History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 29

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 948

USA > Illinois > Union County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 29
USA > Illinois > Pulaski County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 29
USA > Illinois > Alexander County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 29

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).

228

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

are the former creation of plants and ani- mals, which lived and died during the slow, dragging centuries of their formation. These fossil remains are fragments of history, which enable the geologist to extend his re-' searches far back into the realms of the past, and not only determine their former modes of life, but study the contemporaneous his- tory of their rocky beds, and group them into systems. And such has been the profusion of life, that the great limestone formations of the globe consist mostly of animal re- mains, cemented by the infusion of animal matter. A large part of the soil spread over the earth's surface 'has been elaborated in animal organisms. First, as nourishment it enters into the structure of plants, and forms vegetable tissue, passing thence, as food, into the animal it becomes endowed with life, and when death occurs it returns into the soil and imparts to it additional elements of fertility.

The counties of Union, Alexander and Pu- laski contain an area of 812 square miles, em- bracing all that south end of the State from the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio River, extending north to the north line of Union, and from the Mississippi River to the east line of Pulaski County.

The general trend of the line of uplift ;in this section of country is from northwest to southeast, and the dip, with'some local vari- ations, is to the northeastward. Hence the escarpments on the south and west sides of the ridges are steeper and more rugged than those of the north and east. The river bluffs along the Mississippi are high and rocky, and are frequently cut up into ragged de- clivities and sharp summits, and are formed by the chert limestones of Upper Silurian and Devonian age, which constitute the more southern extension of the bluffs into Alexan- der County. Commencing in the northeast-

ern portion of Union County is a sandstone ridge, which forms the water-shed between the streams running northward into the Big Muddy, and those running south into the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. This ridge presents a perpendicular escarpment on its southern face, indicating it was once a bluff to some river, although its course is nearly at right angles to the present water-courses. Its summit is formed by conglomerate sand- stone, and its base by the Lower Carbonif- erous limestone. South of this chain of bluffs, and extending along the line of the Illinois Central Railroad, from Cobden to the bottom-lands of Alexander County, is a broad belt of country underlaid by the Lower Carboniferous limestone, in which the ridges are less abrupt and the surface so gently rolling as to be susceptible of the highest cultivation. There are in this belt an abun- dance of most elegant springs, and this will some day be the great blue-grass district of Southern Illinois, that will equal in value, for dairy, sheep-growing. and the production of fine stock, the celebrated blue grass region of Kentucky, if it does not surpass it. All it wants to induce a spon- taneous growth of blue grass is for the un- dergrowth to be cleared up and put to past- ure. Here are water, soil, climate and rocks that clearly indicate what must some day inevitably come. Men must come, or grow up here. who understand fully the geo- logical formations of this belt, to make it one of the most beautiful, as well as the most productive, portions of the State.

For nearly eighty years, the people have lived and farmed this land in their little patches of corn, wheat and oats, much after the fashion they would have managed their farms had they been in the woods of Tennes- see or 'Middle Illinois. Because they could do quite as well as their neighbors in this or

229

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

the adjoining States, they have been content. They knew their land would produce wheat that would command a premium in all the markets of the world, and that their crops never totally failed, as they often did in other places, and they contentedly concluded it was exclusively a wheat-growing country. The intelligent geologist could have told them, two generations ago, that their won- derful soil was better adapted to that better farming where there are no such things as evil effects from rains or droughts, early frosts or late springs; where wealth was absolutely certain, and where the profits and pleasures of farming would make it one of the most elevating, refining and elegant pur- suits of life; where life upon the farm was divested of that drudgery and unrequited toil that too often drive the young men from the farms to the even more wretched life of a pre- carious clerkship in the towns and villages. Farming is much as any of the other pursuits of life. A certain locality will make of the farmers the most elegant and refined of peo- ple, and their lives will be surrounded by the comforts and luxuries of the world. Their sons and daughters will attend the best schools, and'will complete their education with travels in foreign countries, and thus attaining that refinement and culture that will make them the foremost people in the country. Fortunes are made cultivating wheat and corn, but only by the hardest work and closest economy, and such fortunes are generally gained at the expense of all self- culture among the families that thus work their way along their slow, heavy road. There are few things more pitiable in life than to go into a family where there is wealth and ignorant greed combined-that mockery of all the civilizing influences that wealth should bring, and the stupid conviction that ignorance is adorned by a bank account, and

gentility and sense are only intended for people who have no money. The truth is, wealth should always be a blessing to its pos- sessor; yet how generally is it a curse, be- cause its acquisition has been at the expense of that self-culture that the inexorable laws of nature require at every man's hands.

