USA > Illinois > DeKalb County > History of DeKalb County, Illinois > Part 5
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THE CLAIM ASSOCIATIONS.
mittee were to be then and there chosen, whose duty it should be, to 'examine into, hear, and finally determine, all disputes and differences then existing, or which hereafter might arise between settlers in relation to their claims,' and whose deci- sions, with certain salutary cheeks, were to be binding upon all parties, and to be carried out at all hazards by the three departments of government consolidated in aid of the execu- tive, in what jurists sometimes denominate, the ' posse comita- tus.' Each settler was solemnly pledged to protect every other settler in the association, in the peaceful enjoyment of 'his or her reasonable claim as aforesaid, and further, who- ever throughout all Kishwaukie, or the suburbs, or coasts thereof, should refuse to recognize the authority of the afore- said association, and render due obedience to the laws enacted by the same from time to time, 'to promote the general wel- fare,' should be deemed a heathen, a publican, and an outlaw with whom they were pledged to have no communion or fel- lowship. Thus was a wall, affording protection to honest settlers, built in troublous times. Hon. Levi Lee, our present worthy County Judge, Hon. Geo. H. Hill, Capt. Eli Barnes, James Green and Jesse C. Kellogg, were chosen to be the settlers' committee, who who, as may well be supposed, had business on hand for some time in order to restore and 'ensure domestic tranquility,' and promote the general welfare.' The thing worked like a charm; and the value of these asso- ciations in Northern Illinois, to the infant settlements, has never been over-estimated. Similar associations were formed and maintained in Somonauk and other portions of the County, until the lands came into market. This event took place in Chicago, in 1843, when all De Kalb County, except the north tier of townships, was sold to the highest bidder-that is, so far as 'terra firma' is concerned. The moral as well as phy- sical power of the 'Settlers' associations' was so great, that if a speculator presumed to bid on a settler's claim, he was certain to find himself 'knocked down and dragged out,' and had the land officers shown the least sympathy or favor to the
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'rascal,' there can be no doubt but what an indignant and outraged yeomanry would have literally torn the land office to fragments in almost 'less than no time.'"
The duties of these settlers' committees were onerous in- deed. Suits were prosecuted against them with all of the persistence that characterizes litigation in the courts at the present time. Day after day was sometimes spent in the examination of witnesses, the arguments of learned counsel, and of course some one was generally disappointed and angry at their award.
The Claim associations were not without opposition also, and some were disposed to dispute their authority. Two well- defined parties sprang up in the Kishwaukie country, as that section was called over which the organization before des- cribed claimed authority. The opponents of the Claim As- sociation were called claim-jumpers. They held, not that men had no right to the land on which they settled, but that they had no right to make more than one claim, nor to hold another by purchase. Many rough, reckless pioneers came in at this early day with no intention of settling permanently, but merely to make claims on favorite locations and sell them out. They would roll together a few logs, lay them up in a kind of pen, cover it with bark or shakes, to give it the ap- pearance of a dwelling, and then having blazed around a quarter section of timber, and a mile or more of prairie, they would stand and forbid any one from settling on this claim without paying them some hundreds, or perhaps thousands of dollars, for what they called their farm. And settlers paid, even before the Indians left, hundreds, and sometimes thous- ands of dollars, for such claims. The tract on which now stands most of the village of DeKalb was so claimed in this way by a Mr. Collins, and $2,000 was paid for the claim in 1836 by the company of which Russell Huntley was agent and manager. Mr. Hamlin paid $600 for a claim two or three miles north of that place, and Ephraim and Riley Hall gave $700 for the claim on his present farm in the town of
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THE CLAIM ASSOCIATIONS.
Sycamore. In addition to which, the purchaser was of course required to pay the government for the land when it was surveyed and offered for sale by the United States authorities. Such sums were small fortunes in those early days : they were equivalent to ten times as much money at this time; and men were naturally disposed to stand up very sturdily in defence of those ill defined rights of property for which they had paid so dearly. Fights and rows innumerable arose, fierce and fiery quarrels whose embers are even yet smouldering in the breasts of some of those first settlers. Meetings of the settlers' association were called, and new regulations adopted as occasion demanded.
