USA > Illinois > Montgomery County > History of Bond and Montgomery Counties, Illinois > Part 22
USA > Illinois > Bond County > History of Bond and Montgomery Counties, Illinois > Part 22
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179
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.
CHAPTER II .:
EARLY OCCUPATION OF THE COUNTRY-THE MOUND-BUILDERS-TIIEIR REMAINS AND FORTIFI- CATIONS-THE INDIANS-TRACES OF THEM IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY-THEIR SUCCES- SORS, THE WHITES-DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE EMIGRANTS ON THEIR
WAY TO NEW HOMES-INCIDENTS OF THIE PIONEER PERIOD-GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY.
DRE-HISTORIC research has evolved the fact, that, at a period lying wholly within the province of conjecture, a semi-civilized people, whose origin and final fate, as well as their habits and customs, are enshrouded in com- parative mystery, inhabited, not only this coun- try, but most of the Western Continent. All attempts to unravel the mystery enveloping their peculiar lives meet with failure, save where their fast-decaying works cast a feeble ray of light on the otherwise impenetrable darkness. From the northern lakes through the Mississippi Valley into Mexico, and thenee into South America, these relics of a lost raee extend. Many archæoligists believe that their occupa- tion of this country was anterior to that of the Eastern Hemisphere, and that this continent is really the Old instead of the New World. However extravagant this opinion may be, there is no longer any doubt in the mind of the archæologist that this country was occupied by a race of people, of whose origin the Indians, found in possession of the country by the Euro- peans, knew absolutely nothing. The mounds and fortifications left by them form by far the most interesting relics of American antiquity. Some of the most extensive mounds in the United States are in Illinois, and are located contiguous to the Mississippi River. But our limited space will not admit of a detailed ac- count of this lost race of people. Their name,
language and history have utterly perished from the earth, and their very existence even would never have been known but for the almost ob- literated remains which still show the work of their hands. That they did exist, such writers as Rafinesque, Foster, Lubbock and others, who have spent years in pre-historic research, stoutly maintained. No traces, however, of the " lost race " are found in Montgomery County, so as we can learn. Fortifications, eamps, bu r ing-grounds, etc., which some have attributed to the Mound-Builders', and which are located in different sections of the county, are believed by others, better informed, to be but the works o the American Indians. The latter theory is, doubtless, the correct one.
Following the Mound-Builders, and supposed by writers upon the subject to have been their conquerors, came the Indians, the red sons of the forest. They next occupied this country and resisted the encroachments of the whites to the bitter end. From the Atlantic coast, they were pressed backward toward the setting sun, strewing their path with the bones and skeletons of their martyred warriors. They crossed the Alleghanies, and, descending its western slope, chanted their death songs as they moved slowly and mournfully away from the land of their fathers, before the ever-advancing tide of pale- faces. Halting upon the plains of the " Illini," amid the forests that bounded its streams, they made the last home of their own choosing.
*By W. Il. Perrin.
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.
But here they were not allowed to remain in peace. The handful of whites, who had dropped upon the western shore of the Atlantic, had grown into a great multitude, and like the little stone cut out of the mountains by unseen hands, were rolling on, as a mighty avalanche, crush- ing all that opposed. In the early dawn of the nineteenth century, the red man was again forced to take up his line of march from South- ern Illinois, nor allowed to rest until he reached his promised land, the great plains of the far West. His foot-prints are still visible in what now forms Montgomery County, in fortifica- cations, burying-grounds, etc.
