USA > Illinois > DuPage County > History of Du Page County, Illinois (Historical, Biographical) > Part 3
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On the 8th of the same month, Samuel Miller Gohlson Kircheval and James Walker were sworn in as Commissioners, who promptly pro- ceeded to legislate for the wholesome regula- tion of the infant county. Prominent among the laws they passed were those regulating the prices of spirituous liquors, which they took as good care should not be extortionate, as did the French Revolutionists the price of bread during the Jacobin Reign of Terror in France. It was "ordered that the following rates be allowed to tavern-keepers, to wit : Each half pint of wine, rum or brandy, 25 cents ; each pint of wine, rum or brandy, 373 cents ; each half pint of gin, 182 cents ; pint of gin, 31} cents ; gill of whisky, 6} cents ; half pint of whisky, 12} cents ; pint of whisky, 184 cents. For each breakfast and supper, 25 cents ; each dinner, 37₺ cents ; each horse feed, 25 cents ; keeping horse one night, 50 cents ; lodging for each man per night, 12g cents ; for cider or beer, one pint, 6} cents ; one quart of cider or beer, 12} cents."
The Commissioners also soon issued permits to Alexander Robinson, J. B. Beaubein and Madore Beaubein to sell goods, who, added to six merchants already established in the county, made nine. From the records of the same year, 1831, subsequent to those already men- tioned, appears the name of Joseph Naper, of Naper settlement, who, it appears, was then a licensed merchant and the first in the present county of Du Page.
Such are the first laws ever enacted to pre- vail over this county after settlers came to it. At that time, Chicago, Canal Port, Naperville, Desplaines, Keepotaw and Thornton, were re- ported as the towns of Cook County. It was named after Daniel P. Cook, the same who, with the election of Shadrack Bond for Governor, in 1818, had been elected Attorney General. To him the country along the canal owes a lasting obligation. At a session of the Legislature, January 17, 1825, a law was passed incorpo-
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HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
rating the Illinois & Michigan Canal Associa- tion, with full power to build the canal. By the seventh section of their charter, it was pro- vided that all immunities, etc., hitherto made by the General Government to facilitate the building of the canal, should revert to the asso- ciation to which the State had granted the char- ter to build it. This excess of State authority to dispose of the large amount of land (every alternate section of a strip six miles wide on each side of the canal, which the Government had given to aid in building it), by placing the lands at the disposal of a private company, was uot looked upon with favor by the General Govern- ment, and, had it not been for the efforts of Mr. Cook, the State would have lost the lands, and the canal project would have been indefinitely postponed. He was then Member of Congress, and, seeing the danger, he used his powerful in- fluence among his constituents to have the act repealed which the State had passed. In this he was successful, and the corporations were obliged to surrender their charter.
We come now to the organization of Du Page County-the last subdivision of Cook. In 1838, this was considered and talked over by the peo- ple, and a plan to make four counties out of the area of Cook was looked upon with favor. To effect this object, committees were appointed from each respective locality proposed as the territory to be occupied by them.
It was first proposed by the Commissioners to create one county of nine townships in the northwest corner of Cook, which, had it been done, would have taken the three present town- ships, viz., Wayne, Bloomingdale and Addison, together with the present townships of Hanover, Schaumberg, Elk Grove, Barrington, Palatine and Wheeling in Cook, for one of the four new counties. Du Page County was to come im- mediately south of this, and take in nine town- ships, in which case Naperville would have been not very distant from the center of the county.
For some cause not known to the writer, the Commissioners appointed to mature this plan of subdividing Cook County never met at the ap- pointed place of rendezvous, which was to have been at a certain hotel in Chicago. The couse- quence was, the subject of setting-off' Du Page County came before the Legislature under differ- ent forms, and the action of that body specified the limits of the county according to the act of which the following is a copy :
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the people of the State of Illinois represented in the General Assem- bly : That all of that tract of country lying within the following boundaries, to wit: Commencing on the east line of Kane County at the division line between Sections 18 and 19, in Township 37 north, of Range 9 east, of the Third Principal Meridian, pur- suing the same line eastward until it strikes the Desplaines River; thence following the said river up to the range line between Township 11 and 12 east, of the Third Principal Meridian; thence north on said line to the township line between 40 and 41; thence west on said line to the east line of Kane County; thence south on the east line of Kane County to the place of beginning, shall constitute a new county by the name of Du Page; provided al- ways that no part of the county above described, now forming a part of Will County, shall be in- cluded within the said county of Du Page, unless the inhabitants now residing in said part of Will County shall, by a vote to be given by them at the next August election, decide by a majority of legal voters that they prefer to have the said territory make a part of the said county of Du Page.