But as soon as the Courts were accessible, litigation began. While this was part of Kane County, the Courts at Geneva its County seat, were thronged with litigants, witnesses, attorneys and officers from this distant Kishwaukie country, and the suits were often by change of venue transferred still farther, to Joliet or other neighboring Counties. One well known citizen who had buried a relative on land that was afterward found to be over his line, was promptly sued for trespass, and after long litigation was compelled to remove the body.
One of the most hotly contested of the claim wars, and which may serve as a sample of many others, was between Mr. Marshall Stark on the one side, and Riley Hall with Noble Barron on the other.
Two brothers, James and Samuel Gilbert in 1835, made claims on the west side of the Kishwaukie on what is now the town of Mayfield, and wishing to move away, Mr. Stark purchased them, paying $550 for the claims. But as Stark already had a claim on the east side of the river, Hall and Barron who denied the right of settlers to hold any lands on which they did not reside, " jumped " Stark's west side claims, fenced in a lot, built a house on each, and moved a family in each house to hold them. This was a decided infraction of claim law, and Stark found no difficulty in raising a company 10
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
of some thirty friends to reinstate him. They marched up to the houses where they found their opponents with a few of their friends, armed with a rifle or two, and protected by "arricaded doors. The assaulting party beat down the door with battering rams, seized the rifles from the hands of the inmates, who feared to shoot into so large a party of neighbors, and then gathering rails and firing, they made a bonfire of the whole concern.
The wrath of the claim-jumpers can readily be imagined. They swore great oaths, and threatened the lives of the perpetrators of this wrong. The first blood in the contest was won by Stark, who at an election held soon after at Frederick Love's, gave a sound threshing to two brothers Leckerby, who belonged to the claim-jumpers party. Not long after, happening to go upon the disputed claim, he was waylaid and attacked with clubs by a party of them, and after a running fight of a mile or more, was lucky to escape with his life. Now commenced a long course of litigation lasting for several years. The case tried first before Rufus Colton, then Justice of the Peace, was appealed to the Circuit Court at Geneva before Judge Roberts, thence taken on change of venue to Joliet, then to the Supreme Court at Ottawa, and after many years, finally decided more by good luck than by law, in Stark's favor. But the expenses as usual in closely contested suits, were much greater than the value of the property. A year or two later, the State Legislature passed a statute legalizing sales of claims, thus maintaining the law established by the settlers' association. In the winter of 1839, a party of the settlers came down upon one old fellow who was found in the big woods preparing to jump a claim of one of their friends, and being inflamed with Dutch courage derived from a jug of whiskey, they prepared to hang the poor fellow and would have carried their threat into execution, but that their leaders became alarmed and managed to let the scared wretch run away. He was never more seen in these parts.
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THE CLAIM ASSOCIATIONS.
The cases in which the Claim Association was called upon to take formal action were less numerous than those in which the people of the neighborhood in which some violation of claim law had been perpetrated, were summoned to meet and enforce by the power of numbers what they thought was justice in the case ; and after the lands had come into market the Claim Association assumed no further authority, yet the sacredness of claims was very generally enforced by a popular understanding that no man should be permitted to enter another's claim.
When in 1843 the lands were offered for entry, many of the settlers had exhausted all of their means in making improvements, and were unable to raise the small sum demanded for entering their claims. These lands were now worth ten or fifteen dollars per acre; and there was no law except this unwritten claim law to deter speculators from making them their own upon paying the government the dollar and a quarter an acre which it demanded. But so sacred were these claims regarded by these settlers, so strong was the prejudice against their being taken up by others, and so dangerous was it made for the person who tried it, that many valuable farms were occupied for two, three, and even five years after, by men who had never been able to raise the money to enter them, and who had no title whatever, to their possession.
