USA > Illinois > Bureau County > History of Bureau County, Illinois > Part 8
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Suppose a board of examination in the best of our high schools should ask the class, by the aid of their teachers, to give an abstract of the title to any quarter section of land,
tracing it back to the original tribe of Indians, who were the owners in possession when the country was discovered. A legal abstract of the title of a piece of land is by law complete when the title is traced from the General Government, and in this transfer there are no notes of the different counties of which the particular tract may have formed a ·
part, because the title to the lauds does not vest in the State or county, only as it passes to them from the Government. Yet the descriptive part of the title is incomplete without naming both the State and county. Hence in a chain of title, where any special day or time might be called for, it is of the first importance to tell exactly the name and territorial title at each change that has occurred in its history.
What school-child or teacher could readily tell how a letter should have been directed to have reached a person, supposing one had been here, and there had been mails deliv- ered, during all the time of the known his- tory of this part of Illinois? Suppose, reader, you had been here the past two hun- dred years, and without ever removing from one spot, in what empires, nations, and gov- ernments, Territories, States and counties would you have lived ?
Going back to the time of the Indians, you would have been of the tribe of the Potawatto- mies, then a citizen of New France, and a sub- ject of the French Empire. This was a province of France for about one hundred years. We have seen elsewhere in a preceding chapter that La Salle and Tonti made the first white settlement in Illinois, before the close of the seventeenth century, on the borders of Bureau County. The next white settlement was made in Kaskaskia by the French, in 1707. *
* William H1. Brown, of Chicago, was in KRskoskia in 1818, and gives it as a fact, that he then learned from old settlers, and he found other evidences, that this date (1707) was correct.
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HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.
The next move the "old settler" would have found made for him by the changes in government, while he was stationary, was that he was a Canadian.
Then, in 1673, by the treaty of Paris, the title of all this part of the world passed to the British Empire. Thomas Gage was the ruler by virtue of being Commander-in-chief of the British troops in North America. In 1764 he issued a proclamation, in which he most graciously authorized the Roman Cath- olics of this part of the world to exercise the worship of their religion in the same manner here as they did in Canada, and granting them the further permission "to go about and look at the country, even to New Orleans."
During all this century of changes and transfers there was no civil government established here. The only government was military, and the title to the country a mere claim of discovery and possession to the time of the treaty of Paris .*
October, 1778, the House of Burgesses of Virginia created the county of Illinois, and appointed Lieut. John Tod, ( ivil Commander, and this appointment authorized all the civil officers to whom the inhabitants had been accustomed, to be chosen by a majority of the citizens of their respective districts. This was the establishment of the first En- glish civil government in what is now Illinois. The act of the House of Burgesses above re- ferred to, defined the Northwestern Territory, with the seat of government at Marietta, Ohio. The whole territory was divided into three counties, namely: Hamilton, now Ohio; Knox, now Indiana, and St. Clair, now sub- stantially Illinois. If our imaginary Bu-
reauite had then wanted to marry a dusky maiden he would have had to go to Marietta for his license.
Gov. Tod was commissioned by Gov. Patrick Henry, who wrote his commission and instructions within hearing of the guns of the American Revolution. The book con- taining Tod's commission and an account of his official acts while at Kaskaskia was recently picked up by accident in a wood- box in Chester, Ill., by one who thus rescued this valuable document from the flames, and thus supplied a missing link in the history of the State, the complete loss of which would have been very great indeed.
All the upper Mississippi Valley was con- quered from Great Britain by Gen. George Rogers Clark, who has been often styled " The Hannibal of the Northwest." In the American Revolution he certainly was the hero standing second only to George Wash- ington. He conceived the plans, and with an army of less than 200 poorly armed, half fed and worse clothed soldiers, wrested all this rich empire from England and the Indian, and by able diplomacy, the most daring enterprise and heroic bravery and endurance, aud a tact and strategy never surpassed, kept and preserved a conqueror's title and trans- mitted it to us. No romance compares with the wonderful achievements of Gen. Clark. In 1795, a mere youth, he penetrated the wilds of what is now Kentucky. In counec- tion with Gabriel Jones he founded and erected the county of Kentucky in 1796, and fought out the wars with the Indians that gave that fair land the name of "The Dark and Bloody Ground." In war and in founding and erecting Government and Commonwealths he was the leading and master mind everywhere. Without men, with- out money, without support from any source he conquered, held and handed over to his
* November 2, 1762, France made a secret treaty with Spain, by wbieb the Louisiana Country was ceded to Spain ; this treaty was not made known until 1764. At this time, and just before the treaty was made known, the villages of St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve were founded.
