USA > Illinois > Cumberland County > Counties of Cumberland, Jasper and Richland, Illinois. Historical and biographical > Part 42
USA > Illinois > Richland County > Counties of Cumberland, Jasper and Richland, Illinois. Historical and biographical > Part 42
USA > Illinois > Jasper County > Counties of Cumberland, Jasper and Richland, Illinois. Historical and biographical > Part 42
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In June, 1836, a blazed road was laid out from Newton to Greenup; in December, a road from Newton to Effingham was pro- jected; in December, 1839, from Boekman's mill west to the Van- dalia road; and in September, 1844, from Newton to Saint Marie. By an act of the legislature, March 2, 1839, a road was established from Newton to John Deremiah's in Marion County, via Louisville, . Clay County. This road was chopped out, graded and bridged in the course of that year and the following. The clearing was done in Jasper County at $17 per acre, the whole amounting to six and three quarters acres, H. Wade being the contractor. Other con- tractors on the various parts of the work were L. W. Jordan. J. I. Pullis, Silas Barnes, Benj. Harris, Sr., L. D. Wade, James Barnes and William M. Richards. The aggregate cost was a trifle less than $700. This large increase in traveling facilities, however, did not make the country an easy one to the teamster.
FERRIES AND BRIDGES.
The streams reaching out in every direction, in an early day, proved very embarrassing obstacles. Fords were to be found in
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
certain times of the year, but for several months crossing them was very uncertain. The Embarrass River was the most important, and a ferry was established across it at Newton at a very early date, by Garwood. At certain times in the year teams could ford the river, and the business was of more convenience to the public than profit to the owner. It was abandoned and re-established from time to time. and continued until about 1857. A ferry was established across the same river in 1848, near Saint Marie, which continued with an experience similar to the older ferry until about 1860. Another, across the stream " in the Dark Bend," continued until 1880. These ferries were maintained in the simplest fashion. A rope stretched from bank to bank provided the ferryman the means to pull his boat and cargo across the stream. The boat was a square-end flat-boat, large enough to receive horses and wagon. Business was never very brisk, and travelers were occasionally obliged, in the absence of the ferryman, to swim across the stream after the boat, and work their own passage. The tariff allowed at Newton and Saint Marie varied somewhat, but is as follows, the Newton rate being named first :- For four-horse team and wagon, 50 and 20 cents; for two horses and wagon, 373 and 15 cents; for pleasure carriage and one horse, 25 cents; for two horses, 40 cents; at Saint Marie the tariff was 25 cents for either; for man and horse, 10 cents, Saint Marie same: footman, 5 cents, both the same; neat cattle, per head, 5 and 3 cents; hogs, sheep or goats, per head, 3 and 2 cents; loose horses and mules, 5 cents per head at each place.
Such exactions, while apparently necessary, became at length irksome and gave rise to repeated demands for bridges. On March 4, 1837, the legislature appropriated $300 toward building a bridge across the Embarrass River at Newton, but this was insufficient for the purpose, and the county was unable to raise the balance necessary to build it. The money was therefore loaned at 10 per cent interest until in June, 1844, the sum of interest and principal had reached $500. The money, however, had been used in building the brick court house, and the County Court, urged by the petition of citizens, and the consideration that unless used for the purpose for which it was appropriated the amount would draw interest at the expense of the county treasury, ordered a bridge built, and appropriated the $500. Beyond the levying a tax and creating a fund, the bridge got no nearer construction, as in the following December the virtuous resolution of the court was rescinded. So the matter lingered, never finally dismissed nor actually begun until March of 1857. At this
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
time $4,000 was appropriated, the contract subsequently let to Brill- hart & Gaddis for $4,400, and the bridge completed and accepted, at a cost of $4,450, in August, 1858. This was an open bridge. It finally fell down, and was rebuilt in 1861, the county assisting the township of Wade to the extent of $1,000.
