USA > Illinois > DuPage County > History of Du Page County, Illinois (Historical, Biographical) > Part 21
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TELEPHONE LINES.
Telephone lines were established Septem- ber 1, 1882, between Chicago, Austin, May- wood. Elmhurst, Lombard, Wheaton, Elgin, St. Charles, Geneva, Batavia, Aurora, Joliet, Lockport and Summit. The intermediate towns will be connected as soon as practicable, and the line is to be extended to Rockford . soon. It would be premature to state at this time any limit to the extension of the line. The rates now are 25 cents for five minutes' conversation. L. C. BROWN, Agent.
GEOLOGY OF DU PAGE COUNTY. *
The following diagram shows the order and thickness of the several divisions which form the geological system of Illinois:
Quaternary.
150 ft.
Prairie surface. Alluvium and Drift.
Terti try.
200 ft.
Tertiary.
Upper,
900 ft.
Middle
Carboniferous
and Lower Coal measures.
300 ft.
Millstone Grit.
250 fc.
Chester Limestone.
100 ft.
Ferruginous Sandstone.
Mountain Limestone.
200 ft. St. Louis or Warsaw Limestone.
100 ft.
Keokuk Limestone.
200 ft
Burlington Limestone.
100 ft.
Kinderhook Group.
40 ft.
Black Slate.
Devonian.
120 ft.
Hamilton Group.
50 ft.
Oriskany Sandstone.
Upper Silurian.
300 ft.
Niagara Limestone.
100 ft.
1Iudsoo River Group.
300 ft.
Galena or Trenton Limestone.
Lower Silurian
150 ft.
St. Peter's Sandstone.
100 ft.
Calciferous Sandstone.
*Contributed by C. D. Wilber, LL.D.
158
HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
The position occupied by Du Page and ad- jacent counties is the Niagara division of the Upper Silurian. This has been determined by the examination of the various quarries and from outcrops of rock formation on the Du Page River, and also by several artesian borings, which have penetrated more than one thousand feet. In this division are found the quarries of Lemont and Joliet, from which are annually shipped vast quan- tities of dimension stone and building ma- terial. Below it from 700 to 800 feet is found the St. Peter's sandstone, which con- tains the water supply of the great system of artesian wells, of which about one hundred are already in activo operation in Northern Illinois.
The county of Du Page, it will be seen, occupies both extremes of the geological series, viz., the Silurian system at the bottom and the prairie system at the top. The pres- ent article being limited to a few pages, will be mainly devoted to a consideration of the unfailing, omnipresent question, viz., "What is the Origin of the Prairies?"
From observation on the smaller lakes and lakelets in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, Prof. Leo Lesquereux saw, as he thought, the outline of a theory which would account for the present prairie system.
After a brief view of the soils of these dry lakes, and the tree growths on the margin, he says: From these facts, no other conclusion can be taken than this: That all the prairies of the Mississippi Valley have been formed by the slow process of sheets of water of various extent, first transformed into swamps, and by and by drained and dried. The high and rolling prairies, the prairies around the lakes, those of the bottoms along the rivers are all the result of the same cause, and form a whole and indivisable system.
But since lako bottoms are generally level,
or present a general concavity of surface, and since prairies afford every variety of topog- raphy of rolls, hills, alopes, plains, divides, inclines, draws, ravines, terraces, bottoms, etc .. it seemed quite difficult at the outset to meet these formidable difficulties. But the heroic Lesquereux sweeps them all away with a pen stroke.
"I believe," says he, "that though undu- lated the surface of the prairies may be now, as it has been originally horizontal enough to form shallow lakes, and then swamps like those which now cover some parts along the shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, etc. I have followed for whole days the sloughs of the prairies, and have seen them constantly passing lower and well-marked channels, or to the beds of rivers by the most tortuo's circuits, in a manner comparable to the mo- anderings of some creeks in nearly horizontal valleys. Indeed, the only difference is that in the high prairies there is not a definite bed, but a series of beds extending, narrow- ing, winding in many ways. This explana- tion seems so natural that I could not under- stand how high prairies could be perfectly horizontal."
No person ever appeared more charmed with his favorite idea than the bold Lesque- roux with his pet theory for the origin of the prairies.
