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Roderic R. Busey remembers going to Chi- cago early in the 'thirties in company with his father. Mr. Busey drove a team of two yoke of oxen, his wagon being freighted with the produce of his farm, and returning with salt and other necessaries. At that time
them as low as two and one half cents. Supper, lodging and breakfast, with horse feed and stabling at a country inn, was held to be worth . 50 cents.
"No tax collector harrassed the honest farmer up to 1831."-Urbana Illinois Democrat, Decem- ber 21. 1867.
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
what was known as the "Kanawha salt," or that produced in the Virginia salt region, had about supplanted that produced in the Illi- nois Salines; and, instead of looking to the salt works upon the near by Salt Fork, the supply came from Chicago, to which point it found its way from Virginia. Mr. Busey says that, at the time of his visit, nearly all of the town of Chicago was upon the north side of the river.
Hon. Randolph C. Wright, whose residence in Champaign County began before it had a separate existence as a county, remembers, and tells with much interest, of a trip made by him in 1837 when he was about eight years old, to Chicago. The journey was made in the company of John W. Swisher and Elijah Hale, each of whom drove a team of horses attached to wagons loaded with chickens. The party habitually and from necessity camped out on the prairie or in the edge of the timber. All went well and satis- factorily until one night, just after dark, when, having turned out their horses to graze, with- out tethering or otherwise interfering with their freedom, and having eaten of a good sup- per cooked over a fire made from sticks gath- ered from the adjacent woods, a severe thun- der storm came up and gave an exhibition of its power in very severe detonations. So loud was one explosion that the horses became very much frightened and the whole herd stampeded in the direction of Danville, fifty miles away. In the midst of the storm the . two teamsters or owners of the cargoes, set off for the capture of the fugitive horses, leaving little "Ran," sitting upon the wagon tongue as sole guardian of the wagons and chickens. The terrors of the night were en- hanced by the howling of wolves, at first a single yelp in the distance, and increasing in volume, numbers and nearness to the camp every moment. At last there were at least a thousand, as Mr. Wright now avers, under and around the wagons, howling for a taste of the chickens. They would climb upon the whiffletrees and, with their forepaws upon the front endgate, deliver the most hideous yells to the prisoner in the wagon, for Ran., in default of a better and safer resort, had cov- ered himself with the bed-clothes on the top of the load, where, with a resignation always characteristic of him, he was repeating all the prayers he had ever learned at that date, for
deliverance from the conscienceless foe. His prayers were at last answered, for about two hours after the stampede the horsemen re- turned, having captured the runaways. Their coming frightened away the pack of wolves and brought out little Ran. from his cover, badly scared, but little hurt. The ravenous creatures got no chickens, but the scare caused by the visit is vivid now, after sixty-five years.
Chicago was reached in due time. Mr. Wright says it was then less in size than was Danville at that time. No streets were seen except that along the river, and sand-hills were everywhere in evidence. Their freight of poultry was traded for cash, salt, sugar and dry goods, and the party returned safely, after an absence of nearly a month.
William Sadorus related the story of a sim- : ilar trip to Chicago in 1840, in the big Penn- sylvania wagon, loaded with sixty bushels of wheat. This trip was made by way of Trick- · el's Grove, on the Middle Fork, and Bourbon- nais.
Before 1840 small stores had been opened at Urbana and Homer, and these, from that time, became their points of trade. When a postoffice was established at Urbana, it be- came their postoffice. Not until the opening of the Great Western Railroad-now the Wa- bash-about 1855, was the postoffice bearing Mr. Sadorus' name established near him in the town. laid off by his son, William.
Urbana was their voting place until the es- tablishment of Sadorus precinct in 1854. Mr. ' Sadorus proudly said that, at their first elec- tion there, the voters were all Democratic but one, and might, perhaps have remained so, but that Dr. Somers converted Ike and John Miller to the Republican party in 1856, and thus the Republicans got a foothold in their timber.
When the County of Champaign was estab- lished in 1833, courts were opened in due time, and Mr. Sadorus, as the record will show, took part in the early proceedings. He well re- membered the early Judges, Harlan, Treat 'and 'Davis, and the early Sheriffs, Saulsbury, Stevenson, Cox, Ater, Lewis and Stidham.