In many cases, however, this regulation was violated, and in some instances mobs were raised who forced the offender to deed back the land to the claimant. These mobs, as is the case with mobs everywhere, even when moved by generous intentions, often failed to understand the merits of a case, and unwittingly did great injustice.
In 1843, an old man named McLenathan, a resident of Sycamore, entered a farm which was claimed by Mr. John Mason of Burlington. The claim organization had then become inoperative ; but there was still this strong feeling in favor of protecting settlers in their claims, so that there was
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
no great difficulty in raising a crowd to lynch the old man if he refused to deed back the land. He was living with Mr. David Finley near Ohio Grove, when on one cold morning in March a company of fifty young men mounted on horseback, surrounded Finley's house, and calling him out demanded that he deed over the land to Mason or he should be tarred and feathered. McLenathan said that Mason owed him money, that he did not want his land but merely to get security for his debt, and that if Mason would pay him his money he would deed him the land. This did not suit Mason, nor the crowd of excited followers, so without more ado they seized him, placed him on horseback and started off for the woods. Here they dismounted, stripped the gray haired old man, poured on the tar and rubbed on a coating of feathers.
" Now, old fellow, sign that deed, or we will drown you in yonder pond !"
McLenathan still sturdily refused, whereupon they dragged him to the pond of water near by, and threw him in, some of them jumping on him and crowding him below the icy waters. Finally, nearly dead from the cold and more than half drowned, he consented to give up the land, and the deed was executed. The party did not then disperse, but adjourned to a school house near by, and there drew up and signed an agreement to protect at the risk of their lives, the right of all settlers in their claims. A week after, the company were summoned together to put their resolve in force,
A Mr. Mann, of Burlington, had entered some land claimed by one of this party, and they were summoned to compel him to deed it back. An hundred of them were gathered at this time, and armed with shot guns and rifles, they moved upon the enemies' works. But this was a different undertaking from that of lynching the poor and friendless old McLenathan. The Manns were a numerous family, and had many friends. They had summoned them to their assistance, and when the party approached their residence they found it defended by a large number of determined-looking men well armed with
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THE CLAIM ASSOCIATIONS.
murderous-looking rifles. Not caring to risk their lives in an attack upon a fortress so well defended, they abandoned this attempt and dispersed to their homes.
Indictments were found in the Court of Kane County against a number of the party who assaulted McLenathan, but the matter had become so public there that a fair trial could not be had, and it was removed to Kendall County. The leading participants in this attack were convicted and heavily fined.
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BANDITTI.
About the confines of advancing civilization upon this continent, there has always hovered, like scouts before the march of an invading army, a swarm of bold, enterprising, adventurous criminals. The broad, untrodden prairies, the trackless forests, the rivers, unbroken by the keels of commerce, furnished admirable refuge for those whose crimes had driven them from the companionship of the honest and the law-abiding; and, hovering there where courts and civil processes could furnish but a thin veil of protection for life or property, the temptation to prey upon the unprotected sons of toil, rather than to gain a livelihood by the slow process of peaceful industry, has proved too strong to be resisted. Some have sought these unpeopled western wilds for the express purpose of theft and robbery, some because they dare not live within reach of efficient laws, and some who came with honest intentions, have been tempted into crime by the prevalent immunity from punishment. Everywhere in newly-settled lands the proportion of the dishonest and criminal has been greater than in the older and better regulated communities. This was particularly the case in the earlier settlement of the prairies of DeKalb County. A strong and well constructed net-work of organized crime at that time stretched over this whole seetion of country, and few were fortunate enough to preserve all their property from being swept up in its meshes. A good horse and his equipments was the most easily captured, and most readily concealed-consequently the most coveted and dangerous property in the country. No possessor of a
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THE BANDITTI.
fleet and famous horse dared leave him for a single night, unless secured in a strong, double-locked stable, guarded by faithful dogs, and oftentimes by the owner himself, who regularly slept in his stable. During the first four years of the settlement of the country, a large portion of the population were obliged to keep an armed watchman every night, in order to secure any sense of safety to their valuable horses. Many an instance will old settlers relate of thieves detected by these watchmen, while engaged in breaking the stable locks, and fired upon, with more or less damage to the intruder. They were the more cautious, from the fact that a fleet horse once gone was gone forever. So skillfully were the plans of the thieves concocted, so much of energy and ingenuity was employed in rapidly forcing the stolen steeds at once to a great distance, so large the number of rascals who were connected, that pursuit and capture was difficult-even dangerous-and always unsuccessful.