The Lower Carboniferous limestone men- tioned above as a belt extending nearly en- tirely across Union and through Alexander to the bottom lands above Cairo, extend into the northern and northwestern portions of Pulaski County, and forms gently sloping low hills, with a fertile soil, a rich, are- naceous loam. The hills, as is the case in Union and Alexander Counties, are covered with heavy timber, consisting principally of white oak, black oak, pignut hickory, scaly- bark hickory, yellow poplar, black gum, black walnut and dogwood. They slope generally to the southwest, in the direction of the nearest stream.

The rich river bottoms along the Missis- sippi are of an average of nearly five miles in width, and are as rich in vegetable food as is the valley of the celebrated Nile in Egypt. The bottoms were originally covered with forest trees that often attained to enor- mous size. Except that these bottoms are subject to overflow at high stages of water in the river, there would be no farms in the world more productive than would here be found.

The main body of the upland of Pulaski County, between Cache and the Ohio Rivers, is underlaid with Tertiary strata, and may be called oak barrens. They consist of al- ternations gently sloping, more or less sharp- ly rolling or broken ridges. Their soil is a yellow finely arenaceous loam, which extends to a considerable depth. The growth in the central portion, and extending nearly through the whole width of the county, is

230

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

characterized by an abundance of small, brushy, bitter oak, an upland variety of the Spanish oak, a tree which is hardly "found anywhere farther north, and replaces the black oak and fblack jack. The bitter oak usually forms a dense underbrush, together with an abundance of hazel, sassafras and sumac, with some white oak, black oak barren hickory, pignut hickory, black gum, and in some places small yellow poplar. These oak barrens are only now beginning to be understood. They were called the " barrens," and the name indicated all the people supposed they were good for as agricult- ural lands. Thrifty settlers avoided them, and the coon-skin tribe of early settlers were too often ready to adopt these unfavorable judgments of these lands, and offer that as an excuse for their own laziness and igno- rance of a soil that was really very strong in all the elements of fertility, and capable of being made the rich garden spot of Illinois. But the past decade has brought a revela- tion to this valuable part of the State, and a new style of farming has rapidly taken the place of the old, and the farmers are learn- ing that for wheat their country is unap- proachable; that their crops never fail, and there is hardly anything, either of the North or the South, but that they can produce to great profit. A "single instance may suffice to illustrate our meaning. Only three or four years ago an enterprising farmer, sim- ply because he was too poor to buy teams and the modern expensive agricultural imple- ments, planted sweet potatoes. The yield was over three hundred [bushels to the acre, and these he sold for $4 per barrel. This , chance experiment taught the people that they could raise sweet potatoes in as great abundance, and of as fine quality, as could be produced anywhere, and the profits of this crop were simply immense. Sweet pota-

toes are now a staple product of Pulaski County, and in a few years, we make no doubt, the yield will be very large.

There are no true coal-bearing rocks in the limits of the three counties of Union, Alex- ader and Pulaski, and hence there is no rea- sonable expectation of finding extensive or paying deposits of coal. From time to time, much labor has been expended in digging for coal west of Jonesboro, in the black slate of the Devonian series; but as this slate lies more than a thousand feet below the horizon of any true coal-bearing strata, the labor and means so expended were only in vain. There are some thin streaks of coal, but it only ap- pears locally, as it is interstratified with the shales of the Chester series; but it has never been found so developed as to be of any practical value.

The brown Hematite ore exists in Union and the upper portions of Alexander and the northwestern part of Pulaski, but so far no deposit of this kind has been discovered suffi- ciently extensive and free from extraneous matter to justify mining it and erecting furnaces for its reduction, and the iron ore is generally so intermingled with chert, that its per cent of metallic iron is small.