SEC. 2. An election shall be held at the Pre- emption House, in Naperville, on the first Monday in May, next, by the qualified voters of said county, for county officers, who, when qualified, shall hold their offices until the next general election ; said election shall be conducted and returns thereof made to the Clerk of the County Commissioners' Court of Cook County, as in other cases, and said Clerk shall give certificates of election; and when said County Commissioners shall be elected and qualified, the said county of Du Page shall be duly organized. S. M. Skinner, Stephen J. Scott and Loren J. Butler, are hereby appointed Judges of said election.
SEC. 3. Said county of Du Page shall be at- tached to the Seventh Judicial District, and the
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HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
Judge of said circuit shall fix the terms of said court therein, two of which shall be held in said county annually at Naperville, where the County Commissioners may direct, until the county build- ings are completed.
SEC. 4. For the purpose of locating the per- manent seat of justice for said county of Du Page, the following-named persons are hereby appointed Commissioners, to wit: Ralph Woodruff, of La Salle County ; Seth Read, of Kane County, and Horatio G. Loomis, of Cook, who, or a majority of them, shall meet at the Pre-emption House, in Na- perville, on the first Monday of June, or within thirty days thereafter, and first being duly sworn by some Justice of the Peace, shall proceed to locate the seat of justice for said county at the most eligi- ble and convenient point, provided the said Com- missioners shall obtain for the county from the claimant a quantity of land, not less than three acres, and $3,000 for the purpose of erecting county buildings, which sum shall be secured to the County Commissioners and paid out under their direction for the purposes aforcsaid.
SEC. 5. The Commissioners appointed to locate said county seat. shall each be allowed the sum of $3 per day for each day by them necessarily em- ployed in the performance of that duty, to be paid out of the treasury of said county.
SEC. 6. The qualified voters of the county of Du Page, in all elections except county elections, shall vote with the district to which they belong until the next apportionment, and shall in all respects be entitled to the same privileges and rights as in general belong to the citizens of other counties iu this State.
WILLIAM L. D. EWING, Speaker of the House of Representatives. S. H. ANDERSON, Speaker of the Senate.
Approved February 9, 1839.
THO. CARLIN.
STATE OF ILLINOIS,
OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF STATE, S I, Alexander P. Field, Secretary of State, do here- by certify the foregoing to be a true and perfect copy of "An act to create the county of Du Page," now on file in my office. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and the seal of State at Vandalia February 18, 1839.
[L. s.]
A. P. FIELD, Secretary of State.
Previous to the passage of this act. there had been considerable canvassing of public opinion
as to the division of Cook County, and among those who took part in this discussion was Mr. J. Filkins, who owned property in Wheeling- the northern part of Cook County. His plan, as well as that of many others, was to create a county in the northern part of Cook, which should include the present three northern townships of Du Page County, with Wheeling for the county seat, and in accordance with this proposition, a representative from Naperville and one from the southeastern part of Cook County had agreed to meet at a certain hotel in Chicago to agree on some concert of action in the matter. The Naperville representative was promptly at the place of rendezvous, but the others did not attend, and no systematic plan of action was determined on.
Pending these ambitious schemes, which local interests as well as real necessities set on foot, the citizens of Chicago were in a fintter of perturbation lest they should lose some of their territory, doubtless feeling their ability to govern more instead of being shorn of a part of what they then had.
