Historical encyclopedia of Illinois, Part 48

Author: Bateman, Newton, 1822-1897. cn; Selby, Paul, 1825-1913; Gale, W. Shelden
Publication date: 1899
Publisher: Chicago : Munsell Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1388

USA > Illinois > Knox County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48
USA > Illinois > Lake County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48
USA > Illinois > Mercer County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48
USA > Illinois > Kane County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48
USA > Illinois > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48
USA > Illinois > Coles County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48
USA > Illinois > Clark County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48
USA > Illinois > McDonough County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48
USA > Illinois > Schuyler County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois > Part 48

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

HURD, Harvey B., lawyer, was born in Fair- field County, Conn., Feb. 24, 1827. At the age of 15 he walked to Bridgeport, where he began life as office-boy in "The Bridgeport Standard," a journal of pronounced Whig proclivities. In 1844 he came to Illinois, entering Jubilee College,

but, after a brief attendance, came to Chicago in 1846. There he found temporary employment as a compositor, later commencing the study of law, and being admitted to the bar in 1848. A portion of the present city of Evanston is built upon a 248-acre tract owned and subdivided by Mr. Hurd and his partner. Always in sympathy with the old school and most radical type of Abolitionists, he took a deep interest in the Kan- sas-Missouri troubles of 1856, and became a mem- ber of the "National Kansas Committee" appointed by the Buffalo (N. Y.) Convention, of which body he was a member. He was chosen Secretary of the executive committee, and it is not too much to say that, largely through his earnest and poorly requited labors, Kansas was finally admitted into the Union as a free State. It was mainly through his efforts that seed for planting was gratuitously distributed among the free-soil settlers. In 1869 he was appointed a member of the Commission to revise the statutes of Illinois, a large part of the work devolving upon him in consequence of the withdrawal of his colleagues. The revision was completed in 1874, in conjunction with a Joint Committee of Revision of both Houses appointed by the Legis- lature of 1873. While no statutory revision has been ordered by subsequent Legislatures, Mr. Hurd has carried on the same character of work on independent lines, issuing new editions of the statutes from time to time, which are regarded as standard works by the bar. In 1875 he was nominated by the Republican party for a seat on the Supreme bench, but was defeated by the late Judge T. Lyle Dickey. For several years he filled a chair in the faculty of the Union College of Law. His home is in Evanston.

HURLBUT, Stephen A., soldier, Congressman and Foreign Minister, was born at Charleston, S. C., Nov. 29, 1815, received a thorough liberal education, and was admitted to the bar in 1837. Soon afterwards he removed to Illinois, making his home at Belvidere. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1847, in 1848 was an unsuccessful candidate for Presidential Elector on the Whig ticket, but, on the organization of the Republican party in 1856, promptly identified himself with that party and was elected to the lower branch of the General Assembly as a Republican in 1858 and again in 1860. During the War of the Rebellion he served with distinc- tion from May, 1861, to July, 1865. He entered the service as Brigadier-General, commanding the Fourth Division of Grant's army at Pittsburg Landing; was made a Major-General in Septem-

STATE CAPITOL.

241

HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.

ber, 1862, and later assigned to the command of the Sixteenth Army Corps, at Memphis, and sub- sequently to the command of the Department of the Gulf (1864-65). After the close of the war he served another term in the General Assembly (1867), was chosen Presidential Elector for the State-at-large in 1868, and, in 1869, was appointed by President Grant Minister Resident to the United States of Colombia, serving until 1872. The latter year he was elected Representative to Congress, and re-elected two years later. In 1876 he was a candidate for re-election as an independent Republican, but was defeated by William Lathrop, the regular nominee. In 1881 he was appointed Minister Resident to Peru, and died at Lima, March 27, 1882.

HUTCHINS, Thomas, was born in Monmouth, N. J., in 1730, died in Pittsburg, Pa., April 28, 1789. He was the first Government Surveyor, fre- quently called the "Geographer"; was also an

officer of the Sixtieth Royal (British) regiment, and assistant engineer under Bouquet. At the outbreak of the Revolution, while stationed at Fort Chartres, he resigned his commission be- cause of his sympathy with the patriots. Three years later he was charged with being in treason- able correspondence with Franklin, and im- prisoned in the Tower of London. He is said to have devised the present system of Government surveys in this country, and his services in carry- ing it into effect were certainly of great value. He was the author of several valuable works, the best known being a "Topographical Description of Virginia."