Brodie's Grove, near what is now the village of Dement, and near the west line of the present township of Malta, was a famous rendezvous and station-house of this gang of banditti. When Mr. Benjamin Worden lived there in 1840, he had a fine pair of horses, and much against his will felt forced to adopt the prevalent custom of sleeping in the barn with them to guard them. Old Brodie discovered that he made this a practice, and innocently asked him why. He answered promptly and significantly, that there were many thieves about, and he feared he should have them stolen. The old man, who had taken a fancy to Ben., answered that he need not fear. His horses should not be stolen. He would see to that, and warrant him that they should not be lost. The old man had the reputation of being one of the chiefs of the gang ; and Worden, confident of his sincerity, ever afterwards considered them safe, as if guarded with bars of steel. About that time Worden had made some significant discoveries. Near the little grove was a large, circular depression of the prairie, called a sink-hole. In its center was a strong stake driven,
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
and every indication about it that in that sheltered, obscure spot horses had been frequently tethered and fed. The Brodies were frequently coming and going, and every time upon a new horse, usually a very fine animal. What could all this mean, but systematic horse thieving ?
But horses were not the only prey for these banditti. The circulation of counterfeit money was a large and profitable branch of business, and there were dark and ominous hints in circulation of yet fouler crimes perpetrated ; pedlars had mysteriously disappeared in that section of the country. They had been traced to the vicinity of this grove, but never traced beyond it. When the Brodies finally fled the country, there were found among their effects a suspiciously large number of travelers' trunks, pedlars' cases, and similar property, whose possession was most easily accounted for on the supposition that the murder of innocent travelers, pedlars, and other wayfarers, was not too heinous a crime for them to commit, if the temptation offered. Walking over the prairie one day in search of his cattle, Worden suddenly found the ground sinking beneath his feet, and he was precipitated into a large, square cavity, which had been carefully excavated, then covered with planks and soil, and carefully turfed over with growing grass. The soil taken out had been carefully removed, so that no traces of the excavation could be seen on the surface, and no suspicion of its existence there would be excited. Although no property was then in the cavern, yet the purpose for which it was designed was evident, and its proximity to the residence of the suspected Brodies indicated the origin and ownership of this place of concealment. Pages might be filled with stories told by the early settlers of circumstances which indicated plainly that Brodie's isolated Grove was one of the chief rendezvous of some of the most daring and skillful of those land pirates who at that early period roved over these billowy prairies, as pirates roam the seas.
Six miles north of Brodie's is what is now called South Grove, so called because it was south of the main body of the
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THE BANDITTI.
Kishwaukie timber. David Driscoll was the first settler there, and for many years it was known as Driscoll's Grove. David had married a connection of the Brodies, and the families naturally became intimately associated. A year after David had settled there, his father, old John Driscoll, moved out with his family, and William Driscoll, his brother, with a family of six or seven children, bought David's claim, the father and David settling anew a few miles farther west, David on the banks of the Killbuck, and the father in what is now called Pennsylvania settlement, a few miles farther north.