The bridge at Saint Marie was built in 1861, by J. D. Tripp, contractor, at a cost of about $3,500. This was built by the county; the Board of Supervisors were temporarily restrained from proceed- ing in this matter; the case was heard in the Circuit Court and dis- missed, and in 1861 the county did for Saint Marie what it had done previous to township organization for Newton. These two covered wooden structures are the only considerable bridges in the county. There are some eight or ten bridges of some thirty feet in length over the smaller streams of the county, but on the whole the expense of bridges in the county may be said to be comparatively light.
RAILROADS.
Peoria, Decatur & Evansville .- Until 1876, Newton was an in- land village, and Jasper County subsidiary to Olney. The merchants found this their nearest shipping point, and wagoned their goods over fifteen or twenty miles of tedious road. From this point the mail was carried daily on horseback to Saint Marie and Newton. and the growth of these towns was absorbed by the prosperity of Olney. This state of things could not fail to arouse the dissatisfaction of business and observing men, but there were not wanting large num- bers who, while desiring a railroad, demonstrated to their own sat- isfaction that the country could not support any more than then existed. The construction of the Illinois Central left the south- castern corner of the State unprovided for and at disadvantage in competition with the central portion, and there was an effort made for a competing line as early as 1855. About this time a line of road was projected from Mattoon to Grayville on the Wabash River. 1 company was organized under a charter granted February 6, 1857, and some effort was made to construct the proposed road, but up to the beginning of 1876 nothing had been accomplished. During this year matters revived, and thirty miles of road out of ninety-three proposed, was graded. The friends of the road had not been entirely idle in the meanwhile, but it was a large undertaking at that time, and many discouragements were met. Contractor after contractor undertook the construction and failed; the enterprise depended prin- cipally upon local capitalists whose means hardly entitled them to
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
the name, and the people were not easily persuaded of the advantages of such a road. The discussion had proceeded so far in 1866, that it was proposed to submit the question of taking $100,000 in stock of the road to the people at a general election, but it was discovered that the charter did not provide for this. In March, 1867, the char- ter was so amended as to provide for subscription to the road's cap- ital stock by county courts. In 1866, $1.000 had been appropriated for the survey of the proposed route through Jasper County, and of this amount $722 was expended in this work. In the following December, in accordance with the amended charter, the proposition of subscribing $100,000 was again brought up, and in the spring of 1868 affirmed by the people. The money thus voted, however, was to be expended only on the construction of the road within the county, and the bonds to be issued as the work progressed. The first spike was driven on the Indiana division in 1871, but the work languished here until 1876. In the early part of this year the road was finally located through Newton, and late one Tuesday afternoon the work began here. Chas. Wakefield broke the first furrow for the grade, Fuller Nigh was the first to shovel the dirt into a wheel- barrow, " Uncle Bob " Leach had the Honor of dumping the dirt on the road-bed, and I. M. Shup made first payment on the work done. The payment was made in coin, and consisted of a silver three-cent piece which it was jocosely said he had carried since the Mexican war; and everybody helped to drink the keg of beer which was fin- nished for the occasion. The revival of the work in this year brought the road into Newton, and for a time this place constituted the northern terminus, with round-house and turn-table. In 1878, the road reached Mattoon, and about the same time Grayville.
It was a part of the original design to find an outlet through Indiana, and the Mount Vernon and Grayville Company was organ- ized. In March, 1872, the two companies were consolidated under the name of the Chicago & Illinois Southern Railroad Company. The Decatur, Sullivan and Mattoon Company had been organized under a charter granted in 1871, and was consolidated with the other two roads in 1872. On May 5, 1876, these consolidations were dissolved by order of the United States Court for the Southern District of Illinois. This left the Grayville & Mattoon with thirty miles of grade and without any through connection.
