History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 3

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 3
USA > Illinois > Pulaski County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 3
USA > Illinois > Alexander County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 3

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).

The second steamboat of the West was a diminutive vessel called the Comet. She was rated at twenty-five tons. Daniel D. Smith was the owner and D. French the builder of this boat. Her machinery was on a plan for which French had obtained a patent in 1809. She went to Louisville in the summer of 1813, and descended to New Orleans in the spring of 1814. She afterward made two voyages to Natchez, and was then sold, taken to pieces, and the engine was put up in a cotton factory.

The Vesuvius was the next boat in the record. She was built by Fulton in Pitts- burgh, for a company, the members of which resided in New York, Philadelphia and New Orleans. She was under Capt. Frank Ogden, and went to New Orleans in the spring of 1814. From New Orleans, she started for Louisville in July of the same year, but was grounded on a bar, seven hundred miles up the river, where she remained until the 3d of December following, when, being floated off by the tide, she returned to New Or- leans. In 1815-16, she made trips, for sev- eral months, from New Orleans to Natchez, under the command of Capt. Clement. This gentleman was succeeded by Capt. John De Hart, and while approaching New

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

Orleans with a valuable cargo on board, she took fire and burned to the water's edge. After being submerged several months, the hull was raised and refitted. She was after- ward in the Louisville trade, and condemned in 1819.

The Enterprise was the next boat in the West. She was built at Brownsville, Penn., by D. French, under his patent, and was owned by several residents of that place. This was a small boat of seventy-five tons. She made two voyages to Louisville in 1814, under the command of Capt. J. Gregg. On the 1st of December in the same year, she con- veyed a cargo of ordnance stores from Pitts- burgh to New Orleans. While at the last- named port, she was pressed into service by Gen. Jackson. When engaged in the public service, she was eminently useful in trans- porting troops, arms, ammunition and stores to the seat of war. She left New Orleans for Pittsburgh on the 6th of May, 1815, and reached Louisville after a passage of twenty- five days, thus completing the first steam- boat voyage ever made from New Orleans to Louisville. But from the fact that the waters were very high, and she run all the cut-offs and over fields, etc., this experi- mental trip was not satisfactory, the public being still in doubt whether a steamboat could ascend the Mississippi when the river was confined within its banks, and the cur- rent as rapid as it generally is.

Such was the state of public opinion when the steamboat Washington commenced her career. This vessel, the fifth in the cata- logue of Western steamboats. was constructed under the personal superintendence and direction of Capt. Henry M. Shreve. The hull was built at Wheeling, Va., and the engines were made at Brownsville, Penn. The entire construction of the boat comprised various innovations, which were suggested

by the ingenuity and experience of Capt. Shreve. The Washington was the first "two decker" on the Western waters. The cabin was placed between the decks. It had been the general practice for steamboats to carry their engines in the hold; in this par- ticular Capt. Shreve made a new arrange. ment, by placing the boiler of the Washing- ton on deck, and this plan was such an ob- vious improvement that all the steamboats on the waters retain it to the present day. The engines constructed under Fulton's pat- ent had upright and stationary cylinders; in French's engines vibrating cylinders were used. Shreve caused the cylinders of the Washington to be placed in a horizontal position, and gave the vibrations to the pit- man. Fulton and French used single low- pressure engines; Shreve employed a double high-pressure engine, with cranks at right angles, and this was the first engine of that kind ever used on the Western waters. Mr. David Prentice had previously used cam wheels for working the valves of the cylinder. Capt Shreve added his great invention of the cam cut-off, with flues to the boilers, by which three-fifths of the fuel was saved. These impr vements originated with Capt. Shreve, but although they have been in uni- versal use for a long time, their origin has not been properly credited to the rightful inventor.

On the 24th day of September, 1816, the Washington passed over the Falls of Ohio on her first trip to New Orleans, and returned to Louisville November following. While at New Orleans, the ingenuity of her construc- tion excited the admiration of the most in- telligent citizens of that place. Edward Livingston, after a critical examination of the boat and her machinery, remarked to Capt. Shreve, "You deserve well of your country, young man; but we [referring to Fulton

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

and Livingston's monopoly] shall be com- pelled to beat you [in the courts] if we can."

