USA > Illinois > DeKalb County > History of DeKalb County, Illinois > Part 2
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PIERCE. . Sulphur springs. . Wheat raising. . Nativity of its inhabitants First settlers. . Schools. . Organization in 1853. . Its name. . Contribu- tions to the war. . Population .. . Supervisors. 501
SQUAW GROVE. . The first town settled. . Origin of the name. . Sebree and other first settlers. . Mode of life. . Taxation .. First birth and death. . Schoo's. . Its present wealth. . Population. . Soldiers. . Super- visors. 506
PAW PAW. . Natural characteristics. . First inhabitants. . Origin of its name. . Shabbona. . Waubonsie. . Le Clair ... The banditti. . Bill Rogers . . Treasure trove. . Town organization. . First Election. . Supervisors. . Seminaries. . Churches. . Population. In the war of the Rebellion .. The dead. 508
VICTOR. . Organization in 1853 .. First immigrants. . The railroad. . Nativity of its population. . The Little Indian. . Leland. . Schools .. Population. . Its soldier boys. . Their dead. . Supervisors. 514
SOMONAUK. . Description . . First house in the County. . Early settlers. . Poverty and hardship. . Worship. . The mails. . The railroad. . Sand- wich. . How started. . Manufacturing. . Its grain trade. . Its newspapers .. Its Churches. . Somonauk village. . Rapid growth. . Its war record .. Leading citizens ... Underground railroad. 519
SHABBONA. . The Grove. . The Big Indian Creek. . Early prosperity .. Old Shabbona. . Treaties. . Sells his reservation to Gates. . Sale void .. The sale at Dixon. . The Whispering Smith's attempt. . Investigation .. First house. . First settlers. . Game-Sibiqua-Presest situation- Masonic-Its soldiery-The dead-The Supervisors 524
HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
CHAPTER I.
THE GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF DEKALB COUNTY, WITH THE ORIGIN OF THE PRAIRIES.
The surface of our County of DeKalb has few marked peculiarities-few grand distinctive features. It contains no great and navigable rivers; no elevated peaks, rising in majestic grandeur ; no mountain torrents, shrouded in foam, chafing in rocky channels ; no deep and narrow valleys, heni- med in on every side, and forming little worlds of their own ; no narrow and precipitous passes, winding through circuitous defiles ; no cavernous gorges, giving exit to pent-up waters ; no contorted or twisted strata, affording evidence of violent internal throes and gigantic overturnings. It is simply a plain parallelogram of rich rolling prairie, eighteen miles broad and thirty-six miles long, dotted with a few groves and watered by a few small streams.
But the features of the landscape, although less bold than those of mountainous regions, are yet impressive and strongly marked. In the broad, billowy prairies, extending as far as the eye can reach, we have the element of vastness as in scarce any other land; we have a luxuriant sward of emerald green- ness, clothing the whole land, down to the very margin of the
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY :
waters; we have meandering streams, clear as crystal, now smooth, quiet and glassy, then ruffled by winds or rapids ; we have clumps of trees, charming groves, disposed with an effect of beauty that might baffle a landscape gardener ; now crown- ing the grassy height, now clothing the green slope with their pleasing shade. From the gentle heights of the rolling prairies, the country, even before the hand of man had broken its surface, wore the aspect of cultivated meadows and rich pasture grounds, irrigated by frequent rivulets.
The County occupies the high ground between the two well-known streams, the Fox and Rock rivers; streams famous for their purity and beauty, which, rising in Wisconsin, both flow southwestwardly in a course nearly parallel, and empty, the Fox into the Illinois river at Ottawa, and the Rock into the Mississippi at Rock Island. The highest point between these rivers, and indeed, the highest between the lakes at Chicago and the Mississippi river, is said to be in the town of South Grove, in this County.
The central portion of the County contains the least extent of timbered lands, and the fewest running streams. The northern and southern ends are better watered and timbered. The south branch of the Kishwaukee river is the largest of those streams. Upon all of the early maps of this County, and upon its first records, this stream is designated as the Sycamore river. Kishwaukee is said to be the Indian name for the Sycamore tree, and the river took its name from the fact, that when the country was first settled by the whites, a few scattered groups of those trees (very rare in the prairie region) were found upon its banks.