HUTSONVILLE, a village of Crawford County, on the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway, and the Wabash River, 34 miles south of Paris. The district is agricultural. The town has a bank and a weekly paper. Population (1890), 582.

ILLINOIS. (GENERAL HISTORY.)

ILLINOIS is the twenty-first State of the Federal Union in the order of its admission, the twentieth in present area and the third in point of popula- tion. A concise history of the region, of which it constituted the central portion at an early period, will be found in the following pages:

The greater part of the territory now comprised within the State of Illinois was known and at- tracted eager attention from the nations of the old world-especially in France, Germany and England-before the close of the third quarter of the seventeenth century. More than one hun- dred years before the struggle for American Inde- pendence began, or the geographical division known as the "Territory of the Northwest" had an existence; before the names of Kentucky, Tennessee, Vermont or Ohio had been heard of, and while the early settlers of New England and Virginia were still struggling for a foothold among the Indian tribes on the Atlantic coast, the "Illinois Country" occupied a place on the maps of North America as distinct and definite as New York or Pennsylvania. And from that time forward, until it assumed its position in the Union with the rank of a State, no other section has been the theater of more momentous and stirring events or has contributed more material, affording interest and instruction to the archæol- ogist, the ethnologist and the historian, than

that portion of the American Continent now known as the "State of Illinois."

THE "ILLINOIS COUNTRY."-What was known to the early French explorers and their followers and descendants, for the ninety years which intervened between the discoveries of Joliet and La Salle, down to the surrender of this region to the English, as the "Illinois Country," is de- scribed with great clearness and definiteness by Capt. Philip Pittman, an English engineer who made the first survey of the Mississippi River soon after the transfer of the French possessions east of the Mississippi to the British, and who published the result of his observations in London in 1770. In this report, which is evidently a work of the highest authenticity, and is the more valuable because written at a transition period when it was of the first importance to preserve and hand down the facts of early French history to the new occupants of the soil, the boundaries of the "Illinois Country" are defined as follows: "The Country of the Illinois is bounded by the Mississippi on the west, by the river Illinois on the north, by the Ouabache and Miamis on the east and the Ohio on the south."

From this it would appear that the country lying between the Illinois and the Mississippi Rivers to the west and northwest of the former, was not considered a part of the "Illinois Country," and.

242

HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.

this agrees generally with the records of the early French explorers, except that they regarded the region which comprehends the site of the present city of Chicago-the importance of which appears to have heen appreciated from the first as a connecting link between the Lakes and the upper tributaries of the rivers falling into the Gulf of Mexico-as belonging thereto

ORIGIN OF THE NAME .- The "Country" appears to have derived its name from Inini, a word of Algonquin origin, signifying "the men," eu- phemized by the French into Illini with the suffix ois, signifying "tribe." The root of the term, applied both to the country and the Indians occupying it, has been still further defined as "a perfect man" (Haines on "Indian Names"), and the derivative has been used by the French chroniclers in various forms though always with the same signification-a signification of which the earliest claimants of the appellation, as well as their successors of a different race, have not failed to be duly proud.

BOUNDARIES AND AREA .- It is this region which gave the name to the State of which it constituted so large and important a part. Its boundaries, so far as the Wabash and the Ohio Rivers (as well as the Mississippi from the mouth of the Ohio to the mouth of the Illinois) are con- cerned, are identical with those given to the "Illinois Country" by Pittman. The State is bounded on the north by Wisconsin; on the east by Lake Michigan, the State of Indiana and the Wabash River; southeast by the Ohio, flowing between it and the State of Kentucky; and west and southwest by the Mississippi, which sepa- rates it from the States of Iowa and Missouri. A peculiarity of the Act of Congress defining the boundaries of the State, is the fact that, while the jurisdiction of Illinois extends to the middle of Lake Michigan and also of the channels of the Wabash and the Mississippi, it stops at the north bank of the Ohio River; this seems to have been a sort of concession on the part of the framers of the Act to our proud neighbors of the "Dark and Bloody Ground." Geographically, the State lies between the parallels of 36° 59' and 42° 30' north latitude, and the meridian of 10° 30' and 14° of longitude west from the city of Washington. From its extreme southern limit at the mouth of the Ohio to the Wisconsin boundary on the north, its estimated length is 385 miles, with an extreme breadth, from the Indiana State line to the Mis- sissippi River at a point between Quincy and Warsaw, of 218 miles. Owing to the tortuous course of its river and lake boundaries, which

comprise about three-fourths of the whole, its physical outline is extremely irregular. Between the limits described, it has an estimated area of 56,650 square miles, of which 650 square miles is water-the latter being chiefly in Lake Michigan. This area is more than one and one-half times that of all New England (Maine being excepted), and is greater than that of any other State east of the Mississippi, except Michigan, Georgia and Florida-Wisconsin lacking only a few hundred square miles of the same.