A convention now being about to assemble at Vandalia, to take into consideration plans for public improvements, it was necessary for the Chicagoans to call a public meeting to appoint delegates to attend it. Such a call at Chicago would then, as well as now, bring out their big guns as well as a full regiment of small arms to make a rattle of musketry after the cannons had been shot off; or, in other words, to do the cheering after the orators had spoken. In obedience to the call, a meeting assembled on the 3d of December, 1836, and, as the pith of a woman's letter may be found in the postscript, so the chief object for which this meeting was called, was reserved for the closing business. After a few vehement speech- es had been made, the animus of which was to protest against any further division of Cook County, resolutions were adopted in accord- ance with these sentiments, and a committee
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HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
of three was appointed to circulate a petition to be sent to the Legislature, expressive of the will of the people of Cook County on the subject.
Unfortunately for the people of Chicago, Joseph Naper was then representing Cook County in the Legislature, and it was like strik- ing on a drum that wouldn't sound, to talk " such stuff" to him. He himself was a power, and two of the most influential members of the Senate were his strong friends. One of these was Peter Cartwright, of Carlinville, who had all the Methodists in the State at his back, and the other was old John Harker, from Union County, who was regarded by the Egyptians as a host.
Nothing more was heard about the county to be set off from the northern part of Cook- it being probably thought best not to amputate another limb from her body at that time.
It is worthy of record that of the committee appointed at, the Chicago meeting, Gurdon S. Hubbard was one, but for some reason best known to himself, he declined to serve. Per- haps Mr. Hubbard, in advance of any of the rest, saw the impolicy as well as impractica- bility of the scheme in question. He came to Chicago in 1818, and is still an active man at the place, which has grown from a post of the American Fur Company to what it now is under his eye. As might be supposed, the petition was like seed sown in stony ground.
In due course of legislation, Du Page County was organized as per the act already stated, the first section of which gave the inhabitants of the three northern tiers of sections in Will County, the power to choose by a popular vote, in the following August, to which county they would belong. Had the election taken place immediately, it is almost certain that the people of the territory in question would have annexed themselves to Du Page County, to whose inter- ests at Naperville they had been allied by his- toric as well as social relations from the first; but the time between the passage of the
act and the August election, which was to cast the die, was utilized by the Will County inter- ests and a formidable opposition to the Du Page interests was the result. To add to the discomfiture of the Du Page advocates, some one brought a bottle of whisky into the arena on election day, which roused the indignation of the teetotalers of the Will County interests, and brought out their full force with their thunder thrown in.
The autumn sun dipped into the western green, the polls were closed, votes counted, and one majority for Will County was the re- sult. There wasn't much poetry about the canvass. It need not be claimed that Johnny, with the love of his inamorata in his heart, voted to please his would-be father-in-law or any such kind of moonshine. It was a sharply defined local and temporal issue, and for a small one, large results have grown out of it ; for had the county limits extended south of Naperville, as the original bill intended, no attempt would ever have been made to re- move the county seat, or if made, would not have been successful.
The parties authorized by the fourth section of the act creating the new county to locate the county seat, met on the 17th of June, 1839, at the Pre-emption House in Naperville, and lo- cated it at that place. At the same time, a deed was executed to the county of an undi- vided half of the public square on which the county buildings were erected the same year by voluntary subscription from the citizens of Naperville to the amount of $5,000. Subse- quently, the small brick buildings were built for storing the records, etc.
In vain may the records of any State in the Union be searched for a parallel in eventful epochs involving vital political questions which locally came up within their jurisdiction as has been thrust upon the State of Illinois, and the country around Chicago has been the pivot upon which these issues have turned. This is
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HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
only a just conclusion to deduce from the events of this chapter. The next will begin with the pioneer work begun in Du Page County under a new order of things destined to subordinate wild nature to the uses of man, and reproduce old-settled and time-honored institutions on a
generous scale, there to multiply under the fostering hand of nature. This has been done, but let us take a retrospective view of the proc- ess by which it was accomplished while the living witnesses of it are still on the historie stand to testify.
CHAPTER II.