This stream rises in the town of Afton, near the centre of the County, flows through De Kalb, Mayfield, Kingston and Franklin, about forty miles, entering the Rock river at Mil- ford, in Winnebago County. It has several branches, the largest of which, originating in Virgil, Kane County, flows through Cortland and Sycamore, and enters the main branch in Mayfield. Deer Creck in Genoa, Trimble's Run in King-
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ITS GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY.
ston, Owen's Creek in South Grove and Franklin, all minor branches of the same river, are infinitely valuable to the farms which they water, and have served a valuable purpose in furnishing protection to the scattering groves which always spring up on the prairies upon the eastern sides of the run- ning streams, sheltered there from the ravages of the annual prairie fires, driven by the prevailing westerly winds. Beside the banks of this main stream stretches one continuous forest, composed principally of white red and burr oak trees, liberally ยท interspersed with the poplar, the maple, the butternut, the black-walnut, and the hickory. This grove constitutes the main source of supply for fuel, fencing and timber, for the land owners of all the northern half of the County, being owned in small lots of from one to twenty acres, by the farmers on the broad prairies on each side, some of whom live ten or even fifteen miles from their timbered lots, and resort to them only in the winter season, at which time their principal occupation is the accumulation of a supply of fencing and fuel for the next year's use.
Broad, rolling prairies occupy almost the entire surface of the central portion of the County. The land is, perhaps, more rolling,-more rough,-than at the two extremities ; but only two or three small, isolated, natural groves broke the uniformity of the billowy prairie, before it was formed ' into farms and beautified by man with rows or little thickets of planted or transplanted timber.
The first settlers of the country naturally made their claims in close proximity to the groves and streams; and could hardly believe that the distant prairies would ever serve any other purpose than that of a vast range for flocks and herds. They were confident that no farmer could live and labor conveniently, farther than a mile or two from his tim- bered lots, and they regarded him as a visionary enthusiast who dared to predict that they would live to see it all settled and occupied by man. But the settlements gradually extended farther and farther out upon the prairies, and now the entire
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY :
County is occupied, and scarcely a vacant spot of the wild prairie can be found throughout its entire extent.
The settlers upon these farms remote from the groves, now claim that the soil is there more productive than in their closer vicinity, and observation seems to justify the claim ; but this superiority may be due to their having been more recently settled and subjected to fewer drafts upon their fertility, than those which have been longer cropped.
Some of the wealthiest farmers and the most productive farms of the County are now found in this section of the County, which, twenty years ago, it was thought would never be occupied by residents.
Although this central portion of the County is compara- tively rugged, yet no large streams are found there. The head waters of all the crecks in the County are there formed in sloughs or swamps, which always connect one with another, until the united volume of their waters form brooklets, which flowing north and south ultimately become our larger creeks. The Big and Little Indian Creeks have their origin near the southern boundary of these central towns, and in the town of Afton one handsome and never-failing stream gushes out from the low prairie with considerable size and force; and flowing southwestwardly through the town of Squaw Grove becomes the Little Rock Creek.
But the natural disadvantages of this scarcity of timber and of flowing streams in this section, are compensated by the possession of an important line of railroad, a portion of the great commercial artery between the Atlantic and Pacific, upon which the thriving villages of Cortland, De Kalb and Malta have sprung up; villages which must ever be leading business places in De Kalb County. Thanks to the life-infus- ing influence of this great artery of trade, this portion of the County, has grown in wealth and population during the past ten years more rapidly than any other section, and its popu- lation must still rapidly become more dense.
The six southern towns of the County, like the northern
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ITS GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY.
six, are better watered and timbered than those which occupy the center. There are about four thousand acres of good timber in its several groves, embracing about one thirty-second of its entire surface, and so distributed that no farm in those towns is far removed from timbered lots. Handsome flowing streams are also abundant. It is as fertile and as beautiful a region as the sun shines upon. The Little Indian and Big Indian Creeks water the towns of Shabbona and Paw Paw, while Shabbona Grove and Ross Grove furnish its timber.
