USA > Illinois > Hancock County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois and history of Hancock County, Volume I > Part 127
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especially in meat products and agricultural im- plements; its vast mileage of railroads, indicates this state as one of the most promising fields for the development of electric lines to be found anywhere in the Union. The Illinois Traction System had a modest beginning in 1901 at Dan- ville, Ill., from which point the line was gradu- ally extended to Decatur and Springfield, Ill., and by 1910 it had reached to the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. An entrance to St. Louis, Mo., was gained through the construction of the great Mckinley bridge over the Mississippi River, so-named in honor of the president of the company, a structure that has the greatest car- rying capacity of any bridge spanning that great river. This bridge occupies the unique position of being the greatest project of a similar nature ever undertaken by an electric interurban rail- way. It connects the lines in Illinois with the heart of the business district of St. Louis. The total length of the bridge and its approaches is one and one-quarter miles; it is sixty-five feet in width with an eighty-five-foot clearance above low water; and the three largest spans are of 523 feet each. The system is designed for the transportation of passengers, express and heavy freight, and operates .630 miles of interurban and street railway track, extending through the most favored districts of Central Illinois. Prac- tically the entire mileage of the system is on private right-of-way. The roadway and track are similar to that of steam railroads, the rails weighing seventy pounds to the yard, spiked to standard ties and ballasted throughout with gravel and crushed stone. On the lines of the principal routes are situated, among others, the important cities of Peoria, Lincoln, Springfield, Carlinville, Edwardsville, Litchfield, East St. Louis, Bloomington, Champaign, Danville, Prince- ton, La Salle, Ottawa, Streator and Joliet. In addition to the usual equipment of passenger coaches, the Illinois Traction System operates sleeping cars, parlor cars and freight cars, the latter adequate for the handling of coal, grain and other classes of light and heavy freight. William B. Mckinley of Champaign, Ill., is the president of the Illinois Traction System.
IOWA CENTRAL RAILWAY, a railway line having its principal termini at Peoria, Ill., and Manly Junction, nine miles north of Mason City, Iowa, with several lateral branches making con- nections with Centerville, Newton, State Center, Store City, Algona and Northwood in the latter state. The total length of line owned, leased and operated by the Company, officially reported
in 1899, was 508.98 miles, of which 89.76 milcs- including 3.5 miles trackage facilities on the Peoria & Pekin Union between Iowa Junction and Peoria-were in Illinois. The Illinois divi- sion extends from Keithsburg-where it enters the State at the crossing of the Mississippi-to Peoria .- (History.) The Iowa Central Railway Company was originally chartered as the Central Railroad Company of Iowa and the road com- pleted in October, 1871. In 1873 it passed into the hands of a receiver and, on June 4, 1879, was reorganized under the name of the Central Iowa Railway Company. In May, 1883, this company purchased the Peoria & Farmington Railroad, which was incorporated into the main line, but defaulted and passed into the hands of a receiver December 1, 1886; the line was sold under fore- closure in 1887 and 1888 to the Iowa .Central Railway Company, which had effected a new or- ganization on the basis of $11,000,000 common stock, $6,000,000 preferred stock and $1,379,625 temporary debt certificates convertible into pre- ferred stock, and $7,500,000 first mortgage bonds. The transaction was completed, the receiver dis- charged and the road turned over to the new company May 15, 1889 .- (Financial.) The total capitalization of the road in 1899 was $21,337,558, of which $14,159,180 was in stock, $6,650,095 in bonds and $528,283 in other forms of indebtedness. The total earnings and income of the line in Illi- nois for the same year were $532,568, and the ex- penditures $566,333.