The Indians occupying this portion of Illinois, were the Kickapoos. The following extract will be found of interest to our readers : " The Kiekapoos, in 1763, occupied the country south- west of the southern extremity of Lake Michi- gan. They subsequently moved southward, and at a more recent date dwelt in portions of the territory on the Mackinaw and Sangamon Rivers, and had a village on Kickapoo Creek, and at Elkhart Grove. They were more civi- lized, industrious, energetic and cleanly than the neighboring tribes, and it may also be add- ed, more implacable in their hatred to the Americans. They were among the first to com- mence battle, and the last to submit and enter * into treaties ; unappeasable enmity led them into the field against Gens. Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, and to be the first in all the bloody charges on the field of Tippecanoe. They were prominent among the Northern nations, which, for more than a century, waged an exterminat- ing war against the Illinois Confederacy. Their last hostile act of this kind was perpetrated in 1805, against some poor Kaskaskia children, whom they found gathering strawberries on the prairie above the town which bears the name of their tribe. Seizing a considerable number of them, they fled to their villages before the enraged Kaskaskias could overtake them and rescue their offspring. During the years of
1810 and 1811, in conjunction with the Chip- pewas, Pottawatomies and Ottawas, they com- mitted so many thefts and murders on the frontier settlements that Gov. Edwards was compelled to employ military force to suppress them. They claimed relationship with the Pottawatomies, and perhaps with the Sacs and Foxes and Shawnees. When removed from Illinois, they still retained their old animosities against the Americans, and went to Texas, then a province of Mexico, to get beyond the juris- diction of the United States. There were other tribes, also, who roamed through this part of the State. The Foxes sometimes made incur- sions into this immediate section, and if they did not live here permanently, they remained at least temporarily. In what is now East Fork Township, on McDavid's Branch, in Sec- tion 34, at a fine spring, the Foxes once had a village or camp. Of this, however, we have but little that is definite, as none now living remember the event from their own personal knowledge.
There is a tradition, but how true we do not know, that Capt. Whiteside, the celebrated pioneer and Indian fighter, once, in company with a few kindred spirits. fought a battle with the Indians on Shoal Creek, in the southeast part of North Litchfield Township; but of this battle there remains no record, other than tra- dition. Many other traditions may be gath- ered of the occupation of the county by the aborigines, but none of them are particularly reliable. In many parts of the county there are remains of camps, some of them fortified with something of military order. One of these near Hillsboro still shows the old fortifications very plainly, and has been examined by mili- tary men, who recognized its situation for a successful defense. Nothing, however, has been published in regard to it, and few people in the county know the place of its location.
As the white settlement increased, the In- dians left the neighborhood, falling back. as has
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.
ever been their fate, before the advancing tide of immigration. Their camp fires paled in the sunlight of civilization, and then went out on the prairies of Illinois forever.
The first white people who traversed this country, and claimed it by the right of discov- ery, were the French explorers and travelers. More than two hundred years ago, such men as La Salle, Marquette, Hennepin, Joliet and other Frenchmen, had traversed the State of Illinois, or what now forms this great State, and made settlements along the Mississippi River. Many trees and stones bore the impress of the fluer de lis of France, and Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Vincennes became enterprising French towns surrounded by flourishing settlements. Marquette discovered the Mississippi River, and spent years of toil in explorations and Chris- tianizing the natives of the great West, then died, with none to soothe him in his last mo- ments save his faithful Indian converts. La Salle penetrated to the mouth of the "Great Father of Waters," and alter planting the standard, and claiming the country in the name of his king, was treacherously murdered by his own followers. But time passed on, and eventually the lilies of France drooped and withered before the majestic tread of the Brit- ish lion, who, in his turn, quailed and cowered beneath the scream of the American eagle. The conquest of Gen. George Rogers Clark made Illinois a county of Virginia, and wrested it forever from foreign rule. But few decades after Clark captured Kaskaskia and Vincennes, white people from the Eastern States began to cross the Wabash into the present State of Illi- nois. The first settlements were made in the southern part of the State, and not until about the years 1816-17 was there a settlement made by the whites in what is now Montgomery County.
It was in the latter part of 1816 or early in 1817 that the first white settlement was effected in the county. This pioneer settlement was
made in the extreme southern part, on Hurri- cane Creek. Among the settlers forming it were Joseph Williams, Henry Pyatt, William McDavid, John and Henry Hill, Jesse Johnson, Henry Sears, Aaron Case, Harris Reavis, Joseph and Charles Wright, Easton Whitten, John Kirkpatrick, Henry Rowe, John Russell, David Bradford, E. Gwinn and others. In what is now Hillsboro Township, on Shoal Creek, the next settlement was made by an importation of Kentuckians and Tennesseans in 1817-18, among whom were the following, viz .: Alexan- der MeWilliams, Solomon Prewitt, John Nor- ton, Roland Shepherd, Jarvis Forehand, Gor- con Crandall, William Clark, David McCoy, Nicholas Lockerman, Hugh Kirkpatrick, Mel- cher Fogleman, William Griffith, Joseph McAdams, Israel Seward, James Street, Luke Steel, John McPhail, Joel Smith, David Kirk- patrick, Jesse Townsend, Jacob Cress, Israel Butler, the Harkeys, and a number of others now forgotten. Hiram Rountree, one of the prominent men of the county, who is noticed fully elsewhere, settled in this neighborhood in 1821, and spent the remainder of his life here.
