History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 5

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 5
USA > Illinois > Pulaski County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 5
USA > Illinois > Alexander County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 5

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).

Mose Harrell is authority for the assertion that the little handful of people here- as the shelter they enjoyed, the ground they cultivated, and the general privileges they exercised, cost them nothing, - prob-

ably enjoyed themselves. This inference is strengthened by the recollection that during all this time, they did, or had, but little else to do, and Harrell, therefore, asserts (he was one of the jolly crowd) " they enjoyed them- selves to a degree beyond any other people, so far as he knew or could hear or read about." In the course of time, after the crash, the mea- ger population left, of about fifty souls, had increased to nearly two hundred, and the town seemed to run to wharf-boats, flats and all manner of water craft. The business was nearly all upon the water's edge, and there was quite a period when it really looked as though, as soon as the few houses rotted down, or were used up for kindling-wood, the entire population and business would crawl over outside the levee, and become a real floating city. Here were the gathering places, eating places, drinking places and the center of all the fun or excitement. People wanted to see the steamboats land; they wanted to go on board, look around, and, by examining the passengers, recall recollections of when they were innocent members of the civilized world.

There were three wharf-boats moored in front of the town, and, strange as it may seem, all were doing a fair business, and some of them made money. The Louisiana, Henry Simmons, proprietor, lay about oppo- site what is now Second street; the Ellen Kirkman, Rodney & Wright, proprietors, was just below this, and the Sam Dale, T. J. Smith & Co., proprietors, lay below where the Halliday House stands. "On the hill," as the top of the levee was then called, were to be found the Cairo Hotel, by S. H. Candee, the stores of B. S. Harrell and Oliver S. Sayre, the office of the Cairo Delta newspaper, the saloon of George L. Rattlemueller, and the bakery of George Baumgard. The five last-

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

mentioned were all in the buildings erected by Jones & Holbrook on the ground now oc- cupied by the Halliday House.

About the total population that was left here after the exodus, as the names were furnished us by Mr. Robert Baird, who was here as early as 1839, are the following- premising there are some, of course, that Mr. Baird cannot now recall, or has wholly for- gotten, and further stating the explanatory fact that, of all the earliest comers of Cairo, the only persons now living of those who did not leave the city in its first panic, are Robert Baird, Nick Devore and Mrs. Pat Smith -- just three persons. Here is the now imperfect list of the 1839-40 comers: Squire Marsh, Constable Lee, Dr. Cummings, T. J. Glass, Mr. Jones, Thomas Eagan, Mrs. Pat Smith, D. W. Thompson, who had moved down the hull of the Asia and converted it into a wharf-boat and hotel, afterward taking off the cabin of the boat and moving it to Blandville, Ky., where he made another hotel of it, which was about the first house in that place; Hathaway & Garrison, the latter went to California and grew quite wealthy; Mr. McCoy, who afterward went to Iowa; Dr. Gilpin and family, kept a boarding-house near where is now the corner of Sixth and levee; Thomas Feely, kept dairy, near cor- ner of Eighth and levee; Mr. Adkins, a butcher; Mr. Ferdon, a carpenter, whose grown young daughter was afflicted with at- tacks of occasional insanity. In one of these moods she wandered off, and some distance north of town she came to an old, deserted hut, and as it was night she entered it and found two deer inside, and, closing the door, kept them there, and in this strange company the girl passed the night, unharmed and in seeming content. The next morning she stepped out and fastened the door, and re- porting her adventure to her father, he, in com-

pany with some friends, among whom was our informant, Mr. Baird, repaired to the hut and secured the venison; next, a Mr. Lyles, the father-in-law of Mr. Miles F. Parker, a citizen of Cairo; Mr. Shutleff, a foreman in the shops; Tom Brohan, a teamster and con- tractor; Jacob Weldon and family, his widow afterward marrying Judge Shannessy; Isaac Lee, whose son Bill was for many years a Cairo landmark; John Riggs, a ma- chinist, left here afterward and went to Cali- fornia; Ed McKinney, machinist; John Sulli - van, tailor; Mr. Kehoe, carpenter and kept a boarding-house; Walter Falls, kept bar at the hotel and afterward wharf-boat and store; John Addison, carpenter and boarding- house; John Wesley, shoe-maker; William Holbrook and family; Henry Ours, baker and saloon; George L. Rattlemueller, saloon.

