History of Du Page County, Illinois (Historical, Biographical), Part 36

Author: Blanchard, Rufus, 1821-1904
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago, O.L. Baskin & co.
Number of Pages: 544

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The neighbors all agreed pretty well to- gether, but still the inexorable law demanded that they must have a Justice of the Peace to settle difficulties that might arise, and Lyman Meacham was elected to this honor- able office at their voting-place, which was Elk Grove, about six miles to the northeast, in the present town of the same name in Cook County.

In 1836, Peter Northrup, now a resident of Wheaton, came to the place, and the same year Deacon Elijah Hough and family Ro- selle, one of his sons, since so widely known, was then a youth of sixteen. and Cornelia A., his daughter, a girl of ten years. She is now the wife of Hackaliah Brown, of Wheaton.

Moses B. Elliott came the same year, and large numbers soon came in to avail them- selves of the advantages of the healthy loca- tion and cheap lands that abounded here, among whom was L. E. Landon, now a citizen

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of Wheaton, and Waters Northrup, now liv- ing in Bloomingdale. Deacon Allen Hills came in 1840, with his four sons-Erasmus O. and Nubria, who are now living at Chicago: Hileman, who still lives at Bloomingdale, and H. B., who died at Wheaton in 1881. Be- sides these was one daughter-Almeda, who married T. R. Stevens, an early settler at the place, and the same year Dr. Parker Sedg- wick and S. P. Sedgwick, his son, now a physician in Wheaton, and Hiram Cody, father of Judge Cody, of Naperville, came to this settlement.

We have now a thriving colony of relig- iously inclined men, among whom were two Deacons, and, of course, divine services promptly came in, and the following descrip- tion of one of them, written by Mr. Bronson Hills, and published, before his death, in the Wheaton paper, is a spirited description of one of them:

" Sunday was quite generally observed by the settlers attending meeting at the little log schoolhouse. We must go, of course, with the rest to see what is done. *

* The seats have no backs. They are made of logs split and turned the flat side up, the face of them bearing the marks of the ax with which they were scored and hewed. Twenty or thirty, including children, constitute the au- dience, with an addition of about as many dogs as men. Curiosity to see our new neighbors is the principal item of interest now, especially to see the young ladies. That trim-looking girl, with large gray eyes and jet black hair, is not handsome, but there is something peculiar about her looks that in- duces one to look that way again.

But it is meeting time. Call in your wan- dering thoughts. The minister has come and is reading the opening lıymn. A venerable gray-haired man arises and announces ' Mear' as the tune to be sung. He seems to be cast-

ing about for a key to the tune. He has no tuning-fork, but very soon we hear a hum -- m. Satisfied he is right, he commences the hymn; all join in singing with a gusto, when lo! half way through the first line the leader stops. The audience sing on, but he has gone back for a better pitch, and, starting the piece again, he is coming on with a choir of one. The girls blush, the boys giggle, the elderly and pious people trying all the while to look grave. The situation calls for a compromise. For the sake of charity, the audience yield, go back and join him, for his deafness was the cause of the jargon. The sermon was passably interest- ing, and was only disturbed by a dog fight or two."

Every one familiar with pioneer life will acknowledge the fidelity with which Mr. Hills has described the early meetings, but there was purpose in these first ministers, deacons and laymen, not lacquered with pretentious formula. Virtue had a high standard then, but desperate motives, as if by some freak of the moral law, lurked in the secret re- cesses of a few moody hearts and soon cul- minated in a scene of blood.

THE KENT TRAGEDY.

Dr. Meacham, the first settler at the pres- ent site of Bloomingdale, in 1833, made a claim on what became Sections 14 and 15, built a house on Section 14, and leased both sections to Milton Kent, who came to the place in 1835 from the State of New York. While Mr. Kent held this lease, he had made a claim in Sections 10 and 11, but erected his buildings on the land he had leased of Mr. Meacham. They consisted of a frame house and barn designed for tavern-keeping, occupying but a small portion of the leased land, which portion Mr. Kent said that Meacham had given him. Before the expira-

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tion of the lease, Mr. Kent had sold the land, or rather, his claim to it, to George W. Green, of Chicago.

At the expiration of the lease, which was in 1837, Mr. Green demanded possession of the property of Mr. Kent, which was refused. As already stated, Kent had erected his tav. ern buildings on the property, which, if not at the time in dispute, was liable to be, inas- much as he had only a lease of the premises. Albeit, let it not been forgotten that none of the parties yet held any claim to the property, which the United States Government recog- nized, but the State of Illinois had passed an act guaranteeing to those who first took pos- session of public lands and made improve- ments on them, could hold them, provided they paid for them at government price when offered for sale.

