History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 34

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 34
USA > Illinois > Pulaski County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 34
USA > Illinois > Alexander County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 34

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river and hunting for game he came upon the spot where he afterward lived, and re- turned to his family and brought them with him to his new home. It was a long time before he knew the Hunsakers and Wolfs were his nearest neighbors.

There was an Indian trail that, as was generally the case, was following a buffalo path that passed diagonally across the lower portion of the State and passed near where Jonesboro now is but a little to the south.

During even the early part of the eight- eenth century there were white men passing up and down the Ohio River, and the govern- ments that at different periods had posses- sions had erected 'Fort Massac, Fort Wil- kinson and Fort Jefferson and here were sta- tioned soldiers, but these were merely guard posts of armed men for the purpose of keep- ing the possession and retaining the owner- ship of the country. And often the Indians would gather in great force and besiege the place and bloody battles would ensue, and then for years the place would be evacuated and left untenanted. The tenure of these possessions was frail and uncertain, as they were often the prizes to contend for among unfriendly whites as well as with the native savages.

Skirting along the Ohio River from Fort Massac to the junction of the rivers, there were temporary settlements or camps of pio- neers on the banks as early as 1795. At the junction where Cairo now is, William Bird, in company with his parents, remembered in his lifetime of stopping and camping a short time at the point where the two rivers join, but after a rest of a few days the fam- ily proceeded up the river and settled near Cape Girardeau. He bearing in mind the impression the junction of the two great riv- ers had made, returned, being then hardly grown, to the place, in the year 1817, and made a permanent and the first settlement of

Cairo. Thus during all the early years the extreme point of land at the confluence of the two rivers was known as Bird's Point, and it was only in years after it came to be known as Cairo, and the name Bird's Point crossed the river when the Bird family made their residence at that place.

James Conyers with his family came down the river from Kentucky and camped where Cairo now stands. His son, Bartlett Con- yers, was then seven years old. He is now an active, well-to-do man, eighty-five years old and lives in Menard County, Ill.

Through the politeness of Mr. Potter, of the Argus, we were shown a letter from Mr. Bartlett Conyers, of June, 1881, in which he gives some of his recollections of the country now composed of Alexander and Pulaski Coun- ties. Among other things he says: "We made our first halt and went into camp where Cairo now is. We had moved from Livings- ton County, Ky. It was then a wilderness, and wild game, such as turkey, deer, wolves and bears, was plenty." He says he killed a number of bears as well as other game in what is now the city boundaries. He tells of an encounter he had as follows: " [ went out hunting and had only two balls for my gun. The first shot I killed a very large bear dead in his tracks; with my second ball I slightly wounded another. Although I was but sixteen years old, I thought I could kill him with my knife, so I followed him up and went into the fight in earnest, but after a short tussle in which neither got much worsted, I beat a hasty retreat. The bear retreated at the same time I did, but for some strange cause, retreated in the same direction I did, and only a few feet behind me, but I soon got out of his way. I then cut a good, short club and followed'him up, but was more cautious. I soon came up with him, and after a little maneuvering hit

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him a fair lick on the head. I expected to see him fall, but all the effect it had was to make him take right after me again. In this way we continued the fight for at least an hour, when I accidentally hit him on the back of the head, which knocked him down. For the first time my knife came in good play, and I soon finished him."

Mr. Conyers remembers spending five years hunting exclusively, and all this time had only Indians for associates and bed-fel- lows. He says his father, James Conyers, located twelve miles from the mouth of the Ohio in 1805, at a point which was after- ward America, now Pulaski County. This was the first white family in that county. The Indians were friendly and often visited the house. The next settlement in the coun- ty was Jesse Perry and family. His place was two miles above Conyers.' The nearest settlement to these two families at that time was one near Jonesboro, in Union County.

Mr. Conyers says they had no communica- tion with the outside world; each family de- pended solely upon itself for everything. The little bread they used was pounded in a mor. tar or eventually ground on a hand mill, depending wholly on game for meat, which ' was plenty. In 1807, Thomas Clark settled where Mound City now stands. And in a short time a man named Humphrey came and settled where Caledonia now stands.

