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Elsewhere a partial showing of the cost of reclaiming the wet and overflowed lands of Champaign County has been made. The change from fields broken by uncultivated sloughs, as they appeared as late as 1876, to what is seen today, has been produced by the outlays made as there seen, and by private outlays as great or greater.
Most of those who bought lands of the Illi- nois Central Railroad Company in this county, were men of small means, and many of them, in addition to this hindrance, were also men of limited experience as farmers and of great expectations, induced in most cases by the redolent representations sent out by the Company in the form of circulars and adver- tisements.
It will be needless to say to an Illinois read- er of any experience or observation, that this class of purchasers, in a majority of cases and under the adverse surroundings above spoken of, met with sore disappointments. Lack of experience, wet lands, sickness, poorly fenced fields and, in some cases, early frosts so disheartened many of our new neighbors on the prairie, that they turned their backs upon what they had fondly hoped was to be their land of promise, and again sought their Eastern homes. (A severe frost on August 9, 1863, ruined the corn crop of Champaign County to an extent which made the importa- tion of seed corn a necessity in the spring of 1864.) Not so with all, however, Many, provoked by failures, challenged their reverses of fortune to do their worst, resolutely pushed forward and won success.
The breaking out of the War of the Rebellion called from many of the new farms-partly paid for-their owners, who exchanged the contest carried on by them with adverse sur- roundings in their prairie homes, for confiicts
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
with their country's enemies-a contest more sanguinary, but requiring little more of courage and fortitude than the former. Many of this class never returned to take up the battle of life here, but, if spared to honorable discharge, sought out other fields and occupations.
The records of deeds for the lands sold by the Illinois Central' Railroad Company in very many cases, show the deeds not to have been made to the original purchaser, but to some assignee of his. In most cases of assignment of certificates of purchase, or contracts, the transfer was due to some of the causes enum- erated above, which overtook the purchaser and caused him to give up the contest.
It will always be said to the credit of the officers and managers of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, that it arbitrarily can- celled few of the original certificates issued to purchasers of its lands. Failures to meet the terms of purchase by the buyer, though a sufficient cause for a cancellation of his con- tract under its terms, was rarely followed by drastic measures; but great leniency, as a rule, was observed towards all purchasers by that corporation. Notwithstanding this, many sold their claims and gave up the contest. Few of those who began life on "railroad land" and won the hard contest remain to enjoy their triumphs and to see lands, cheaply rated at the beginnings, now sought after at the high- est prices.
The pre-emption laws of the United States, though in force in Illinois in some of their various forms since 1813, had very little effect upon the settlement of public lands in Cham- paign County, until the supply of these lands had been nearly exhausted, when many, desir- ing lands but not being able at the time to pay for them, or not being able on account of the closing of the Land Office, to complete their entries, availed themselves of these Federal enactments to secure for themselves homes. The years between 1855 and 1857 saw many pre-emptions in Champaign County, and also saw many contests for the lands between the pre-emptors and other claimants-the latter for the most part being speculators, or men whose object in entering the land was only financial gain, rather than to utilize it as a home.
All sales by the Government were condi- tioned that the same had not been pre-empted; and, where the claimant under the pre-emp-
tion laws, made satisfactory proof of his resi- dence upon the land and of his compliance with the provisions of the law, any sale of the land to others was cancelled. This condition raised many sharp contests between claiming pre- emptors and speculators, which were not in all cases terminated by the investigation held before the officers of the Land Office, but many found their way into the State and Federal Courts. The controversy was sharp for a time and aroused no little public interest throughout the county. Sentiment every- where favored the pre-emptor, and the "land sharks," as the purchasers were called, with very offensive adjectives added to empha- size and make the term more opprobrious, rarely dared show themselves in the neighbor- hood of their entries.
It is a fact well remembered that the "actual residence" required to be proven by the pre- emptor was often of a farcical and unreal character, as would appear from the kind of buildings and enclosures relied upon as evi- dence of possession, and of the acts of owner- ship by him relied upon. His dwelling was often a mere shack, fences unreal and his broken prairie a myth. All the same, the pre- emptor was favored by public sentiment and won out finally. The speculator, who was gen- erally foreign to the locality, lost.