Pat Smith married Miss Hennessy, the wedding taking place at the residence of Mrs. Weldon. It was late in the afternoon, and at the church door Smith left his new wife to go along with the crowd, while he went to get up his cows (he seems to have always had milch cows). He got his cows, milked, and bethought himself to look up his wife, and she had gone visiting among her friends, enjoying herself very much indeed, and partly to annoy and plague her husband, and partly for fun; so well did she hide her- self that it was late at night before he found her, although he had traveled the town over.

No proper history of Cairo will ever be written that omits the conspicuous mention of the name of Judge Bryan Shannessy; nay more, it must account well for some of his acts, and much of the remarkable peculiari- ties of character that possessed him. For the true history of all people is chiefly in the candid picturing of the extraordinary or leading characters, who were among the chief promoters or factors of that society's exist-

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

ence. By this we do not mean the old notion of the history of a people, where the histo- rian had filled his whole duty when he told all the minutiæ of the kings, princes, the queens and princesses, and how they were dressed, dined, wined, and the cost of the latter; how they were sick, or died, or were buried, or were born, or with other details ad nauseum. Or of battles, defeats, and slaughters and sieges; of famines; of church dignitaries and State rulers. These things, during the centuries alone, were history. Had Voltaire and Buckle not lived, this might have been so yet, and continued indefi- nitely.

But now, the history of a people, State or nation means the common people as well as the notorious-the history of all alike. Of course it is impossible to individually men- tion each of the masses, as this would make it a mere directory of names, but to portray the extraordinary characters of those who were of the masses, who mingled with and were a part of them, who, as it were, were the very outgrowth; the immediate develop- ment of that community itself, is to bring to the reader's knowledge one of the best and clearest hints of what the great mass of the people were, how they acted, thought and were influenced.

Such a representative we deem Mr. Shan- nessy to be. He came here with the rush of 1840, as unpretentious and unassuming an Irishman as the humblest knight of the wheel- barrow in all the crowd that were drawn here by the mighty schemes of the founders of Cairo. But there was that stuff in him, sometimes called fate, faith or a star, which made him shape his course very differently indeed from the common crowd. He was one of the very few who did not flee when the memorable crash of 1841 came, and reduced the city, in a few weeks, from a prosperous

and busy population of over two thousand to less than fifty souls, with no work, no busi- ness, nothing, in short, to do except to oc- cupy the deserted houses of the desolate city. Then Shannessy, like the man who said if all the world were dead he would go to Phila- delphia and open a big hotel, he opened a boarding-house, and in 1853, while but little better than cockle and jimson weeds had un- disputed possession here, we find him the happy lord of a dingy boarding-house, a saloon, a Squire's shop, a drug store, the post office and a doctor's office. There was nothing else in the place, or he would have had that. It is said the few natives of the place thought of calling on him to preach to them, but when they talked it over among themselves they got afraid of the fiery thun- derbolts he would launch at them in all his sermons, mixed with brogue and brimstone. He continued to hold office all his long life. When the city had waxed great, he became Associate County Judge, and he was Police Magistrate in this city so long that " five dollars and costs " was as natural to his tongue and his existence as breath.

He was a shrewd, original, strong-minded man, who "never went back on a friend." This last trait is well told by the story of a prominent lawyer, who desired to bring a certain suit, but felt doubtful about the issue; so he went to the Squire and told him freely his dilemma, and stated what he supposed to be the facts of the case. The Squire told him "that sifter would hold water, dead sure." The suit was brought, but on trial the defendant introduced evidence that utter- ly destroyed every vestige of plaintiff's case. The court finally gave his decision in an elaborate and learned opinion, reasoned about the law, the evidence, the world's his- tory, the flood, the pandects, the quadrilater- al and the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty, and

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

concluded by giving judgment for the plain- tiff. Everybody was amazed, even the plain- tiff's attorney. Afterward, to this attorney, he remarked: " That was a very close case, very close. The closest case I ever decided in my life. In fact, I believe the law and the evidence were both dead against you; but I never go back on a friend."