An accumulation of ice in the Ohio com- pelled the Washington to remain at the - Falls until March 12, 1817. On that day she commenced her second trip to New Orleans. She accomplished this trip and returned to Shippingsport, at the foot of the Falls, in forty-one days. The ascending voyage was made in twenty-five days, and from this voy- age all historians date the commencement of steam navigation in the Mississippi Valley. It was now practically demonstrated, to the satisfaction of the public in general, that steamboats could ascend this river in less than one-fourth the time which the barges and keel boats had required for the same purpose. This feat of the Washington pro- duced almost as much popular excitement and exultation in that region as the battle of New Orleans. The citizens of Louisville gave a public dinner to Capt. Shreve, at which he predicted the time would come when the trip from New Orleans to Louis- ville would be made in ten days. Although this may have been regarded as a boastful declaration at that time, the prediction has been more than fulfilled; for as early as 1853, the trip was made in four days and nine hours.

After that memorable voyage of the Wash- ington, all doubts and prejudices in reference to steam navigation were removed. Shipyards began to be established in every convenient lo- cality, and the business of steamboat build- ing was vigorously prosecuted. But a new obstacle now presented itself, which for a time threatened to give an effectual check to the spirit of enterprise and progression which had just been developed. We refer to the claims made by Fulton and Livingston to the exclusive right of steam navigation on the rivers of the United States. This claim

being resisted by Capt. Shreve, the Washing- ton was attached at New Orleans, and taken possession of by the Sheriff. When the case came for adjudication before the District Court of Louisiana, that tribunal promptly negatived the exclusive privileges claimed by Livingston and Fulton, which were decided to be unconstitutional. The monopoly claims of L. and F. were finally withdrawn in 1819, and the last restraint on the steamboat navigation of the Western rivers was thus removed, leaving Western enterprise and energy full liberty to carry on the great work of improvement. This work has been so progressive, that at one time no less than 800 steamboats were in operation on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; and here this mode of navigation has been carried on to a degree of perfection unrivaled in any other part of the world.

In the year 1818, William Bird, now de- ceased, entered the extreme point of land on the peninsula formed by the junction of the two rivers, and known in the Congressional Survey as the southeast quarter of Section 25, and all of Fractional Section 36, the two tracts aggregating about three hundred and sixty acres; but for some years the land lay unimproved and neglected. From this ownership by Mr. Bird, the locality took the name of Bird's Point, by which name it was designated for nearly twenty years.

Shortly after Bird's entry, a company was formed, at the head of which was a man named Comegys, and apparently in good faith set about the work of building a city here that should anticipate the wants of men and commerce for all time to come. They obtained a charter for that purpose, under the name and style of the "City and Bank Company of Cairo." This company foresaw the Illinois Central Railroad, and here, so far as the facts can now be gathered,

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

was the first tangible idea of this great rail- road put forth to the world. There was no Chicago then to build a road to; there was little or nothing in the central or northern portion of the State demanding highway privileges and commercial rights, and yet the idea was formulated that, in the course of time, was worked out to a most successful issue. The particulars of this corporation, and its struggles and its end, are given in another chapter. Sufficient to say here, that the com- pany ceased to exist, and had left untouched the great old forest trees that covered the town site when first discovered. This first failure had hardly attracted any public at- tention to Cairo. The majority who had come to know the country believed that a city would arise somewhere here on the pen- insula, but they were mostly convinced that it must be built back upon the hills, and not upon the point that all could see was subject to frequent inundations. Henry L. Webb and a few others, therefore, had started, as far back as 1817, the town of Trinity, at the mouth of Cache River, six miles above Cairo, on the Ohio River. This had grown to be a steamboat landing, and in very early times the place could boast a boat store, a tavern, a bar and a billiard soloon, but for ten years after this first abortive attempt to settle, " the smoke of no adventurer's hovel gave gloom to Cairo's canopy," and the unbroken silence remained with the "neck of the woods," where the future Cairo was to be.

