History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 38

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 38
USA > Illinois > Pulaski County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 38
USA > Illinois > Alexander County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 38

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 law requires that school directors shall report the number of persons between twelve and twenty-one years of age who cannot read and write. The United States census of 1880, and the school census, show a strange incon- sistency on this point. The former report the number of persons under twenty-one in the county at 9,878. The school census re-

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ports it at 9,564. The school census reports the number of persons who cannot read and write between the ages of twelve and twenty- one at 130. The Government census reports this class of persons at 658, the last gives those between the ages of ten and twenty- one. This is a glaring discrepancy, and we have no hesitation in adopting the Govern- meut report as much nearer the truth. Union County is not any worse in this respect than the counties of the State generally. Not nearly so bad as many. For instance, Jasper re- ports twenty-three illiterates, and the Gov- ernment reports for that county 534, who can- not read and write. We do not believe in compulsory education, and yet we con- fess it is not a cheering sign to see a large per cent of illiterates. It is a misfortune for any people to have very many who cannot read and write, but it is a greater misfortune to the individual sufferer than the body politic; but so is it a misfortune to have poor health, poor teeth or a bald head. It is a misfortune to have young men grow to maturity without any of those refinements and polish that make social life so pleasant, but you cannot legis- late away the clowns and roughs, though their presence may mar society never so much. We have too much law concerning the schools already and too little education. A compul- sory school law has been practiced in this It country and in Europe for generations.

can hardly be said to be an experiment. If it corrects the evil of illiteracy, and in return

gives us the much greater ills of a paternal government, where are the benefits? There are always a class of men who are infinitely more dangerous to society than are those who cannot read and write. These are the reform . fanatics, who would legislate away all evils, and legislate into force all morals. They see a real or an imaginary wrong existirg, and they fly to the Legislature and call for a police-

man to remedy the wrong. They know no power for good except the brute force of gov- ernment. The same class of men a few years ago were in power in most of the governments. They made the blue laws of New England, and talked in a heavenly, pious twang. and burned poor old helpless women for witches, and murdered hundreds of thousands of other people for the shocking crime of heresy. Power in the hands of such lunatics is indeed a menace to mankind. They have no more idea of the part and province of a govern- ment than has an enraged bull- dog of human- ity and justice. It is not a great while since these fanatics had a compulsory church at tendence law in Scotland, and policemen ap- pointed to visit the houses and see that every one attended. Did they have a doubt, think you, that they could legislate people into heaven ? The work of forming strong pater- nal governments has been going on for six thousand years, at least, and the supreme evil that has afflicted mankind in all these centuries has been over-legislation-too much law, too much interference with the people, too many government officials, too much of governments trying to do what only individ- uals can do for themselves. That man is not fit for the noble duty of self-government who thinks government ever did or ever can legis- late men either into morals, religion or educa- tion. That mau is insufferably ignorant who does not know that the only way to make men good, and to cleanse him from all evils is to first remove his ignorance. It is ignorance that has brought into this world all our woe. An ignorant man is a menace to a community. But simply to know how to read and write is not a proof of the absence of ignorance. If people had the correct ideas of schools and education, there would not be a child (except idiots) that would grow to the age of twelve in the land but that could read and write. It

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is no more trouble to teach any child to do this than it is to teach it to eat with a knife and fork. When people's ignorance is re- moved, they will no more grow children that cannot read and write than they will who cannot dress themselves, or talk, or play the innocent and healthy plays of chil- dren. A compulsory law to wash the child's face and comb its hair might now be neces- sary in say an average of one family to a county. Reading and writing are not edu- cating; they are simply a species of training and of themselves of no higher grade than those of ordinary acts of politeness, cleanli- ness or decency. An ignorant, savage peo- ple must have a school, if their children ever learn to read and write, but no civilized fam- ily has to have any such assistance. And you may mark it well, that the day is either now here or it is very near, when such a thing as people sending their children to school to learn to read and write will be as unknown as is now the custom of sending them out to be washed and their heads cleaned. The reader who feels his own con- victions outraged by these sentiments is most respectfully requested to turn back and ex- amine carefully over again the definition of the word education. What is it? Not. as the dictionaries will tell you e from, and duco to lead. You can get no idea from the defini- tion you will find in the dictionaries of what the real meaning of the word is. "To lead from ignorance " is like the old defini- tion of heat as the absence of cold, and cold, then. would be the absence of heat. You might study such definitions a thousand years and you would not have nearly so good a definition of heat as the child when it tells you "it burns." Ask any man you meet