He loved his friends as well as he loved office, and he believed in being just to them, and this sometimes made strangers think they had to suffer. But altogether he was full of good, kind traits of character. This is evi- denced by the fact that these outre decisions never alienated his friends so as to defeat him at an election. He reared a large family, of the very highest respectability, and de- parted this life at a ripe old age and full of honors, and his fame is growing greener in the memories of all his numerous friends than is that of, probably, any other man's.

It was this decade of years in Cairo's life that it acquired a wide-if not a world-wide -reputation, as being one of the " hardest " places known. Partly, this was owing to the natural reflex swing of the pendulum that had been pushed too far the other way by Holbrook & Co., in their extraordinary puffing of the place in its first heyday, but it is doubtful if this was one of the largest factors that resulted in such gross injustice to Cairo. The writer distinctly recollects that the first he ever heard of Cairo and Mound City' was in the scorching lampoons that at that time were passing between Mose Harrell and Len Faxon, on the two rival towns. Doubtless, like thousands of others, he formed his idea of the two places, although he knew, of course, they were the essence of extravagance, from these mutual attacks. If he stopped to think about it at all, he must have known that the language was Pickwickian in the extreme; yet, per-

haps, like all the world, who knew nothing of their own knowledge, he must have sup- posed they understood each other's weak points, and made the attacks accordingly. For instance, the Mound City Emporium prints the following neighborly notice:

"A number of Cairoites, impelled, per- haps, by a desire to see dry land-to stand once more on terra firma-visited Mound City last Friday, on the tug-boat Pollard. They were a cadaverous, saffron-colored lot of mortals, most terribly afflicted with bad hats and the smell of onions. These poor people inhaled the pure atmosphere of our highlands with an almost ravenous greedi- ness, and on their wan features would occa- sionally play a flush of health as they did so that betokened they were sucking in a flow, to their physical and spiritual parts, of some of that strong, buoyant principle of life possessed by every Mound Cityite. But from this delightful recuperative process they were summoned by the tap of the boat bell. Descending from the elevation our city oc- cupies to the landing, they boarded the craft, and then, descending the Ohio to its mouth, they stopped and made a further descent of sixteen feet or more, which placed them in Cairo. A further descent of sixteen feet could not be made on account of heat, smoke and the smell of brimstone! That's just the distance between the two places!"

To this the Times and Delta replies: "The Buckeye Belle came down from Mound City last Saturday, having on board quite a num- ber of people from that delectable village; but the quarantine officers of our city enforced the ordinance relative to steamboats landing with sick people on board, and would not permit her to touch, whereupon, after mak- ing sundry ineffectual attempts to land at each wharf-boat, she shoved out into the river, where all hands set up one indignant

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

yell of defiance, and, 'cussing,' proceeded back to Mound City, where, we presume, the passengers were remanded back to their re- spective hospitals."

The Cairo paper thus topographically talks of its neighbor:

"At last accounts from Mound City, the principal portion of the inhabitants were roosting in trees. Some of them sleep with skiffs by their bedsides. One of these deter- mined not to be treed, procured two quarts of 'crow whisky,' some bread and bacon, and induced one or two inhabitants to go with him, and they have fortified themselves on the 'carbuncle,' or mound-the only dry place in the town-where they intend to stay until the waters subside.

" The principal occupation of the inhabit- ants for the past three weeks has been every half hour to proceed to the river, punch a stick in the ground at the water's edge, see how much the water has come up and then go home and move their cooking utensils and 'steds' into the second stories of their houses. Where there are no second stories, 'as we said before,' they 'clum' trees."

From the same source, here are a few re- marks on health:

" The Mayor of Mound City, in his inau- gural address, says to the Council: 'It will soon be your duty to purchase, and fit for use, a sufficient ground for a public ceme- tery. It will take half of the town plat for that purpose.' The Mayor means, we sup- pose, by ' fitting for use,' that portions of the swamp should be fenced and filled up with dirt, so as to give it a bottom."

Or this: " We saw a couple betting high at draw poker the other night. The ante was two negroes, and the little one had run up the pot to a cotton plantation and three stern-wheel boats.

" 'I'll go you the City of Sandoval better,' said the big one.

" 'I'll see you with Mound City and call you,' said t'other.

" ' Psahw! That ain't money enough,' said big bones.