No schools were opened in that settlement until 1839, when a man named Hooten taught a family school in Mrs. Sadorus' kitchen for a short time. Mr. Sadorus sent his son, William, to a school at Georgetown, Vermilion County, and, while he was there, the surveyor was en- gaged in platting and laying out that town. It
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WOMAN'S BUILDING- UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
LIBR RY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
afterwards became the seat of the Georgetown Seminary and quite an educational center. Henry Sadorus, Jr., was also sent to a school ten miles this side of Danville.
The first public school in the settlement was taught by John Hamilton, in 1840, in a log school house built in the upper end of the grove about one mile north of the village. It is said this school was taught before a floor had been laid or a window put in the house, and before it had been "chinked and daubed."
William Sadorus says that the first sermon preached and the first religious exercises held in Sadorus Grove were conducted by Peter Cartwright, but he could not give the date. Cartwright was followed by Arthur Bradshaw, who was appointed to the Urbana Mission in 1839. His field embraced the territory for a long distance down the Okaw and Ambraw. The settlers prepared a set of puncheon benches, which were hauled from house to house where appointments were made for Mr. Bradshaw. The timber was of linn, and so was light and easily handled. These appoint- ments were not very frequent, but were. well attended.
In 1838 Mr. Henry Sadorus built for himself and family a very pretentious permanent home, after having lived in their cabin home fourteen years. It was a two-story frame building, about fifty feet front by twenty feet deep, attached to which was an "L" of con- siderable size. It had for its support big granite boulders gathered from the field. The siding was hauled from Coal Creek, Ind., while cther portions of the sawed lumber was brought from Moses Thomas' mill near Hom- er, and some was brought from Heptonstall's mill, a short distance below Urbana. The house was roomy and afforded the host better facilities for extending that hospitality to strangers for which he was noted. This home, and that of William Rock, three miles farther south, were, in their time, the best on the Creek, and were often the scenes of social gatherings and always the seat of a generous hospitality.
The first milling facilities enjoyed by the settlement were a choice between a mill in
Morgan County, Ill., and mills beyond the Wabash River in Indiana. These were, in part, supplied by a horse-mill made by Mr. Sadorus in 1830. It was made of dressed boulders and run by horse power. It would grind only a bushel of corn in two hours or four or five bushels in a day. It could grind, but could not bolt the grain, but this was bet- ter than to go one hundred miles east or west to mill. They subsequently resorted to John Brownfield's mill, in the Big Grove, and to Thomas' mill at Homer.
In the course of time here, as everywhere else in our country, the seclusion of the fron- tier gave way to the forces of civilization, and the iron-horse plowed its way through Sa- dorus' Grove, about on the line of the "Nar- rows" adopted by Sadorus and his fellow pioneer, Joe Smith, as the line between their possessions, and across the land entered by William Sadorus in 1834. In the period of the State Internal Improvement craze in 1837, a line was run through the grove for this road, about half a mile north of the present loca- tion of the line, but nothing more came of it until eighteen years afterwards, when in the fullness of time, the Wabash Road was built; and now its thirty trains a day thunder through the sylvan shades where the Sadorus family, almost eighty years ago, first broke the soli- tude which had prevailed since creation's morn.
Mr. William Sadorus lived to be a patriarch of almost ninety years of age, passing his en- tire life in a home not far from where the family pitched its camp on April 9, 1824, while his brother, Henry, younger by twelve years, lived and died a mile away. A dense popula- tion has taken possession of the adjacent tim- ber and prairies and elbowed the hunters and their game therefrom.
The old pioneer, Henry Sadorus, Sr., died July 18, 1878, aged almost ninety-five years, and now, with his faithful wife who died thir- ty years before him, sleeps in the little ceme- tery near his home, but immediately upon the banks of the stream he loved so well and so long. His name is borne by his township and the village and will never be forgotten.
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
CHAPTER XVII.
LIFE IN THE NEW COUNTRY. (Continued.)
THE COMING OF THE FIRST BUSEY FAMILY-SELEC- TION OF A HOME-VIEW FROM THE NEW HOME- ENTRY OF LANDS-COMING OF ISAAC BUSEY AND OTHERS-VISITS OF INDIANS-RECOLLECTIONS OF MRS. STAMEY-GOING TO MILL-NO STORE-BUSI- NESS TRIPS TO CHICAGO-MERRY MAKINGS-WED- DINGS-SICKNESS-DEATH OF MATTHEW BUSEY.