"I WILL" MOTTO, THE. This popular motto had its origin in the fall of 1891. At that time the people of Chicago were making huge prepara- tions for building the World's Fair, and the sug- gestion was made by the Chicago Inter Ocean that a motto ought to be adopted typical of the Chicago spirit. "A mighty spirit was aflame and in action," wrote William Hudson Harper, one of the editors of the paper, and the man who had made the original suggestion, and in referring to the great project, then the leading topic among the people, he characterized it as "an achievement of vision, idealism and optimism without prece- dent in its class in all the world's history." Mr. Harper's idea was approved by H. H. Kohlsaat, the proprietor of the Inter Ocean, and he at once offered a series of three prizes for a suitable design to illustrate a motto to be adopted, a first prize of $200, a second prize of $100, and a third of $50. Having published the offer through the columns of his paper, Mr. Kohlsaat selected a committee as judges of the designs to be sub- mitted, composed of Thomas Nast, the famous
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New York cartoonist; Mrs. Potter Palmer, presi- dent of the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Fair; Miss Harriet Monroe, author of the "Columbian Ode"; W. M. R. French, director of the Art Institute, and Lyman J. Gage, former president of the World's Fair during the period of its preliminary organization. On March 15, 1892, the Inter Occan announced the decision of the judges, and a few days later it published the drawings of the three prize winners together with those of thirty-three others. About 300 drawings from competitors in all parts of the country had been submitted. The successful art- ists were: Charles Holloway, first prize; George H. Petet, New York, second prize, and Johannes Scheiwe, Ottumwa, Iowa, third prize. The suc- cessful design may be described as the figure of a goddess wearing a helmet and a breastplate, upon which was inscribed the motto "I Will." Mr. Holloway, then a resident of Chicago, was a stained glass designer, and had already won a high reputation for artistic work. "He was the first interpreter of the genius of Chicago," writes Mr. Harper, "to associate with an artistic per- sonification of this city an expression of the dominant power of its soul." In its editorial columns the Inter Ocean said of the design: "It is of the highest type of emblematic figures, ex- pressing dignity, strength, purpose and energy, all that is involved in the motto 'I Will.'" How- ever, while it achieved an immense popularity, it did not meet with the unreserved approval of the critics. Indeed it was looked at askance by most persons of that ilk. Nevertheless the "I Will goddess" has survived all unfavorable criti- cism and the design has become a standard model for statues and pictures of all descriptions, and the motto itself has been in very extensive use by writers from that day until the present time.
LANDIS, Kenesaw Mountain, Jurist, was born. at Millville, Ohio, November 20, 1866, son of Abraham H. and Mary (Kumler) Landis. He was educated at the public schools of Logans- port, Ind., and in 1891 was graduated at the Union College of Law in Chicago, and was ad- mitted to the bar in the same year. On July 25, 1895, he was married to Winnie Eckles. He practiced law in Chicago from 1891 to 1905, ex- cept for two years while he was private secretary to Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham. He was appointed United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, March 28, 1905. Judge Landis is a Republican in politics. His residence is in Chicago.
LEWIS, James Hamilton, Congressman and Senator, was born at Danville, Va., May 18, 1866. He received his early education in the state of Georgia and afterwards attended the University of Virginia. He studied law in Savannah, Ga., and was admitted to the bar in 1884. He re- moved to Seattle, Wash., where he entered upon the practice of his profession. In November, 1898, he was married to Rose Lawton Douglas. He was elected to the State Senate in Wash- ington, and in 1897 was elected Democratic Con- gressman-at-Large from that state. He served on the staffs of General Brooke and Gen. Frederick D. Grant during the Spanish-American War, and was a candidate for vice president in the Democratic National Convention of 1900. In 1903 Mr. Lewis removed to Chicago, and in 1905 was chosen corporation counsel for that city. He was candidate for governor of Illinois in 1908, but was defeated; in 1913, however, he was elected to the United States Senate, in which he served until the expiration of his term in 1919. Mr. Lewis is the author of a number of works of & political and historical nature. His residence is in Chicago.
LINCOLN HIGHWAY, THE. In its proclama- tion of September 10, 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, a patriotic and non-commercial body, from its headquarters at Detroit, Mich., declared that "the Lincoln Highway now is, and hence- forth shall be, an existing memorial in tribute to the immortal Abraham Lincoln." The Lincoln Highway is a continuous, connecting, improved road from the Atlantic to the Pacific, connecting New York and San Francisco, a distance of 3,322 miles. The association is not a constructing or- ganization. It gives its attention to the education of public sentiment toward the proper expenditure of road funds in the sccuring of main arterial highways between the two coasts, and as a part of a national system. The Lincoln Highway is open to lawful traffic of all descriptions without toll charges, though in its earlier years certain por- tions of the connecting links were subject to tolls, but these the association has gradually ac- quired and abolished the toll charges. Its basic principle is to secure the shortest and most di- rect route and to promote the construction of hard-surfaced roads throughout its length. The Lincoln Highway enters Illinois from the east a short distance from Chicago Heights. Passing through that point, it follows a western course through Joliet, Ottawa and Sterling, and passes out of the state across the bridge over the Miss- issippi River at Fulton, into Iowa. Chicago is
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not on the route of the Lincoln Highway, the nearest point being Chicago Heights, eighteen miles distant. The route is well marked with signboards and it is intended to plant shade trees along the borders of the highway as fast as pos- sible. Support for the activities of the associa- tion is derived from membership fees and gifts from public-spirited citizens. A guide book is published by the association in which is col- lected a vast amount of information, including a complete itinerary from coast to coast.