The sulphuret of lead, or galena, has been found in small quantities in the cherty lime- stones of the Devonian series. On Huggins Creek, on the southwest quarter of Section 1, Township 11, Range 3 west, it has been found near Mr. Gregory's. The galena occurs here, associated with calcspar, filling small pockets in the rock. If this ore is ever found in quantities in this portion of Illinois, it will be in pockets, and it is very doubtful if it will ever be discovered in suffi- cient quantities to pay for the digging.

An excellent article of potter's clay occurs in many localities in the three counties. In Section 2, Town 12 south, Range 2 west, a very

231

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

fine white pipe-clay is found, which is used by Mr. Kirkpatrick, of Anna, for the manu- facture 'of common stone-ware, by mixing with a common clay found near the town of Anna. This pipe-clay is nearly white in color, with streaks of purple through it, and appears, from its colors, to have been derived from the striped shales known locally in this part of the State as " calico rock." Except for the coloring matter which it contains, this clay seems to be of a quality suited for the manufacture of a fine article of white ware. The clays of the Tertiary formation are found in abundance, and they are valuable for the manufacture of potter's ware, and for years one variety has been in use at Santa Fé. It is of a gray color, and is sufficiently mixed with sand to be used without any farther ad- dition of that material. Before burning, the ware is washed with the white clay, to im- prove its color, and the inside of the vessel is washed with Mississippi mud to improve the glazing. The white clays near Santa Fé are supposed to be well adapted to the man- ufacture of white ware, but they have not been properly tested. The white clays result from the decomposition of the siliceous beds of the Devonian series. The Devonian sand- stone found in the northeast portion of Un- ion County is often quite pure and free from coloring matter, and is well adapted to the manufacture of glass.

Those portions of Pulaski and Union County that are underlaid with limestone have a rich, light, warm soil, which yields the most ample rewards for the labor be- stowed upon it. The southern latitude makes it favorable to nearly every crop that has ever been tried upon it, and almost every year experiments show that its range of pro- duction is most extensive. Many years ago, it was discovered that all this portion of Illi- nois was fertile in the yield of peaches,

apples and the small fruits, and lately it has demonstrated that in all garden vegetables it was unsurpassed, and just now it is coming to light that the barren ridges promise the best results, the yellow loam being one of the finest and most inexhaustible soils in the world. On the wide bottoms of Cache River is found very superior land, as is indicated by the timber growth upon it. The low bot- tom ridges or swells have a black, sandy soil, which is more or less mixed with clay, and they produce most bountifully. They are above the flood level, but are surrounded by low lands, which are wet and often impassable and frequently overflowed. One difficulty in these bottom ridges is pure, healthy water, but this defect could be supplied by cisterns. The low lands are very rich, are also very fertile, but somewhat heavy soil. In the course of time these will become very valu- able. The timber is heavy, and is being rapidly cut out to supply the extensive saw mills on the railroads and Cache River. The removal of the timber has a drying effect on the soil, and places which a few years ago were continuous swamps are now becoming dry, and are capable of growing fine crops of corn. This influence will be more and more felt as time goes on, and once the channel of the river is cleared of obstructions, and the soil is broken with the plow, large stretches of now swamp land will be reclaimed and converted into a fine agricultural district. With this will be correspondingly improved the health of that part of the country. Some at- tempts have been made to drain the extensive cypress swamps of Pulaski County, as well as in Alexander and Union Counties. Some years ago, a ditch was cut from Swan's Pond, situated in Sections 22, 23, 26 and 27, Town- ship 14, Range 2 east, to Post Creek, which empties into Cache River, in order to dry the pond; but those who planned the 'work