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HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.
Government empires that in their extent and magnificence dwarf the proudest achievements of the flaunting eagles of Napoleon; and we have no hesitation in claiming that con- ceiving of the plan and the remarkable man- ner in which he executed his designs, find no parallel in American history. When the Revolution had been fought out and Gen. George Rogers Clark's great work was done in that wonderful play on the chessboard of nations, he retired to private life, to obscuri- ty and poverty that was only equaled by that the humblest soldier in his ragged squad.
If the deeds of our great men are ever to be measured by the greatness of the results that come of their acts, rather than by the pomp, the ceremony, the loud blasts of fame and the pageantry of great numbers, then the future historian of the United States may burn his brightest fires in illuminating the greatest chapter in his book, where he tells the story of George Rogers Clark and the Northwest. It is no part of our purpose here to attempt to tell the interesting story. We merely point, it out, and hope the young who may peruse this page may be induced to take up the subject and follow it through.
From 1732 to 1759 we were under the control or rather belonged to the Company of the Indies. M. Penier was Governor-Gener- al, and M. D'Artaguette was Local Governor of Illinois. This brave and chivalrous man was killed in the Chickasaw war, where he had been called to assist the people of Louisiana. Illinois at this time was a part of Louisiana and a province of Canada. The Company of the Indies failing, the French Government again assumed the control and title to the country.
The treaty of Greenville (this point is now in Darke County, in the southwest part of Ohio) was made in 1795. This was a treaty with the Indians, and at the time was not con-
sidered of any value in detining the future boundaries of the country, but in the end it became a very important matter in the settle- ment of our boundary lines with Great Brit- ain. When the treaty of Ghent was being negotiated in 1814, and the American Com- missioners met the English, the former were much surprised at the demand of the British for recognition of that treaty as the basis of negotiations for the western boundary of the United States. At first the English refused to negotiate except on that basis and insisted upon the entire sovereignty and independence of the Indian confederacy. They claimed the Indians as allies, and even subjects they were bound to protect in all their defined rights. It was a fact the Indians had received annuities, first from the French, and that af- terward the English had continued these after the treaty of cession in 1763, and also after the acknowledgment of our independence. The Indians had annually sent delegations to Canada to receive these annuities. During the negotiation of this treaty it was brought to light, a fact that had been denied by the parties to it, that there had existed an alli- ance offensive and defensive between Tecum- seh and the British. The American Commis- sioners peremptorily refused to recognize the sovereignty of the Indians, or that they had any right to dispose of their territory to a foreign power. The British Commissioners then proposed that the English and American powers arrange matters so that they might jointly exercise protectorate powers over the Indians, and consider all the territory not ac- knowledged to belong, by the treaty of Green- ville, to the United States, as embraced with- in that proposed joint protectorate. This would have left six miles square of the heart of the city of Chicago permanently Indian territory, and would have placed the upper Mississippi Valley exactly as was left the
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HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.
western slope which now includes Oregon and Washington Territory. These were long un- der this joint protectorate or joint occupation by the United States and Great Britain. And the final result of the joint protectorate would have been a division of the territory, as was the case in Oregon, when perhaps all this portion of Illinois would have fallen to the portion of Canada, and in that event we would to-day have been Canadians instead of Illinoisians.