In 1828, John and Thompson Bird, the sons of William Bird, made the first improve- ment here. They selected the spot a few hundred feet south of the present Halliday House, and, bringing their slaves over from Missouri, threw up a sufficient embankment to protect a building which they erected, about twenty-five by thirty-five feet in dimensions, and in a short time after the!

erected another building, between this and the river, which was about twenty feet square, and was placed on piles, as a security against the water. The first building was a tavern, and the latter a store, and for several years it was only the chance flat-boatman that circumstances compelled to land here and get a few supplies for his crew that fur- nished customers to these Alexander Selkirks. Bacon, whisky and flour were the only com- modities wanted by any of the customers of those days. The next season after the Birds had taken possession, a wood-chopper put up a shanty near their improvement, and in this he lived and chopped wood, and piled it on the bank, waiting for some boat to come along and want it. The wood-chopper made a very little impression on the big trees around him, and the Birds had only a small spot cleared and cleaned off, so as to have a little breathing room, as well as a place to receive and pass out the goods they handled. In 1831, only about five acres had been cut away, and this lay in a narrow strip along the banks of the Ohio, and extended no further north than to about where is now . Second street. Until 1835, Trinity continued to be the commanding and promising point. In this year, Messrs. Breese, Swanwick, Baker, Gilbert and others began to give the point their open attention, and they entered several thousand acres of land, including all that portion between the two rivers up to and beyond Cache River. They had in view the future possibilities of the place as a point for a city, but having secured the land, mat- ters remained quiet for some time. The next step taken was on the 16th day of January, 1836, when a charter was granted a com- pany, by the Illinois Legislature, to build the Illinois Central Railroad.

February 27, 1837, the State of Illinois passed the General Improvement Bill-better

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

known to the immediate posterity of these early statesmen as the General Insanity Bill -which resulted in a wide-spread bankruptcy, and seriously threatened, at one time, to ruin the State for nearly all time to come. This State scheme of making all the improvements swallowed up all charters that had been granted to private parties, and, among the others, the charter for the construction of the Illinois Central Railroad; and, as a specimen of what an insane State could do, the Legislature appropriated (not having a dol- lar, it seems, in the treasury) $3,500,000 for the building of this last-named road.

On the 4th day of March, 1837, the Cairo City & Canal Company was chartered by the Illinois Legislature. This was the final act and organization that led to founding a city here, and of the charter and laws and the official acts of the company, and their failures, etc., we refer the reader to another chapter, where these matters are given in their order and at length.

This company purchased, on credit, vast bodies of land, including the Bird tract, and pretty much all lands on the peninsula, to and beyond Cache River. The master-spirit of the enterprise, as soon as it was success- fully started, was Darius B. Holbrook, of Boston. The company, apparently, cared not what price it agreed to pay for the land; so the title was secured, that seemed enough. The daring, and doubtless unscrupulous, leader of this company, even in those days of little money and natural economy, seemed to talk and think of money in sums of never less than millions. He expected to borrow immense sums, and stake these over-bar- gained lands as the security for the vast amount of money wherewith to improve the lands and build the city; and, remarkable as it may be, did so borrow money, and had arranged for it to be advanced by the million,

sure enough. While such success shows there must have been method in his madness, yet his whole idea, after he had secured the money, was a piece of madcap folly. When he found it possible to find other men to furnish the money for him to expend, he was at once seized with the idea that, with money enough, he could build a great city, and the whole thing, when completed, would be as much of a private piece of property as would be a large factory, steam mill, or, for that matter, a block of private residences. His theory was to sell no property about the town, except the bonds and stocks. No one could buy a lot and build upon it and own it. You could not buy an inch of the city grounds; but you could buy the bonds, and, upon this insane idea, he went to Europe and hypothecated the city bonds to the amount of more than $2,000,000, and returned to Cairo with the first installment of this money, and com- menced the stupendous work upon a stupen- dous scale. The only parallel to the vast scheme was the State's craze on the internal improvement folly. It is amusing to conjec- ture what Holbrook would have done had he been backed by a limitless supply of money. He evidently would have left some wrecks here, the like of which the world had never seen, while his cold, selfish, Yankee instincts would have made a heavy per cent of all the money that passed through his hands stick in his fingers. Thus, in the end, he would have grown immensely rich; but it is not at all certain he ever would have erected a town here.

