USA > Illinois > Perry County > Combined history of Randolph, Monroe and Perry counties, Illinois . With illustrations descriptive of their scenery and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 16
USA > Illinois > Randolph County > Combined history of Randolph, Monroe and Perry counties, Illinois . With illustrations descriptive of their scenery and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 16
USA > Illinois > Monroe County > Combined history of Randolph, Monroe and Perry counties, Illinois . With illustrations descriptive of their scenery and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 16
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Settlements were also made in the year 1780 by John Hilterbrand, Henry and Elijah Smith, David Hix, and Haydon Wells, on the east side of the Kaskaskia river, above the mouth of Nine Mile creek. Some of these had served with Clark. Elijah Smith settled on the Kaskaskia, where Cox's ferry now is Claim 1044, covering the customary four hundred acres of land, was given to his heirs in right of his having made this improvement This is the farthest grant of land that was made up the Kaskaskia, and for a long while Smith's little farm was the limit of the settlement. Hix's improvement was on claim 1992, immediately south of Smith. Thomas Hughs came from the western part of Pennsylvania in the year 1783. During that year be built a cabin, and placed some land under cultivation, on Nine 9
Mile creek. Claim 319, comprising four hundred acres of land, granted to his heirs, covers this improvement. The next year he went back to Pennsylvania for his family. Coming down the Ohio river near Fort Massacre, the boat was attacked by the Indiaus, and Hughs and an infant child in the arms of its mother were killed. The child was shot through the head, and its brains were spattered over the mother's breast. The mother was wounded severely in the shoulder. Some friends were accompanying the family to Illinois, and of these two were killed. The rest of the party escaped and returned without attempting to continue their journey.
Indian hostilities broke up the settlements cast of Kaskas- kia, and interfered with the immigration to Illinois. The American pioneers found refuge in Kaskaskia. Israel Dodge, Ichabod and George Camp, John Cook, Jacob Judy, William Musick, James Piggott, and Robert Seybold had all become residents of the village before 1783. Israel Dodge was the father of Henry Dodge, afterward United States Senator from Wisconsin. In 1790 he removed across the river to Upper Louisiana. James Piggott settled at Pig- gott's fort in the present county of Monroe. He had served in the war under Clark, as had also Seybold. Jacob Judy built Judy's mill in Monroe county.
The Indian troubles lasted till about the year 1795. Ir. 1796 and 1797 several families re-established themselves east of Kaskaskia river, and remained there permanently . Ichabod and George Camp made improvements west of the Kaskaskia river, and Camp creek bears their name. They afterward removed to St. Louis, and lived at Camp Spring, then west of the city, now included within its limits. Mrs. Hughs, whose husband, Thomas Hughs, was killed by the Indians on the Ohio, as has been narrated, afterward married James Pillars. In the year 1795 the family, con- sisting of Mr. and Mrs. Pillars, two sons, John and Richard Pillars, and James Hughs, the surviving son of Thomas Hughs, came to Illinois. They settled on the farm east of the Kaskaskia, long known as the "old Hughs place." Pil- lars lived here several years, and was a quiet and industrious citizen. James Hughs returned to Kentucky, there married, and came again to Illinois in the year 1800. He was a man of great energy and sound judgment. He was in the United States ranging service during the war of 1812-14. John Reynolds, then a boy. afterward Governor of the State, re- sided in the same neighborhood from 1800 to 1807. He says : "Before any common school was established in the neighborhood where my father resided, I mounted a horse nearly every evening during a winter, and rode about a mile and a half to the residence of James Hughs, to study under his guidance the arithmetic. Mr. Hughs, although he was raised in the back woods, and was filled with fun and frolic, was a man of strong mind and benevolent heart. He took great pleasure in teaching me the arithmetic, and during this winter I studied the most important principles contained in the treatise."
Stace McDonough, in the year 1797, settled on the old place which John Montgomery first improved, in claim 1993, a couple of miles northeast of Ellis's Grove. He bad
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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH, MONROE AND PERRY COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.