what education is, and the chances are ninety- nine in a hundred he will tell you so-and-so is highly educated, because he can read Latin and Greek, when the facts are a man may read all the dead and living languages of the world and still not be educated at all-still be very, very ignorant. You cannot think, much less talk, intelligently about education unless you first know the full and true mean- ing of the word. Education is getting knowl- edge, and knowledge is understanding the mental and physical laws. We start you on the way of mastering the understanding of the word education. You can pursue it and follow it out to its complete understanding if you so desire.

The School Superintendent of Union Coun- ty, W. C. Rich, in a report to the State Superintendent in 1884, says:

" Irregularity of attendance in country schools-this can only be met by a compul- sory act. The object of the free school sys- tem is to give every child of school age a common school education, but in the absence of a compulsory law, the object of a free school system will never be accomplished."

In Union County there are three brick schoolhouses, sixty frame houses and eleven loghouses, making a total number of school- houses seventy - four. One new one was built in 1882; of these are seven graded schools. Number of male teachers in graded schools, 10; females, 15. Number of male teachers in ungraded schools, 52; number of females,20; making the total number of teachers in the county 97.

Certainly a creditable showing as to both the number of houses, teachers and pupils in a county of only a little over 18,000 popula- tion.

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

301

CHAPTER VII.

THE BENCH AND BAR -GOVERNOR REYNOLDS-EARLY COURTS -FIRST TERM AND OFFICERS- DANIEL P. COOK-CENSUS OF 1818-COUNTY OFFICERS TO DATE-ABNER AND ALEXANDER P. FIELD-WINSTED DAVIE-YOUNG AND M'ROBERTS-VISITING AND RESIDENT LAWYERS-GRAND JURIES PUNCHED- HUNSAKER'S LETTER -WAR BE- TWEEN JONESBORO AND ANNA -COUNTY VOTE, ETC., ETC.

" Ambition sighed; she found it vain to trust The faithless column, and the crumbling bust."

TN the early organization of a county, especially away back in the history of Illinois to 1817, the date of the formation of this county, the courts, and their short bi- ennial sessions, the judges, the judges' great. ness and dignity that those people readily conceded the judicial toga, the lawyers, as they traveled over the large circuits, through the many large and sparsely settled counties, were objects of much awe and admiration among the people. Even the Clerks of the Courts, the Sheriffs, the foreman of the grand jury, as well as other petty officers about the court house, who, by virtue of their official positions, could, on terms of apparent great familiarity, exchange a few words with the

Judge and the lawyers, were temporarily greatly enlarged and magnified, and perhaps envied sometimes by the common crowd. But soon after the organization of each county came the local lawyer, the permanent dweller at the county seat, and thus some of the glamour that invested the profession of the law passed away. Their numbers in- creased, and as law and politics were then synonymous terms, and they still more mixed among the people, and coaxed and wheedled them out of their votes, kissing the babies, patting the frowzled-headed, dirty-faced youths on the head, talking taffy to the vain old mothers, hugging, like a very brother,

the voters, and dividing with them their plug tobacco, and making spread-eagle stump speeches everywhere and upon all occasions, and upon the slightest opportunities, and thus still more of the awe-inspiring great- ness of the profession passed away. Thus, in the long process of time, a lawyer came to be only a human being, and even the high Judge, as the boy said about the preacher, "nothing but a man." But the fact remains that in the early settlement of the State, and in the formation of the county municipalities, these legal gentlemen had very much to do in those initiatory steps that have shaped and fashioned the destiny of both the State and the counties that transformed this wilderness of wild men and wild beasts into the fourth commonwealth in this cluster of great and growing States, and from this vantage-point our State is entered in the race for the third place, then the second place, and then the great goal of first place in the galaxy of States. The finger-marks of these founders, and largely the architects of the early State polity that has so swiftly led to these as- tounding results, are to be seen everywhere, and the meed of praise is justly theirs for this beneficent foresight, patriotism and un- yielding integrity that have stood like beacon lights upon the troubled waters, when the storms raged and beat upon the ship of State.