Solomon Hess next came and settled at the mouth of what was afterward called Hess Bayou. A man named Kennedy was living on Clark's place in 1812, when the Indian Massacre occurred. George Hacker was the first settler on Cache River; he came there in 1806; soon after, John Shaver settled near him, and, about the year 1810, Rice and William Sams located on the Cache. This includes every soul in all that region prior to the war of 1812. The people were not

troubled for years in holding elections or paying any taxes. The war of 1812 stopped all immigration for some years, and the In- dians became troublesome, and the citizens, for self-protection, had to gather together, and the house of James Conyers was selected for the rendezvous and converted into a fort or block-house, and the settlers all " forted " there.

The Indians had a regular crossing about one mile above Conyers' place, and it was here Tecumseh crossed the river when he went south to incite the Creek and other tribes to go to war. This crossing may yet be found, as it is at the mouth of a little creek about one mile above America.

Mr. Conyers furnishes us some new facts in reference to the first attempt to settle the point of land at the junction of the two riv- ers. His recollection is distinct that it was a man named Drakeford Gray. He built his house on posts or stilts, and above the high waters. During very high water, the build- ing caught fire and burned. A boat hap- pened to be passing, and took the people off, otherwise, there is hardly a doubt they would have all perished.

The earliest settlements naturally were made along the Ohio River, and a short dis- tance up its tributaries. The pioneer river men became the pioneer settlers, and the name of Cache River is a history of itself, of those who came there and why they came. A " cache" is thus described in Irving's " Asto- ria:" " A place for the cache is situated near a running stream, a circular sod is cut out and laid aside, a hole is then dug wider at the bottom than at the top, the earth is thrown into the stream, the cache filled with such goods as are to be concealed and the sod carefully replaced." The earliest set- tlements, or rather encampments of settlers, at the mouth and a short distance up this

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HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

stream, date back to 1795. In 1809, four families had settled in what is now Dogtooth Bend. They were named Harris, Crane, Wade and Powers. They built a school- house, the first so far as can be now ascer- tained in this section of the State. The lit- tle house was made of a cottonwood tree that had been split into rails, and the first teacher was an unknown Irishman. He took his toddy and shed the light of his birch rods with no scanty or light hand. One of his pupils was John S. Hacker, who, it seems, here laid the foundations for those political tilts that he was afterward to engage in with John Grammer. Many of the immigrants into this part of Illinois had fled for safety to these high hills from the great earth- quake of 1811. This brought ex-Gov. John Dougherty, a small child at that time; he re- moved to near Cape Girardeau and after- ward to Union County. The earliest settlers along the river were supplied with salt, iron, ammunition, etc., by keel-boats. The fol- lowing description of keel-boating was fur- nished Rev. E. B. Olmstead by Col. John S. Hacker, who had often acted as bowsman in trips up and down the river: The hull was much like a modern barge or small steam- boat; a mast about forty feet high was erect- ed near the bow. to the top of which a line nearly two hundred yards long was attached. The men, with the line on their shoulders, walked on the bank, drawing the load slowly against the current. To the tow line a line was attached about thirty feet long, called a stirrup; the end next the boat passed through a ring on the tow line, so as to be within reach of the bowman, who by this means kept the boat from swinging out, and with a pole kept it off the banks. In this he was aided by the pilot or helmsman at the steer- ing oar. This was called cordeling. When the current of the river was very strong,

warping was resorted to. A line was sent ahead, fastened to a tree and the boat drawn up; as the line was drawn in, another was paid out and sent ahead. Often two to four miles was all the advance a day's hard work yielded. But ten miles could frequently be made, and when the wind allowed a sail to be unfurled it proved a blessing to the men. It required ninety days to make the trip from New Orleans to Louisville, and forty men to man the boat. Wages were $100 for the trip np, and freight was $5 per hundred pounds. The adventurous and daring navi- gators saw the beautiful country along the banks of the river and marked them for their future homes. Prominent among these was Capt. James Riddle, of Cincinnati. He was afterward one of the proprietors of Trinity, America and Caledonia, and still later of the Mounds.