experienced many adventures in his campaigns against the Indians, and became a leader in the frontier community. He was born, of Scotch ancestry, in New Jersey, in the year 1770. His parents dying when he was an infant, he was bound out, but he and his master not getting along well together, he ran away, and coming West, found his way to Kentucky. He took part with the Kentucky troops in their expeditions against the Indians north of the Ohio, and in Col. Clark's campaign in the year 1786, though then only sixteen years of age, distinguished himself by his brilliant services. He was strong, athletic, and courageous, and a faithful and ardent soldier. He was an excellent marksman, and frequently acted as a spy. He entered into the service of the United States government in 1790, and in Gen. Har- mer's campaign of that year was given the command of a train of pack horses. The next year he served under Gen- eral St. Clair, and was placed in charge of the convoys of provisions for the army. He was in the disastrous defeat of St. Clair on the fourth of November, 1791, escaping on foot from the field of battle, and saving the life of an officer whom he found wounded and exhausted on the ground, and whom he assisted into camp. He commanded one of the govern- ment boats on the Ohio in 1793. He was an excellent pilot, and thoroughly understood the navigation of the river. Near the mouth of the Kentucky river, an Indian standing on the shore shot him in the shoulder. A white man with the Indians, called out in English, " to throw that man over- board, he will die in a short time." He never recovered fully from the wound, but was well enough to take part in Wayne's campaign against the Indians a year or two later. He left the service at the close of the war in 1795, and married in Louisville, Kentucky. After coming to Illinois he improved a fine farm. He was extremely fond of the rifle, and spent a good deal of his time in hunting. In the war of 1812-14 he was captain of a ranging company, and did good service in protecting the frontiers from Indian depredations. " He was also, during this war, contractor for carrying the mails from St. Louis to Shawneetown. This mail route was then very important, on account of its being the only one by which correspondence was kept up between Illinois and Washington. The country between the Kaskas- kia and the Ohio rivers was a wilderness, and the Indians hostile, but he carried the mails with punctuality. Like many of the early pioneers he had strong natural abilities, but no education. He was honorable and upright in his re- lations with his neighbors. He died on the farm on which he settled on coming to the county, after having lived on it nearly fifty years.
Toward the close of the Indian wars the settlements in Illinois began to extend. The New Design settlement, in the present county of Monroe, was at that period by far the largest American colony in Illinois, and soon after 1795, it began to extend southward into Randolph county. In the year last mentioned the town of Washington was laid off on the west bank of the Kaskaskia river, not far south of the northern boundary of the county. Its site was the high bluff of the river, overlooking to the west the Horse prairie. Johnson J. Whiteside was one of its projectors. The
Whitesides had emigrated from Kentucky to the New Design settlement in 1793. Washington came to be known as Horse Prairie town. Its inhabitants cultivated large fielda of grain, and raised stock. Among the resident& of this place were William Going and his son, who bore the same name. They had come from Kentucky in 1794, and erected a station a short distance south- west of the present town of Waterloo. Both were blacksmiths. The old gentleman was a quiet and orderly citizen, except when excited with taffia. At courts and other gatherings he had bells to sell, and often put a cord through the staples of a dozen bells of all sizes and then tied them around his waist. His head was adorned with a fox-skin cap, the tail suspended behind, and his other dress was of the same back woods character. Thus equipped, he danced in the crowd, making of course, a terrific noise. He was not a large man, but strong and active. He compelled Judge Simms, one of the United States judges for the North- western territory, while he was holding court at Cahokia, to undergo this bell-dance at which his honor grew very im- patient. He was noted for performing other wild freaks. He died at the Horse Prairie town, and was buried in the old graveyard north of the town.
William Going, the son, was a man of different qualities. He had received but a limited education and could hardly read and write, but possessed strong natural abilities which, had he made use of them, might have fitted him for almost any position. He was brave and courageous, and impressed his associates as a man of decision and firmness. His im- pulses were naturally on the side of honesty and integrity, but bad associations, and evil habits, gradually grew on him, and often the public was forced to think strange of his con- duct. At horse races, shooting matches, and at the card table, his was the governing spirit. Besides being a black- smith, he was a good gunsmith. He had no taste for steady and hard labor. He worked in his shop when it pleased him, and with the object of only earning enough to support himself and family. For wealth he cared nothing. He had steady nerves and excellent eyesight, and none excelled him in repairing, or shooting, a gun. Reynolds relates that he at one time, at ninety yards, with a rest, put four rifle balls into the same hole, near the centre of the target. The fifth ball also touched the hole. From the Horse Prairie town he moved to a place on the Kaskaskia river, in St. Clair county, below the present town of Fayette, and from there to Arkansas, where he died in 1830.