Meacham now, in order to fulfill his con- tract of sale with Green, was obliged to bring a suit of ejectment against Kent, which he did, and the court confirmed the title to Meacham, who held the improvements, also, that Kent had put on the land, consisting of the tavern buildings.

The next thing was to dispossess Kent. This was done in the spring of 1840 by the Sheriff of Du Page County, who called in to bis assistance several men, of whom Thomas Muir, a young Scotchman living in the neigh- borhood, was one. In giving the writer in- formation of the affair, Mr. Muir speaks of the two accomplished and beautiful daugh- ters of Mr. Kent and the unpleasant task al- lotted to him in removing their toilet furni- ture from their rooms, they, meantime, pleas- antly inviting him to join them in a game of ball, but the law was inexorable, and he, im- pervious to their attractions, obeyed the or_ ders of the Sheriff.

The ejected family now moved their goods to a grove about thirty rods distant, and

piled up the furniture for a sort of wall and overspread these walls with canvas to make a temporary habitation. Night came on with its glooms, and the Kents determined on ven- geance.

Besides the father, who was a stanch old man, F. L. Kent, his son, and James Wakeman, who had married one of his daugh- ters, and a Mr. Turnbull, who subsequently married another of them, were all in council together. A quit-claim was drawn up, ready for Green to sign, and they intended to force him to do it by violence, and to execute this purpose appeared at his door the following night, which was Saturday. Green had taken immediate possession of the house from which Kent had been driven, and here the battle was to be fought. First, one of them rapped at the door to gain admission. This being refused, the door was burst open. Green was armed with a rifle, pistol and butcher knife. The first weapon was fired off, but it barely missed the neck of elder Kent. The men were now in the house, and the elder Kent grappled with Green. He snapped his pistol at him, but the hammer in the scuffle rubbed against his person and did not strike the cap with sufficient force to explode it. Next came the knife. Green stuck it into Kent's heart, and he reeled back outdoors, exclaiming, " I am a dead man!" Instantly young Kent grappled with Green, but soon he loosed his hold, for his antagonist thrust . the same dagger into his back that had just killed the father. Green in his turn now re- ceived a blow over the head with a pistol, which brought him down and the conflict ended. Young Kent was not dangerously wounded. One of the party was left with the old man, who was not yet dead, while the other seized Green, conducted him to the camp of the Kents, presented the quit-claim to him and he signed it; he was then brought

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back and left on the doorsteps of his house; his wife had fled to the neighbors to give the alarm, and they soon returned with her to the late scene of conflict. Roselle Hough helped dress the wounds of young Kent, and others helped nurse Green. Happy would it have been for Mrs. Green had her husband been killed in the encounter, for he gave her poison a few years later, and was tried and condemned to be hung for the crime, but he anticipated the hangman a few days by hang- ing himself in his cell.

He is said by those who knew him to have been totally depraved to all sense of right, cruel to his wife, whom every one who knew esteemed, and unmerciful to everybody. That he once charged a spring with arsenic and poisoned three innocent children to drive their father away is well known, and Thomas Muir, by mistake, became one of the victims of this diabolical crime, barely escaping with his life.

Good fellowship is almost always at flood tide in all new counties. Leaving one's old home for a new place where new associations are to be made, stimulates better emotions in average individuals and improves them in all the social accomplishments that make up a neighborhood. But there are some, even among pioneers, who take council only with sinister motives, and regard others with whom they may come in contact as instruments by which they may improve their own standing pecuniarily, which to them is the only meas- ure by which anything can be gauged. Any consideration that cannot be measured by money, or its equivalent, is a myth to them. When two such persons are pitted against each other, the result is always hostile. Neither have learned how to offset aggressive action with discriminative prudence, but act only on impulses, and those selfish and evil ones.

These unfortunate people generally mani- fest about as much prudence as a hen that attacks a bull dog in defense of her chickens, or a partisan politician who often persists in running for a courted office, when ordinary reflection ought to convince him that the peo- ple don't want him elected. When two such persons are brought into relations with each other, the result may be a tragedy, as it was in this case. Neither of the men engaged in it were accounted idiots, but yet it cannot be denied that when men do common-place kind of acts, or business, with as little foresight as they did criminal acts, they are ac- counted fools. It hardly need be told that the court did not regard the quit-claim that Green had signed to the property on that fatal night as binding.