In further exhibiting to the reader the phases of the life of the pioneer as lived and experienced upon the ground where we, of today, live a different life and enjoy other and higher privileges, we may now look into the experiences of another family, which set- tled later and within a short distance of the center of the county. Few men in point of time were upon the ground before Matthew Busey, whose story is here told as given to the writer a few years since by his daughter, Mrs. Stamey, now deceased.
Champaign County, in 1828, was almost in the condition in which Nature left it when it came from the hand of that Wonder-worker. The green grass and fragrant flowers of the prairie waved in the breezes as tliey had done for ages before, and the timber groves remained undisturbed, except for the occasional in- fringements of these pioneers of the pioneer -the so-called "squatters"-upon the public lands. Before that year but 160 acres of our lands had been entered from the Government. Not a dozen families lived within the bounds of what is now Sadorus, Sidney and Urbana Townships, while all other territories were unvexed except by Indian trails.
We have taken this date for the reason that it marks the entry of one of the first families coming here-one which, through all the intervening sixty-seven years, has re- mained attached to the soil-that of Matthew Busey.
In the early part of the year 1828, Matthew Busey, then a resident of Shelby County, Ky., having heard of the richness of Illinois, but having no particular part in view, loaded all his earthly goods into two wagons drawn by ox-teams, and turned his face towards the great expanse of prairie on the other side of the Ohio River. His family then consisted of
eight children, the eldest being but fourteen years of age, and the mother who was laid to rest but a few years since. The party was ferried over the Ohio at Louisville into the State of Indiana, and from the east side of the Wabash to the west side at a point below Eugene, from which point they struck out for . the land of promise-the great verdant prai. ries of Illinois. They first stopped with a set- tler whom they found at Linn Grove by the name of Straley, a squatter there. Here Mr. Busey left his family while he prospected in the neighborhood. Mijamin Byers, a Ken- tucky neighbor who came with him, bought out Straley and settled at Linn Grove.
After an examination of the lands and loca- tions for the space of one week, he determined upon the point now known as the "Nox farm," two miles east of Urbana, on the Danville road. Here on the north end of the west half of the northeast quarter of Section 15, he found one Sample Cole, who, with his fam- ily, occupied a cabin there erected, with no other title than that of possession; for neither he nor any of his neighbors had then entered a foot of land around the Big Grove. At that time only five families lived in what was known as the "Big Grove Settlement," these being the families of Runnell Fielder, who has the credit of having been the first inhabi- tant; Sample Cole; William Tompkins, who lived on the lot where is now Halberstadt's mill; Philip Stanford, who lived on the Roberts farm north of the grove; and Thomas Rowland, who lived on Section 1, Urbana. No one had settled on the Sangamon. Henry Sadorus was already at Sadorus' Grove, the squatter Straley at Linn Grove and William Nox at Sidney.
The many attractions of the Cole claim took the fancy of Mr. Busey, and he bought out the squatter and, the next day, removed his fam- ily to the humble home, where he lived to the day of his death in 1863. (R. R. Busey, one of the sons of . Matthew Busey, remembers that his father paid Cole $100 for his claim. )
Four weeks on the road had given the pio- neers an appetite for a place to be called home, and they were not over captious as to what were the qualities of the house, else they could not have taken up with the Cole cabin, for it is unnecessary to say that it had none of the comforts of a modern home. It was built of logs-or rather of poles-such as could
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
be handled by few hands; covered with boards split from the trees near by; its floor was of split "puncheons"; windows it had none; its fire-place was of sticks and dirt or clay; and its door was made of split-boards also. But what a landscape surrounded it! On the north was as fine a grove of oaks, hickory, sugar maple and other useful timber as any man ever looked upon, which stretched from the door six miles away; and, in every other direction stretched the finest prairie view that ever greeted the eye of man in any clime. This vast expanse of wealth was inhab- ited only by wild beasts useful to man. To all of this magnificent domain our pioneers had as good a title as any living man, and it was all within their reach at the small sum of $1.25 per acre. Go, today, and stand upon the prairie rise, a short distance east of the Cole homestead, and look over the landscape that greeted the eye of Mr. Busey at that time, and imagine it freed from all of the impedi- menta put upon it during the intervening time, for the convenience and profit of man; and you will not wonder that our pioneer was in love with the place at first sight. No more beautiful sight ever opened before human eyes.