LOWDEN, Frank Orren, Governor, was born in Sunrise, Minn., January 26, 1861. During his boyhood his father removed to Hardin County, Iowa, where he purchased a farm. The son worked on the farm in the summer and attended school in the winter. At the age of fifteen years young Lowden began teaching school at various places in the county, continuing in this occupa- tion for several years. At twenty he entered the freshman class of the State University at Iowa City, graduating therefrom in 1885, and from the Union College of Law, now the Northwestern University Law School, at Chicago, in 1887, being valedictorian of his elass in each institution. Before taking the law course he taught Latin and mathematics in the Burlington High School for one year. On his removal to Chicago he en- tered the law office of Dexter, Herrick & Allen as a clerk, and after finishing his course at the law school he entered upon the practice of his profession. In 1898 he formed the partnership of Lowden, Estabrook & Davis. He occupied the chair of Federal Jurisprudence in the Northwest- ern Law School and in recognition of his services in that institution one of the halls was named after him. Mr. Lowden was Lieutenant Colonel of the First Infantry, Illinois National Guard, in 1898. Becoming active in politics, he entered the race for the governorship in 1904, but was de- feated after a severe contest in the convention. He was elected to Congress from the Thirteenth District, serving from 1906 to 1911, when he re- tired on account of ill health. He was nominated for governor on the Republican ticket in 1916 and elected by a large majority. He was married to Miss Florence Pullman, daughter of the late George M. Pullinan, April 29, 1896. Mr. Lowden was inaugurated as governor of Illinois January 8, 1917. Governor Lowden's place of residence is at Oregon, Ill.
McCORMICK, Medill, United States Senator, was born in Chicago May 16, 1877, the son of Robert S. and Katharine (Medill) McCormick. He was graduated from Yale University in 1900.
He served an apprenticeship in the newspaper business, eventually becoming publisher of the Chicago Tribune, but in February, 1910, he sev- ered his connection therewith. Mr. McCormick was married June 10, 1903, to Ruth, daughter of the late Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio. In 1912 he was elected to the Forty-eighth General As- sembly and re-elected to the Forty-ninth. He ' was elected on the Republican ticket to the United States House of Representatives in 1916, and in 1918 he was elected to the United States Senate. He was vice chairman of the Progressive National Committee in 1912. Senator McCormick is a resident of Chicago.
McCULLOCH, Catharine Waugh, lawyer, was born at Ransomville, N. Y., June 4, 1862. She is the daughter of Abraham Miller and Susan (Gouger) Waugh. She was graduated at Rock- ford College in 1882, and at the Union College of Law, Chicago, in 1886; was admitted to the bar in the same year, and in 1898 she was ad- mitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court. She was married May 30, 1890, to Frank H. McCulloch. Mrs. McCulloch is the author of several works on legal and economic subjects, and is an ardent supporter of Woman Suffrage. She and her husband are residents of Evanston, Ill.
MCKINLEY, William Brown, Congressman, was born at Petersburg, Ill., September 5, 1856. He was educated in the common schools and spent two years as a student at the University of Illi- nois. He was a clerk in a store and bank in the years from 1874 to 1877, afterwards manager and partner in a banking and loan business under the firm name of J. B. & W. B. Mckinley. He was married in February, 1881, to Kate Frisbee of Chicago. He became interested in waterworks and electric lighting property in Champaign in 1885, and since then has been continuously en- gaged in building and operating gas plants and railway properties, and is now president of the Illinois Traction System. He was a member of the Fifty-ninth, Sixtieth, Sixty-first and Sixty- second Congresses, and of the Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth Congresses. Mr. Mckinley is a Re- publican in politics. His residence is at Cham- paign, Ill.