Somonauk and Squaw Grove are watered by the Little Rock and Somonauk Creeks and provided with timber from the grove which borders these streams.
Upon the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroads have sprung up the two active, enterprising and well built villages of Sandwich and Somonauk. At Shabbona Grove and in the southwestern portion of Paw Paw have long been small villages, natural centers for the surrounding country whichi only need the life-giving influence of a railroad to make them among the largest in the County.
The whole County is divided with mathematical precision into eighteen towns, laid out by the United States Govern- ment, each six miles square.
Hardly a ledge of rocks pierces the surface in any part of the County. Some soft, inferior limestone is found in King- ston a few feet below the surface, and in Franklin is a quarry of the same that is converted into building lime. A similar quarry has been found in Afton, and in the southern part near the banks of the creeks it may be found cropping out occasionally.
But the whole County is, even for this prairie land, singu- larly and unfortunately destitute of rock suitable for building or for any other valuable purpose. Thinly scattered over its entire surface, however, are found rounded granite boul- ders, varying in size from that of a huge cannon ball to that which would weigh a ton or more. In the vernacular of the country they are called hard heads or nigger heads and are
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY :
prized by the farmers, who use them for underpinning barns; sometimes also for stoning their wells, and more rarely their house cellars. But few farms are so fortunate as to possess enough for these purposes.
THE ORIGIN OF THE PRAIRIES.
These singularly beautiful and fertile plains, destitute of the thick growth of timber with which nature has clothed most of the country, and so admirably fitted by nature for the immediate use of man, is a subject that has excited a vast deal of interest and inquiry and has given rise to a great many different theories.
To give an intelligent opinion on their origin, some brief review of the commonly received theories of geology is necessary.
The science of geology informs us that the earth, originally a fiery, nebulous mass, revolving in illimitable space about the sun, gradually became cooled at its surface and that at the present age, the globe, still seething with tumultuous fires within, is covered on its exterior by a rind of solid matter about ten miles in thickness, which, as compared to its entire diameter, is like a thin sheet of paper spread over a globe a foot in diameter. This surface cooled irregularly in rough corrugations ; the elevations constituting the mountains and continents, and the depressions, filled with the condensed vapors making the oceans and the valleys of the principal rivers. This surface was originally far more rough and irreg- ular than at present, and changes-alternate elevations and depressions, while the solid exterior was thinner-were more numerous than at this later age.
Those rocks which bear marks of having been originally in a fluid state are called igneous rocks and constitute the primary strata. Granite is the most common specimen of this class of rocks.
Heat, frost and floods gradually crumble and wear away the irregularities of the surface and form from the disinte- grated mass a soil, which, stimulated by the high tempera-
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ITS GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY.
ture caused by the fires below, produced herbage and veget- able growths of enormous size. In the strata of rock formed at this period are found, not only shells and the simpler forms of animal life, but the remains of giant ferns sixty feet in height, with stalks or trunks three feet in circumference. Vines, palms, and all the flora of the present tropical regions, an hundred times increased in size, grew and flourished in the hot, moist atmosphere with a luxuriance almost incon- ceivable, and dying, produced a soil of incomparable richness, which in turn reproduced fresh and more gigantic forms of vegetable life. This rapid growth and equally rapid decay soon formed beds of pcaty soil of immense thickness, and the crust of the earth being at this time much thinner than now, and of course subject to more frequent disturbances and irruptions of the struggling internal fires, they, bursting forth, often buried with the enormous weight of the overturned strata these thick beds of vegetable matter, and by the aid of heat, converted them into those beds of coal, which now, brought to the surface, furnish man with an inexhaustible supply of the most valuable of fuel. In these coals we even now can readily trace the remains of plants and trees ; even the delicate foliage of the graceful ferns being still plainly visible.