In many cases where the pre-emptor only cared for the money he could make out of his claim, or was weak-kneed and dreaded a con- flict with a power the strength of which was to him unknown and the result uncertain, compromises were effected whereby the spec- ulator got the land and the pre-emptor re- ceived a small money compensation. A decision of the highest Federal Court was finally reached upon a test case taken there, which concluded the controversy, so far as all con- tested claims not already abandoned were con- cerned. (1) John Roughton, who was one of the leading contestants on the part of the pre- emptors, had located upon the northeast quar- ter of Section 27 in Ludlow Township, and was among the successful litigants. He re- ceived a patent from the United States Gov- ernment for his holding as a reward for a
(1) For the main facts relating to the Preemp- tion Law in Champaign County, the writer is in- debted to a paper read by John Roughton, Esq., before the Old Settlers' Society of the county, some years since.
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
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genuine attempt to comply with the law and the courage to defend his acts; and now, in his old age and after nearly half a century, he resides upon the land, perhaps the only one of his class to show such enduring evidences of the good faith of his declarations. His resi- dence there has been broken only by his "three years or during the war" service for his coun- try.
Another law of Congress which figured to a considerable extent in the settlement of Champaign County, was the act approved, August 4, 1854, commonly known as the "Graduation Law." By its terms the prices of all public lands remaining unsold were reduced and graded according to the periods in which they had been in market. Those which had been in market ten years or upwards, were reduced to one dollar per acre; those fifteen years or upwards, to seventy-five cents; those twenty years or upwards, to fifty cents; those twenty-five years or upwards, to twenty-five cents; and those which had been upon the market for thirty years or upwards, to twelve and one-half cents per acre. Under this statute many obtained cheap lands and made for themselves good homes; as, at that date, there were many tracts in the county which, owing to their remote location, or to some other quality, had either been rejected by the home seeker or overlooked by the speculator. Most of these tracts came under the two latter clauses; and it is a fact of his- tory that some of the lands of this county, now marketable at one hundred dollars per acre, were sold at twelve and one-half or twenty- five cents per acre by the Government, in its effort to close out a "job lot" of its public lands.
Reference has been made in another chap- ter to the lands situated in Champaign County known as "swamp lands," and to their char- acter and the work of their reclamation. The great extent of lands of this stripe was, with- out doubt, one of the greatest hindrances in the way of the earlier settlement and develop- ment. Such a thing as their artificial drain- age was unthought of by the earlier seekers after profitable lands for entry, as well as by those who made homes within the county. That land was flat and wet from overflow from neighboring high land, was enough to condemn it and to cause it to be ignored by by all. All early comers seeking land entries
for speculation, after all the timber lands were taken, made their selections from the high ridges and naturally drained lands. An exam- ination of the earliest entries of the lands of the county will invariably show them to be of lands with sufficient natural incline to afford natural drainage. No one would have any other kind of land. So generally was this true throughout the States containing public lands, that, to encourage their sale and drainage, Congress, on September 28, 1850, passed an act by the terms of which all swamp and over- flowed lands were donated to the States wherein situated-ostensibly to enable the States to construct the necessary drains and levees to reclaim the same from overflow. By an act of the General Assembly of Illinois of June 22, 1852, the lands so granted to the State were, in turn, granted to the counties where situated, "for the purpose of construct- ing the necessary levees and drains to reclaim the same." It is needless to say, that the expressed purpose of these grants was never carried out; but the proceeds of the sales of these. lands were wholly diverted to other public uses, leaving it for the owners of these ·and other lands, under the provisions of other laws, but with funds paid by themselves, to reclaim them. Before the year 1870 all these lands had been sold by the agents of the county at prices averaging little above the Government price of one dollar and twenty- five cents per acre, and are now the most valuable lands in the county.