When he returned from Europe, he issued a flaming address-a kind of open letter ad- dressed to all the world-full of as much fulsome nonsense and after the style of Na- poleon's address to his soldiers. It can only be guessed why he issued these flaming ad- dresses. He was not seeking purchasers for

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

his town property, for he had nothing to sell, and the addresses were not got up to draw renters. The only excuse there can be for their existence was to brag on himself, and, in the common slang, " blow his own horn."

If Cairo has had any parallel, either in its commencement or in much that has occurred in its history during its progress, we are not aware of it. Its very first building was a tavern, its second a store, and then came the first natural growth-the woodman's shanty. Then the next effort was to found a city by starting a wild-cat bank, and then came Hol- brook and his idea of a city and the inhabitants all stockholders, while he and his company were the real owners. But Holbrook was at least in earnest about the building of levees around the town, to keep out the water. As soon as he secured the money, he made con- tracts with S. & H. Howard, J. H. McMurry, Murphy and others, and these contractors brought on laborers here in large numbers. Many of these brought their families, and. in hastily constructed shanties and huts, they went to living. "keeping boarders," and put- ting on those airs which belong to a city that has grown in a night. Mr. Walter Falls had a store on a boat, moored at the levee, but its capacity for furnishing supplies was wholly inadequate, and passing boats were called upon to help furnish the people with some of the necessaries of life. The State also threw a large number of men here to work on the Illinois Central Railroad, so that the demand for flour, bacon and coffee was still increased to that extent that often loaded flat-boats would stop here, and sell out the cargoes they had intended for farther south.

A population reaching 2,000 souls were thus thrown suddenly together, and affairs had much the appearance of one of those mining towns that jump into existence so suddenly, and sometimes seem to jump out

quite as quickly. But the people believed everything was permanent; they. therefore, proceeded in due form to organize a regular form of government, and appoint the neces- sary officers to carry out its edicts. As Jus- tices of the Peace, Mr. Marsh and Mr. Mc- Cord were chosen, and two lawyers decorated a couple of shanty doors with their shin- gles; these were Mr. Gass (good legal name) and a Mr. McCrillis. A post office was at once established, and Squire Marsh was ap- pointed Postmaster. In addition to being Postmaster, he had to receive and forward all mails, and in a short time this task was worth three or four times the whole salary of the office. A Dr. Cummings hung out his banner on the outer walls, and called the sick and afflicted to come to him for quinine and calomel. The Catholic element, mindful of their religious obligations, set about the prep- aration of a place for the public worship of God. As they were limited alike in means and building materials, and as they desired to subserve only a temporary purpose, they satisfied themselves with a rough, board- roofed shanty in the depths of the convenient woods. In the forks of one of the trees over- shadowing their unpretending church build- ing. they suspended a bell, and this, every Sunday morning and evening, rang out through the deep woods and over the face of the surrounding waters the call of " Come, and let us worship." . Such was the first organization of municipal. governmental and

church matters in Cairo, as well as the first lawyers, and the first doctor and the first people. Such was the young city at the commencement of the year 1841. At this time, the firm of Bellews, Hathaway & Gil- bert secured a charter for iron works, and they opened their establishment. It was tilled with all the finest machinery that could be procured in England. At the time. it ranked