" 'Well, I'll take that back, and bet you a keg of tar and a blind horse.'

" ' That'll do,' said big bones, 'but don't try to ring in Mound City again, for I want to play a decent game!' "

And in this way, for about three years, the " sparring " in the two papers went on, never abating in severity or intensity of ex- pression from the first day, until all that could be said mean of the two places was blown upon every wind, and, upon the prin- ciple of the dropping water wearing away the hardest stone, so these persistent lam- poons had, doubtless, their effect upon the minds of the outside world. Then, to those who visited and saw the town, there was that unfinished, half-commenced hole dug here, and half-formed mounds thrown up there, that made up its quota of reasons for assisting any rising prejudices in the mind of the beholder, that also aided in creating prejudices against the place. Then, there was still another reason for the bad reputa- tion of Cairo, that is so curious, so extraor- dinary, that, were it not vouched for by the best of authority that was here, and knew whereof it affirms, we could not believe it, and would give it no notice in these columns. We again refer to M. B. Harrell, as authority on this matter, only premising that in much of the practical jokes he was nearly always in the thickest of the fray:

" Cairo then, and up to a much later period, unjustly bore a hard reputation. Stories of fiendish murders and robberies of travelers stopping in the place were so cur-

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

rent over the country that the poor Cairoite who would attempt to contradict or correct them was laughed and derided into painful silence. Knowing they could not refute such a general and well-settled impression, they ' turned tack,' and whenever they saw travel- ers exhibiting foolish apprehensions of per- sonal danger, they would at once set about operating upon them, 'just,' as they would say, ' to get even with them.' For instance: " Two consumate dandies [being 'dan- dies,' it seems, was the great crime they were guilty of] from Pittsburgh, stopped upon one of the wharf-boats, to await a passage to New Orleans, they having arrived on a boat that was bound for St. Louis. At once it became evident that these young men had been fed upon stories of Cairo horrors; but they tried to show, nevertheless, that they could not be scared by anything, however dreadful. Both had revolvers and bowie- knives, but that they were unused to them could be told by the practiced eye of a Cairoite. These weapons were freely ex- hibited, and always worn so as partly to be seen while concealed about their persons. Diligently did these young men try to im- press it upon the people that they would be 'ugly customers' in a hand-to-hand encoun- ter. To show that they were familiar with rough life, they would swear voluminously, and occasionally they would drink brandy, etc., etc." These were fine subjects for vic- tims, and the hoodlums of the village gathered about them in full force, and then hours of confidential talk among them would occur-care being taken that the intended victims should overhear every word, about as follows:

"I'll be -- , Tom," remarked a rough- looking customer, as he slammed down an empty boot box beside the counter, "I hain't had nothin' as has sot so hard onto my

feelin's as the killin' of that boy, sense the day I hit my old woman in the breast with the hatchet. He was a smart boy, and, by -- , you know he was; and just to think I could git mad enough at him, cos he failed to lift the stranger's wallet, to smash his skull with a oar, is positive distressin'. But I'll tell ye, Tom-give us a drink-that boy Waxey shall be buried right. The human left into me will see to that. The cat-fish fed onto the old woman, but d-n the bite shall they git of Waxey. And now, Tom, have you a longer box than this? Waxey is five feet long, and this is only four. Hain't got none, hey? Well, 'tis little 'gainst a father's feelin's, but this box must coffin him. I couldn't do no better, Tom, and you know it, so I'll go home now and saw off his legs!"

Taking another drink, the distressed fa- ther (?) shouldered the box, and left the wharf-boat, chuckling at the effect his story had produced upon the strangers.

And now night had gathered around, and the usual crowd collected at Louis' bar-room, which, it must be known, was in the store and adjoining the depository for baggage. The strangers continued guard over their baggage, and viewed, with trembling, the growing multitude. Drinking followed the arrival of each character, and after several glasses had been emptied. the following con- versation ensued, and all for the strangers' benefit, and so arranged that they could hear every word of it:

"Well, Boggie, if ever thar war a nicer time'n last night, I'm not posted. Them two strangers what we hornswoggled with us, and who danced with Spike-foot, ain't now 'sash- aying' around here much. But now, Boggie, them men fought tigerish, I tell you! I didn't know, till Bob, here, told me, that we were a-gom' to mince 'em. I didn't, now,