As the earth grew older strange forms of animal life ap- peared. Amid the moist tropical lagunes gigantic beasts dis- ported. Enormous lizards, twenty feet in length, with bodies larger than the elephant's ; reptiles, resembling no species now existing ; huge birds ; terrible serpents; monstrous fish ; strange compounds of all these species of animals ; many of them furnished with wings yet adapted to life in the water, together constituted the living inhabitants of the earth at this early period of its existence. Their remains are found imbed- ded in solid rock, often so distinct that their mode of life and the nature of the food on which they subsisted may be easily determined. Millions of years passed away. Animals of countless varieties lived, died, and even their species passed
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY :
out of existence, amid the operation of the grand process of fitting the earth for the habitation of man.
Strata on strata of rocks were formed by the slow process of disintegration of the elevated surfaces, through the agency of heat, floods and frost, aided by alternate elevations and depressions, and the re-formation of this mass into solid rock again, till we come at last to the diluvial or drift period ; the last geological era before man occupied the globe; if indeed he had not during or before this period become its tenant.
The greatest portion of this diluvial deposit consists of sand and gravel; but tough, hard clay constituted no inconsiderable amount of it.
The vegetation of this period differed but slightly from that of the present day. The position of the mountains, continents, rivers and oceans was substantially the same as at the present, which is termed the alluvial period; although there have evidently since been some elevations and depressions of the surface. During this diluvial period, there seems to have suddenly occurred an era of intense cold throughout all the northern hemisphere. That it was a sudden change is shown by the perfect preservation to this time in the frozen mud of Siberia of numerous specimens of the elephant, rhinoceros, and other inhabitants of a warm climate, which are now found with the hide and even the flesh still visible; and also by similar discoveries of the mammoth and mastodon in some parts of this continent. The changed climate was perhaps due to some sudden oscillation of the axis of the earth. Nearly all organic life was destroyed by this reduction of temperature, and gla- ciers were formed on mountains of moderate height. The northern regions of the earth became vast sheets of ice and snow, which, as now in polar regions, sent out their glaciers, by the natural force of expansion, nearly as far to the south as the gulf of Mexico. By changes of temperature these glaciers advancing and retreating as they do at the present time in the Alps and in the polar regions, broke fragments from the ledges of rock below, and grinding them upon the
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ITS GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY.
surface of the rock, rounded them into boulders. Ultimately the temperature became again permanently elevated; and the vast sheets of ice became equally vast currents of water, which floated off huge icebergs loaded with rocks, sand, gravel, clay, and fragments of trees. Floating toward the warmer regions of the south they gradually melted and deposited their debris upon the surface of the earth. Becoming fixed upon some accidental projection, large gravelly knolls and hills were formed from their deposits, and over the entire surface their boulders were scattered. In some natural gorges these icc- bergs would naturally accumulate, and rapidly liquefying, would deposit cnough of their detritus to stop the passage of the great waters, and cause the formation of immense lakes which covered the country, perhaps for centuries of time, until, cither by some internal convulsion or perchance by the slower processes of ordinary causes, the dam thus formed became worn away, and the lakes floated off to the ocean.
These prairies were undoubtedly at one time the bed of such a lake. The black soft mould which constitutes the surface soil is strongly impregnated with ulmic acid, a charac- teristic constituent of peat and swampy ground, and which is present in most vegetable manures. Beneath this is a foot or two, sometimes ten or fifteen fect, of reddish yellow clay often mixed with gravel; then a stiff blue clay or hard-pan, and in or under this we often find well-preserved fragments of timber and the brush of forests ; sometimes pine, oftener hemlock ; rarely tamarack ; always of species that do not grow within some hundreds of miles of this country. This deposit of clay, sand and loam sometimes reaches to the depth of two hundred feet, while in other places the stratified rocks below it are scarcely concealed. These stratified rocks consist of thin veins of coal, limestone, sandstone, and other varieties of rocks in layers down to the primitive granite. The clay, the gravel,' the fragments of trees were probably deposited in the drift period ; the gravelly knolls formed from the detritus of some iceberg arrested in its course and melted there. The granite
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
ledges, from whence the boulders that strew the prairies were taken, can now be seen about six hundred miles toward the polar ocean.
