Many came but did not long remain. From Milton there went out Thomas Beard to found Beardstown; O. M. Ross to found Ha- vana ; Charles Gregory to open a farm and, in part, to locate White Hall, and David Marks to build Manchester. From Upper Alton went Zachariah and John Allen to become original settlers of what was later Greene county.
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THOMAS CARLIN
"In the immediate neighborhood of Milton, on the Mississippi, at a place afterwards known as Gibraltar, dwelt Thomas Carlin, who subsequently also migrated to Greene county and had the county commissioners lo- cate the county seat on his land. The inten- tion was to name the new town after him, but for some reason it was changed, or twisted, to Carrollton. I do not think any one in Milton then expected to see him governor of Illinois.
"One of the early settlers of Upper Alton was Enoch Long whose influence was always for good. His usefulness was duplicated by his excellent wife. They must have settled in Upper Alton in 1819. Dr. Erastus Brown and wife settled in Upper Alton about the time I came to Milton. Dr. Brown was a brother-in-law of Colonel Easton. He built a good hewed log house facing the road from Milton near where it turned into the main (afterwards Long) street. It was the best house for a while in the village. Dr. Brown died in 1831 or 1832. There were other Browns there: Jonathan Brown carried on business there until 1831 when he removed to 'Brown's prairie' where his brother had lo- cated a large farm. The farms owned by the two brothers are now the site of the town of Brighton. Then there was Chad Brown, a rather eccentric character. Mr. Churchill adds to this that Chad Brown was a member of the firm of Meacham, Day & Brown, mer- chants. I also recall the names of Elisha Dodge, Benjamin Spencer, Hezekiah H. Gear, Charles Gear, Isaac Woodburn, Benjamin Steadman, David and George Smith as early settlers of Upper Alton.
"Dr. Augustus Langworthy was a man of some note in those days. He was Alton's first postmaster. The Edwardsville Specta- tor of August 28, 1819, has the following record : 'Postoffices have been established at Alton and Gibraltar. Dr. Augustus Lang-
worthy has been appointed postmaster at the former place.' Daniel D. Smith was ap- pointed postmaster at the latter.
"There was another and a very different person on whom my mind loves to dwell, Rev. Nathaniel Pinckard, who, having preached the gospel for many years as a traveling minister in the Methodist connec- tion, had settled down to spend the evening of his days in the new and crude village of Upper Alton. (He was the father of Wil- liam G. Pinckard, Sr.)
"Sometime in the winter of 1819-20 a family arrived in Milton that had an impor- tant relation to my life. It was that of Elijah Slater, whose acquaintance I had first formed when descending the Ohio river, he on a raft and I on a keel boat. He was from Ithaca, New York. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Slater and three daughters. They removed later to what is now Sanga- mon county, near Springfield. My wife hav- ing died, I subsequently married the second daughter. A third daughter married Dr. Gershom Jayne of Springfield. A daughter of this marriage became the mother of Mrs. Lyman Trumbull. Mr. and Mrs. Slater passed the evening of their days in the home of Mrs. Dr. Jayne. My family suffered much from sickness while we resided at Mil- ton. The dam across Wood river, just below the bridge, was supposed to create malaria. Dr. John Todd of Edwardsville was our physician, but as he was ten miles off and had an extended practice we sometimes called in Dr. Clayton Tiffin, who resided at St. Mary's some three miles distant. A year or so after arriving at Milton I was called on to marry my friend, Ebenezer Huntington, to a sister of Dr. Tiffin, the ceremony to be performed at his house at St. Mary's. I
went and found a level plain at, or near, the mouth of Wood river, on the lower side, with a two-story frame house upon it in which Dr. Tiffin resided. That was St.
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Mary's. Whether the town of Chippewa, of which I heard afterwards, occupied the same site I do not know.
OLD-TIME EDWARDSVILLE
"The town of Edwardsville was, in those days, an important place. It was the resi- dence of the two United States Senators, Ninian Edwards and Jesse B. Thomas, and these two distinguished citizens and their ac- complished families formed the nucleus around which the intelligent naturally gath- ered. We know that the young ladies shone as brilliant gems in the gay and polite circles of the city of Washington. The town of Edwardsville had been laid out before I was acquainted with the county and was the seat of justice. It occupied a ridge jutting out from the Cahokia creek, and had on each side a somewhat deep ravine, separating it from the level land adjacent. Thus it had but one street, or scarcely more. The court house was a log building on the edge of the square next the street, not far from the lower end of town. The jail, on the same square, was not more remarkable for beauty or strength. It was built of logs and perhaps lined with plank. Nor could the brick court house and jail, built a few years later, be called a great improvement.