By the provisions of Section six of the Act Y of Congress of April 18, 1818, the sixteenth section of each and every Congressional Town- ship in the State of Illinois, was granted to the State for the use of the inhabitants of the township where situated, for the use of schools. The effect of this law was to give to Champaign County more than eighteen thousand acres of its lands for school pur- poses; and all this land it owned as a trus- tee at its organization. Unwise legislation on the part of the State permitted the sale of these lands, instead of their being sacredly held in accordance with the spirit of the act granting them. The effect of this law was the early sale of all lands of that character, at low prices, and the loss by bad loans of much of the fund realized from the sale; so that now the benefit realized by the schools of the county from this munificent grant is a
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
mere pittance, compared with a probable an- nual income of one hundred thousand dollars, had the lands remained unsold in accordance with the spirit of the grant.
Intimately connected with the progress of the county during its existence, has been the general financial condition of the whole country during that period. No country can make material progress, no matter what may be its natural advantages, unaided by a sound circulating medium, in harmony with that of the world with which it makes its exchanges.
Soon after the organization of the county, the State of Illinois, by the nearly unanimous vote of the members of the General Assembly, entered upon a general system of internal im- provements, which included not only the con- struction of a commercial water-way connect- ing the Illinois River with Lake Michigan, but the building of a system of railroads within the State, and the improvement of nav- igation of the large rivers of the State. The enterprise had in it so much of folly and so little wisdom, that it completely collapsed inside of four years, leaving the State without credit and with a debt of $12,000,000 to carry -for payment was then impossible. But a small fraction of the lands of the State had then been entered and were taxable, and less than 500,000 inhabitants were within the State to bear the burden. Added to this, all the banks of the State suspended specie pay- ment about that time, and the whole country, in 1837, passed under one of the severest financial reverses known to history. So the new county was born to a childhood of pov- erty entailed by the parent State.
Wise legislation and discreet management on the part of the State had hardly restored its credit when, in 1857, the so-called stock security banks of the State-of which there were many-became discredited, so that their issues were rejected everywhere beyond the limits of the State, and were under suspicion at home. It needed only a national distur- bance of some kind to entirely overthrow the whole system; and this came with the insur- rection in the Southern States in 1861, the bonds of the rebellious commonwealths, in most cases, being the only security upon which the currency rested. The hostile guns of the Confederate States were the final knell of the whole Illinois currency, and all of its banks, not predicated upon the bonds
of loyal States, were wound up by the State Auditor.
Champaign County had but one bank, the Grand Prairie Bank of Urbana,(1) a bank of issue and deposit, with a branch in West Urbana called the "Cattle Bank," where de- posits were received and exchange sold. The issue of this bank was not large and was held by the public generally, and its deposits being small, its misfortune did not add largely to the local embarrassment. The people of the county, however, suffered in common with the whole country, and it goes without saying that the early years of the war of 1861-65 were years of great financial suffering every- where. In 1861 and 1862 corn brought but ten cents per bushel of sixty pounds, and all produce of the farmer held but a relative value. War and war news was talked of upon the streets and our patriotic young farmers laid aside the hoe and the scythe for the sword and the musket. The farms and the shops were exchanged for the military camp and the march; homes were broken up and farms deserted; shops, offices and stores were closed, and society here became more disorganized than could have followed any calamity other than that which the coun- try had to meet-the attempt upon the life of the nation.
The period was not one which favored debt- paying or the purchase and improvement of farms. The towns and villages came to a · standstill, and public improvements of every kind ceased. A deathly paralysis seized upon every movement looking to progress, and either stilled it forever or postponed until the cloud of war had passed away.
(1)"Grand Prairie Bank. This is the name of an institution about to be organized in this place under the general banking law of the State. The affairs of the bank will be presided over by W. N. Coler, Esq., and Mr. T. S. Hubbard will fill the post of cashier. With such expert financiers and thorough business men, we think the "Grand Prairie Bank" will become useful to the com- munity to the highest degree.