232

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

were incompetent engineers; the necessary preliminary levelings seem not to have been executed at all, or badly executed; for when the ditch was completed, it conducted the water the wrong way-that is, from the river to the pond, instead of from the pond to the river. Accurate topographical surveys would readily point out a way to drain the swamp lands of the Cache River, and thus reclaim a very large 'and rich agricultural section. All over this district is found a soil from three feet to one hundred feet in depth, that will never be exhausted by the husbandman. In even the uplands and in the oak barrens the subsoil, when taken from a depth of fif- teen or twenty feet, needs but a short time to mellow and then produces nearly as well as the surface soil. The richness of the land, and the wonderful store of elements of fertil- ity can, therefore, not be doubted. All that is needed is to keep it stirred, and as the skimmed surface is exhausted simply culti- vate a little deeper, and here is a bank against which the farmer may draw his checks that will always be honored. There is a just mixture of sand in the upland soils that makes them warm, rich and porous, caus- ing them to produce an unlimited variety of vegetation, to defy the droughts as well as the drowning rains. Hence the too little known fact that two years ago, when an un- usually dry summer followed a wet spring, the crops in nearly all the Mississippi Valley failed, and yet the wheat and corn in the oak barrens of Pulaski County produced a good average crop. Corn, we are told by rep- utable farmers in that district, was raised that produced forty bushels to the acre, that was rained on only once between planting and maturity. No industrious farmer need be afraid to trust such a soil with his labor; he may be certain of being repaid, with large interest; but the tendency to cultivate

over-large tracts, slovenly, proves injurious to the land, and this great mistake has caused many to misjudge the land, and even pronounce it of inferior quality. Here is a wonderful and only partially developed coun- try, destined, some time, to be the most valuable spot on the continent; capable of producing tobacco, cotton, sweet potatoes, fruits, garden vegetables, corn, wheat and blue grass; supplied with magnificent springs abundantly; the Mecca of the coming farmer ; the home of blooded stock of all kinds, and eventually a race of people who may take their places in the front ranks of the splendid civilization of the Western Hemisphere. The shiftless half farmer, half coon-skin hunter, and the slave of ignorance and a life of mis- guided toil, disease and suffering, will pass away, as have the red wild men of the forest, and here will take their places a type of re- finement, intelligence, culture, enterprise, wealth and comfort that produces the noblest races of men and women. Nature's bounties have been poured out upon this land in boundless profusion, and the evil, so far, has only come from the plethora of ignorance that has tried in vain to utilize this excess of nature's rich profusion, and this has often given griefs and pain where only should have come the promised joys. It will, at the rate intelligence has progressed since the dawn of history, be a long time yet, perhaps, before ignorance ceases to afflict mankind. And it should be borne in mind, that all pains in this world are the penalties we pay to ignorance. It is hardly possible for a pang to come from any other source. The most of us are incapable of understanding or inves- tigating nature's laws. Hence, we come into the world law-breakers, and thus make of this otherwise bright and beautiful and joyons home a penal colony for the children of men, where we war and struggle for exist-

233

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

ence, and suffer long and die, and the fitful fever is over, and the unchangeable and in- exorable laws of God go on, exactly as they have always gone on without beginning, and as they will forever without ending

Building Stone and Marble .- The whole southern extremity of Illinois has an abun- dant supply of superior building stone, and some day the quarries will be properly opened, and then the amount and quality of the material they will afford will be better known. Here will then be a vast and profit- able industry developed. First in impor- tance, perhaps, not only from the thickness of the formation, and consequently the large amount of material it will afford, is the Trenton Limestone, which has outcropped more extensively on the river bluffs below Thebes than anywhere else. This formation is about seventy feet in thickness above the low water level of the river, and consists of white and bluish-gray limestone, partly in heavy beds of from two to three feet in thick- ness. It is generally free from siliceous or ferruginous matter, can be easily cut into any desired form, and is susceptible of a high polish, and is adapted to various uses as a marble. It has been extensively quarried at Cape Girardeau, since the earliest settlement of the country, both for lime and for the various purposes for which a fine building stone is required, and is widely known and appreciated as the "Cape Girardeau Marble" along the river. For the construction of fine buildings and the display of elaborate architectural designs, this rock has no su- perior in the West.

The mottled beds of the Upper Silurian series consists of hard, compact limestone, and are susceptible of a fine polish, and make a beautiful marble. The prevailing colors are red, buff and gray, varying some- what at different localities. The rock is some-

what siliceous, and consequently harder to work than the white limestone of the Trenton group, but it ; will, no doubt, retain a fine polish much longer than a softer material, and the varieties of colors which it affords renders it well adapted to many uses as an ornamental stone, for which the other would not be required. These mottled layers vary from ten to twenty feet in thickness, and can be most economically quarried where the overlying strata have been removed by erosion. For table-tops, mantels, etc., this is one of the handsomest rocks at present found in the country.