John Pulliam, from 1799 to 1802, was a resident of the Horse Prairie town. He was born in Botetourt county, Virginia ; after the Revolutionary war he removed to Ken- tucky, and in 1796 came to the New Design settlement. In 1797 he removed to the neighborhood of Florissant, west of St. Louis, and returned to Illinois two years later to settle in Horse Prairie town, near which he cultivated a farm. In 1802 he began improving a farm on Prairie du Long creek, near the mouth of Richland creek, in what is now Monroe county. He died on the Kaskaskia river, near the present town of Fayette, in 1813. He was a man of sound mind, and considerable energy and activity. From him sprang
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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH, MONROE AND PERRY COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.
one of the most numerous pioneer families io Illinois. Joho Grosvenor, a stone mason aud farmer, and a native of Connecticut, lived in the Horse Prairie town for some years after 1799. He had a large farm adjoining the town which he cultivated with more industry than was usually displayed in those days, raising considerable amounts of produce As the country in the Horse Prairie improved, the village declined, and soon became extinct.
Among the pioneer settlers ou Horse creek was Henry Levens. He emigrated from the westeru part of Pennsyl- vania. He was a large, stout man, a stranger to fear, and well calculated to brave the dangers and difficulties of a new settlement. He was without much education, but possessed decisive and energetic qualities of miud which made him a conspicuous personage among the early pioneers. He came to Illinois in 1797. Coming down the Ohio river, he lauded at Fort Massacre with two wagons and teams, one of which was an ox team. In one of the wagons he placed a large skiff to be used as a wagon body on land and a ferry boat iu crossing the large creeks encount-red on the journey. The party was twenty five days in coming from the Ohio to Kaskaskia. He settled on Horse creek, about two miles above its mouth, and three miles north of the present town of Evansville. He here obtained a donation of four hun- dred acres of land (claim 2607) by reason of his improve- ment. In the year 1800 he built a saw and grist mill on Horse creek, near his residence, which he carried on with much energy and industry, and with great advantage to the other settlers. At the time this was built it was the only saw mill in the country. The lumber for nearly all the flat boats built in early times in Illinois, was sawed at this mill. Levens was a man of great hospitality, and his house was the usual place at which dancing and convivial parties as- sembled. He raised a large family, and both his sons and daughters were inclined to gayety and sociability, and indulged freely in the pleasures of the ball-room, and other amusements of a similar character. The most of his sons, and some of the daughters, played on the violin. The family was the centre of attraction, and many happy days, and particularly nights, of innocent amusement and recrea- tion were enjoyed iu pioneer times at Levens' hospitable dwelling on Horse creek. The sons were active, resolute men, excellent hunters and marksmen, and frequently carried off the prizes at the shooting matches which formed a common amusement for the neighborhood. They also delighted in foot racing, wrestling, and jumping, and an early chrouicler remarks that they "were not bashful in a fight, in which they indulged at times to the great discom- fiture of their adversaries." The gun, race-horse, and violin were articles of greatest admiration in the family. Although fond of amusement, the Levens' family became more wealthy than the most of their neighbors. Their stock was raised, winter and summer, without much labor, and the mill and farm yielded considerable income. The peltries, resulting from the hunting expeditions of the sons, added something. At one time the family consisted of four, or five grown unmarried sons and two daughters. The progress of the settlements at last crowded the old man too much, and in
1818 he sold out his possessions on Horse creek, and moved to the frontiers of Missouri where he died at an advanced age.
The Horse prairie, lying between the Kaskaskia river and Horse creek, obtained its name. as did also the creek, from the fact that herds of wild horses were found in the prairie, and along the creek, in early times. These horses had escaped from the French villages. In the upper end of the prairie, at the close of the last century, a settlement, composed of Samuel aud Winder Kinney, Chance Ratcliff, Robert McMahan, Jarrot Brickey, the Gibbons, Teter, and some other families, was formed in the upper eud of the prairie. In a few years the most of the families moved away. McMahan was born in Virginia, removed to Ken- tucky, and in 1793 came to the New Design settlement. In 1795, in the present Monroe county, three miles northeast of New Design station, his wife and four children were killed by the Indians. Oa coming to the Horse prairie, he settled on Ralls' ridge where now runs the road from Red Bud to the Kaskaskia. He was justice of the peace, and one of the judges of the old court of common pleas. He removed to St. Clair county near Lebauon, and then to the neighborhood of Troy, in Madison county, where he died in the year 1822. Jarrot Brickey was a native of Virginia, and came to Illinois from Kentucky. He lived in the Horse prairie for nearly half a century. He was in the ranging service during the war of 1812-14, as was also his son, Preston B. Brickey, whose farm was half a mile north of the present town of Red Bud.
Kaskaskia by this time had become the residence of seve - ral Americans. John Elgar, who came to the village in 1784, had assumed a prominent position in the community. William Morrison reached the place in 1790, and began an extensive mercantile business. The earliest practicing law- yer in Illinois, John Rice Jones, hal settled in the town the last named year, and in 1798 Dr. George Fisher began the practice of medicine.