Although the owner of the precarious title of Sample Cole, Mr. Busey seemed in no hurry to secure the government patent; nor did he fear that his claim would be jumped, for not until December 5, 1829, did he apply to the Land Office for the perfection of his title, and became the owner, in fee simple, of his new home. The rush for government land had not then set in. His entry was preceded by few in the county.
Following Mr. Busey came his relative, Isaac Busey, from the same county in Ken- tucky, who, with his son-in-law, Isaac G. Beck- ley, came the next year but one, and bought out William Tompkins, who, on February 4, 1830, had entered the lands in Sections 8 and 17, Urbana, where he had lived for a number of years as a squatter. Beckley settled on the southwest quarter of Section 5, Urbana.
Within the next few years the settlers in- creased in numbers rapidly, and the names of the
Brownfields, Webbers, Trumans, Robertsons, Isham Cook, James T. Roe-also a son-in-law of Isaac Busey-Alexander Hol- brook, Nicholas Smith, Charles Busey, and many others from the State of Kentucky, with
Martin Rinehart, Anderson Rice, Charles Woodward, John Moss, and Elias Stamey from other States, were added to the settlement. George Bartley also settled on the creek near where the Fielders lived. Moses Deere came soon after the Buseys, and he was followed by James Huss and Moses Argo, all of whom settled in the Salt Fork timber above where Sidney now is-and all of whom (long since dead) left a numerous progeny to perpetuate their names and to bless society. Charles Woodward came about 1830, entered the west half of the northwest quarter of Section 8, Urbana, and built a cabin where the old fair ground was.
In 1830, Isham Cook also came from Ken- tucky, stopped for a while at Linn Grove and meantime bought out a squatter named Bullard, who had stopped on the west half of the southwest quarter of Section 5, Urbana, now known as the Dean farm, and erected a cabin for the use of his family. He entered the land on July 1, of that year. When nearly ready to remove the family to his new home, word came to Matthew Busey that his old Kentucky neighbor, Cook, was lying dead at the Linn Grove. He at once went there with his own team and moved the family with its deceased head to the new cabin on the west side of the Big Grove. The goods of the family and the family-living and dead-were unloaded at the new home. The few settlers in the neigh- hood assembled the next day, and, without form or ceremony, deposited the remains of the dead Cook in a grave near the home. The lands have since then passed through the hands of many successive owners, but the place of interment, though unmarked by stone or monument, is still pointed out and re- spected.
About the same time there came also from Kentucky, one Hodges, the father of Mrs. Brumley, and of Mrs. William Gill, both of whom died in Urbana, not many years since. Mr. Hodges also stopped at Linn Grove and bought out the claim of Mijamin Byers, and made his home at that sightly and attractive spot. He, too, survived but a short time.
At the time of the coming of Matthew Busey, this county was the occasional abode, for hunting purposes mainly, of many Indians of the Pottawatomie tribe. They came from their own lands in the north, staid sometimes a season or, perhaps, through the winter, hunted
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
the game and undoubtedly raised corn here, for as late as when our pioneers came there were marks of their rude cultivation on the site of the city of Urbana, and upon other locations. They had some years prior thereto ceded to the United States Government all their rights to the soil, and had no right to come even temporarily here; but, as their visits were always friendly and sometimes helpful to the settlers, no objection to their presence was made until the time of the raid made by Black Hawk in the northern part of the State, when some alarm was felt among the scattered settlers in this county. After the conclusion of peace, following the raids of Black Hawk, it is not remembered that any of the Pottawatomies ever came back to this country.