"It is flattering to our citizens to witness the increase of business in our town and vicinity. Only a little while ago and we had no more need of a banking institution than we now have of an armory, but so rapid has been the increase of business of all kinds that of necessity now we are to have one. The bank, we can assure the public, is to be no 'wild-cat' institution, but one originated by our best citizens at home, and calculated in every way to beget confidence."- Urbana Union, February 7, 1856.
"We are happy to inform our readers that the Grand Prairie Bank is now open and doing busi- ness. The bills will be issued in a few days,"-Id. March 6, 1856.
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LIBRARY OF THE
BINNER WELLS TO.
GREEN STREET, THROUGH THE CAMPUS-UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
CHAPTER XXIV.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL MATTERS IN THE COUNTY -URBANA SEMINARY-HOMER SEMINARY-MRS. FLETCHER'S SCHOOLS - TECHNICAL EDUCATION DISCUSSED IN THE STATE-CONGRESSIONAL ACTION -PROPOSITION TO BUILD A SEMINARY IN THIS COUNTY - LOCAL DISCUSSION AND EFFORT- BUILDING OF SEMINARY-THE. WAR PERIOD NEWSPAPER COMMENT ON SEMINARY ENTER- PRISE - STEPS LEADING' TO LOCATION' OF THE UNIVERSITY AT URBANA-PROPOSITION TO UTILIZE SEMINARY BUILDING-DR. C. A. HUNT- BOARD OF SUPERVISORS TAKE HOLD-EFFORT OF 1865 AND ITS DEFEAT-REPORT OF LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE-PREPARATIONS FOR FUTURE WORK- C. R. GRIGGS, ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE-PROPOSI- TION OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY-OPPOSITION- SUCCESS.
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As has been seen in former chapters, Cham- paign County was slow in the establishment of schools, certainly not for the reason that schools were not appreciated or their need not felt by the pioneers, but primarily for the reason that no general law providing for their establishment and maintenance was in exist- ence. The fact that, in all of the settlements log structures were early provided for the accommodation of schools where the primary branches were taught for a few months each year, both the buildings and the instruction being provided by the voluntary action of the pioneer settlers, furnishes satisfactory proof that the value and necessity of some degree of education were well appreciated, and that better facilities would be availed of when within reach.
Our pioneers, some of whom could neither read nor write, did not turn their backs upon nor disregard the advantages to their chil- dren of mental training. Long before the adop- tion of the free school system in Illinois, there grew up, in most of the county-seats of the State, and in many cases in other important towns, seminaries of learning of a respecta- ble order, where young men might be prepared for college. Danville had two seminaries, which, to some extent, owed their existence to sectarian rivalry; Georgetown, Paris, Marshall and Shelbyville each had one.
As early as 1852 a movement was initiated
in Urbana for the establishment of such an institution. A board of trustees was appointed and an organiation, in a legal form, effected under the name of the "Urbana Male and Female Seminary," under which liberal sub- scriptions were made to the building fund by citizens in all parts of the county. The insti- tution was nominally under the patronage and control of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but its establishment was encouraged by citi- zens of other churches and by men of no church relations.
James S. Busey, who laid out an addition to Urbana in 1853, generously gave an entire block therein as a site for the seminary, which is now occupied by the public school known as the Oregon Street School. Early in 1854 ground was broken and the foundation laid for a building in size about 40 by 60 feet. Under great discouragements for the lack of funds with which to pay for labor and material, the progress of the building was slow until the fall of 1855, when it was completed-a hand- some two-story building. In the upper part was a large assembly room and in the lower several recitation rooms.
Rev. John Miller, an accomplished and suc- cessful educator from Kentucky, was brought here to take charge of the new enterprise and the school was opened under very favorable conditions, with a patronage of many bright young people from Champaign and other coun- ties. Not half a year had elapsed when Dr. Miller died, leaving the management of the new school to others, which necessarily proved very embarrassing and injured its prospects not a little.