NEW SALEM, Sangamon County. This town was founded in 1829 by James Rutledge and John · Cameron. It attained some importance as a land- ing place on the Sangamon River, with a popula- tion of perhaps one hundred persons, but in 1837 it began to decline, and by 1840 Petersburg, two miles down the river, had absorbed its busi-
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ness and population. New Salem thereafter ceased to exist, but it is remembered because Abraham Lincoln became a resident of the place in 1831 and conducted a general store and was postmaster there from May 7, 1833, until the discontinuance of the post office on May 30, 1836. It was during Lincoln's residence in this place that he first met Ann Rutledge, to whom he became engaged in 1835. Her doatlı in August of that year prevented the fulfillment of the en- gagement. A visitor to the site of New Salem describes the scene in 1885 as follows: "From the hill where I sit, under the shade of tliree trees whose branches make one, I look out over the Sangamon River and its banks covered ap- parently with primeval forests. Around are field 3 overgrown with weeds and stunted oaks. It was a town of ten or twelve years only, yet in tliat time it had a history which the world will not let die as long as it venerates the memory of the noble liberator and martyr, President Abraham Lincoln."
PROHIBITION. An amendment to the consti- tution of the United States was adopted by congress on December 18, 1917, providing that "after one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes, is hereby prohibited." The ratification by two-thirds and more of the legislatures of the states was completed early in 1919, and thus was assured the adoption of the amendment, now known as Amendment Number 18. The Legis- lature of the state of Illinois was the twenty-fifth to ratify the amendment, this important action having been taken January 14, 1919.
RANKIN, Henry Bascom, farmer, lawyer, · banker; born near Athens, Ills., April 7, 1837. Rankin is described by Joseph Fort Newton, in the introduction he wrote for Rankin's volume, "Per- sonal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," pub- lished in 1916 by Putnam's Sons, N. Y., as "one of the Lincoln boys' who grew up in the valley of the Sangamon before the sturdy race of pio- neers had disappeared." The early opportunities of Mr. Rankin for education were limited and de- fective, but those he supplemented through his junior periods by private tutors. But the closing of early student years of tutorage did not ter- minate his education. He has kept up with all that was best in science and literature, and con- tinues at eighty-three to be a student who does not consider his education finished. As a writer
he has been a contributor to the best papers and magazines, and in later years, in addition to his "Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," he has added articles and letters to the best class of Lincolniana, and thus revealed, as few others have, the humanly quality and progressive mental development of Lincoln, in a style free from all traces of sensationalism, romance or caricature. Mr. Rankin is exceptionally well qualified for such tasks, by reason of his long association with Lincoln and his friends in the New Salem and Springfield periods of our First American's life. The three years before Mr. Lincoln became presi- dent, Mr. Rankin was a law student in the office of Lincoln and Herndon, at Springfield, which is his home at the present time. Mr. Rankin's father was sheriff of Menard County and was intimately associated with Lincoln in the political affairs of that time, and his mother, Arminda Rogers, whose parents and family came to Illinois in 1818, was the friend and tutor of Ann Rutledge when both Lincoln and Ann lived at New Salem. Mr. Rankin is the possessor of an autograph album the first name in which is that of Abraham Lincoln. The entry in the album is as follows: "Today, Feb. 23, 1858, the owner honored me with the privilege of writing the first name in this book. A. Lincoln."
REND, William Patrick, soldier, capitalist and coal operator, was born in Ireland, February 10, 1840. He was brought to Lowell, Mass., in his boyhood where he obtained his education. He entered the Union army in the Civil War and was present at several of the great battles in Vir- ginia. After the war he embarked in the coal business at Chicago, Ill., in which he was very successful. He took a deep interest in the wel- fare of miners and other classes of laborers and sought to promote arbitration and conciliation as a means of averting disastrous strikes. He died November 30, 1915.