In 1816, James Riddle, Nicholas Berth- end, Elias Rector and Henry Bechtle entered lands extending from below the mouth of Cache River to the Third Principal Meridian, and by a general subdivision established Trinity. No town lots were sold, but James Berry and afterward Col. H. L. Webb, in about the year 1817, coumenced a hotel here and commenced a trading and supply busi- ness. Goods were shipped here for St. Louis, and as early as 1818 a town was laid ont on an extensive scale. The propri- etors were James Riddle, Henry Bechtle and Thomas Sloo, of Cincinnati, and Stephen and Henry Rector, of St. Louis. The agent of the proprietors was William M. Alexander, who then resided at America. The agent of Mr. Riddle was John Dougherty, whose son Will- iam is a citizen of Mound City. Mr. Alexander was one of the extraordinary men of the early day. A physician of great eminence, and immediately upon the formation of Ai- exander County, was elected its first Represen-

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HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

tative in the General Assembly, and was chosen Speaker of the House. Dr. Alexan- der was here when Union County did'not ex- ist; he was here and traversing the entire county, and was well known to all the peo- ple in the district when Union County em- braced all of the now three counties. His reputation extended throughout the State, and he was intent upon building a great city at or near the confluence of the two great rivers. Something of what was going on in the way of city building may be gleaned from an extract or two of the Doctor's letters. In one dated "" Town of America, April 4, 1818," to James Riddle, of Cincinnati, he says: " The survey and additions will be completed in probably two weeks; nothing but a desire to promote the prosperity of the place could justify us in selling property which must become erelong of immense value." In another letter dated March 10, 1819, not quite one short year, he says: "The present is the crisis of its [the town's] fate. I wish you could be at America and view with your own eyes the necessity for some exertion. Only see what has been effected by my feeble exertions since the 1st of De- cember. I say it with diffidence, but I must say it, if I had not gone there at that criti- cal time, America must have fallen in a long sleep. The public mind of the coun- try was prejudiced against it. I opened Ohio street as far as Washington, Washington as far as the public square, a road to Jonesboro and one to Cape Girardeau. Had all the timber from the mouth of the creek leveled down with the earth, set the first example of erect- ing a house, have so conciliated the good will of the citizens that they have petitioned to have America made the seat of justice. Now all may bid defiance to opposition, but let us not sleep. What I have said of my- self is not by way of boasting, but to show

the effect of limited means, to show what your superior ability could effect if exerted. The. Commissioners for fixing the seat of jus- tice were selected by myself, and will of course be favorable to our views. The con- dition of its establishment will be the pay- ment of $4,000 in installments for public buildings. I have completely abandoned the idea of making an immediate specula- tion. We must wait patiently for the im- provement of the town. We must dig a well, build a free bridge over the Cache, so as to draw the trade of the Dutch in Union Coun ty Send us down mechanics of all sorts. As the Legislature has made the County Commissioners one of the most influential and respected offices in the State, I shall be a candidate for that office in Alexander Coun- ty, which is the name the Legislature has given the new county. If I am elected, I will bend the whole county to such improve- ments as will promote the interests of Amer- ica. I shall take immediate steps for the erection of the public buildings."

William M. Alexander soon left America and Union County and resided at some time in Kaskaskia. He was determined to join his fate to some new Western town that would grow at once into a great and pros- perous city, and the fates seemed to pursue him. America went " to sleep," as the Doc- tor feared it would in one of his letters, and he was hardly more than fixed in Kaskaskia when the capital of the State was moved to Vandalia, and that old town followed the fate of its more humble contemporary, Amer - ica. After residing in Kaskaskia, he went South and died.

In the year 1809, in the south part of what is now Union County, the family of Law- rences, three in number, and William Clapp, making four families, settled. They lived on Mill Creek. In a short time after this,

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John Stokes, William Gwinn, George Evans and Thomas Standard settled in the last part of the county in what has long been known as the Stokes settlement.