When these figures are taken into account some idea may be formed of the magnificence of the domain comprised within the limits of the State of Illinois-a domain larger in extent than that of England, more than one-fourth of that of all France and nearly half that of the British Islands, including Scotland and Ireland. The possibilities of such a country, possessing a soil unequaled in fertility, in proportion to its area, by any other State of the Union and with re- sources in agriculture, manufactures and com- merce unsurpassed in any country on the face of the globe, transcend all human conception.

STREAMS AND NAVIGATION .- Lying between the Mississippi and its chief eastern tributary, the Ohio, with the Wahash on the east, and inter- sected from northeast to southwest hy the Illinois and its numerous affluents, and with no moun- tainous region within its limits, Illinois is at once one of the best watered, as well as one of the most level States in the Union. Besides the Sanga- mon, Kankakee, Fox and Des Plaines Rivers, chief tributaries of the Illinois, and the Kaskaskia draining the region between the Illinois and the Wabash, Rock River, in the northwestern portion of the State, is most important on account of its valuable water-power. All of these streams were regarded as navigable for some sort of craft, dur- ing at least a portion of the year, in the early history of the country, and with the magnificent Mississippi along the whole western border, gave to Illinois a larger extent of navigable waters than that of any other single State. Although practical navigation, apart from the lake and by natural water courses, is now limited to the Mis- sissippi, Illinois and Ohio-making an aggregate of about 1,000 miles-the importance of the smaller streams, when the people were dependent almost wholly upon some means of water com- munication for the transportation of heavy com- modities as well as for travel, could not be over-estimated, and it is not without its effect upon the productiveness of the soil, now that water transportation has given place to railroads.

243

IHISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.

The whole number of streams shown upon the best maps exceeds 280.

TOPOGRAPHY .- In physical conformation the surface of the State presents the aspect of an inclined plane with a moderate descent in the general direction of the streams toward the south and southwest. Cairo, at the extreme southern end of the State and the point of lowest depres- sion, has an elevation above sea-level of about 300 feet, while the altitude of Lake Michigan at Chicago is 583 feet. The greatest elevation is reached near Scale's Mound in the northwestern part of the State-1,257 feet-while a spur from the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, projected across the southern part of the State, rises in Jackson and Union Counties to a height of over 900 feet. The eastern end of this spur, in the northeast corner of Pope County, reaches an elevation of 1,046 feet. South of this ridge, the surface of the country between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers was originally covered with dense forests. These included some of the most valuable species of timber for lumber manufacture, such as the different varieties of oak, walnut, poplar, ash, sugar-maple and cypress, besides elm, linden, hickory, honey-locust, pecan, hack-berry, cotton- wood, sycamore, sassafras, black-gum and beech. The native fruits included the persimmon, wild plum, grape and paw paw, with various kinds of berries, such as blackberries. raspberries, straw- berries (in the prairie districts) and some others. Most of the native growths of woods common to the south were found along the streams farther north, except the cypress beech, pecan and a few others.

PRAIRIES .- A peculiar feature of the country, in the middle and northern portion of the State, which excited the amazement of early explorers, was the vast extent of the prairies or natural meadows. The origin of these has been attrib- uted to various causes, such as some peculiarity of the soil, absence or excess of moisture, recent upheaval of the surface from lakes or some other bodies of water, the action of fires, etc. In many sections there appears little to distinguish the soil of the prairies from that of the adjacent woodlands, that may not be accounted for by the character of their vegetation and other causes, for the luxuriant growth of native grasses and other productions has demonstrated that they do not lack in fertility, and the readiness with which trees take root when artificially propa- gated and protected, has shown that there is nothing in the soil itself unfavorable to their growth. Whatever may have been the original

cause of the prairies, however, there is no doubt that annually recurring fires have had much to do in perpetuating their existence, and even extending their limits, as the absence of the same agent has tended to favor the encroachments of the forests. While originally regarded as an obstacle to the occupation of the country by a dense population, there is no doubt that their existence has contributed to its rapid develop- ment when it was discovered with what ease these apparent wastes could be subdued, and how productive they were capable of becoming when once brought under cultivation.