Among the earliest of the Illinois lawyers,

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who at one time lived in the county that then included what is now Union County, was John Reynolds -- the Old Ranger. The ap- pellation of Old Ranger was given him for his great services in the soldiery that fought the Indians. In the early days, these soldiers were mounted men, and often they were designated in their military capacity as rangers.

Gov. John Reynolds was a native of Penn- sylvania, and came to Illinois and located in Kaskaskia in the year 1800. Only eighteen years after the first American flag had been unfurled over all this territory, and the land had become a part and parcel of the posses- sions of the United States, under Lieut. Todd, who had been commissioned by Gov. Patrick Henry to come here, take possession in the name of the United States, and put in force and operation the principles of our present free and enlightened Government. Gov. Henry wrote this important document within hearing of the booming of the guns of the Revolution. The Governor appointed a messenger to bear the important commis- sion to Lieut. Todd, who was fighting the Indians and British somewhere in the North- west, and it took the bearer nearly or quite a year to find Todd and invest him with the important authority of organizing and establishing upon an enduring basis the benign government that now blesses so many people of the great Mississippi Valley. Thus it was the soldier, Lieut. Todd, who laid the foundations of a free government here, and upon this foundation has risen the grand superstructure we now behold, and, as before remarked in this work, a great deal of credit is due the early lawyers of Southern Illinois, and among the earliest and most valuable of these, to the then young Territory, was John Reynolds, whose life, after he came here, was spared to us sixty-five years. He was a re-

markable man in many respects. The writer hereof first saw him in 1844, and to his boy- ish eyes the Old Ranger was the one great man that he ever expected to see. He was tall, slim, erect, with classical features, soft, white hair, moderate mutton-chop whiskers of the same color, with a wonderfully pene- trating, restless gray eye. It was a warm day, and he had his coat off, and his shirt collar unbuttoned, and was battling for Polk for President. He talked rapidly, and held the closest attention of the men, women and chil- dren present, ever and anon appealing per- sonally and by name to some voter in the audience, and always addressing him by his given name, and so adroitly did he manage this, that by the time he would finish his speech he had thus appealed to about every voter in his audience. It was told of him, that in about every county in Southern Il- linois he could pass through them on an elec- tioneering tour, and shake hands with every voter he met, and call him, by his given name. His knowledge of men, his ready wit, his practical, shrewd sense, his big, warm and generous heart, and incorruptible integrity both in private and public life, were the sources of his invincible power among the people. When the least bit embarrassed, he had a singular way of rubbing his hand down over his face and at the same time giving his nose a slight pull. His speeches were some- what in a familiar conversational manner, and interjected with side remarks that were explanatory and often intensely amusing. In many respects he was admirably equipped for a great and successful demagogue, and for sixty-five years he plied his vocation to such an advantage that he occupied from time to time nearly all the exalted positions in the State, as well as Financial Agent of the State in negotiating the Internal Im- provement Loan of $4,000,000 to Europe.

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HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

It is not proposed here to give a detailed biography of the Old Ranger, for this is a familiar subject to all our people. His last years among us was the happy rounding out of a well-spent and valuable life. And when started once upon his favorite, theme, the venerable old kindly face would kindle and flame with recollections of the pioneer times and people, and his talk became as intensely interesting as his fund of incident and anec- dote seemed inexhaustible, and of him and about him there was current among the people nearly an equal fund of anecdote. These the old Governor never referred to in his conversations, especially that one in refer- ence to his sentencing, while on the circuit bench, a man to be hung: "Mr. Green," said the Judge, addressing the prisoner, "the jury and the law have found you guilty of murder. I am very sorry for you Mr. Green. I wish you would send word to your friends down on Flat Creek that it was the jury and the law, and not me, that sentenced you to be hung. What day would suit you best to be hung, Mr. Green? Well, I will do all I can for you. The law permits me to extend your life four weeks and I will give you all the time I can." Then addressing the clerk he said : " Mr. Clerk, I wish you would look at the almanac and see if next Friday four weeks comes on Sunday?" " You see, I don't want to hang you on Sunday, Mr. Green." And thus this really sad and afflicting duty of this kind-hearted official was gotten through with. Green was duly hung, but his friends on Flat Creek, as Green exhorted them from the scaffold to do, always afterward voted for the Old Ranger unanimously.