The Busey home was often visited by the red men, who always came hungry, craving food from the settlers. At first the family were frightened by their presence; but when they became acquainted with them and the craven and cowardly spirit of the remnant of the race, they would not hesitate to order them out of the cabin and away from the neighborhood when their presence became dis- tasteful. Among these people was their leader, called "Old Soldier," or as he has caused his name to be subscribed to treaties with the whites, "Shemaugua." This man's intelligence was superior to that of most of his people, and he well appreciated the advantages pos- sessed by the whites on account of their civ- ilization. He claimed this as his native coun- try, and could relate to the settlers many in- cidents in its history; among others, he remem- bered the winter of the "deep snow," when, as he said, the snow fell to the depth of sev- eral feet. To him may also be ascribed the name borne by the creek known as the "Bone Yard Branch," which meanders through Ur- bana from the west. He told the early set- tlers, that its banks had always been covered with the bones of many animals, some of which were left there by the camping parties, while many of them were the bones of animals which perished of hunger during the big snow.
The last considerable party of these people that came here, came in the fall of 1832, or early in the winter of that year. They num- bered several hundred, and formed their camp near the John Stewart farm, two and a half miles north of Urbana. Here they remained
all of the winter, and, in the following spring, some of them remained long enough to raise a crop of corn on the land now occupied by Col. S. T. Busey as a homestead. Of this party "Shemaugua" was one, and the direct- ing spirit
Mrs. Nancy D. Stamey, the eldest of the children of Matthew Busey, until recently among us, with a memory undimmed by age, from whom I have received many of the in- cidents of this narrative, well remembers the visits of these people to her father's cab- in, and the terror their coming brought to the mother and children, when their visits oc- curred in the absence of the father. But they inflicted upon the settlers no harm, and finally retired from these beautiful plains, the homes of their ancestors for ages, as well as their hunting grounds, with regret and grief.
The cabin home of the Buseys, bought from the squatter Cole, did duty as such for sev- eral years; but, after the Black Hawk War, and after Mr. Busey had entered nearly a section of land in Sections 9, 10 and 15, in Urbana Township, he built for himself a more pretentious home, just across the section line in Section 10. The house was built of hewed logs, and stood for many years on the site of the Nox homestead. As there were no mills for the manufacture of lumber, resort was had to the primitive mode of manufac- turing that necessary article known as "whip- sawing." When it is said that logs were sawed lengthwise into plank of the required thickness, by hand, the reader will want to know no more of the art. But logs were then sawed into lumber sufficient for the fin- ishing of this house, in a manner to make it the most considerable dwelling in the western part of the County of Vermilion. In like man- ner, also, were produced' the boards for the loft of the Webber cabin, erected, about the same time, but a mile or so west of the Busey home.
When Mr. Busey first came to the country there were no mills in which to reduce the grain of the settlers to meal or flour, if we except, perhaps, the hand-mills of Fielder and Stanford. These were poor excuses, and the lack of milling facilities compelled the settlers to go beyond the Wabash River to have their . grain ground. Mr. Busey, as is related, often had resort to the Indiana mills, and going by the prairie roads and with ox-teams, his expe-
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
ditions were of no little importance, and con- sumed considerable time. Subsequently John Brownfield · built a horse-mill, and more. re- cently a water-mill on the creek, below Ur- bana, which, in their turn, relieved the wants of the settlers. The mill of Moses Thomas, at Old Homer, succeeded by the improved mill on the same site by M. D. Coffeen, like- wise proved great conveniences to the peo- ple, until the age of steam, represented by William Park, invaded this prairie country, when hand-mills, horse-mills, water-mills and all other makeshifts were retired to the mid- dle ages.
As early as 1830, there were no stores in what is now Vermilion and Champaign Coun- ties, if we except the Indian traders' posts, and like temporary shifts. Mr. Busey and his neighbors at that time, and for some years after that date, were compelled to make pil- grimages to Chicago for the purpose of sup- plying many of their wants. At that time there was no Wabash and Erie Canal upon which to float the surplus products of the country, and, in turn, to bring in the mer- chandise necessary to the settlers to be pro- cured at ports upon that great waterway, as in subsequent years; so these long journeys to the lake ports were a necessity. They were made generally in company of other settlers, from the adjoining settlements, and bore the products of the county, such as bacon, grain, fruits and other supplies. Some- times quite a caravan would be collected in this way, forming a merry lot of campers on the way. The produce thus taken to market would be exchanged for salt, flour, sugar, cot- ton and other merchandise, and the caravan would turn face to the south from the little me- tropolis, then, as now, the entre-pot for the great Northwest. Chicago at an early day, from its position on the lake, wielded its commercial scepter over Illinois, as now.
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