ROAD IMPROVEMENTS. Since the advent of the automobile there has ben a constant endeavor in all the states to bring the roads throughout the country into better condition to meet the new demands upon them. The Federal Aid Road Act of July 11, 1916, provided a total sum of $14,550,000 to be apportioned among the several states of the Union, of whichi Illinois' share was $658,323. Eachı year thereafter a special appor- tionment was to be made by the Secretary of Agriculture and this provision is in course of accomplishment. In the following year, namely, on June 22, 1917, the Illinois Legislature passed an act providing a state wide system of durable,
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hard-surfaced roads to be constructed by the state "as soon as practicable." These roads were to be built along certain public highways and bonds to be issued by the state for the payment of the cost of construction. Accordingly an issue of bonds for $60,000,000 was authorized by the voters in November, 1918, and the act approved. This act supplements the former State-Aid Road Act of 1913, which had only a limited scope com- pared with this later act, provides a more equi- table system of taxation and makes more efficient use of the funds received from the general gov- ernment. It is assumed that the entire system of roads provided for under the act of 1917, and approved November 5, 1918, will require some six years to complete, and the eventual retirement of the bonds will be accomplished largely from the motor license fees to be collected. The act, however, providing for the issue stipulates that a levy must be made each year for repaying the bonds "unless the money is provided from some other source." This was done "in order to make the bonds a binding obligation on the state of Illinois," says S. E. Bradt, superintendent of high- ways, "and thus give them a proper standing in the financial market. But the added provisions in both the bond law and the motor law have so safe- guarded their payment from the motor fees as to preclude the people from being called upon to pay any part of the cost of this great improve- ment from the ordinary revenues of the state. This means that this system will be constructed without a dollar of added tax except such as is paid for motor license fees." Before the agitation for good roads had become an effective issue in this state it is shown that Illinois, while ranking first in agricultural importance, second in wealth and third in population among the states, occupied twenty-third place in the matter of improved highways!
RUTLEDGE, Ann, daughter of James Rutledge, an Illinois pioneer, was born January 7, 1813, in Kentucky. In 1828 James Rutledge came to Illinois and brought with him his wife and nine children where he and others founded the town of New Salem. In 1831 Abraham Lincoln came to the same place where he became acquainted with the Rutledge family, and in 1835 he became engaged to Ann Rutledge, the third of the nine children of that household. At that time she was twenty-two years old. One who knew her well describes her in these words: "She was a beauti- ful girl and as bright as she was beautiful. She was well educated for that early day, a good con- versationalist, and always gentle and cheerful,
a girl whose company people liked." During her residence at New Salem she pursued certain studies under the direction of Miss Arminda Rogers, daughter of Col. Matthew Rogers, one of' the early settlers in that region. Miss Rogers was older than Ann Rutledge by ten years and had taught school for several years before they met. She tutored the young girl in some of the elementary branches required for entering an academy for young ladies that had been opened at Jacksonville. Miss Rogers later became the wife of Amberry A. Rankin of Menard County, Ill., and their son, Henry B. Rankin studied lw in Mr. Lincoln's office for some years preceding the latter's election to the presidency, and is now (1919) a resident of Springfield, Ill. Mr. Rankin who is mentioned in a separate article in this supplement has written his recollections of , Mr. Lincoln in a volume published in 1916. He has added much to our knowledge of Ann Rut- ledge, who died August 25, 1835, at the untimely age of twenty-two years. Her grave is marked by a plain boulder bearing her name but with no other particulars, at Oakland Cemetery at Con- cord, about seven miles from Petersburg, Ill.
SEAL OF STATE. As at first adopted in 1818 the design of "the Great Seal of State" carried the motto "State Sovereignty-National Union," composed with other details. As the result of the Civil War this motto no longer held true. "His- tory itself had reversed the motto," writes Mr. Brand Whitlock in an article on "The Great Seal of Illinois," printed in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society for January, 1913, "and had written it in blood and fire; it had placed national union first; state sovereignty, if at all, afterward." In the years succeeding its original adoption some minor changes were made at different times, but in 1867 Hon. Sharon Tyndale, then secretary of state asked the legislature to pass an act "authorizing himself to renew the seal." It was Tyndale's idea to change the motto by reversing it under the provisions of the pro- posed act. A bill was accordingly prepared authorizing a new seal of state "as nearly as practicable of the size, form and intent of the seal now in use, and conforming with the original design, as follows: 'An American eagle on a bowlder in a prairie, the sun rising in a dis- tant horizon, and a scroll in the eagle's beak on which shall be inscribed the words "State sover- eignty-National Union," to correspond with the original seal of state in every particular." The bill became a law March 7, 1868. Mr. Tyndale was a strong Union man and he was consequently
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