THE AMERICAN POPULATION IN 1800.
According to the estimate of Reynolds, the American population in Illinois in the year 1800 amounted to eight hundred souls. The New Design and American Bottom settlements, in the present county of Monroe, contained six hundred inhabitants, and there were other scattering settle- ments in that county. Only about one hundred Americans lived in Randolph county. Of these, six or eight families lived in Kaskaskia. The settlement east of the Kaskaskia River contained seven families, and the Horse Prairie colony was still less in number.
SUBSEQUENT SETTLEMENTS.
On the opening of the present century the arrivals became more numerous, and the number of American inhabitants of the county rapidly increased. The immigrants were mostly from the western and southern states, and the Ohio river was the main channel by which the pioneers reached the country. Fort Massacre was a usual point for leaving the Ohio and beginning the journey overland. In very early times the French had opened a road from Fort Massacre to Kaskas-
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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH, MONROE AND PERRY COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.
kia, marking the miles on the trees. The figures were cut in with an iron instrument and painted red. This road made a great curve to the north to avoid the swamps and rough country on the sources - of Cache river, and to take advantage of the prairie as much as possible. A road also ran from Fort Massacre to Cape Girardeau, then in the Spanish country. There were two celebrated crossing places on the Ohio, Lusk's Ferry and Miles' Ferry. The former was opposite the present town of Golconda, and the latter six or seven miles farther up the river. From Lusk's and Miles' ferries a road had been established to Kaskaskia. This road was first opened by Nathaniel Hull, one of the pioneers of Monroe county. Roads were afterwards cut leading from Shawneetown to Vincennes and Kaskaskia.
The scanty American population of the county received a notable addition in 1800 in the family of Robert Reynolds. His son, John Reynolds, then a boy of twelve, afterward became governor of the state. Robert Reynolds was born in Ireland, and emigrated to the United States in 1785. In Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, John Reynolds was born in 1788. The family in the fall of that year removed to East Tennessee. In February, 1800, with eight horses and two wagons, the family left Tennessee for the Spanish country west of the Mississippi. Upper Louisiana, now Missouri, was theu popularly known as the Spanish country. The Spanish authorities encouraged by liberal land grants the immigration of Americans. Several members of the Murphy family had gone from the Reynolds neighborhood in East Tennessee, and had settled on the St. Francois river, southwest of St. Genevieve, and Robert Reynolds had de- cided to settle there. The Ohio was crossed at Lusk's ferry, and they first set foot on Illinois soil where now stands the town of Golconda, in Pope county. The west side of the Ohio was then called the Indian country. Governor Rey- nolds relates that he asked Mr. Lusk how far it was to the next town, and that the proprietor of the ferry laughed and said, "One hundred and ten miles to Kaskaskia, the first settlement on the route." Big Muddy river was found to be full and swimming, and after waiting on the banks two weeks for the stream to fall, a raft was constructed, with two days' labor, and the family and their effects were ferried over. Four creeks were rafted between the Ohio and Kas- kaskia, and the journey required four weeks. Governor Reynolds has recorded his impressions as he reached the bluff's east of Kaskaskia, and surveyed the prospect. It was spring, and the landscape was clothed in beauty. The prairie between the Kaskaskia and Mississippi rivers was covered with grazing horses and cattle. The Mississippi itself could be seen through the forest of cottonwood trees skirting its shores, and the ancient village of Kaskaskia presented its singular and antique construction to his sight The ancient cathedral stood a venerable edifice in the heart of the village, with its lofty steeple and large bell-the first church bell he had ever seen. Around the village were numerous camps and lodges of the Kaskaskia Indians, who still retained much of their original savage inde- pendence.
Many of the young warriors decorated themselves with
paints, and tied feathers in their hair, and sometimes at- tached to their heads the horns of animals.