I remember when Lorenzo Dow came to Edwardsville to preach, some years afterwards. When he was shown the court house as the place for the meeting he refused to hold service there-saying it was not fit for a hog pen. It had not yet a floor, except a narrow staging for the court and bar. About 1819 some gentlemen purchased a farm at the southeast end of town and laid it out in blocks and streets, with an open square of reasonable size in the center. It was designed to supersede the old town and, probably for this end (for I can conceive no other) it was laid out in such a way as not to connect by streets with the street already established. There was no reason, except
the caprice of the proprietors, why the streets of the addition should not have been made to correspond with it, or with the points of the compass, but they agree with neither.
"The proprietor of the old town was James Mason, who had purchased it before I knew it. He had built a brick house on the rear of the square in part of which an inn was kept by William Wiggins-afterwards so well known at Wiggins ferry, St. Louis. At this hotel might have been seen, during the years of its occupancy by Mr. Wiggins, a number of men of no small note, the elite of the day, both of our own citizens who had not yet made homes and for those who came to spy out the land. For comfort, for good living in a plain way, Mr. Wiggins furnished a resting place which the intelligent and re- fined traveler was well prepared to appre- ciate after a horseback ride across the state and rude entertainment at log farm houses along the way. Edwardsville was, at that time, the most noted town in Illinois.
"While the old capital was at Kaskaskia and the new one prospectively at Vandalia, neither was as much a point of attraction as Edwardsville, not merely for the reason that the chief men of the state resided there, but the people gathered there as a center from which to go out prospecting. The land dis- trict had been opened and the office estab- lished at Edwardsville, and consequently all who wished to settle north of the Kaskaskia district must make their land entries at our county town. The lands were sold by the government on credit at two dollars an acre (the minimum). On paying one-fourth of the purchase money down, the remainder might be delayed. This was done in order to enable the settler to earn the balance by labor on the land, which was doubtless often done. But unfortunately the spirit of speculation was aroused. Thousands and thousands of acres were purchased by non-residents on mere speculation, and actual settlers entered
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three or four times as much as they had money to pay for. Mr. Churchill writes in regard to this: 'Under the old credit system of selling the public lands, you might select a quarter section (160 acres) and pay sixteen dollars which would secure it for forty days. If, within that time, you paid the additional sum of sixty-four dollars you would have completed the first instalment of eighty dol- lars and three more such instalments, paid at the end of one, two and three years, made the land your own. But if you failed to com- plete the first: instalment within the forty days, another person might enter the land and your sixteen dollars would be forfeited. But when the credit system was abolished and relief laws were the order of the day, I believe a way was provided to use these six- teen dollars forfeitures in paying up old land debts.' Such was the state of things at that time and consequently many congregated at Mr. Wiggins' house at all times whose object was to enter many tracts to be kept until the price of land advanced. These were men of property and intelligence, and, added to the residents, made a lively and pleasant society.
"At the establishment of the land office in Edwardsville, John McKee was appointed register and Benjamin Stephenson, receiver. The former died, presumably in 1819, and Edward Coles was appointed to take his place. Colonel Stephenson, says Mr. Church- ill, died on the 10th of October, 1822. He was succeeded by Samuel D. Lockwood, while William P. McKee, son of the first register, succeeded Mr. Coles when the latter was elected governor.
"Of Colonel Stephenson I have to say that he was a plain, unassuming man, not highly educated, but of good sense, and amiable and pleasant in the circles of social life. His position, and especially the elegant and high- toned manners of his beautiful wife and daughter, together with their close associa- tion with the accomplished family of Gov-
ernor Edwards, place him and his among those at the head of society, alongside of that of Senator Thomas, whose step-daughter, Miss Rebecca Hamtramck, shone as a brilliant star in the social circles of Washington. Indeed we had evidence that Edwardsville, in the person of Miss Julia Edwards, afterwards Mrs. Daniel P. Cook, and Miss Hamtramck, furnished society in Washington with some of the most perfect specimens, in one case of charming, modest beauty and grace, and in the other of dashing elegant manner and splendid appearance, that it could boast dur- ing a session of congress within the presi- dential term of John Quincy Adams. With these and others fully competent to associate with them, and the strangers heretofore men- tioned, it may not be too much to say that there was an intelligent and refined if not a fashionable society in Edwardsville as early as 1819 and 1820.
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