The Pekin, Lincoln & Decatur Railway Company was organized under a charter granted in 1870, and the road opened from Pekin to Decatur, 67.9 miles, in November, 1871, by its original owners. In
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
the following year it was leased to the Toledo, Wabash & Western Railway Company, by which it was operated until August, 1876, when it was sold under foreclosure sale. The road was subsequently extended from Pekin to Peoria, a distance of 9.2 miles, and opened for traffic March, 1878. This road then purchased the Decatur, Sul- livan & Mattoon and then the Grayville & Mattoon, the first train from Newton arriving in Mattoon on July 4 of that year. This road re-organized in 1880, under the name of the Peoria, Decatur & Evansville Railway Company, then possessed the property and fran- chise of the four corporations. The Mount Vernon & Grayville road existed only on paper. The subscription of Mount Vernon had been diverted to the building of a new court house, and the five miles of road which had been constructed had been abandoned. Under the new organization new life was infused [into the whole line. New bridges were constructed, new depots built; those parts of the grade shabbily built were re-built, and the Evansville division pushed and completed to its new terminus.
The experience of the people of Jasper County in securing this line of railroad was not such as to encourage them in building oth- ers. The work was prosecuted under the most discouraging circum- stances, and those who were concerned with its construction labored without the hope of reward. To this experience was added the pang of ingratitude on the part of the road. The usual ordinances were passed to maintain a passage for vehicles along highways crossing the track, which, after repeated violation, were enforced, and the company forced to pay some $600 as fines. This enraged the management of the road and Newton was dropped as a station. The depot was closed, the telegraph facilities removed and neither freight nor passengers were taken or left at the town. A spirited legal struggle was maintained, and the company, after a week or two of annoyance, forced to yield. Subsequently the company achieved a victory in another contest over the payment of the bonds subscribed. An abbreviated statement of the case is as follows, taken from the decision of the United States Supreme Court:
" The Grayville & Mattoon Railroad Company was incorpo- rated February 6, 1857, and on the first of March, 1867, its charter was amended so as to allow counties to subscribe to the stock and issue bonds in payment, if a majority of the voters of the county, at an election called by the County Court, should vote in favor of such a subscription. The county of Jasper, through which the road of the company ran, was under township organization, and its Board of
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
Supervisors called upon the voters of the county to vote at an eler- tion to be held on the seventh of April, 1868, whether or not a sub- scription of $100,000 should be made to the stock of the company by the county, payable in bonds of the county, to be issued as the work progressed, one-sixth of which were to fall due annually from the time they were put out. The election was held and resulted in a majority in favor of the subscription. At a meeting of the Board of Supervisors, January 23, 1863, the chairman was authorized to subscribe the stock as soon as it might legally be done. An act of the general assembly of the State, approved March 27, 1869 (Acts of 1869, vol. 3, p. 360) relating to this company, and to votes which had been taken for subscriptions to its stock, contained the following as section 3:
" That all elections held for the purpose of voting said stock, and the manner in which said stock was voted, are hereby legalized in all respects, and the stock to be subscribed in the manner the same was voted."
On the authority of these several acts and this election, the Board of Supervisors issued one hundred bonds of $1,000 cach.
The bonds fell due, some in 1877 and others in each year there- after, until and including the year 1883. It nowhere appears when the bonds were put in the hands of the Trustee, but none of them bore date prior to October 19, 1876.
At all the times when these several things were done there was in the county of Jasper a County Court as well as a Board of Super- visors.
Under authority of an act of the legislature, passed April 14, 1875, the Board of Supervisors called an election of the voters of the county, to be held on the third day of April, 1877, for the purpose of voting for or against funding the " bonds issued to the Grayville & Mattoon Railroad Company for the sum of $100,000, drawing ten per cent interest: said hundred bonds to be due in twenty years, and payable at the option of the county in ten years; said bonds to be payable semi-annually at the treasurer's office in Jasper County." At this election a majority of the voters were found to be in favor of the measure. Afterwards funding bonds were issued in exchange for old bonds.
*
After these bonds were put out the indebtedness of the county exceeded somewhat five per centum of the value of the taxable prop- erty ascertained by the last preceding assessment. The plaintiff
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
below, and defendant in error here, being the owner of coupons cut from some of the funded bonds falling due in May and November, 1878 and 1879, which were unpaid, brought this suit to recover them. He was the holder and in possession of a part or the whole of the original bonds when the funding took place, and took the funding bonds in exchange for such of the original bonds as he then held.