These settlements were made in the timber bordering the water-courses. The people who composed the original settlements came from timbered countries, abounding in springs and streams of running water. To them, the broad prairies of waving grass, overtopped with in- numerable blossoms and fragrant flowers (in summer), presented all the monotony, if not the dreariness, of sandy deserts, and the groves of timber were as welcome as the "shadow of a great rock in a weary land." It was not for years after the first settlements were made in the timber that people ventured out on the prairies. The prairies, they believed, would never be utilized, except for pasture, as the country afforded an insufficiency of timber to fence them, and "if God Almighty did not make timber grow on the prairies," they ar- gued, "it was no use for man to attempt it."
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.
Hence, the prairies would never be fit for any- thing but pasturage.
Settlements were made in other portions of the county soon after those already mentioned. Some of the people composing these early set- tlements, after a temporary rest, made other settlements. Melchoir Fogleman, with Nicholas Voylis and William Stephens, settled in what is now Walshville Township some time in 1818. A little later, Austin Grisham, James Baker and John Jordan settled in the same neighbor- hood. In what is now Butler Grove Township, Jacob Cress and family, already mentioned, settled in 1818. The present township of Fill- more was invaded by a colony from Kentucky about 1820, among whom were James Card, Thomas J. Todd, John Alexander, Henry and Peter 1Till, M. Mason and others. Thus set- tlers came in every year, and settlements were made in every body of timber in what is now Montgomery County. As the population in- creased, and the timbered land was occupied, settlers began to branch out on the prairies. Slowly at first, and with many misgivings, but as the first venturesome ones did not starve to death, others soon followed them, until all the prairie land was either settled or taken up. It is not our purpose to minutely describe the settlements made in different parts of the county in this connection, but will leave it to chapters devoted to each individual township.
For a number of years after the first settle- ments were made in the wilderness, life pos- sessed few pleasures and comforts, and was hard in the extreme and often dangerous. The people were exposed to danger, and were forced to undergo the most arduous toil to maintain life. The following extract from an article by Mr. Coolidge will give the reader some idea of the life led by the early settlers until civiliza- tion and prosperity improved the times. The article referred to says : " The earliest houses or eabins were of logs. one story high, and usu- ally of one room. The door was frequently
made of split stuff, and the openings for light sometimes were defended by a frame or rude sash, with oiled paper for glass, but more usu- ally the opening was closed only by a solid shutter. In the summer, this was left unclosed; in the winter, the cabin was lighted down the chimney or through an open door. In such a residence we have seen the entire family of father and mother and well grown boys and girls and the occasional guest sleeping on the floor, and heard Senator Douglas repeat the ludicrous comments of the grown-up daughters on the 'right small chance of legs' he was forced to exhibit when dressing in the morning after a night's rest en famille. The kitchen utensils were a pot for boiling potatoes, a bake- kettle for bread and a skillet for frying meat. Twenty-five dollars would buy the entire do- mestic outfit of a family, the coveted feather- bed representing a moiety of the same. Chairs or seats were made at home, strong, durable and weighty, but not luxurious. The pantry was a rustic shelf or two in a corner, with a bit of cloth before them. We are dubious as to the cradles, but the crop of children was sure and large. They grew up stout, rosy- cheeked, and shy as untamed colts. As for pocket-money, nobody seems to remember if they had any. The writer's allowance, when sixteen, was but 5 cents a year. A tea-kettle was a superfluity, and irons were supplied by a couple of flat stones. The hearth was the naked earth; the chimney was outside the house. A bank of clay and stone was raised up several feet; about four feet from the gen- eral level, two stout pieces of timber were fas- tened on each side of the fire-seat, the upper ends inelining toward each other, and resting against a loft-beam, a yard and a half from the wall of the house. The angular space thus inclosed was filled with split sticks and clay mortar. At a convenient height on each side. a hole was left into which was thrust a pole from which depended a log chain. into which
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.
pot-hooks could be inserted to sustain a pot or kettle. If the owner was forehanded, he sub- stituted a trammel for the chain; this was usu- ally a flat bar of iron, the upper part bent to grip the pole easily, and the lower portion pierced with numerous holes for the 'insertion of pot-hooks.