In 1787 we were a part of Virginia, as be- fore stated, and were by that State erected at that time into the Northwest Territory, and became Illinois County. No one civil act in the country's history has exceeded in import- ance the celebrated ordinance of 1787 (July 7). By it the whole country northwest of
the Ohio was constituted one district. A governor and secretary was provided for; a court consisting of three judges was also provided for, and this court with the gover- nor enacted laws for the government of the country; with many other provisos "the ter- ritory was not to be divided into less than three States, and at its option Congress might form one or two [more] States in that part which lies north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan." If the reader will keep in mind the words italicized, he will find it a convenient explanation of certain otherwise puzzling points that arose in fixing the north boundary line of this State ; but more espe- cially when Wisconsin, when applying to be admitted as a State, put forth the claim to all that portion of northern Illinois to a line running due west from the extreme south bend of Lake Michigan.
The ordinance of 1787 also specially pro- vided "that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory."
In the summer of 1778 this new territorial
government met at Marietta, the seat of gov- ernment.
October 5, 1787, Maj .- Gen. Arthur St. Clair was by Congress elected Governor of the Northwestern Territory.
October 6, 1789, President Washington wrote to Gov. St. Clair: "You will also pro- ceed, as soon as you can with safety, to exe- cute the orders of the late Congress respect- ing the inhabitants at Post Vincennes and at the Kaskaskias, and the other villages on the Mississippi." He says: " It is a subject of some importance, that the said inhabitants should, as soon as possible, possess the lands which they are entitled to, by some known and fixed principle." Accordingly in Feb- ruary, Gov. St. Clair and the Secretary, Win- throp Sargeant, arrived at Kaskaskia. The country within the bounds of our present State, extending northward to the mouth of the Little Mackinaw Creek on the Illinois River, was organized into a county and called after His Excellency, St. Clair, and this is therefore the mother county in Illinois. It was divided into three judicial districts, and three judges appointed; Cahokia was the county seat. Had our imaginary Bureauite been here then he could have gone to Caho- kia if he wanted a marriage or liquor license, or to administer on his mother-in-law's estate.
Cincinnati had become the seat of govern- ment for the North western Territory.
By the ordinance of 1787 the country was entitled to the second grade territorial gov- ernment as soon as it contained 5,000 inhab- itants.
By act of Congress, May 7, 1800, the Ter- ritory of the Northwest was divided, and all that part of it lying westward of a line be- ginning on the Ohio River opposite the mouth of the Kentucky River, running thence north via Fort Recovery to the British Possessions, was constituted a separate territory and called
7
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HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.
Indiana. This comprised the present States of Indiana (except a small strip on the eastern side of the State), Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. The white population at that time in all this vast region was estimated at 4,875, about the population of the city of Princeton. Had they been evenly scattered over the country it would have been, in Yankee par- lance, " a right smart step " between neigh- bors.
In 1803 Louisiana was purchased from France and annexed to the Indiana Territory, and thus again we became a part of Louisi- ana. But this was of very short duration, as in 1805 Louisiana was detached and erected into a separate Territory. At this time Aaron Burr entered upon his treasonable effort to wrest from the United States this territory of the Mississippi Valley. He visited Vin- cennes and Kaskaskia and by his smooth and artful tongue induced in each place a few to consent to become his followers. But the scheme was soon exposed and he was arrested in Mississippi in 1807.
We were a part of Indiana for nine years. By act of Congress, February 3, 1809, Illi- nois was created and set apart from Indiana. This included not only the boundaries of the present State but all of Wisconsin, the whole containing an estimated population of 9,000. Still, had the people been evenly distributed over the country the neighbors' chickens would have been kept separated without very high picket fences between them. Ninian Edwards became Governor of the Ter- ritory of Illinois.
April 28, 1809, Illinois was divided into two counties, St. Clair and Randolph. Then the imaginary Bureauite would have received his mail " Shakerag, St. Clair County, Territory of Illinois," and if he had wanted a squaw, by marriage, unless he had done as the offi- cers of the army often did in those days, buy
one, he would have had to go to Cahokia for his license. In September, 1812, Madison County was created and that then included all this part of Illinois, and we could all then attend court at Edwardsville.
In March, 1819, we would, had we all been here then, have become citizens of Clark County, with our county seat at Palestine, on the Wabash River.
There were only fifteen counties in the State when it was admitted into the Union.