Upon this state of facts the court below gave judgment against the county. The case is now here by writ of error, and the single question is presented. whether the county made out a valid defense to the coupons sned on. In our opinion the county is estopped from setting up the alleged invalidity of the original bonds as a defense in this action. It is true the funding law only authorized the fund- ing of " binding and subsisting legal obligations," " properly author- ized by law," but no new bonds could be issued in lieu of old ones except on a vote of the people. All outstanding bonds were not to be taken /up in this way, but only such as were recognized by the people, acting together in their political capacity at an election for that purpose, as binding and subsisting legal obligations. After such a recognition the corporate authorities could make the ex- changes, but not before.
The law under which the original bonds were put out was suf- ficient. No complaint is made of any illegality in its provisions. The only objection is that there was a mistake in carrying it into execution. The election was called by the wrong corporate agency. The County Court should have brought the people together and not the Board of Supervisors. This, if there had been nothing more. would. under the rulings of the highest court of the State, made long before the vote was taken, render the bonds invalid. (Schuy- ler Co. rs. People, 25 III., 185.) It was for this reason undoubtedly that the Board of Supervisors, at their meeting at the election, authorized the subscription to be made and the bonds delivered in payment as soon as it might lawfully be done, and that the act to legalize the election was passed in 1869.
As was very properly said below by the learned Circuit Judge. " there must be an end of these contests and defenses some time or other." There must be a time when the people in their political capacity are concluded by their contracts as much as individuals, and we think that where the people of a county, at an election held according to law, authorize their corporate or political representa- tives to treat certain outstanding county obligations as " properly authorized by law " for the purpose of negotiating a settlement with
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
the holders, and the settlement which was contemplated has been made, all contests as to the validity of the obligations must be con- sidered as ended.
When, therefore, the people were called on to vote whether the old bonds should be funded, the facts they had to consider were these: A valid law authorizing the subscription and an issue of the bonds had been passed. The people at an election which had been irregu- larly called had voted to make subscription and issue bonds bearing ten per cent interest, and all payable within six years. An act had been passed to legalize the election, and under it the subscription which had been voted was made and bonds such as were contem- plated had been issued and were then outstanding in the hands of various parties. Whether these bonds were valid was, so far as any direct decisions were concerned, an open question, and certainly not free from doubt. Under these circumstances the question was directly put to the people of the county, in a manner authorized by law, whether they would recognize these bonds as " binding and subsist- ing legal obligations" and issue in lieu of them other bonds having twenty years to run and bearing seven per cent interest, instead of ten, and they by their votes said they would. There is no complaint of any illegality in this election or of fraud or imposition. So far as the record shows. the proposition to fund went from the county authorities to the bondholders, and not from the bondholders to the county. The facts were as well known to one party as the other. If the people intend to rely on their defenses to the old bonds, then was the time for them to speak and by their vote say they would not recognize them as being obligations. By voting the other way they, in effect. accepted them as legal and subsisting for the purpose of the proposed extension of time at reduced interest, and said to the holders if their proposition was accepted no question of illegal- ity would be raised. Their offer having been accepted they are now estopped from insisting upon an irregularity which they have by their votes voluntarily waived, with a full knowledge of the facts.
Danville, Olney & Ohio Rirer .- This company was organized under a charter granted March 10, 1869, and proposed to construct a road from the north bank of the Ohio River, in Massac County, Illi- nois, " thence northwardly to the city of Chicago, or such place from which an entrance may be effected, by construction or connection, and the line of railway to be located on such survey as may come within the range and purview of the charter of the company, about 340 miles." Considerable stock was subscribed to this enterprise
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
along its route. The townships of Grandville, Willow Hill and Saint Marie. each voted $30,000, but the construction was delayed. and June 30. 1876, there was but eight miles graded. In June. 1878, this eight miles of road, from Kansas to Westfield. was put in operation and the construction of the balance of the road languidly pushed. The work was subsequently revived, and in 1881, the line was con- pleted to Olney. which is the present terminus of the road. Grand- ville successfully resisted her subscription on the ground that the company did not comply with conditions on which the subscription was made. Willow Hill and Saint Marie would probably have been equally successful, but they did not contest the question. This road was originally built with narrow-gauge, but in 1882. when the company had fifty-seven miles in operation, changed the gauge. and extended it to Olney.