It seems most probable that the departure of the waters which formerly covered these prairies was due to the gradual elevation of the surface by internal forces ; and it is not im- possible that this gradual elevation may still be in progress, and account, in part, for the constantly increasing dryness of the surface of the country, which is so evident to every settler who was accustomed to these prairies a quarter of a century ago.
The theory that these prairies were formerly the bed of . a lake will account for the absence of trees. Grass and herbaceous plants in great variety, including flowering plants which bloom in constant succession from spring till autumn, grow in the finely comminuted soil which always constitutes the bottom of lakes and ponds, as they grow here on the prairies ; but in such soils trees do not naturally spring up. The beds of lakes in Michigan which have been gradually filled up or drained off remain as natural prairies. Some acid in such soils checks the spontaneous growth of trees. But a different kind of soil is found upon the margin of streams, and in this class of soil groves of excellent timber are always found. The cause of this may be in the fact that when in the course of the gradual elevation of the whole region, the higher por- tions are laid bare, the drainage became more concentrated in narrow channels, and the more rapid current washed away the swampy top-soil, leaving exposed the underlying drift, which is a soil of a character adapted to the growth of forests. Trees indeed grow and thrive in the prairie soil when planted there, but never except when the hand of man has broken the tough sod of the surface, and enabled their roots to penetrate to the argillaceous loam which constitutes the sub-soil.
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE STATE.
CHAPTER II.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE STATE.
It was about two centuries ago that Louis XIV., the most ambitious, most illustrious and most dissolute of all' the kings of France, desirous of extending his dominions into the new world beyond the seas, sent out settlers to colonize the rich wilderness called after him, Louisiana, and embracing all the territory that was drained by the Mississippi river, including the beautiful country of the Illini tribe of Indians, named ultimately Illinois.
French villages or trading posts were established at St. Louis, Prairie du Chien, Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, Peoria, Cahokia, Chicago, and some other less noted points, by settlers who, under LaSalle, Iberville, and various other Jesuit priests, became the first white inhabitants of our State.
For nearly one hundred and fifty years these villages made little progress. The original settlers generally intermarried with the Indians of the surrounding country, and their de- scendants partook, to some extent, of the wild, roving, indolent character of the aborigines, united with the politeness, gaiety and courtesy of the French. Most of their time was spent in hunting and fishing excursions from which they returned with the skins, fur and feathers, which were the staple articles of their trade in their annual excursions down the great Father of Waters. Each village had its own Catholic church, which was the place of gay resort on Sunday, and its priest, who was the loved advisor and companion of his flock.
In 1713 the country passed from the authority of the French at the conclusion of the treaty of Utrecht which ceded Canada to the English, the whole being known as New France.
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
In 1774 an act of Parliament known as the Quebec act, designed to prevent the Canadians from joining with the other ' disaffected colonies in opposition to the British Crown, among numerous other privileges, attached all of this country north of the Ohio and cast of the Mississippi to the province of Quebec.
When in 1778 the country was conquered. from the British who then possessed it by the colonial troops under General George R. Clarke, many of his officers and soldiers remained and settled in the territory; and in due time other hardy pioneers from Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, followed them.
Clarke, who was acting under authority of the Legislature of Virginia, claimed this part of the country as a conquest of that State ; and the Virginia Legislature in October of that year organized it as the County of Illinois, in the State of Virginia, and as such it continued till the ordinance of 1787 reorganized it as the northwestern territory, and appointed Gov. St. Clair its territorial governor.
When in the war of 1812 British emissaries stirred up the Indians to war upon the settlement of those who confessed allegiance to the Union, these colonists then amounting to about 12,000 in number, maintained their position, and, with the aid of one company of regular troops, took the offensive, and made hostile expeditions into the territory of the neigh- boring tribes, burning their villages and driving them from the country. At the outbreak of the war, however, the company of troops posted at Chicago, who had received notice of the declaration of hostilities and orders to evacuate and destroy their post, were ambushed at Michigan City while escaping to Detroit, and massacred by the Indians. With the cessa- tion of the war, peace returned to the little chain of Western colonies. By the famous ordinance of 1787, organizing this great northwestern territory, there were to be not less than three nor more than five States carved out from its limits, any one of which should be admitted into the Union so soon as it
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