History of Effingham county, Illinois, Part 16

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? ed
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, O. L. Baskin & co.
Number of Pages: 650

USA > Illinois > Effingham County > History of Effingham county, Illinois > Part 16

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else gone up in smoke. This was one of sev- eral prospects that worked up to the fairest promise, and then came to naught.

In the early part of 1871, a contract to construct the road from Effingham to a junc- tion of the Fairbury, Pontiac & Northwestern at some point east of Bloomington, was en- tered into with the firm of Ralph Plumb & Co., the members of the firm being Ralph Plumb, F. E. Hinckley and P. B. Shumway. There was a secret arrangement agreed upon with Craddock. The heaviest donations on the road were from Bement to Windsor, through Moultrie County, there being $50,- 000 at Bement, $100,000 in Moultrie and $75,000 in Windsor-plenty to pay every dollar of the cost of the road between these two points. Work was, therefore, com- merced at Bement and carried from there south and soon completed to Windsor. A train was put upon this much of the road, and was a financial success from the day it commenced to run.

The Bloomington & Ohio River Railroad was then consolidated with the Fairbury, Pontiac & Northwestern, and the new road was called the Chicago & Paducah Railroad, and according to the terms of the contract, the entire franchise and corporation passed into the hands of the contractors. The work south stopped at Windsor, and the north end of the road was finished until it met its northern companion, and was completed and stocked and operated as one line from Wind- sor, through Pontiac to Streator. After a delay of three years, the work on the road from Windsor south was commenced. The two townships in Shelby County had given $40,000 donations, and in a short time it was built to Shumway, in this county. Here it made another pause. It wanted to reach the Springfield Branch of the Ohio & Mississip- pi. and, in 1872, it had made all arrange-

ments for an extension from Effingham to Louisville, in Clay County. Surveys had been made, and the people had subscribed $60,000 in private subscriptions, payable only when the road was completed to Louisville. Ralph Plumb & Co. had contracted with H. C. Bradsby to secure the right of way from Effingham to Louisville and get the dona- tions. They had also contracted with him for the ties along the entire line. The com- pany apparently having failed to make ex- pected money arrangements, abandoned all this part of the road and organized under the general law a company to construct a railroad from Shumway to Altamont. This was an easy line built and it would save a rough crossing at the Wabash to get to Effing- ham. A force of workmen were put upon the line from Shumway to Altamont. The news of what was being done soon came to the city of Effingham, and a petition for an injunction, preventing the building of the road to Altamont, was presented to Judge Allen of the Circuit Court, and promptly granted. This carried dismay to the con- tractors, and they came to the people of Effingham and sued for terms, asking to be permitted to complete the work to Altamont, and offering pledges that they would then build to Effingham, the pledge being the do- nations Effingham had voted the road. The attorneys of Effingham and others, probably a majority of the people, were in favor of ac- cepting their offer. Others opposed it; they said it could do no harm to let the injunction stand-this would insure the road being built at once to Effingham, and when this was done they could build to Altamont or where they pleased. The first-named carried their point-the contractors keeping faith with some to whom they made promises, and unceremoniously breaking them with others. The injunction was removed and the road

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completed to Altamont. In 1874, the next move was to apply to the township of Doug- las for the $50,000 of bonds voted by it, and that had been signed in blank by Casper Nolte, Supervisor, in 1872. Suits were com- monced to restrain the filling and completing these bonds and their delivery to the company, and praying the court to not only prevent their delivery, but to order them burned by the Sheriff of the county. But these suits were not popular. Indeed, so anxious were the people that the bonds should be passed over to the road nunc pro tunc, that stacks of affidavits, including nearly all the business and leading men of the city, may yet be found in the Clerk's office in favor of passing over the bonds "in order that the work of completing the road to Effingham " might go on. The bills for injunction to restrain tho issue and delivery of these bonds are on file in the Circuit Clerk's office, and there is no question that they show an extraordinary state of facts. Nor is there a doubt but that Judge Allen was anxious to stop the delivery of the bonds and save the people $50,000 thereby. A. B. Jansen, the then Supervisor of Douglas Township, had been warned not to issue the bonds or deliver them. The bonds had been placed in Judge Thornton's hands, the attorney of the railroad in that, as well as in other cases, and the Douglas Township Supervisor finally went to Shelby- ville and from thence to Springfield, and when ho returned the company had the bonds, not only filled up, but registered in the State Auditor's office. When the road was com- pleted to Effingham there occurred a curious coincidence, the people pretty much en masse became violently opposed to the issue of the bonds, and a suit was commenced to annul them and an injunction asked and obtained restraining the tax collector from collecting the tax for the purpose of paying the interest

on the bonds. As a matter of course the people were defeated in this suit, and mulct- ed in an additional bill of costs and attor- noys' fees.