" The level of the low prairies being scarce- ly above that of the lakes, their surface after an overflow becomes dry by percolation and evaporation, rather than by true drainage. But wherever the rivers have cut deeper chan- nels, the drainage has constantly taken place toward theso deep channels, and the water, though its movements may be very slow, fur- rows the surface in its tortuous meanderings, and from this results that irregular, wavy con- formation, generally and appropriately called rolling prairie."
159
HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
For illustration of his theory, Prof. Lesque- reux refers to the prairie soil of Illinois:
"Its thickness is first to be considered; it varies from one to four feet, and even more How has been produced this enormous coat- ing of black mold which covers the clay sub- soil? and, also, how has this subsoil been produced, if not under the influence and ac- tion of water? Complete oxidation of vege- table remains has never resulted in the keep- ing of such a peculiar thick compound as is the soil of the prairies. We must then con- sider this prairie soil as formed under pecu- liar chemical action by a slow oxidation or decomposition of vegetable matter, retarded in its action by water, in preventing the free access of oxygen, as in formation of peat. This (prairie) soil, then, as we have said, is half peat and half humus."
Prof. Whitney, formerly State Geologist of California, writing of the formation of prai- ries, considers the absence of trees caused by the fineness of the soil, and partly by the ac- cumulation in the bottoms of immense lakes of a sediment of almost impalpable fineness under certain conditions.
The one great fault with these theories is, that they are hasty and indiscriminate, when a larger view would include all that these theorists have stated, without shutting us up to narrow requirements. We can take in all that Prof. Lesquereux says, viz., that the great prairie system has been covered with water, and at the same time understood that water action is not, or was not even the re- motest cause of the unwooded districts. The prairies may come after the existence and subsidence of lakes, but they come simply in the order of events, and not as a consequence of water. There is nothing in the water or primitive lake theory that does not apply equally to the wooded regions of any country.
Referring to Lesquereux's theory, and Whitney's, Prof. Winchell says: "The fatal objection to this theory, and all the theories which look to the physical or chemical con- dition of the soil for an explanation of the treeless character of the prairies, is discovered in the fact that trees will grow when once introduced."
The numerous lakes of Iowa, Illinois, Wis- consin and Michigan are mostly shallow, cov- ering often areas five miles by ten or fifteen. They have a dark sediment bottom, generally upon clay, which, being impervious, like leather, will for ages maintain those bodies of fresh water as they are. In some cases of higher altitude, with smaller lakes, the clay can be punctured, and after the escape of water the black sediment becomes good soil. Or the lake may be drained by cutting down its lower edge with a deep ditch. It is ob- vious that the concave-shaped clay substratum caused the lake, and it appears that the fresh water acted as a medium through which the sediments, no matter how obtained, were pre- cipitated; but directly the lake is drained the soil is ready to raise crops of grains, grasses or trees-but it does not become a prairie. West of the Missouri River, and, as far as known, west of the Mississippi River, in Ne- braska and Kansas, the brown-colored top soil is not a sediment of, but instead, the same material as the sub-soil, whether loess or drift, having the same chemical elements, but colored by successive years of decay of grasses. Whether these grasses, year after year, were burned or disappeared by the slower process of oxidation, they were cer- tain to contribute both the dark or humus color, besides a certain amount of material not being sediment in any sense. We are agreeably relieved from introducing the need- less miracle of innumerable lakes as prairie antecedents.
160
HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY,
The evidence of prairie origin deduced from the disappearance of lakes, large or small, is therefore rejected as not sufficient. The lake patches with subsequent drainage, are simply facts by themselves, but not in any way related to the origin of the vast un- wooded regions of North America.
The proportion of prairie to forest is so great in the Western States and Territories as to reverse the order of the inquiry. It seems here more proper to inquire, Why have we woodland and grove and densely timbered tracts in the Canadas and Eastern States, in- stead of these "unshorn fields, sublime and beautiful, for which the speech of England has no name?"
This leads to another inquiry, viz., Which is the normal condition of the surface; which has priority, prairie or woods ? Are not prairies, and pampas, and steppes, and vast unwooded areas quite as natural as forest- covered plains and hills? Have we not a problem quite as intricate in explaining the existence and permanence of forests as in pre- senting a theory which explains their ab- sence ?