In January, 1821, we would, without any act of our own, have all become citizens of Pike County, and could have joined in the refrain of "Joe Bowers, all the way from Pike." In January, 1823, never leaving home, we would all have been in Fulton County. Then in 1825 in Peoria County, and the same year we were placed in Putnam County, provided it had enough people to organize, and it seems it did not have, as the steps to really form Putnam County were not taken until 1831, and we remained in happy content until 1837, when poor Putnam County was divided, as the clown cut off the dog's tail, "just behind the ears," and Bureau County came into existence.
As a part of the history of the abstract to all our land titles in this portion of Illinois, it may not be amiss to here note the fact that the French had for a century lived with the Indians, and there had been no serious dis- putes as to the titles to the lands. At the conclusion of the Revolution and when Wash- ington was President, and the present race of men were commencing that flow of immigra- tion that has never ceased, the Indians con- federated together and determined to con- test the right of these " white dogs" to come among them. They took the position that the Ohio River was the extreme northwestern boundary line, and thus, commencing at Pitts burgh, all the Northwest should be left to
C1
firstur Stevens
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HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.
them "as long as grass grows and water runs." Pontiac, and then Tecumseh and finally Black Hawk, were the respective Indian lead- ers in warring upon the white invasion. Ev- ery defeat of the Indians was followed by new treaties, in which the red man moved west and the Saxon extended his dominion across the upper Mississippi Valley, and it was the final treaty with Black Hawk, in 1832, after his defeat and capture, that for- ever settled the title to the lands in Bureau, or in fact, to all territory east of the Missis- sippi River.
CHAPTER V.
THE GRAND MARCH OF EMPIRE-THE MARVELS IN THE SWEEP OF POPULATION-THE MARCH OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS-THE ACT OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY CREATING BUREAU COUNTY-ETC., F.TC.
" Thus came the restless Saxon tide, Resistless, broad and deep and strong ; That on its bright, free, crested wave, New life and learning bore along." -JOHN H. BRYANT.
IN the preceding chapter is traced the 1 genealogy of the county down to the period of its formation and the commence- ment of its municipal existence under its present designation of Bureau County. The geological history, involving to some slight extent, the play of nature's great forces, and æons of time in continent-building were first referred to ; the strata which are the base upon which rests the crust of the earth's sur- face, and the surface.itself, and the long and slow process of forming our prairies, and the preparations that were made for the coming of animate life, and eventually of man, were briefly touched upon; and then following cur- sorily the evidences that for millions of years different races of men were here and had
passed away before the coming of the red men and their congeners; and from such hasty glimpses, we catch enough to tell us some- thing of the weird and wonderful story that is contained in the little world, even that is bounded by the bending horizon of each living inhabitant of this particular portion of the globe. The mind staggers under the astound- ing revelations of the historian, and at the same time, if the picture has been at all drawn to the facts, they have enlarged the views of the student, and, it is hoped, will broaden the av- erage ideas of men and materially aid them in grasping those larger and more generous plans of human life that will ennoble and bet- ter the condition of alt. The plan of this work compelled only the briefest allusion to the past, so slight indeed, that it is feared the majority of readers will fail to feel the impress of the important hints it gives, and thereby lose much of value and deep interest. With this expression of perhaps a groundless regret, we turn from the Then to the Now, and what do we find? A story that grows, if that is possible, in interest as we approach our own age and time.
Nothing in the history of the globe is so extraordinary in its topographical and moral results as the vast western march of the American people within a hundred years. Let ns look, for instance, at the excellent French map of what constituted the northern part of the United States in 1798. The western boundary of the visible settlement is the Genesee River of New York. The names on the Hudson are like the names of to-day; all beyond is strange. No railroad, no canal; only a turnpike running to the Genesee, and with no further track to mark the way through the forest to " Buffalooe " on the far-off lake. Along this turnpike are settlements-" Schen - ectady," "Canajobary," "Schuyler or Utica," " Ft. Stenwich or Rome," " Oneida Cassle," 4
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HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.