In all these unfortunate complications, tho writer liereof knows probably every man who was " seen," as the slang phrase goes, as well as those whose hopes from great promises, turned to Dead Sea apples upon their lips, and nearly broke, doubtless, their honest hearts, but for our common humanity he deems it best to take these little secrets with him to the grave. Tho situation of our peo- ple in reference to these bonds was simply, when they could they wouldn't, and when they would they couldn't, and that's an end on't.

It is due Mr. Benson Wood, who was the local attorney of the people in all this litiga- tion, to say that in the first suits to protect the people and enjoin the bonds, that he com- plained bitterly that he had a good caso, but no proper client; he probably now will as freely acknowledge that in the final suits he had an excellent rich fool for a client, but no case.

The first train to run the entire length of the road, from Streator to Altamont, on sched- ule time, was on the 29th day of June, 1874. It was two years after this, February, 1876. before trains were run into Effingham.

On the 5th day of April, 1880, the Chi- cago & Paducah Railroad passed into the hands of the present owners and became the Wabash Railroad. This new company at once set about completing a railroad from a place known as Strawn to Chicago, and thus was made a direct and valuable road from Effingham and from Altamont to Chicago. This also gives this great corporation a direct and valuable line a direct road from St. Louis to Chicago.

A mixed passenger train is daily rnn from

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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.

here to Bement, where it connects with the Chicago & Toledo trains, and returns here in the evening. A freight is daily dispatched from Altamont, giving the road two daily trains each way from Shumway north. Since the building of the road, there has been but two different station agents here, namely, C. A. Van Allen, the first one, and H. G. Hab- ing, the present one. Mr. Frank Green, the present conductor between this point and Be- ment, was the second conductor ever put upon the road. He succeeded Andy Ricketts, the first conductor for a few months, when the road was first opened from Bement to Windsor.

It is in contemplation by the Wabash to build a road from this point through Jasper and Crawford Counties, in a southeast direc- tion to Cincinnati, and as an evidence of the earnestness of this intention, a mortgage bond on this line was recently filed for record in our Clerk's office. The purpose of this is to reach Cincinnati and the rich block coal fields of Indiana.

The Narrow Gauge .- The Springfield, Effingham & South-Eastern Railroad was chartered in 1867, with J. P. M. Howard, S. W Little, W. B. Cooper, L. R. McMurry, John F. Barnard, Anderson Webster and Thomas Martin, incorporators. J. P. M. Howard was elected first President, and Van Valkenburg, Secretary. A partial survey of the line was made in 1868. At the June meeting in 1878, Howard resigned and quit the organization, and L. R McMurry, Presi- dent, and H. C. Bradsby, Secretary, T. D. Craddock, Treasurer; and another survey of the line was made. There were $163,000 in donations voted from Effingham to the Wa- bash River. Effingham voted $50,000 of this.

In the same year, the Vincennes & Pana Railroad was chartered, with William Rea- vell, James H. Steeles, William C. Wilson,

Joseph Cooper, Isaac H. Walker, William C. Jones, Daniel Rinehart, William B. Cooper, R. A. Howard, Craig White, J C. Helmack and D. D. Shumway were incorporators. This provided for the building of a railroad " commencing at a point at or near the O. & M. R. R., west of Vincennes, as the company may select, east of Lawrenceville, thence to Robinson, thence to Newton, thence to Effing- ham, thence to Pana."