and wagon. He finally asked her opinion of the country. "Oh; well," said the good dame, " it seems to be good enough for men and dogs, but is powerful tryin' on women and oxen."

The first term of the Circuit Court convened in Union County was in Jonesboro, at the house of Jacob Hunsaker, May 11, 1818; Daniel P. Cook, Presiding Judge. A picture of this pioneer court room and the gathering of the people in this humble log house of jus- tice, in their hunting shirts, coon-skin caps, and generally each man with his shot-pouch hanging to his side, and early as it was in the spring, many of them barefoot, and the others with deer-skin moccasins; when the grand jury, after being charged by the court with the affairs of the county and the weal or woe of litigants or criminals, filed out in solemn silence in the charge of an officer of the court, who conducted them a short dis- tance in the woods to their grand jury room, which consisted simply of a log lying be- neath the old forest trees; and then, after a hot trial as to whom the meat belonged to of a certain wild hog that one hunter had shot and another had captured, to see the petit jury similarly file out to another log in another part of the woods to be "locked up," or rather seated on another log to deliberate on their verdict. We say, this in a picture would now look curious and very rude in- deed. And so it was in some respects, and yet when more deeply studied and under- stood, it would be seen that there were here in this log court house, with all its primitive surroundings, men of ability, education, and forensic talents, that might have adorned the most elevated or historical woolsacks in the world.

The old Governor would often in his speeches, especially if there were ladies present, tell the story about his riding along Daniel P. Cook will take his place in the history of Illinois as second to no other man the road one day in the early time, and coming u) w .; ) \ woman who was driving an ox teamin the State except Stephen A. Douglas. He

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HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

came from Missouri to Kaskaskia a very young man and in very delicate health; stud- ied law with his uncle, Nathaniel Pope; was admitted to the bar, and at once took his position among the great lawyers of his day; was the Territorial Delegate in Congress, and framed the measure and passed it through Congress admitting the State into the Union; in 1819, was elected Attorney General of the State, and afterward a mem- ber of Congress, defeating McLean in a con- test extending all over Southern Illinois, and that was conducted by joint discussions, and, it is said, was never excelled for displaying great talents, unless it was in the campaign of Douglas and Lincoln in 1858. In the bill to admit Illinois, the committee reported the north boundary line of the State to run due west on a line parallel with the southern bend of Lake Michigan, and it is due to Judge Cook that this was changed to its present line, and thus the fourteen northern counties, including the city of Chicago, were taken from the Territory of Wisconsin. He showed Congress that the lakes of the North and constant navigation at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers must not be separated by dividing State lines - that Illinois must be made a Keystone State of the Mississippi Valley. He then foresaw would come the great questions between the North and the South that did come, and his wise forethought was the architect of the West and of the Union as we now have it, and it is highly probable that his action here did more ultimately to preserve the integrity of the union of States in the late civil war than any other one thing in our history.

Such was something of the magnificent record of a man who sank into his grave at the age of thirty-seven years, and who nearly all his life was an invalid and sufferer. His brief life, his wonderful achievements, his

lingering death from consumption upon the threshold of his manhood, are, indeed, "a strange, eventful story." His was one of the few lives that adorned the morning of the nineteenth century, and was a blessing to American civilization that only ignoble de- scendants will ever forget or cease to cherish.

At this, the first term of the court, the Sheriff returned the following grand jury: James Westbrook, George Woolf, John Riton, John Weigle, John McIntosh, Michael Lin- burg, Thomas Sams, Joel Boggis, Alexander Beggs, Benjamin McCravens, James Murphy, John Whitaker, Nicholas Wilson, Samuel Sprood, Rice Sams, David McIntuff, Benja- min Worthenton, Adam Clapp, Richard Mc- Bride, George Godwin, Henry Lamer, John Crise, David Penrod, and Owen Evans. John Whitaker was appointed foreman.