Hon. John Grammer .- About this time, it may have been earlier, as the most diligent search has failed to fix the date, and which is much to be regretted, there came to this county John Grammer, the model, the won- derful, the extraordinary pioneer; the fisher, hunter, trapper, politician and statesman. So little was his appearance an index to the man that he was an old settler before any one there knew that such a being existed. His presence was heralded by no star in the east or west to point him out and say to all the world " behold the man!" The inferences from the early records are that he was accom- panied by his brother William in his com- ing. It cannot be ascertained what his age was when he came, or where he was from. We only know that among the early and re- markable productions of the county, Johnson County then embracing all the territory of Union, Alexander and Pulaski Counties, was the Hon. John Grammer, who settled in what is now Union County, a little south of Jonesboro. He was one of the first offi. cials in the county, representating John- son County in the first Territorial Legis- lature as early as 1812, when there were but five counties in the State, and the entire Assem- bly would gather about a good-sized table in Kaskaskia and talk in a coversational way for an hour or two, and then join in one of those exciting games of " crack-loo" for the drinks, and in this august assembly Gram- mer was a statesman of the rougli diamond, barefoot persuasion. He was as illiterate as he was indifferent to fine clothes and per- fumed soap; as slouchy, careless and un- couth in manners mostly as he was reckless and indifferent in the use of the King's Eng-

lish, when pouring forth from the stump one of his towering philippics. He came among the early simple hunters and trap- pers of Union County like an Aurora in soiled linen or an unshod, burr-tailed colt from the mountain "deestrict," and he waked the echoes of the primeval forests, and as a politician bore down all opposition, as he rode in triumph into the affections of the voters and into high official positions. In the very first election ever held in the coun- ty he was made a Justice of the Peace, from which foothold he essayed and accomplished dizzy flights to higher positions, until he was elected to the State Senate, which position he filled time and again, from which vantage- point his name and fame extended through the entire State, until "as John Grammer says " became a by-word from Galena to Cairo. He was no common man in any- thing; he was no man's man, but strong, original, honest and incorruptible, he trod alone, sword in hand, his great life pathway, with an eye that never quailed and heart for every fate. He was unlearned in the books, but original and strong in intellect. It was from the rude, simple, illiterate John Gram - mer that the statesmen of Europe learned that when a legislator is called upon to vote in a legislative body, if he don't fully under- stand the question, to always vote "no." This was John Grammer's rule, from which he never deviated in the Illinois Senate. Nor had he any of that false pride and silly fear of be- ing laughed at that so often makes weaker minded men assume to know all things brought before them, and to hide their igno- rance in silence. This was John Grammer's cardinal idea of statesmanship: the idea and practice was his invention or discovery, and the great Frenchman De Tocqueville, when studying this government, was attracted to Grammer, and in his book on American insti-

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tutions, the Frenchman called the attention of Europe to it in terms of highest commen- dation.

What other statesman has America pro- duced that has been thus handsomely started on the road to a deserved immortality, to equal this unwashed, unkempt, illiterate backwoodsman ? Early Illinois produced many remarkable men, but none so strongly original, so uncouth, so illiterate, or so in- teresting as John Grammer. As said before, he borrowed nothing from the books, and his illiteracy was so marked that it amounted to a gift or talent. He borrowed or copied from nothing. He never hesitated for a word, for when he wanted one he would coin it upon the instant. When addressing the Senate, he would shake his frowsy locks and point his finger at the chair and exclaim: " Mr. President, I give you a 'pernipsis' of that bill." All other business stopped while he was giving his promised synopsis. When thoroughly warmed up, his eloquence was a Niagara of words, until sometimes his tongue would trip and he would land souse in a " tangled priminary," as he always called a dilemma, when he would appeal to the brother " siniters" to help him out of the difficulty, which some of them would always do, when with unruffled plumes he would sail away' again so grandly, with such gor- geous home-made rhetoric as would have paled the meteoric glories of even Sir Boyle Roche himself. Something of his greatness, in fact, lay in his ready aptness in word-coin- ing and phrase-making, and it was no trav- esty upon grammar-the science of lan- guage-when his patronymic was solemnly recorded as John Grammer, the father of Illinois true Statecraft, the author of amus- ing bulls, quaint mistakes and pat phrases that deserve to live forever in connection with his name. The heaviest constitutional

questions had no terrors for him, and when he found a fellow-senator attempting some real or fancied innovation upon the funda- mental laws, he snuffed the battle afar off and clothed his neck with thunder. Upou an occasion of this kind, he controlled his patience as long as he could, when he arose, and in a voice that pierced the marrow in members' bones, exclaimed, " You can't do that. It's fernent the compack!" and the country was saved, and John Grammer sat down immortal and to this day in all South- ern Illinois, when a thing is "fernent the compack," it is a dead cock in the pit.