There is much reason to believe, and little reason to doubt, that the houses of David and John Driscoll were other station- houses on the route of this horse-thieving fraternity ; and it is not impossible that even after William Driscoll's purchase there, the Driscoll grove still furnished them shelter and refreshment. From thence their usual course was across to Gleason's at Genoa, or to Henpeck, now Hampshire, in Kane County, and thence north to McHenry County, where some men, now prominent as politicians and office-holders, were supposed to be connected with the gang. From thence it was not difficult to pass the stolen horses along to the pineries of Wisconsin, the mines at Galena, or to find a market for them at some of the young cities on the lake shore. In Ogle County on the west, and Winnebago on the northwest, the banditti were more numerous. There theft, counterfeiting, ยท and the like crimes, constituted but a small part of the sworn duties of the gang. They were required to control elections, to secure the election of justices from among their friends, and in case of arrest, to furnish perjured testimony to secure their discharge. In the spring of 1841 seven of the gang had been arrested and confined in the new jail at Oregon. The court had assembled for their trial in the new Court House, just completed, when, on the night before the trial, the rogues assembled, and burned both buildings to the ground. But the prisoners did not escape. Their trial was proceeded with, and the evidence was found complete and conclusive. But
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
one of the confederates had secured a place upon the jury. He would consent to no verdict of guilt. Then a novel method of securing a conviction was adopted. The eleven honest jurors seized the refractory twelfth, and threatened to lynch him in the jury room unless he gave his assent to the verdict of guilty. The rascal gave up his opposition, the verdict of guilty was received, and the three criminals were sentenced to imprisonment for a year. They all, however, broke out of jail and escaped.
Such outrages as these naturally aroused a strong and bitter opposition among the honest people of the land. They would be more or less than men who should submit tamely to them. Neither life nor property being protected by the laws, some additional, more stringent, if less merciful, measures must be adopted. The settlers met by universal consent, and organized a band of lynchers. The Ogle County Lynching Club was the title of the organization, although its membership extended over Winnebago and Lee Counties as well. In the spring and early summer of 1841, there were held numerous meetings of these Regulators, or Lynching Clubs, and their armed bands, mounted or on foot, traversed the country, delivering warnings and threatenings to those whom they suspected of being confederated in the gangs of banditti. "You are given twenty or thirty days to leave the country, and if found here after that time you will be lynched," was the brief and threatening message which condemned the suspected party, without a trial, to banishment, at whatever sacrifice of his property, and at whatever sudden sundering of the ties which bound him to his home. It was not strange that such messages provoked strong, indignant opposition. Crime always finds or imagines some justification for its evil deeds, and at least is apt to retort that its acts are no worse, only more bold, than those of its pursuers. And it was true in this case, that although the original organization of the Lynching Club was supported by many men of undoubted probity and worth, although the staid Puritan, the upright
.
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justice, the honest lawyer, the clergyman even, were on its rolls of membership, yet there were also men of the baser sort,-men who used the organization for the purpose of wreaking vengeance on their personal enemies --- men who were capable of manufacturing false statements to secure the destruction of their foes ; yes ! there were even horse-thieves themselves among the most active and prominent of those who were lynching others for the same nefarious practice.
The Lynching Clubs duly organized, they met by mutual agreement, and selected John Long, of Stillman's Run, the proprietor of a fine saw-mill just erected there, as captain of the combined companies. Soon after, in the performance of his duties, he headed a detachment of the lynchers, who seized one Daggett, who was residing near what is now Greenough's Ford in the town of Franklin, and, tying him up, gave him a severe flogging, at the same time ordering him to leave the country. Not long after these events, the mill of Mr. Long was set on fire and destroyed ; and although no direct evidence was obtained of Daggett's connection with the deed, yet circumstances pointed strongly to him as the perpetrator of the crime. About the same time one Lyman Powell was seized upon the road between Driscoll's and the Killbuck. He seems to have been really a harmless, inoffensive man, lame, and destitute of any settled occupation. But he was an associate of the suspected Driscolls, worked at threshing and other odd jobs for them and others. The Lynching Company questioned him closely, to draw from him some evidence of the criminality of himself or his associates, but not succeeding to their liking, they beat him cruelly with hickory withes, and taking from him the horse he rode, they turned him adrift. He afterwards went to the place where he had bought his horse, and furnishing satisfactory proof that it was honestly obtained, it was returned to him. About the same time a threatening letter was sent to Long, defying the society to combat, and threatening personal violence. Mr. Long, being intimidated by these acts, called his band together
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