The next year Prof. A. M. Wheeler, from one of the New England States, took charge of the institution, being succeeded a year later by Rev. L. Janes-both being experienced and successful teachers. A debt incurred in the con- struction of the building still encumbered the school and threatened its overthrow. The patronage was insufficient to justify the em- ployment of an adequate teaching force, and these adverse conditions made necessary the resort to some measures other than those in hand.
Subsequent to the origin of the scheme for building and equipment of the seminary, the General Assembly had enacted the Free-School Law, and it was rapidly superseding all other primary schools in all parts of the State. In
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
Champaign County Thomas R. Leal, an enthusiastic educator from the State of New York, was, during the second year of the new law (1857), chosen County Superintendent of Schools to supersede the old order of things and the old officers. He at once took up the work of the reorganization of the schools of the county under the law, and it become apparent that the new order of things would not only install a new system of educational facilities, but would supplant the old and, with the old, the many seminaries which had come into existence to meet the demands of the youth for better schools. The result was, that the people of Urbana voted to tax the school dis- trict $5,000, to enable it to accept the offer of the trustees of the Seminary to convey the building and grounds to the common school corporation, to be used as a free school.(1) The transition was easy and natural, and for- ever terminated the existence of the Urbana Male and Female Seminary, the authorities of which were enabled to honorably discharge every debt and retire from business. This event not only marked the end of the Semi- nary, but the beginning of the free school sys- tem in the county.
A similar fate befell a very respectable semi- nary at Homer, built by private subscription, but which also became a free school under the new law. So all the other seminaries spoken of finally gave way to the new order of things and were superseded by the free system.
Mrs. Mary A. Fletcher, a very accomplished educator, came to West Urbana about 1855, from one of the Southern States, and opened a young ladies' school, which was well patron- ized for several years and quite popular. It was finally merged into an incorporated female academy, which, about 1867, took possession of the old church building discarded by the
(1)"Educational .- The citizens of this place voted on Thursday last in favor of purchasing the Urbana Male & Female Seminary to be occupied by the free schools. It is well the step was taken, as it would inevitably become obsolete as soon as a vigorous system of graded schools is established. It was voted to raise by tax $5,000 for this purpose, and the further sum of $2.500 to be used in pur- chasing a lot and building a house in the east part of town, to accommodate the lower de- partment of the Union School. We prophesy that, whoever happens around Urbana in two years from the present time, will hear of a well regulated Union School, that will afford every facility for educating children for men and women; where a child may become fitted for entrance into college or any situation in life."-Urbana Union, May 13, 1858.
First Presbyterian Church of Champaign, when the edifice now in use was occupied. This school, too, was the outgrowth of public needs, but in turn gave way to the free schools.
The end of Mrs. Fletcher's school rapidly followed the resolution of the Board of Trus- tees of the University to admit to equal priv- ileges of the institution, female students, which action was taken early in 1871.
The coming to this county of the Univer- sity of Illinois, next to the coming of the Illi- nois Central Railroad and its train of other railroads-of which there are now eight cross- ing its territory, not counting two lines run- ning out of the county from the center- was, and is, the greatest event in its history, and, next to the coming of these means of trans- portation, counted for more to the county in its passage from the wilderness condition to a populous and highly intelligent community. The University came to meet a demand of the people of the State; and its particular loca- tion in the State was determined by influences largely local. To both these forces which con- stitute part of the history of the county, their origin and extent, will this chapter be devoted.
The subject of industrial or technical edu- cation, as distinguished from the mere pro- fessional education of the old colleges, occa-
. sioned much discussion during many years prior to 1860 in this country, and especially in Illinois. Public meetings of the friends of industrial education were held in many parts of this State as well as in other States. At every gathering of farmers and horticulturists for years about the middle of the last century, the desire that the youth of the State should receive special training along the lines of occupations which they were to follow, was breathed with ever increasing force, until the demand became a tornado of public sentiment, The answer of the Spartan king who, when asked what things he thought most proper for boys to learn, replied, "Those things which they ought to practice when they become men," took hold of the public with great force and moved people to a discussion of educational methods, having in view a radical change from the old, the new idea being to teach the pupil to do things, and not to learn the theory only.
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