Individual estimates of the comparative value of wooded and prairie regions would vary as to the tastes or traditions of men; but the general summary of an impartial census leaves no room for debate on the su- perior advantages of prairie surfaces. The center of empire makes its way westward over these natural meadows more rapidly than through dense forests. The unprecedented advance in the United States since the year 1840, in political power, wealth and popula- tion, is dne, mainly, to the prairie system of the Western and Northwestern States and Territories.
The landed estate of Illinois is worth $1,000,000,000 in forty years, is equal to that of Ohio in nearly eighty years, and
an average prairie county in the interior of Nebraska in twelve years attains the wealth and population of one in the woods of Ohio, of equal size, with seventy-five years of toil. After searching all that is known upon the subject, we may see that both prairie and forset are natural conditions, and that it is in the power of man to make or unmake, to have either surface, or to combine the two in any manner united to his use or caprice. It does not matter, therefore, whether grassy plains or boundless forests have priority as the primitive condition. It would easily ap- pear from both geologic and human history, that the two orders of surface have alternate- ly held possession, and that the present prai- ries and timbered areas, wholly, or in part, were once covered with forests, and vice versa. To that whenever we raise the ques- tion of priority, we are at once carried into the realm of geologic history, whose faint outline can be seen on the shores of the old Silurian Sea, where the first fronds of vege- table life raised their tiny forms, suited to the earliest condition of light, air and moist- ure consistent with life upon the planet. But the two great orders of vegetable life, viz., trees and grasses, are so diverse in mode of growth, in form and in degree of vital force that we may naturally took in the di- rection of this diversity for causes that shall logically jlead ns toward a satisfactory expla- nation.
The superior vital force of grass growths, aided by favorable conditions, enables them to exclude timber growths, except where pro- tected by natural barriers. The constant and free action of these relative forces maintains the present boundary between prairie and timber areas. Whenever these forces are in- constant, or irregular, or suspended by human agencies, the relative areas of each are varied or changed.
161
HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
Grass is called " an annual" plant, yet in an enlarged sense it is perennial. There is more vitality in the rhizoma or roots of grass, than in the oak or palm. Whatever may de- stroy a tree or shrub brings no harm to grass. An ocean of flame may sweep over the prairie and consume every living thing, and leave the plain a parched and desolate waste, yet in a month the grass is green over the entire area, but the trees are dead. What required ten, twenty or a hundred years to accumulate as forest or grove, can be replaced only by the same number of years, while grass will come to its best estatein the summer time of every year. I offer this primal and fundamental relation between grasses and trees, as the present and procuring cause in a theory to explain, philosophically, the origin of the prairies:
" Next in importance to the Divine profu- sion of water, light and air, those three great physical facts which render existence possible, may be reckoned the universal beneficence of grass. Exaggerated by tropical heats and vapors to the gigantic cane congested with its saccharine secretion, or dwarfed by polar rig- ors to the fibrous hair of Northern solitudes, embracing between these extremes the maize, with its resolute pennons, the rice plant of Southern swamps, the wheat, rye, barley, oats and other cereals, no less than the humbler verdure of the hillside, pasture and prairie in the temperate zone, grass is the most wide- ly distributed to all vegetable beings, and is at once the type of our life and the emblem of our mortality. Lying in the sunshine among the buttercups and dandelions of May, scarcely higher in intelligence than the mi- nute tenants of the mimic wilderness, our earliest recollections are of grass; and when the fitful fever is ended, and the foolish wrangle of the market and forum is closed, grass heals over the scar which our descent
into the bosom of the earth has made, and becomes the blanket of the dead.
" Grass is the forgiveness of nature-her constant benediction. Fields trampled with battle, saturated with blood, torn with the ruts of cannon, grow green again with grass, and carnage is forgotten. Streets abandoned by traffic become grass grown like rural lanes, and are obliterated. Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal. Beleaguered by the sullen hosts of winter, it withdraws into the impregnable fortress of its subterranean vitality, and emerges upon the first solicitation of spring. Sown by the winds, by wandering birds, propagated by the subtle horticulture of the elements, which are its ministers and servants, it softens the rude outline of the world. Its tenacious fibers hold the earth in its place, and prevent its soluble components from washing into the wasting sea. It invades the solitude of de- serts, climbs the'inaccessible slopes and for- bidden pinnacles of mountains, modifies climates, and determines the history, char- acter and destiny of nations. Unobtrusive and patient, it has immortal vigor and ag- gression. Banished from the thoroughfare and the field, it bides its time to return, and when vigilance is relaxed, or the dynasty has perished, it silently resumes the throne from which it has been expelled, but which it never abdicates. It bears no blazonry of bloom to charm the senses with fragrance or splendor, but its homely hue is more en- chanting than the lily or the rose. It yields no fruit in earth or air, and yet should its harvest fail for a single year, famine would depopulate the world."