THE PIONEER-STEPHEN J. SCOTT-THE SCOTT SETTLEMENT-BLODGETT HAULEY-BAILEY HIOB- SON, THE FIRST SETTLER OF DU PAGE COUNTY-BUILDING THE FIRST CABIN-CROSSING A SLOUGH -WILLIARD SCOTT-SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS-CORN PANCAKES -THE NAPERS-FIRST GROUND PLOWED-THE FIRST SCHOOL-JOSEPH NAPER-JOHN NAPER-THE FIRST STOVE-CHRISTOPHER PAINE-THE FIRST SAW-MILL- HOME-MADE SPINNING WHEELS AND LOOMS-COLD WINTER OF 1830-31 -PORTAGE TO CHICAGO-TIIE LAWTONS-THE POTTAWATOMIES -FLIGHT TO FORT DEARBORN-HORRIBLE MASSACRE AT INDIAN CREEK-EXPLOITS OF COL. BEAUBIEN.
W ITHIN the memory of men now living, the whole of Du Page County was an immaculate tablet on which to make the first footprints of progress in the form of agricult- ure, architecture and publie works. In ancient times, when new countries were settled, it was done by nations who sent out colonies under the especial guardianship of a king's viceroy, and this was the ease with the first new eoun- tries settled in America from Europe. All this became changed when the American nation became the owner of the vast plains of the West. Then settlements began to be made on private account for the first time in the world's history, and such a conception of human rights put in such universal practice, as it was here, brought into being a class of men different from any hitherto known. They were the ereation of their period in their habits, character and their self-sustaining powers. They valued themselves not for what their fathers had been, but for what they themselves were. It takes a few generations for mental foree to gather and turn the thoughts of men into new channels, and,
by the time Northern Illinois was settled, the thoroughbred pioneer, in his floodtide of glory, came upon the scene. He is the man referred to-the incarnation of freedom in its broadest sense, the man who is a law unto himself, who takes a short eut to the ends of justice regard- less of technicalities ; the man who evinees himself more by what he does than by what he says, and scorns unfair distinetions not based on merit.
To describe the American pioneer would re- quire the imagery of romance and the foree of the drama. Behold him, as he turns his face to the West, his gun on his shoulder, his dog by his side, his horses harnessed to the wagon that contains his household goods, his wife and babies, behind which follow at a slow pace his cattle, driven by his young sons, whose keen eyes often dart their irrepressible humor from beneath a tattered hat brim. This is the true pioneer. His step is firm ; his glance is keen ; his whole appearance commands respeet, though his garments may be of the eoarsest stuff. To him belongs a singular fame, for he
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HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
is the first to lay the dimension stone of a social fabric which is to grow up where he plants the seed, and become a lasting mon- nment to perpetuate his memory.
The first of these pioneers who became ulti- mate residents of Du Page County were Steph- en J. Scott, who came with his family from Maryland, and made a claim on the lake shore just north of the present site of Evanston, in 1826. The place was then and is still known as Grose Point. It is an elevated sand ridge, making an abrupt bank on Lake Michigan, but not composed of a soil adapted to the growth of the cereals, which is probably the reason why Mr. Scott left the place and took np a claim at the fork of the west branch of Du Page River, which he did in the autumn of 1830, with his family, among whom were his sons, Willard and Willis.
This became known as the Scott settlement, and was the first beginning made which drew to the place other settlers. Its locality was just south of the Du Page County line in the present county of Will, but accretions to it soon extended up the stream, within the pres- ent limits of the county.
Early in the following June, 1831, Isaac P. Blodgett came from Amherst, Hampshire Co., Mass., and settled at the fork, his son Henry, now Judge Blodgett, of Chicago, being then nine years old.
Pierce Hawley also came to the place about the same time, and, in the summer of the next year, 1831, Robert Strong, Rev. Isaac Scarrett Capt. Henry Boardman and Isaac Stockwell came to the Scott settlement, and became per- manently identified with the interests of what was then known as the Du Page Country. These were near neighbors to the settlement began the same year just above them on the Du Page, and soon the little gap of unclaimed land that intervened between them was filled up with new-comers.
But the first actual settler in the county now
named Du Page was Bailey Hobson. His widow is still living in Naperville, and the following is a brief narrative of the events of her experiences in coming to the place, as re- ported to the writer in June, 1882.