" Onondaga Cassle," " Geneva " and " Can- andargue," where the road turns north to Lake Ontario. Forests cover all western New York, all northwestern Pennsylvania. Far off in Ohio is a detached region indicated as "the Connecticut Reserve, conceded to the families who had been ruined during the war of independence," whence our modern phrase " Western Reserve." The summary of the whole map is that the United States still consisted of the region east of the Alleghan- ies, with a few outlying settlements, and nothing more.
Now pass over twenty years. In the map prefixed to William Darby's tour from New York to Detroit in 1818-this Darby being the author of an emigrant's guide and a mem- ber of the New York Historical Society-we find no State west of the Mississippi except Missouri, and scarcely any towns in Indiana or Illinois. Michigan Territory is desig- nated, but across the whole western half of it is the inscription: "This part very imper- fectly known." All beyond Lake Michigan and all west of the Mississippi is a nameless waste, except for a few names of rivers and of Indian villages. This marks the progress -and a very considerable progress-of twen- ty years. Writing from Buffalo (now spelled correctly), Darby says: "The beautiful and highly-cultivated lands of the strait of Erie are now a specimen of what in forty years will be the landscape from Erie to Chicaga [sic]. It is a very gratifying anticipation to behold in fancy the epoch to come, when this augmenting mass of the population will enjoy in the interior of this vast continent a choice collection of immense marts, where the pro- duce of the banks of innumerable rivers and lakes can be exchanged."
Already, it seems, travelers and map-mak- ers had got from misspelling "Buffalooe " to misspelling "Chicaga." It was a great deal.
The Edinburgh Review for that same year (June, 1818), in reviewing Birkbeck's once celebrated " Travels in America," said:
" Where is this prodigious increase of numbers, this vast extension of dominion to end? What bounds has nature set to the progress of this mighty nation? Let our jealousy burn as it may, let our intolerance of America be as unreasonably violent as we please, still it is plain that she is a power in spite of us. rapidly rising to the supremacy; or, at least, that each year so mightily aug- ments her strength as to overtake, by a most sensible distance, even the most formidable of her competitors."
This was written, it must be remembered, when the whole population of the United States was but little more than 9,000.000, or about the present population of New York and Pennsylvania taken together.
What were the first channels for this great transfer of population ? The great turnpike road up the Mohawk Valley in New York; and farther south, the "National road," which ended at Wheeling, Va. Old men, now or recently living, as, for instance, Sewall Newhouse, the trapper and trap maker of Oneida, can recall the long lines of broad- wheeled wagons drawn by ten horses, forty of these teams sometimes coming in close suc- cession; the stages, six of which were some- times in sight at once; the casualties, the breakdowns. the sloughs of despond, the pas- sengers at work with fence rails to pry out the vehicle from a mud-hole. These sights, now disappearing on the shores of the Pacific, were then familiar in the heart of what is now the East. This was the tide flowing westward; while eastward, on the other hand, there soon begins a counter-current of flocks and herds sent from the new settlements to supply the older States. As early as 1824 Timothy Flint records meeting a drove of
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HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.
more than a thousand cattle and swine, rough and shaggy as wolves, guided toward the Philadelphia market by a herdsman looking as untamed as themselves, and coming from Ohio, "a name which still sounded in our ears," Flint says, " like the land of savages."
The group so well known in our literature, the emigrant family, the way-side fire, the high-peaked wagon, the exhausted oxen, this picture recedes steadily in space as we come nearer to our own time. In 1788 it set off with the first settlers from Massachusetts to seek Ohio; in 1798 it was just leaving the Hudson to ascend the Mohawk River; in 1815 the hero of Lawrie Todd saw it at Rochester, N. Y .; in 1819 Darby met it near Detroit, Mich .; in 1824 Flint saw it in Missouri; in 1831 Alexander depicted it in Tennessee; in 1843 Margaret Fuller Ossoli sketched it be- yond Chicago, Ill .; in 1856 in Nebraska and Kansas; in 1864 Clarence King described it in his admirable sketch, "Way-side Pikes," in California; in 1882 Mrs. Leighton in her charming letters pictures it at Puget Sound, beyond which, as it has reached the Pacific, it cannot advance. From this continent the emigrant group in its original form has almost vanished; the process of spreading emigration by steam is less picturesque but more rapid.
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