The forest, however, in its strife for the mastery or possession has its peculiar advan- tages. From its deep shades it excludes the grasses. The lack of light and warmth in the twilight of vast forests-"the boundless
162
HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
contiguity of shade "-partly paralyzes vege- table growth of all kinds, and nearly obliter- ates all traces of grass. The shrubs and un- dergrowth are dwarfed into insignificance, and appear unwelcome, like lank beggars in a lordly court.
Grown trees, however, with their spreading branches, bearing coronals of leaves, yearly increase in this manner their own bulk, and at the same time deepen the shade that de- prives the shrub or sapling and grass of their bread of life. By this regime the forest at- tains its majesty, and maintains its regal splendor for centuries. By this economy, with its steady bracing and blending of woody tiber, the tree trunk lengthens towards the sun, increases in strength and beauty, and contributes to man his house on land and his ship at sea. On the border, between the forest and plain, both grasses and trees show the decimating effect of antagonism in the struggle for existence. Trees of high growth and rank never grow into columns; but, with branches near the ground, dwindle into groves in bush forms. Among them, but with abated force, the grasses spread, and afford only tolerable pasture. It is evidently a drawn battle, or an attempt to compromise under a flag of truce. The effect of annual fires over prairie areas is nearly uniform. It is one of the constant forces, varying, of
course, in direction and power with the wind, but passing over, year after year, nearly the same areas, and meeting the same barriers to stay its progress, thus keeping the same bor- der line between the two kingdoms. These fires may have originated ages ago, from the ordinary lightning, or what is more probable, they were caused by the same means that now maintain them, viz., human agency. From time immemorial, the Indians have, generally in the autumn of each year, fired the prairie or grass plains, producing thereby that pecu- liar phenomena called Indian summer. By these annual fires, they secure two results, viz., first, the game is driven to the timber, where it can be more easily taken; and sec- ond, the grasses being burned, the bare prairie affords free vision against invasion, and also facilitates speed, whether for assault or retreat. Compelled thus by a twofold ne- cessity to annually burn the prairies, it is easy to see that they must have maintained for ages the areas that were fixed by natural barriers in the indefinite past -- established with no prospect of change, except by a change of policy under a different race of men. In this case the successful invaders of the present vast population of farmers must speedily revolutionize the Indian policy and the former boundaries between prairies and groves.
MILTON TOWNSHIP.
163
CHAPTER VIII.
MILTON TOWNSHIP -ITS FIRST SETTLERS -WHEATON - HOW IT RECEIVED ITS NAME-THE GALENA & CHICAGO UNION RAILROAD-CHURCHES OF WHEATON-PIONEER SCHOOL-
STACY'S CORNERS-BABCOCK GROVE-PROSPECT PARK-ITS CHURCHES.
TWO seafaring men, who had risen from cabin boys to become masters of vessels by time they had attained manhood, formed a determination to relinquish the calling to which they had been trained, and strike out a new course in life. These men were the two Naper brothers, of whom much has been said in previous pages. The new plan con- templated the forming of a colony to establish itself and grow up with the country some- where in the West to which the immense im- migration was tending that had loaded their vessels westward bound to their utmost ca- pacity for the years that they had been sail- ors and Captains. The names of two of the men who joined their colony are Lyman But- terfield and Henry T. Wilson. The vessel started from Ashtabula, Ohio, in June, 1831, aud arrived at Chicago in July. From thence the adventurers made their way across the spongy flats that then intervened between the place and the Desplaines River, and kept on to the west till their destination was reached, which was the spot where Naperville now stands. Here Mr. Butterfield and Mr. Wil- son remained a short time, witnessed the Black Hawk scare, and the next year took up claims a few miles north of the parent set- tlement-Naperville. Mr. Butterfield's claim was for a half-section of land lying wholly in the present township of Milton, in its south- eastern corner. Mr. Wilson's claim, made at the same time, happened to be where the three townships-Lisle, Winfield and Milton
-corner together. These two men were the true pioneers of Milton Township, just half a century ago last June, the time of writing this chapter being August, 1892. Mr. But- terfield died a few years ago, but Mr. Wilson still walks the streets of Wheaton, and stal- wart young men, whose fathers he saw in their swaddling clothes, now help the old man up and steady his tottering footsteps down the uneven sidewalks of Wheaton, as he goes for the mail or after a newspaper to see what is going on in a world of excitement of which he has beheld three full generations. His grip on life is still tenacious as it is chronic. As this goes to press, news comes that Mr. Wilson's sands of life are run out almost to the last grain.