Many of the early statesmen in Union County, in fact in all this then very large Senatorial district, have been sadly worsted in their attempts to supersede him among the voters. They found him wily, tough, stubborn and full of resources. He under- stood the people. He did not, when in a campaign, or any other time for that matter, array himself in purple and fine linen; nor did he drive a tandem team of blooded trot- ters with gold-mounted harness. A log wagon bull team, trimmed with bark and hickory withes was the most sumptuous go- to meetin' rig he ever possessed or used. And when dressed in his best on such oc- casions, he was generally barefoot, and thus arrayed it only seemed to add force and fire to his vehement eloquence, if his breeches were rolled up to the knees, and a twist of tobacco in one pocket and the Democratic platform in the other. He was Nature's un- adorned progeny-rather broad and liberal in his mode of thought, either in politics or religion, as well as his customs, manners, morals and habits. Like pretty much all of his day and time, he would sometimes in- dulge his appetite beyond stern puritan ideas, but he seldom went so far in this way as not to keep an eye on the main chance.

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An instance of this is given when on one oc- casion there was a great political rally, for the benefit of candidates, down in the north part of Alexander County, and Grammer was posted for a big speech. He reached the grounds some time before speaking was to commence, and before that hour had arrived he was out of all condition, and he realized this so fully that he reported himself sick, and sought seclusion, where he would soon brace up and be all right for the ordeal. The crowd foolishly gathered about him densely, when his rival pushed into the crowd and shouted: " Stand back, men; give him air!" Grammer rolled his helpless head, eyed his rival and understood he only wanted to expose him, and he said: "D-n you, I understand you. I'll be thar or bust yet," and so he did, and made one of his most effective speeches.

As did all men in those days, he hunted a great deal. On one occasion he was out in the rain all day, getting very wet; at night he hung his powder-horn on one side of the large open fire-place, so that the large tow string by which he swung it over his shoulder might dry. During the night, the " fore- stick " burned in two in the middle, and the end flipped up and set the tow string on fire. It burned off and the horn fell into the coals, and soon the sleeping household was startled by the explosion, which scattered the fire all over the room, and even on the bed where the man and wife slept. The woman soon brushed and swept up the coals, and all was safe and serene again. But Grammer didn't return to bed, but walked the floor in great distress, his hands clasped across his stomach. Finally his wife, in great alarm, asked what was the matter. "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" exclaimed the poor man; "it is not the loss of the powder, or the horn. I could stand all that; but, Sal, suppose it

purtends a sign!" And again and again the distressed man moaned like the sad, wet winds.

In the simplicity of his soul, he dreaded a "sign," a portent from a displeased heaven. Here was greatness and childish simplicity and credulity that brings to mind the agony of fear that is sometimes said to seize the huge elephant upon seeing a ridiculous little mouse.

He was a peculiar bundle of wisdom and weak and childish fears and superstitions; a medley of strange contradictions; a man who, perhaps, amid other surroundings, would never have emerged from the profound obscurity that surrounded his early life, and it now strikes the ear of the reader like the happy fictions of the romance writers, when they are told that this obscure, illiterate man, at the first moment an opportunity pre- sented itself in the State, to offer his services as a law-maker to the people, and they read- ily accepted the offer. How did this silent hunter, this illiterate recluse, ever come to know that Illinois had been advanced to a second grade Territory, and would want, as early as 1812, the people to elect a Legisla- ture, to go to Kaskaskia and enact laws, and fix the governmental machinery that was to bear aloft the weal and destiny of the young giant State. He read no newspapers, and the obscurity that envelopes the first years of his life in these wild woods, indicates that he held no converse or communication with liv- ing thing, except with the wild game, to which he spoke with the keen crack of his rifle, and its reverberating echoes among the hills. But when his adopted State called for statesmen he stepped forth, regal in coon- skin and deer-skin clothes, and filled the be- hest and was immortal. No proper history of Illinois will ever be written which omits the name of John Grammer. The first Ter-

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History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 34

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