In spite of the uniformity in altitude of the State as a whole, many sections present a variety of surface and a mingling of plain and woodland of the most pleasing character. This is espe- cially the case in some of the prairie districts where the undulating landscape covered with rich herbage and brilliant flowers must have presented to the first explorers a scene of ravish- ing beauty, which has been enhanced rather than diminished in recent times by the hand of culti- vation. Along some of the streams also, espe- cially on the upper Mississippi and Illinois, and at some points on the Ohio, is found scenery of a most picturesque variety.

ANIMALS, ETC .- From this description of the country it will be easy to infer what must have been the varieties of the animal kingdom which here found a home. These included the buffalo, various kinds of deer, the bear, panther, fox, wolf, and wild-cat, while swans, geese and ducks covered the lakes and streams. It was a veritable paradise for game, both large and small, as well as for their native hunters. "One can scarcely travel," wrote one of the earliest priestly explor- ers, "without finding a prodigious multitude of turkeys, that keep together in flocks often to the number of ten hundred." Beaver, otter, and mink were found along the streams. Most of these, especially the larger species of game, have disappeared before the tide of civilization, but the smaller, such as quail, prairie chicken, duck and the different varieties of fish in the streams, pro- tected by law during certain seasons of the year, continue to exist in considerable numbers.

SOIL AND CLIMATE .- The capabilities of the soil in a region thus situated can be readily under- stood. In proportion to the extent of its surface, Illinois has a larger area of cultivable land than any other State in the Union, with a soil of supe- rior quality, much of it unsurpassed in natural fertility. This is especially true of the "American Bottom," a region extending a distance of ninety

244

HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.

miles along the east bank of the Mississippi, from a few miles below Alton nearly to Chester, and of an average width of five to eight miles. This was the seat of the first permanent white settle- ment in the Mississippi Valley, and portions of it have been under cultivation from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years without exhaustion. Other smaller areas of scarcely less fertility are found both upon the bottom-lands and in the prairies in the central portions of the State.

Extending through five and one-half degrees of latitude, Illinois has a great variety of climate. Though subject at times to sudden alternations of temperature, these occasions have been rare since the country has been thoroughly settled. Its mean average for a series of years has been 48° in the northern part of the State and 56° in the southern, differing little from other States upon the same latitude. The mean winter temper- ature has ranged from 25° in the north to 34° in the south, and the summer mean from 67° in the north to 78° in the south. The extreme winter temperature has seldom fallen below 20° below zero in the northern portion, while the highest summer temperature ranges from 95° to 102°. The average difference in temperature between the northern and southern portions of the State is about 10°, and the difference in the progress of the seasons for the same sections, from four to six weeks. Such a wide variety of climate is favor- able to the production of nearly all the grains and fruits peculiar to the temperate zone.

CONTEST FOR OCCUPATION. - Three powers early became contestants for the supremacy on the North American Continent. The first of these was Spain, claiming possession on the ground of the discovery by Columbus; England, basing her claim upon the discoveries of the Cabots, and France, maintaining her right to a considerable part of the continent by virtue of the discovery and exploration by Jacques Cartier of the Gulf and River St. Lawrence, in 1534-35, and the settlement of Quehec by Champlain seventy-four years later. The claim of Spain was general, extending to both North and South America; and, while she early established her colonies in Mexico, the West Indies and Peru, the country was too vast and her agents too busy seeking for gold to interfere materially with her competitors. The Dutch, Swedes and Germans established small, though flourishing colonies, but they were not colonizers nor were they numeric- ally as strong as their neighbors, and their settle- ments were ultimately absorbed by the latter. Both the Spaniards and the French were zealous