The St. Louis limestone affords a good building material, especially the upper and lower divisions. At the quarries west of Jonesboro, the rock is a massive, nearly white, limestone, free from chert, and dresses well, and in a dry wall will prove to be durable, but splits when used for curbing, or whenever it is subject to the action of water and frost. The middle of this division is a dark gray cherty limestone, that might answer well for rough walls, but would not dress well, in consequence of the cherty mat- ter so generally disseminated through it. The upper division of this stone quarried east of Anna, is a light gray, massive lime- stone, tolerably free from chert, and in qual- ity similar to the quarry rock just west of Jonesboro.

The best limestone for the manufacture of quicklime, is found in the upper portion of the St. Louis group, and is extensively quar ried in the eastern part of Anna Precinct, and in the edge of the village of Anna, where several kilns are constantly in opera- tion. The rock is a crystalline, and partly olitic, light-gray limestone, nearly a pure carbonate of lime in its composition, and makes a fine, white lime, similar in quality to the Alton lime, made from the same for-

234

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

mation. Much of Central and Southern Illi- nois and the South is supplied from these kilns. The supply of this stone is almost in- exhaustible.

The Thebes sandstone affords an excellent dimension stone and material adapted to the construction of foundation walls, culverts, etc. It dresses well, and is durable. Some of the beds are of suitable thickness, and make good flagstones. All these beds out- crop along the banks and in the vicinity of the Mississippi River, and consequently may be made available, at a small cost, to all the lower country bordering on the Mississippi River that is destitute of such material, which is the case with the entire country from Cairo to New Orleans.

Millstones .- The enormous masses of chert rock contained in the Clear Creek limestones afford, at some points, a buhr stone that ap- pears to be nearly equal, if not quite equal, in quality to the celebrated French buhr stones so extensively used for millstones in this country. Some of the specimens ob- tained here seem to possess the requisite hardness and porosity, and some millstones have been obtained from [the chert beds of Bald Knob that are said to have answered a good purpose, and have been used in the neighboring mills. But these were made from the rock that had been long exposed at the surface, and perhaps were not taken from the best part of that; while the beds lying beyond the reach of atmospheric influences have not been tested.

Grindstones .- Some of the evenly-bedded sandstones of the Chester group, and es- pecially the lower beds of the series, are fre- quently developed in thin, even layers, that could be readily manufactured into grind- stones. The rock has a fine, sharp grain, and if too soft when freshly quarried, would harden sufficiently on exposure to give them

the necessary durability. Some beds of the conglomerate sandstone also have a sharp grit, and when sufficiently compact in text- ure and even bedded will make good grind- stones.

Mineral Springs, at Western Saratoga, in Union County, were widely known as far back as the recollection of man reaches in this sec- tion. In the early times, it was a noted " deer lick," and the deer would gather here in great numbers to quench their thirst and feed at their " licks." It was a noted Indian camping-ground, where they would come and hunt. That the waters possessed mineral properties was known to the earliest settlers, and as early as 1830 people began visiting the place from Jonesboro and the country north to Kaskaskia. In 1838, Dr. Penoyer, who, perhaps, had lived in Union County some little time, purchased a tract of 160 acres, and proceeded to lay out a city, of which the springs were to form the center, and gave it the name of Saratoga. Penoyer made the mistake of platting his town and dedicating, in its center, a square to the public, and this precluded any one from tak- ing hold of it and developing it as it de- served. Another error, that was fatal to the development of the place, was placing upon the lots so high a price that no one felt they could afford to invest. However, about 1840, a man named Bradley purchased a small tract, and erected a boarding-house. ' This stood until 1878, when it was burned. Dr. Penoyer and a man named Harkness, whom the Doc- tor had associated with him, built a bath- ing-house, about forty rods from the spring, and connected with it by a series of pipes. This bathing-house was about one hundred feet long and nine feet wide. This was used for some time, but gradually falling into dis- use it rotted down. As long as people could get accommodation, they flocked here in great

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.

History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 29

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co. Number of Pages: 948

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 948