There are still many persons living in the neighborhood who were residents of the place at the time this tragedy occurred, and the shock it made to the public sense of justice is still fresh in their minds, though great moral, religious and physical changes have since had place. Of the two former, the clerical Sunday service is an index. Of the physical changes that have come over the face of nature, the drainage of low lands and dimunition of streams is a marked one. On the little rivulet then called Shaw's Creek, which took its rise just south of Meacham's Grove, Hiram Gooding erected a saw-mill in 1844. It worked about three months annual- ly, but now there is not water enough in the little wet-weather brook to propel a saw mill, except during some excessive fall of rain sufficient to cause a flood. Fine fish were caught in this brook in the early day, such as pickerel and bass.

As late as 1850, the southern and western portions of Bloomingdale Township were but sparsely settled, but the road from Chicago to Galena passed along the northern portions,

R. Benjam 1 -

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and was one of the principal thoroughfares leading to the West, and at that time was of as much local importance as a railroad is in our day, and it gave promise of future wealth, which would have been realized but for the railroad system, which subsequently drew this trade and travel into other localities. The Chicago Pacific (now the Chicago & St. Paul Railroad), which was finished through the northwestern part of this township in 1873, sets it now on an equal footing with its adjoining ones, as the railroad facilities for easy marketing.

There is no waste land in the township, but all of it high, rolling and fertile, afford- ing excellent dairy farms, to which interest there seems to be a tendency. There are twelve school districts, and, by the school census, 366 persons between the ages of six and twenty-one years. Schools are sustained on an average of between seven and eight months in the year.

There is a cheese factory in the southeast- ern part of the township which consumes 4,000 pounds of milk and makes 135 pounds of butter and 280 pounds of cheese daily. William Rathge and Fred Stuenkel, proprie- tors.

The Coverdale Creamery, in the southwest part of the township, does a similar amount of business.

Many petrifactions of nuts and various veg- etable forms are found in the creek that runs along the northern fringe of Meacham Grove.

The village of Bloomingdale grew into ex- istence as a convenience for the surrounding farmers-a depot from whence their wants for store goods could be supplied. It was first called Meacham's Grove, and, being on the early stage road from Chicago to Galena, and eligibly located on the border of the grove, it had a fair prospect of becoming a large village.

In 1843, there lived at the place H. Meach- am, Deacons Hough, Hills and Stevens; Moses Hoyt, who kept tavern; Levi H. Kinne, F. Kinney, W. Northrup (Postmaster), H. Woodruff, James Vint, Hileman Hills, Nu- bria Hills, sons of Deacon Hills, together with others sufficient to make a good beginning for a town. A mile to the east, Mr. Tupper kept another tavern. The site of the town is said to be the most elevated land of any vil- lage in the county, being 190 feet above Lake Michigan. The plat of the town bears date of January 11, 1845, H. S. Hills, pro- prietor-situated on the north west and north- east quarters of Section 15, Township 40, Range 10. About thirty-five families live in the village. An excellent spring of pure water breaks out of the ground just west of the village, at which place Col. Hoyt kept his famous tavern.

The Congregational society of Blooming- dale was established August 22, 1840, and held their services in a log schoolhouse at the southeastern extremity of Meacham's Grove, by which name the village was first known. Rev. D. Rockwell and Rev. Flavel Bascom, who at this time live in Hinsdale, officiated at the ceremonies of organization.

Mr. Rockwell was ordained as first pastor and remained over this charge till 1842, when he was succeeded by H. Colton for one year; B. W. Reynolds, for two years; L. Parker, for four years; N. Shapley, for one year; L. Parker again, for three years; D. Chapman, for one year; H. Judd, for one or more years. who was succeeded by others not known to the writer. The society built a new church in 1851, and, June 13, 1852, it was dedicated, but the limits of their prosperity was reached not long after the new church edifice was oc- cupied. Death removed some, and others went West, while none came forward to take their places. This decimating process went

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on till 1879, when the church was sold to the Lutherans. Between two and three hundred members in all have been enrolled on the books of this church, which had a Sabbath school numbering once fifty, and a library of 300 books.