After securiog some provisions, and provender for the horses from General Edgar's mill, near which they had en- camped, preparations were made to cross the Mississippi, when Robert Morrison, John Rice Jones, Pierre Menard and John Edgar came up, and proposed that, instead of going to the Spanish country, the Reynolds family should remain for a time at Kaskaskia, and look around for a per- manent residence in the vicinity. After spending some time iu the exploration of the eastern side of the Mississippi, Robert Reynolds re-affirmed his decision to settle west of the river, and applied to the Spanish commandant at St. Gene- vieve for a permit, but found that a pledge was required that he should raise his children in the faith of the Roman Catholic church. To this he refused to agree, and he re- mained in Illinois. The family lived iu Kaskaskia some months, raised a crop of corn in the common field, and then settled east of Kaskaskia. Governor Reynolds says: "Our residence was within about two miles and a half of Kaskas- kia, and we made mathematically the seventh family of the colony. We made our habitation east of the Kaskaskia river, in the forest amongst the high grass, and the wolves and wild animals were howling and prowling about us all night. About the year 1805, a small school was formed in the settlement where my father resided I was a scholar at this humble institution during part of the winters and the wet days we could not work on the farm, for one or two years, while we remained in the settlement. There were some books scattered about the country. but they were not plenty. Al- though my father was a reading man, and possessed a strong mind, yet, as far as I recollect, he brought to the country with him no books except the Bible. John Fulton, who settled in the vicinity, brought with him Rollin's Ancient History. My father borrowed it, and I read it day and night at the times I spared from labor." In 1803, Robert Reynolds, with Pierre Menard and Robert Morrison, repre- sented Randolph county in the Legislature of the Indiana territory. In 1807, he moved to the Goshen settlement, fonr miles south west of Edwardsville.
In 1801 John Beaird and family settled four miles north- east of Kaskaskia He was born in Virginia and raised in the country adjoining the New river. He emigrated from Virginia to Tennessee in the year 1787, and there married a relative of Robert Reynolds. He is described as a brave, energetic, decisive man, and while living in Knox county, Tennessee, was always elected captain of the companies raised to pursue the Indians when any depredation was com- mitted, which was not unfrequent. In April, 1793, he led one hundred and twenty five men from Knoxville to Nash- ville, and killed a few Creek Indians. The next month, in command of fifty men, he pursued a band of Indians who had killed two citizens near Clinch river. In defiance of the orders of the United States government he crossed the Tennessee into the Cherokee country, and there killed several of the savages. The government ordered him to be tried by court martial, but the people of Tennessee sustained him in his course. On the formation of the state government of
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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH, MONROE AND PERRY COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.
Tennessee he was elected to the legislature from Knox county. He died in Illinois in 1809. One of his sons, Joseph A. Beaird, hecamue a prominent citizen of Monroe county, which he represented in the state senate for several terms. Another, William A Beaird, was sheriff of St. Clair county from 1818 to 1830.
Among the additions to the settlement east of Kaskaskia in 1801 was Joseph Heard, who first settled on Garrisun hill, and theu improved a farm on Gravel creek, two miles and a half north of Chester, in later years the property of Joseph B. Holmes. Ils son, Hugh Heard, settled two miles north of his father, in the neighborhood of Diamond Cross, and the farm on which he lived was long known as the " Old Heard farm." After living on this farm many years Hugh Heard removed to Wisconsin. James Heard, a brother to Hugh, located still farther north, and made a farm ou which he lived to old age. Joseph, William and James, were sons of the latter. With Joseph Heard came George Franklin who improved a farm in section twenty- two, of township six, range seven, and afterward removed to the neighborhood of the present town of Pinckneyville in Perry county.
In the year 1802 the arrivals became more frequent and the settlements began to expand over wider territory. John Fulton, the same who as Governor Reynolds relates, brought with him to Illinois Rollin's Ancient History, came from Tennessee, and settled east of Kaskaskia, in the vicinity of Robert Reynolds. He made a valuable addition to the com- munity, and was aetive and foremost in promoting the pub lie welfare. His sons, Thomas, David and Cyrus, lived afterward in the same neighborhood. The two former died there, and the last removed to Marion county. William Roberts came from Lexington, Kentucky, also in 1842, and settled east of the Kaskaskia river, in the neighborhood of Ellis Grave, where he improved a farm. He was a man uf enterprise and shrewdness, and traded down the river, be- coming well known along the banks of the Mississippi between Kaskaskia and New Orleans. He died in 1822. His son, Thomas Roberts, was nearly of age at the time of the settle- ment of the family in the county. He settled on a farm near his father. For many years he acted as justice of the peace. He was a member of the county commissioners' court from 1828 to 1834. His death occurred in 1858. One of his nine sons, Daniel Preston Roberts, was the last register of the land office at Kaskaskia, receiving his appoint. ment in 1853, and continuing in the office till its removal to Springfield. John and Ephraim Bilderbaek came in 1802 Ephraim settled east of the Kaskaskia. He was a man of great industry, and paid close attention to his farm. His sons were William, Stuart, James, Charles, Franklin, Henry, Ephraim, Thomas and John. William removed to the ex- treme southern part of the county, where he entered land as early as 1814. Charles also settled in that part of the county. John Bilderback, the brother of Ephraim, was in the ranging service during the war of 1812-14. He died without children.
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