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

darned ef I did! And of course, jest as soon as he told me that we war a-goin' to mince 'em, why, I stabbed the old one right in the small of the back, like. He had floored Wash Wiggins, and I guess was a-chokin' of Wash, but when he felt my knife ronch against his spinal bone, why, it diverted his attention. He cum at me savage; struck out thickly, and kep' me clear out of reach of him; but Dave, who had got a swingle-tree, seein' how matters was, dropped it on the old one's cranium, and a groan, a gurgle and a little splash of brains was all there was that followed. The old man dropped, and I, thinkin' he might revive and suffer, separ- ated his jugular and let him bleed some. But the other, I tell you he was a snorter! He knocked Clark Ogden clean through the winder, followed, and before anybody knowed it, dressed him off confounded handsome. As we all had nothin' to do, then, but to make way with this chicken, we at once set about it. His first cut I give him; the next punch you made, and then he cut dirt and humped himself. Zofe, there, caught him near the river, but havin' no weapons, he just held him and hollered until weapons was forth- coming. The swipe that let out his innards would 'a saved him; but Dave, you know, stabbed him six times afterward, all over the breast and body. He fell then, and right thar I saw him lyin' not more'n an hour ago. Take the scrape altogether, Boggie," con- tinued the speaker, casting a meaning glance at the strangers, " I think it just about as in terestin' as any we'll have 'tween this and the mornin'."

Such was the substance of the rigmarole intended to directly affect the strangers, and it is easy enough to believe the assertion that they believed every word they heard; and the further fact that they had seen one of the desperate men steal a pocket-book from

another's pocket (a pre-arranged affair, too), all combined, left the two young men ap- palled with horror. Even this devil-may-care crowd noticed, from the actions of the young men, that they had probably carried the joke too far, and there was danger of them plung- ing into the river in order to avoid the worse fate they felt certain was in store for them. It was about decided to explain the joke to them, but it was dangerous to approach them to attempt an explanation, as such an ap- proach would be a signal for them to jump into the waters. Fortunately, at this moment a boat approached and touched at the land- ing, and instantly the two young men boarded her, and hid themselves in the cabin until the boat pulled out. The vessel was on its way to St. Louis, and they were going to New Orleans, but so intense was their alarm that they would have taken a boat for any point in the world to get away from Cairo.

It is said that a short time after this, a Pittsburgh paper reached Cairo, in which was a letter, dated from St. Louis, describing, with shocking details, the bloody murders at Cairo, which we have given above, the writers not only attesting that they saw them committed, but they had shot dead two of the murderers themselves, in a perilous effort to stay the butcheries. The story of the boy corpse and the short boot box went the rounds of the papers of the country, and in seven- leagued boots, the Cairo horrors traveled about the world. .

We have given an account of this in- stance pretty fully. It was only one among hundreds, until the horrible stories from Cairo had been familiarized pretty much over the civilized world. The Cairo people did all this, they said, in revenge for the many gross falsehoods that had been circulated about them and their town. It was a unique mode of revenge, and was of doubtful virtue,

6. Hoffner

HISTORY OF CAIRO.

for the outside world only too readily be- lieved all they thus saw, but more, too, and it soon fixed itself in the minds of men as a shocking reality. Here was another cause of the blighted reputation of the place. Add this to the causes recited above, and when they are combined it is wonderful that all men did not shun the place as they would the lepers' grounds. There is but one . strong reason why they did not. Cairo was the one gateway between the North and the South, and through here all must pass in nearly all communications between these two regions. This forced men to come. Even the timid and trembling were compelled thus to face the fearful imaginary dangers of the place, and when thus forced into the town, they were like the boy who finally saw the preacher, and remarked to his mother, in disgust, "Why, he's nothin' but a man;" so the Cairo people were found by these com- pulsory visitors to be nothing but human beings; as quiet, civil, well-behaved and honest as any people in the world. But while a slander flies upon tireless wings. truth crawls in gyves and hobbles, and while it is true that " when crushed to earth will rise again," yet there is no day nor hour fixed for the " rising " to be done, and as "the eternal years are hers," she generally takes up the most of them in running down a lie and putting the truth triumphantly in its place.

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 5

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