The Baptist Church of Bloomingdale was organized in 1841 by Rev. Joel Wheeler. It first numbered ten members. The next year, a revivalist named Morgan Edwards came to the place and preached with effect. Six new members were added to the church, but no regular preaching was held till Rev. P. Tay- lor, of Babcock's Grove, supplied them each alternate Sunday.

In 1848, the society commenced building a church. The frame was erected and the question arose whether the site of the place chosen was destined to be the true center of the town. This question hung in suspense, and the prairie breeze whistled through the naked scantlings and rafters of the unfinished edifice while this question was being settled by the events of time. Finally, the locality was not considered a good one, the work was abandoned, another site selected and a church built in 1849. Prosperity rewarded their efforts, the church proved too small for their increasing numbers, and the society sold it for a schoolhouse and built a larger one in 1855, at which time they had over one hun- dred members. Rev. P. Taylor was the first settled pastor of the church, who remained with them until the church was built which they now occupy. The number of their members is now about fifty. The church has regular preaching and a Sabbath school.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Bloomingdale was organized in 1878, and the next year occupied the church which they bought of the Congregationalists. Rev. Gus- tave Lambrecht was their first pastor, who was succeeded by Rev. A. B. Mysch, the

present pastor. About thirty-five families belong to this society.

The following is a list of the business and professional men of Bloomingdale Village :

Brown & Verbeck, proprietors of the Bloom- ingdale Flax Mill, consumes 1,000 tons of flax straw and manufactures 600 tons of tow annually; the firm employs eight men; T. C. Ryan, cheese factory, employs three men, consumes 8,000 pounds of milk, makes fifteen cheeses and 240 pounds of butter daily; bed spring factory, by A. R. Kinne, makes 500 bed springs annually; Johu Beurmaster, tai- lor; Robert Gates, C. Eden, wagon-makers; John Shank, George Wallis, William Sleep, Elijah Bond, blacksmiths; O. A. Verbeck, Bradford Hills, carpenters; Henry Rohler, A. Backhouse, shoe shop; Roger Ryan, Charles Hills, Josiah Stevens, artesian well-borers; Thomas Saureman, harness shop; Hills & Deibert, general store; J. R. Dunning, Post- master and general store; Henry Vanderhoof, physician; G. W. Robinson, Baptist clergy- man; A. B. Mysch, Lutheran clergyman; William Rathge, Notary Public; Robert Gates, Henry Woodruff, Justices of the Peace; Jo- siah Stevens, Charles Pierce, Constables; Henry Holstine, grist-mill, propelled by wind- power, manufacturers of flour and grinds feed.

The village of Roselle, situated in the northeast quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 3, Township 40, Range 10, was plat- ted and recorded October 5, 1874, by Bernard Beck. The following is a list of its business men:

Hattendorf & Bagge, general store and agricultural implements; M. Secker, general store; Illinois Linen Company, manufactory of linen fabrics, ropes, twines, etc .; a grist- mill with three run of stones for flour and feed, Henry Holstine, proprietor; Rudolph Milton, blacksmith; grain elevator, by Fred- erick Langhurst; meat market, by J. Theo-

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bald; wholesale meat market, by Fred Golt- ermann; lumber yard, by Frederick Thies; hardware and tin shop, by Henry Williams; H. A. Secker, hotel; Henry Eincke, hotel; Henry Sumner, keeps the depot; J. H. C. Hattendorf, Postmaster: a public school; Henry Woodworth. Justice of the Peace; Jo- seph Fidler, carpenter; John D. Behrer. boots and shoes; George Steging, harness maker.

The elevation of the place is 190 feet above Lake Michigan.

Meacham is a station on the Chicago, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, in Section 1, in Bloomingdale Township. It has one general store, kept by James Pierce, who also keeps the depot and is Postmaster. The Methodist Church at the place was first organized as a class meeting by Rev. J. C. Stoughton, in 1851. Elizabeth Pierce, Mary Ann Battin, Grace Lawrence and Mr. and Mrs. B. B Miller were the members. They met in the old schoolhouse. Here their services were held, including their Sunday school, which was organized in January, 1858. The next year their church was finished and regular preaching has been sustained in it till the present time. The church when first organ-

ized numbered only six members. Now it numbers thirty-six and is under the pastoral charge of Rev. T. C. Warrington. MR. RUFUS BLANCHARD:

Agreeable to your request, 1 give you herewith a statement as to a strange phenomenon that occurred on my land in Bloomingdale in August, 1856.