" After 1830, wagons began to be seen. Prior to this, the ox-cart was the universal vehicle of transportation. Judge Rountree brought his wife and worldly possessions to the county, drawn by a yoke of two-year-old steers .* Thomas C. Hughes brought his family here in a similar vehicle. These carts were not built for rapid movement. A yoke of oxen usually lounged onward at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, and five days was the usual time for a trip to St. Louis. With the use of wagons horses began to be employed to draw them. Mules were not seen here until well on in the thirties. It a stranger noticed a house a fur- long or half a mile from a highway, and ap- proached only through several gates, he knew he was gazing on the site of a pioneer home.
"The plague of insects was intolerable to man and heast. A green-headed fly was the most formidable pest. In the heat of the day, horses were frantic, and for safety were put in stables. Cattle would dash through thickets of hazel brush to dislodge their tormentors or stand midside deep in pools of water. The people would at times maintain 'smudges' to drive away mosquitoes, and cattle would seek and stand in the smoke for hours for relief. With the increase of land cultivation, these pests have disappeared."
In further illustration of the pioneer period,
we quote the following from the " Rountree Letters," published a few years ago in the Hills- boro Democrat : "Biscuits and corn-dodgers baked in an oven over and under glowing coals at the fire-place, and johnny-cakes baked on a board in front of the fire, are among the pleas- antest memories. The big pot of lye-hominy was also one of our earliest delights. Game was so plenty that it rarely happened that meats were scarce. But the means of obtain- ing meal and flour for bread were scarce. Mills for flour came after awhile, but hand-mills, run not by steam, horses nor oxen, but by women and children, were occasionally seen ; new corn was often grated by hand for immediate use- * *
* * Instead of our gay chandeliers, and coal oil lamps, were candles of tallow or wax, and an old-fashioned affair, dignified by the name of lamp, that was stuck in a crack in the wall and held lard in a heart-shaped sheet- iron basin, in which was a wiek which burned well and gave a toreh-like glare. Those who had brass or silver or even iron candlesticks strove to keep them as bright as their pewter and tinware.
"The clothing for both sexes was made at home. If of cotton, the cotton was raised, picked, ginned, carded, spun, woven, colored and cut and made at home. If of wool, the sleep were raised, the wool elipped, picked by hand, carded, spun, colored, woven and made up at home. All members of the household, male and female, men, women and children, were usually employed in some part, if not in all parts, of the manufacture. It is true that the men and boys frequently wore clothing either made entire of the dressed skins of ani- mals or had their clothes 'foxed ' with them. There are no doubt many now living in our old county who can tell of the long linen shirts, home-made, that were the only summer gar- ments worn by children and of the moccasins and the buckskin clothing. Boots were nearly un- known, and shoes were indulged in as a luxury
*The following incident is related of Judge Rountree's advent in Hillsboro : A settler was at work upon his "improvement " In the sunth end of the present town, when he heard a doleful noise, which he was wholly unable to comprehend, and which was so per- fectly harrowing as to make every particular hair on bis bead stand on end. Stories of Indian ontragen were rife in the land, and he imagined it was some Indian device to draw the whites into an ambuscade, and with the greatest cantion, he set ont to reconnoiter. When he reached a point commanding a view of the trail-now the Vandalia road-he saw Judge Rountree coming up the long slope, driving an ox-cart, the creaking and screaking of the wheels of which had produced the horrible sounds, so alarming to his sensitive vars, ever on the alert for danger .- ED.