Mrs. Clarinda Hobson was born in Georgia in December, 1804. The family emigrated to Orange County, Ind., in 1812, where she was married to Mr. Hobson in 1821. In 1830, they removed to the present site of New- ark, Ill., remaining there the succeeding winter, when, in the following November of the same year, Mr. Hobson went to the Du Page River, about two miles below the present site of Naperville, and marked out his claim, consisting of about five hundred acres, lying on both sides of the river. This done, he returned to his temporary home to make the necessary preparations for building a habitation on his Du Page River claim. To this end, he again went to the place with a load of shakes (clapboards) with which to make a roof for his intended cabin, and a hired man accompanied him to help cut and haul to the ground the logs necessary for its walls. They had only worked one day, when the cold was so intense they were obliged to abandon their plans and turn their course toward home, which they reached in safety after two days' toiling over the bleak prairie with an ox team.
With the opening of March, 1831, the work was again resumed by sending Lewis Stewart, brother of Mrs. Hobson, to the place to cut the logs for the cabin, while Mr. Hobson himself was to follow with the ox team and wagon loaded with their household goods. A new dilemma now arose. More than a hundred In- dians had just encamped hard by their house for the purpose of making maple sugar in an adjacent grove, and she dare not stay with her five children alone in their midst. Meantime, her husband's duties were imperative. He must go to the new home to get the house ready for the opening of spring.
Las Reyracker.
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HISTORY OF DU PAGE COUNTY.
In this emergency, Mrs. Hobson formed the resolution to transport her family to a small settlement a few miles distant at what was then called Weeds', and now Hollenback's Grove. Besides the family, were two horses and four- teen head of cattle, the same stock that had been driven from their home in Indiana. Ac- cordingly, her husband started off with their furniture, and she, with the family and their flock, by a different route, to reach a temporary abiding place. On the way, she had a danger- ous slough to cross, where the track was buried beneath the flood, so deep that she dare not trust her little ones on the horse alone, but took them across one or two at a time on her own horse and set them on the opposite bank till they were all safely landed. The fourteen cattle were then driven over and all herded safely in the grove, where they were kept on browse and what grass they could find on the early spring sward. Here she remained awaiting her hus- band's return to take the family and their stock to their new home.
A few days brought this about, notwithstand- ing the hardships he had encountered in camp- ing out on the open prairie on his way, and other discomforts not easily imagined by those who read of them nowadays. March was nearly spent when they arrived at their home. It was a rough log cabin with a puncheon floor, but no windows. The lack of them was the smallest of their grievances, for the unchinked crevices between the logs let in light enough.
Willard, the son of Stephen J. Scott, who had recently married the oldest daughter of Mr. Hawley, was then living in the same log cabin with his father, and their families being the nearest neighbors to the Hobson family, occa- sional visits were made between them, and the hospitalities of the wilds exchanged in trne pio- neer style. Their entertainments did not con- sist of the modern æsthetic styles of serving their dishes, or of the epicurian qualities of them, but were simplified down to actual ne-
cessities. Corn seems to have constituted their entire material for bread ; nor had they vege- tables or fruits the first year, and the corn it- self was in the ear, as it grew at Weeds' (now Holderman's) Grove, from whence it had to be transported by ox teams.
The problem now was how to convert it into meal, the solution of which, however, did not task the ingenuity of a trne pioneer to its ut- most by any means. The first process was to shell it ; the next to immerse it in hot water to start the bulls. It was then put into an iron kettle and pounded with the head of an iron wedge (the tool used for splitting rails) till it was made into meal. The next process was to put this meal into cold water and float the bulls off, and the meal was ready for use.
It was made into a batter with water only, and fried like pancakes, or, for variety's sake, spread on a wooden board and turned up to a fire to be baked into bread. Sifting this meal when dried left its coarsest portions for hominy. which gave them varieties improvised out of corn.
Such was the first household and home made in this county, of which a faithful witness in the person of Mrs. Ilobson is still among us in the full enjoyment of her mental faculties.
The next who came to the county were the Napers. They were men of broad ambition like the pioneers who had preceded them in the Scott settlement. While residents of Ohio, they had owned a sailing vessel on the lakes, named the Telegraph, which they had sold, agreeing to deliver it in Chicago in the sum- mer of 1831, and in this vessel on its passage to this place they came with the families of John Murray, Lyman Butterfield, Henry T. Wilson and a Mr. Carpenter. It set sail from Ashta- bula, Ohio, in June, landing them in Chicago in time to reach Du Page early in July.
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