Observing that one of my fences was prostrated, I examined the breach, and found that one of the posts had been shattered into splinters from below the second board above the ground, including the portion of it set in the ground. The portion of the post above where the bottom board was nailed to it was whole, without the marks of violence, but the lower board nailed to it was somewhat shattered. The strangest part of the whole was that in the identical hole made in the ground in which the post had stood, a deep incision was made as if, by some violent operation of nature, something had perfo- rated it from below up, the evidence of which theory being found from the abundance of dirt thrown out and scattered for three or four rods all in one direction-probably owing to the wind. The splinters of the lower part of the fence post were also scattered the same as the dirt which had been thrown out of the hole. I ran a pole about ten feet long down the hole, but could find no bottom, nor could I hear pebbles strike any bottom as I dropped them down. The hole was about six inches in diameter, and as clean a cut as could be bored with an auger. DANIEL KELLEY.

Subscribed and sworn to before me, a Notary Public, the 13th day of September, 1882.

W. L. GUY, Notary Public.

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CHAPTER XVI.

ADDISON TOWNSHIP-THE MOUNTAIN DAISY-INDIAN ENCAMPMENT-THE ARMY TRAIL-THE SOL- DIER'S GRAVE-THE LOG CABIN-HOME TALENT-THE GERMAN VANGUARD-THIE PIONEER TAVERN-THE OLD GALENA TRADE -- SALT CREEK-FRANCIS HOFFMAN, A LAY PREACHER -THE VILLAGE OF ADDISON-THE GERMAN EVANGELICAL TEACHERS' SEMINARY -THE ORPIIAN ASYLUM-PROFESSIONAL AND BUSINESS MEN OF ADDISON -ITASCA-ITS BUSINESS MEN-LESTER'S-BENSENVILLE-SCHOOLS.

T THE mountain daisy is a handsome white flower, about the size of the old-fash- ioned bell-buttons that were fashionably used on boys' blue satinet roundabouts in the early part of the present century, and discontinued about the year 1835. This daisy was cer- tainly more ornamental than useful. But what had it to do with the history of Addi- son? Let us speculate. The daisy was so tenacious of life that it was more difficult to kill than blue grass. Wherever it took pos- session of the land, it outrivaled every other kind of vegetation, and rendered it almost valueless for meadow or pasturage. It grew in several of the towns east of the Merrimack River, in the vicinity of Concord, N. H., es- pecially in Stoddard and Hillsboro, and forced many of the inhabitants away from their mountain homes to seek more fruitful locali- ties, where a better reward met the hands of the husbandman. The writer came from this part of New Hampshire, and speaks from his own knowledge. At Hillsboro lived Heze- kiah Duncklee, and from this place he emi- grated in the summer of 1833. If the mount- ain daisy drove farmers away from the place, perhaps their gorgeous beauty gave them a taste for the ornamental, and may not have served a vaiu purpose. Mr. Duncklee, having crossed the Green Mountains, arrived at Pots- dam, in the State of New York, safely, where

he was joined by Mason Smith, and the two started together for the West.

Their road lay along the old historic grounds of Fort Stanwix (now Rome), thence across the Genesee River at Rochester and Buffalo, at which place they took a boat for Detroit, where they bought a horse and wag- on, and pursued their journey across the State of Michigan to Chicago, which they reached on the 3d of September. They rested here five days, and again started westwardly for the Desplaines River, crossing it at the pres- ent site of Maywood, from which place a well- traveled road bore westwardly across an ap- parently boundless prairie. But, before starting on this road, they encamped for the night in the country so strange to the visit- ors. The low, flat prairie, and the sluggish river that drained it, were the least of their surprises. The Pottawatomies still owned the entire country to which they were emi- grating, and 300 of their number were as- sembled on the river bank here. It was a picture rarely to be looked on to see these natives just preparing to leave their homes to make room for the new-comers, for they (the Indians) were now bending their course to Chicago to attend the treaty there, destined to convey Northern Illinois east of Rock River to those who had already taken pos- session of the choicest portions of it before

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the bargain was made to sell it, and Mr. north of where they had crossed this stream, Duncklee and Mr. Smith were two more of this class on whom the Indians could look in no other light than that of intruders.

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History of Du Page County, Illinois (Historical, Biographical), Part 36

Author: Blanchard, Rufus, 1821-1904 Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Chicago, O.L. Baskin & co. Number of Pages: 544

Author: Blanchard, Rufus, 1821-1904
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago, O.L. Baskin & co.
Number of Pages: 544