Ralph and Morgan Babcock came to the place since called Babcock's Grove, and made claims in 1833 of nearly the whole grove, with a view of parceling it out to their friends who were soon to follow.
The next year (1834), Deacon Winslow Churchill, with his sons-Seth, Winslow, Jr., and Hiram-came to the place and made claims-all in what is now Milton, except that of Winslow, Jr., which was on the ground on which the northern part of the village of Lombard, in York, now stands. With the Churchills also came the wife of Morgan Babcock, John D. Ackerman and family and Seth Churchill and family. All these came from Onondaga County, N. Y., arriving at Chicago on the schooner La
164
IHISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
Grange, June 4, 1834; here they procured teams, and, loading their household goods, started over the prairies, stopping the first night, at Scott's tavern, where Lyons now is, and the next night at Parson's, where Lisle now is; thence over the trackless prairie northwardly, to the grove where their home had been secured to them the year before by a few blazes made on trees in the grove and a few stakes driven in the prairie by Mr. Babcock.
In 1835, Moses Stacy and his wife came from Windham County, Vt., via Buffalo to Detroit, by steamer, thence by schooner to Chicago; thence, with a hired team, they started for Hennepin, Ill., their original des- tination, but, on their arrival at Ottawa, they found so many cases of malarial fever that they retraced their steps in pursuit of a more salubrious location to the north. They found it the last of August, 1858, at the high spot of land to which their name has been given- Stacy's Corners-and here Mrs. Stacy and one of her sons still live on this spot so beau- tifully adorned by generous nature, on the top- most of those gravelly ridges that rise in ter- races one above another till it crowns the whole with a broad plateau, extending indefinitely to the north. Here they built a small cabin, 14x16, with a puncheon floor and a roof of split logs, the lower layers of which were channeled so as to catch the drainage from the upper ones. Soon after it was built, an oc- casional traveler called at night for enter- tainment. It would not do to turn him adrift, for he had no other refuge. Thus be- gan this business of tavern-keeping, which grew on their hands till their premises were enlarged and rebuilt once and again, and still inadequate to supply the demand as the country settled to the West, and Stacey's Corners gave promise of a central nucleus of a metropolitan character, and the name of Du Page Center was given it.
David Christian settled at the place in 1837, and built a frame house, the first in the new settlement. In a few years it had two good stores, two blacksmith shops, a har- ness shop, a hame factory, a wagon shop and all the machinery of a town.
Even Chicago came to the place to get their mechanics to make a dredge to clean the mud out of the Chicago River. But there was a limit to this prosperity. The laws of trade are inexorable and would follow the railroads, even from pleasing heights into valleys, and when the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad came through in 1849, many buildings were moved from the Corners to Danby, and all the business that had hither- to centered at the place.
But let us return again to the good old days of 1835, when log schoolhouses were built for earnest children to study in, drawn thither by no æsthetic influences. One of these was built by subscription in 1835, at an opening in the north edge of the grove, on a small tributary of the East Fork. It is now a lonesome spot, away from the road, but was then vocal with young voices on week days, and hallowed with divine worship on Sundays, as all schoolhouses were in the early days.
The first teacher in this house was Miss Maria Dudley, whose brother is now a promi - nent lawyer in Naperville. Rev. Pillsbury was the pioneer preacher in it, per order of Presiding Elder Clark, of the Du Page dis- trict, the same who had in June the previous year, come to the place to preach the funeral sermon of a young daughter of Deacon Wins- low Churchill-Amanda. There was no cemetery in which to deposit her remains, but she was buried on private grounds with solemnities all the more impressive, because where people are few and the face of nature is ample, the loss of a single individual
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