in proselyting the aborigines, but while the former did not hesitate to torture their victims in order to extort their gold while claiming to save their souls, the latter were more gentle and beneficent in their policy, and, by their kindness, succeeded in winning and retaining the friend- ship of the Indians in a remarkable degree. They were traders as well as missionaries, and this fact and the readiness with which they adapted them- selves to the habits of those whom they found in possession of the soil, enabled them to make the most extensive explorations in small numbers and at little cost, and even to remain for un- limited periods among their aboriginal friends. On the other hand, the English were artisans and tillers of the soil with a due proportion engaged in commerce or upon the sea; and, while they were later in planting their colonies in Virginia and New England, and less aggressive in the work of exploration, they maintained a surer foothold on the soil when they had once estab- lished themselves. To this fact is due the per- manence and steady growth of the English colonies in the New World, and the virtual domi- nance of the Anglo-Saxon race over more than five-sevenths of the North American Continent- a result which has been illustrated in the history of every people that has made agriculture, manu- factures and legitimate commerce the basis of their prosperity.

EARLY EXPLORATIONS .- The French explorers were the first Europeans to visit the "Country of the Illinois," and, for nearly a century, they and their successors and descendants held undisputed possession of the country, as well as the greater part of the Mississippi Valley. It is true that Spain put in a feeble and indefinite claim to this whole region, but she was kept too busy else- where to make her claim good, and, in 1763, she relinquished it entirely as to the Mississippi Valley and west to the Pacific Ocean, in order to strengthen herself elsewhere.

There is a peculiar coincidence in the fact that, while the English colonists who settled about Massachusetts Bay named that region "New England," the French gave to their possessions, from the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mis- sissippi, the name of "New France," and the Spaniards called all the region claimed by them, extending from Panama to Puget Sound, "New Spain." The boundaries of each were very indefi- nite and often conflicting, but were settled by the treaty of 1763.

As early as 1634, Jean Nicolet, coming by way of Canada, discovered Lake Michigan - then

245

HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.

called by the French, "Lac des Illinois"-entered Green Bay and visited some of the tribes of Indians in that region. In 1641 zealous mission- aries had reached the Falls of St. Mary (called by the French "Sault Ste. Marie"), and, in 1658, two French fur-traders are alleged to have penetrated as far west as "La Pointe" on Lake Superior, where they opened up a trade with the Sioux Indians and wintered in the neighborhood of the Apostle Islands near where the towns of Ashland and Bayfield, Wis., now stand. A few years later (1665), Fathers Allouez and Dablon, French mis- sionaries, visited the Chippewas on the southern shore of Lake Superior, and missions were estab- lished at Green Bay, Ste. Marie and La Pointe. About the same time the mission of St. Ignace was established on the north shore of the Straits of Mackinaw (spelled by the French "Michilli- macinac"). It is also claimed that the French traveler, Radisson, during the year of 1658-59, reached the upper Mississippi, antedating the claims of Joliet and Marquette as its discoverers by fourteen years. Nicholas Perrot, an intelli- gent chronicler who left a manuscript account of his travels, is said to have made extensive explor- ations about the head of the great lakes as far south as the Fox River of Wisconsin, between 1670 and 1690, and to have held an important conference with representatives of numerous tribes of Indians at Sault Ste. Marie in June, 1671. Perrot is also said to have made the first discovery of lead mines in the West.

Up to this time, however, no white man appears to have reached the "Illinois Country, " though much had been heard of its beauty and its wealth in game. On May 17, 1673, Louis Joliet, an enter- prising explorer who had already visited the Lake Superior region in search of copper mines, under a commission from the Governor of Canada, in company with Father Jacques Marquette and five voyageurs, with a meager stock of provisions and a few trinkets for trading with the natives, set out in two birch-bark canoes from St. Ignace on a tour of exploration southward. Coasting along the west shore of Lake Michigan and Green Bay and through Lake Winnebago, they reached the country of the Mascoutins on Fox River, ascended that stream to the portage to the Wis- consin, then descended the latter to the Mis- sissippi, which they discovered on June 17. Descending the Mississippi, which they named "Rio de la Conception," they passed the mouth of the Des Moines, where they are supposed to have encountered the first Indians of the Illinois tribes, by whom they were hospitably enter-

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Historical encyclopedia of Illinois, Part 48

Author: Bateman, Newton, 1822-1897. cn; Selby, Paul, 1825-1913; Gale, W. Shelden Publication date: 1899 Publisher: Chicago : Munsell Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1388

Author: Bateman, Newton, 1822-1897. cn; Selby, Paul, 1825-1913; Gale, W. Shelden
Publication date: 1899
Publisher: Chicago : Munsell Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1388