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.
only by the grown people, while moccasins made at home sufficed for the smaller members. How- ever, as soon as tanning could be done, and it was also often done at home, it was not unfre- quent that the shoe-maker went from house to house with his implements, and made the shoes for the family. There are no doubt many now living in the county who never wore boots un- til they were nearly grown, and, perhaps, never saw any until nearly grown. Yet while there were days of self-denial, they were days of sin- cere happiness ; and though the memories are pleasant, wouldl we go back to them ? Would we be willing to live as our fathers lived ? Would those who grew up thus, like to try it again ? Times have changed, and with the times our people, and their notions and tastes ; and no doubt it is all right. But the memory is pleasant."
Such were some of the experiences, and the hardships with which the early settlers of this county had to contend in reclaiming it from a wilderness. In the grand march of civilization the great changes that have taken place within the last half-century is almost beyond the power of the mind to comprehend. When we look around us at the enterprising cities and towns, the magnificent residences and broad, product- ive fields, the manufactories of various kinds, and the improved machinery in use, thus facili- tating men's work and giving employment to hundreds and thousands of human beings, we are startled at the fact that fifty or sixty years ago these fertile plains were the abode of savages and wild beasts ; and the few whites, scattered here and there, as little dreamed of the results of to-day, as we dare predict what the next fifty years may bring forth. The pioneer's cab- in "rude in its simplicity, and simple in its rudeness," has given place to comfortable homes ; the rude implements of agriculture have disappeared before improvements and in- ventions that have made farming not a labor but a science, while the patient ox has been supplanted by the iron-horse.
Additional to other troubles and trials of the pioneers in the early period of the country were prairie fires. These fires have always been a source of terror to people living in a prairie country, and much damage and loss of property and even of life have resulted from them. The tall prairie grass, from four to six feet high, when dry, with strong winds prevailing, pre- sented combustible matter only surpassed by kerosene, gunpowder, etc. " In. time of peace prepare for war," is an adage that was very generally observed by the settlers living on the verge of the prairies, and later in the prairies themselves. As soon as the grass began to die and dry up in the fall of the year, preparations against fire were made by burning or plowing roads around fields and farms. But even these barriers were sometimes overleaped, and dis- tressing consequences followed to the poor man, who had but little to begin with, and lost that almost in the twinkling of an eye. The early inhabitants were often melancholy witnesses to these great conflagrations-so glorious in their grandeur, and gloomy in their ruin and waste. The dense smoke arising from them in the days of Indian summer, often enveloped the land in the " shades of evening," recalling the lines of Milton-
"The sun,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight Shed o'er half the nations."
In the natural course of event, everything must have a beginning. As the county settled up and population increased, mills were built, shops and stores established to supply the wants of the community, and highways opened to the markets of the outside world. The first store in the county was kept by John Tilson, a man prominent in the early history of the county. He was from Boston, and located on the farm afterward known as the "Scherer place," about three miles southwest of Hills- boro. lle opened a store about the year 1820-21, where he lived, and when the county seat was established at Hillsboro, moved his
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY.
store to town. He built the first brick house in Hillsboro, and kept the first store in the town as well as in the county. When the post otlice was established, he became the first Post- master. Melchoir Fogleman is believed to have been the first blacksmith, and had a shop in the west part of the county. The first mills, manu- factories, etc., will be found in other chapters of the work. We are informed by a local au- thority, that N. Lockerman was the first man married, and that he was married by Rev. James Street, while hoeing corn, but whether it was Mr. Street or Mr. Lockerman hoeing corn, deponent saith not. It is said there is a woman in everything, whether for good or ill, but there is none mentioned in connection with the marriage of Mr. Lockerman, and it may be that he was married by Mr. Street to the corn he was hoeing. We would be glad to describe the toilettes and bridal presents of this pioneer wedding, for the benefit of our lady readers, who are always interested in such things, but, owing to circumstances, are unable to do so. We doubt not, however, but that they were in accordance with the customs of the time. As to the truth of the assertions that
"Full many cares are on the wreath, That binds the bridal veil,"
we cannot say, but presume that Mr. Locker- man and his bride-if he had one-lived as happily as the common lot. The second mar- riage celebrated in the county was David Mc- Coy to Miss Kirkpatrick, and the third, William H. Brown to Miss Harriet Seward. The license of the latter couple were the first returned to the Clerk's office of Montgomery County.
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