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

among the completest establishments of its kind in the United States, and as it was run to its fullest capacity, it gave Jabor to a large force of men. These works were erected about where is now the corner of Twelfth street and the Ohio levee. Near the iron works were two large saw mills, of great capacity each, and they were busily at work converting the big trees of the adjacent forest into lumber for building purposes and railroad timbers. The company had revived the old City Bank of Cairo-a bank of issue, and, by law, was temporarily located at Kaskaskia, and this money was scattered profusely about the town. By some favored arrangement, the money of this wild-cat bank was taken at the Kaskaskia Land Office, while much better money from Indiana and Ohio was refused there. The company had erected a long frame hotel at the point-its great length, and its verandas extending from one end to the other, all painted white, made it a con- spicuous landmark in approaching Cairo. Its landlord was a man named Jones, and in these flush times it was at all times thronged with the chief men of the town and travelers awaiting the arrival and departure of boats to carry them on their intended way. A planing mill of mammoth proportions was erected near the corner of Eighth and Com- mercial streets. Two brick-yards, each sup- plied with the latest patents for turning out brick by the many thousand daily, from dry, compressed earth, were erected. These were then located in what is called Upper Cairo. The company had erected a dry dock, at a cost of over $35,000, and notwithstanding a heavy force of carpenters were erecting buildings in every direction, yet, so urgent was the demand for houses of any and every kind, that Col. Falls had moored at the levee the hull of the steamer Peru, and a Mr. Thompson had also brought the steamer

Asia to the wharf for the same purpose. In short, the entire levee soon became a compact mass of wharf-boat hotels, stores, residences, boarding-houses and business places of every kind. Here was a little busy city on boats moored to the shore. Everything and every- where about Cairo bespoke a marvelous thrift -all was at high pressure, and the wonder of the age had come at last. And all over the land the contagion spread. Along the rivers, from Pittsburg and St. Louis to New Orleans its name grew, and crossing the Alleghanies and over the Eastern States, and, pushed by the great banking-house of Wright & Co., of London, which had taken over $2,000,000 in the Cairo bonds, and who were interested in advertising it all over Europe in the most unqualified and extravagant terms, until apparently the large portion of the civilized world looked, at least, and as- certained where this remarkable young city was located on the world's map. Never was more thorough, elaborate or expensive adver- tising done for any place than that for Cairo. Flaming prospective views of the city in splendid lithographs were hung upon the walls of steamboats, hotels, halls and other public places, and to all these were added the potency of a great young State, advertis- ing, by its legislative acts, this great South Sea Bubble, or, as Cairo was modestly then called in the proclamations of Holbrook, the " great commercial and manufacturing mart and emporium."

The State had literally bankrupted itself, and perforce wound up its Utopian schemes. Its folly had very nearly universally bank- rupted the entire people. The whole coun- try was ripe for a panic and contraction, and the probe of a solid specie basis pricked, of course, the Cairo bubble, and the crash of tumbling air castles, and the half-completed real ones, carried everything with them, and

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

left the Cairo City & Canal Company buried beneath a mountain of debris. We have already shown the inherent defects there were in the Holbrook idea of founding and building a great city, but in a sketch by M. B. Harrell, published in 1864, he gives the following as his conclusions as to the immediate and remote causes of the collapse of the town:

" There are many causes, " he says, "which contributed to the downfall of Cairo, but the chief cause alleged is the failure of the house of Wright & Co., London, through whom the company anticipated continued loans. But this is by no means the sole cause. The suspension of work on the Illinois Central Railroad, the great artery of trade and traffic upon which so much depended, and the gen- eral abandonment of the system of public works inaugurated by the State in 1837, seemed to affect the public at large, and so seriously enervated the enterprise of Cairo. And, again, it is directly taught, by the his- tory of the whole country, that no man, set of men or corporation, can create and success- fully conduct such a monstrous monopoly as that attempted at the confluence of these rivers by D. B. Holbrook & Co. Even per- sonal liberty and freedom of thought were brought in direct antagonism to this singu- lar undertaking. The project amounted to no more nor less than an attempt on the part of these men to build, own and direct a city at the mouth of the Ohio River. At no price, in no shape or form, could a resident of this city, under the Holbrook auspices, become a freeholder. He could not purchase, he could not lease, or otherwise acquire a title in a single foot of ground within the proposed city. If he occupied a dwelling, this com- pany owned it, and consequently he lived in it only during the pleasure of this . Lord of the manor.' If ordered to vacate, he could

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History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 3

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