Indiana and Illinois Southern .- The " Narrow Gauge," " as it is popularly known, is the result of twenty years' agitation. AA char- ter was obtained about 1857. for a road to be called the Springfield. Effingham and Southeastern. The movement got little beyond the securing a charter until 1881, when under the auspices of this organ- ization the "Narrow Gauge" came to Newton. As projected, the line of road was to extend from Effingham, Illinois, to Hamilton, Ohio. The Illinois division extended from Effingham, Ill., to Sulli- van, Ind., a distance of seventy miles ; the Sullivan division, extended eastward through Indiana to the Ohio line, 165 miles, making'a total of 235 miles. The projected line passed through the following counties in the State: Owen, Greene, Brown, Monroe, Bartholo- mew, Decatur, Ripley and Dearborn, with the intention of pushing it forward to Hamilton, Ohio. In November. 1882, the Indiana and Illinois Southern Railway Company was organized "to construct a railway and acquire the Springfield, Effingham and Southeastern Railway." The plan of this company was to extend the road west- ward in Shelby County to a point on the Pittsburgh, Chicago and Saint Louis Road, and eastward to combine with the Bloomington road. This new company was formed of Boston capitalists, and the road was sold to them by the Receiver, but the court refused to con- firm the sale in order to protect the rights of the creditors of the road. It was subsequently sold to - Sturgis et al., of the con- struction company and has since fallen into the hands of J. B. Lyon, of Chicago. The eastern terminus is Swiss City, Ind., and while there have been rumors of its extension to Cincinnati and Saint Louis, there are no tangible evidences of such extension. A train each way
Joseph Picquet
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HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.
on each of the two divisions suffice for the traffic of the road. and while it proves a convenience for certain isolated villages, it is on the whole an aggravated disappointment.
Terre Haute & Southwestern .- Of late years Newton seems to be the center of the railroad cyclone. Scarcely a season passes without the regular charter. preliminary survey, and general felicitation upon the prospect of the railroad which is to bring metropolitan greatness to the quiet village of Newton. Of these transitory excitements. the T. H. & S. W. promises to be more permanent in its results. This road was originally chartered as the Terre Haute and Iron Mount- ain Railway, and in 1880, after lying dormant for years. the project was revived. The Times gives its history as follows: "This road was surveyed, subsidies were voted to it, and some work done towards Terre Haute, about eight years ago, since which time it has peacefully slumbered until recently, when it was again revived in Terre Haute, and a new surveying corps sent out. The old survey line made Newton a point, passing on down through our county in a southwest direction to Ingralrun, Clay County, and to Flora, thence on to Chester, opposite Cape Girardeau. Mo., where it connected with the Iron Mountain road. Newton is on a direct line from Terre Haute to Chester, but since the revivication of the road meetings have been held and committees appointed to wait on the authorities at Terre Haute, both in Robinson and Olney. Therefore. it was thought necessary for our people to hold a meeting and appoint a committee to wait upon the moving forces at Terre Haute, laying before them our inducements, and also learning what would be expected of us, else we might as a county and town be cheated out of a most valuable railroad line that properly belongs to us by virtue of our location, by our own lethargy and the enterprise of our neigh -. bors. "
The projected road is still occupying a good deal of public attention, and under date of June 18, 1883, a letter from one of those interested in the project. gives the following: " We located a line from Oblong to Annapolis, which is straight, and the finest line you ever saw. We are assured of the right of way and money to make the survey and set the county to work. There is a splendid coal bank on the line of the road: shaft sunk and coal being taken out. The vein is four feet thick, and choice coal only forty feet deep. We also strike the finest stone quarry in southern Illinois, both lime and sandstone. The stone and coal on this line alone will pay to build the road. besides being through the finest agricultural country in
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