James Evans, Esq., on exhibiting license from the Superior Court, was admitted as an attorney at law.

This was then known as the Western Dis- trict of the Territory of Illinois.

The first day's proceedings were a contin- uance of the case of Daniel Ritter vs. Joseph Taylor, action on the case. Letters of ad- ministration were granted John Bradshaw, on the estate of Charles Murphy. The case of Joseph Taylor vs. Thomas Giles, con- tinued. A judgement taken upon confession against John Stokes, one of the defendants, for $1.10.

The grand jury returned into court an in- dictment against John C. Thomas, felony. The court disposed of case of " Milly, a black woman," on habeas corpus, was dismissed.

On the second day, the case of John C. Thomas, continued for the term./ The next criminal case was the indictment against Samuel G. Penrod for retailing liquors.

The second term of the court was held by Judge John Warnock.

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HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY.

Johnson Renny was, at the September term, May, 1818, admitted to practice law. At this term of the court, William Russell is ad- mitted as an attorney. Mr. E. K. Kane also appeared as an attorney. At this term, John Reynolds, the " Old Ranger," appeared as an attorney.

At a term court, May 13, Richard M. Young produced license and was admitted as an attorney. On Tuesday, September 14, 1819, David T. Maddox was ad- mitted as an attorney. At this term of the court, Daniel T. Coleman prosecuted his suit for divorce against his wife, Judah. A jury was called and the divorce granted.

At April term, on April 10, 1820, Charles Dunn produced in court a license to practice law and was duly enrolled. Thomas Rey- nolds was acting as Circuit Attorney.

April term, 1821, Thomas C. Browne was the Presiding Judge. David J. Baker appears as an active and practicing attorney at this term.

In another chapter, we have given the order of the organization of the County Commis- sioners' Court, the platting of the town of Jonesboro, and the election and appointment of the county officers, and the commence- ment of the work of putting into operation the county machinery, which constituted the county's government. When the little county ship of State was duly launched, it was in power over the large territory that now em- braces Union, Alexander and Pulaski Coun- ties, and contained a population in 1818 of 2,482 souls, and was in the number of its in- habitants the fifth county in the State. The counties outnumbering it were Gallatin, with 3,256 people; Madison, 5,456; Randolph, 2,939; and St. Clair, 4,519. The total pop- ulation of Illinois at that time was 40,156.

Joseph Palmer, as stated, was the first Sheriff of the county, and he and the Com-

missioners' Court, upon a settlement, could not agree, and the court claimed he was $260 behind in his payments of money collected, and they entered judgments for that amount, and also assessed the State penalty, which was that such delinquents were to pay twelve per cent per month from the rendering of such judgments until the judgment should be paid. The case was in litigation some time, and finally compromised by the court allow- ing a part of Palmer's set-offs, and his pay- ing the remainder. In 1821, George Hun- saker was the Sheriff of the county. Abner Field was acting as County and Circuit Clerk, and his entire salary for performing the duties of the two offices for one year was $60. He resigned.

Winstead Davie, at the April term, 1822, of the Circuit Court, was ap- pointed Clerk, by Judge Browne, Presiding Judge. And at the March term, 1823, there appears upon the records the following : " Winstead Davie having been before ap- pointed Clerk, in the place of Abner Field, resigned, he presented his bond as Clerk of the Circuit and County Court, Recorder and Notary Public." The bond was approved. There is no man whose history is more closely interwoven with the early accounts of the county, or whose history is more interest- ing and instructive, than that of Winstead Davie. A complete story of his life would read like a well-constructed romance. Born with physical infirmities that rendered him a cripple for life-requiring the constant use of two crutches-he commenced in poverty the struggle for existence, and worked out a career that points him out as the child of destiny. He was the crippled, helpless in- valid child of poor parents, with a large family of children. It is told of him, that in his youth he overheard his parents talking and lamenting over his affliction and his

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History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 38

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