By consolidating these two lines and mak- ing the present S. E. & S. E. R. R., a line was authorized as it is at present located, and built from here to the Wabash River. The consolidation was formally made and entered into. The financial panic of 1873 apparently had forever killed the enterprise that had promised so fair from its inception to that time. In the latter part of 1878, parties came, and the project was revived, with John Funkhouser as President, and George C. Mitchell, his son-in-law, for Sec- retary. In 1876, a contract was made with Adams, Soliday & Company to build the road. This company was soon deeply in debt to workmen, tiemen, boarding-houses, and all other employes, and the company of Buell, Lyon & Co. succeeded them. Lyon seemed to have plenty of money, and all the people along the line were soon revived in hope, and the work started up with great ac- tivity again. After a little while, Lyon re- tired from the firm, and it became Buell, Smith & Co., and another spirited revival of the work took place. This last company or- ganized the Cincinnati, Effingham & Quincy Construction Company, and all was again serene for a short time. Some misunder- standing arising in this construction com- pany, in March, 1879, a Receiver was ap- pointed-John Charles Black-for the con- struction company. In September, 1879, J. P. M. Howard was appointed Receiver for the

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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.

railroad company. At this time, about ten miles of the road had been graded, and half a mile of the track was laid at Robinson. In January, 1881, the road was completed, and the trains commenced regularly running from the city of Effingham to the Wabash River. The affairs of both the construction and rail- road company were settled, and the books closed and road turned over to Sturgis, Lyon & Co., in July, 1882.

O. & M. Railroad .- In 1867, the Spring- field & South-Eastern Railroad was chartered. and the work commenced to build a line from Shawneetown to Springfield. This was Tom Ridgeway's and Charley Beecher's road. These two men came to the City of Effingham and caused much excitement among our peo- ple by telling them their line of constructed road from the south on its way to Springfield was rapidly approaching our south county line; that they wanted to build to our city on the route, but they wanted first to know exactly how much we would give as an in- dncement; that if this inducement was not liberal enough, they would build the road west of us, through Altamont or St. Elmo, etc., etc. In the winter of 1879, the people of Effingham had heard so much about rail- roads coming-singly, in squads and in pla- toons-that they were dazed with their own prospective greatness. Railroad meetings were frequent, and it was railroads for break- fast, dinner and supper. The people had

appointed a Railroad Committee, a kind of public safety committee, and, in de- spair in understanding all the talk that was going on about railroads, they turned the whole matter over to this committee. But the committee was less able, it seems, to either agree or understand what it all meant than were the people. The final result was that Effingham hesitated, and the little, act- ive, wide-awake townships of West, Mason and Liberty, and the village of Edgewood, secured the road. Edgewood gave $10,000, West Township $10,000, Mason Township $10,000, and Liberty $5,000, and the Spring- field & South-Eastern Railroad was built upon the line it now ruus upon, through Edgewood and Altamont, twelve miles east of Effingham, on to Springfield. The road, in 1875, passed into other hands, and be- came the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad.

In the county are 1042 miles of operated railroad, as follows: Illinois Central, twenty- five miles; Wabash, nineteen and three- fourths miles; Vandalia line, twenty-five and a half miles; S. E. & S. E., eleven miles; O. & M., twenty-two and a half miles.

There is a company organized to construct a narrow-gauge railroad from Effingham to Camden, on the O. & M. road, and the proba- bilities are that this and the road leading southeast will both be completed at an early day, and this will add twenty-five miles to the road-bed now in the county.

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CHAPTER IX.

RETROSPECTION-MORALIZING ON THE FLIGHT OF TIME-POST OFFICE, TELEGRAPHS, ETC .- THE SINGING AND WRITING MASTERS-" FLING, DANG, DOODLE, DA"-LITERARY TASTES OF THE COUNTY-EXAMINATION OF A SCHOOLMASTER-THIE DUTCII-

TOWN WAR-A BIT OF CHURCH GOSSIP-VALEDICTORY, ETC.

" Time was not yet,

When at his daughter's birth the sire grew pale For fear the age and dowry should exceed On each side just proportion. Well content,

With unrobed jerkin, and their good dames handling The spindle and the flax." -Dante.

SI YIMILAR lamentations have been said or sung of every place and nation under the sun that has risen to wealth and refinement. Simplicity of manners may be a good thing, but, with the increase of wealth, industry and population, it cannot continue as it was in earlier times; and to regret when the times and social state have changed is to regret an impossibility. Every stage of society has its good and evil side; and wisdom would seem to consist in endeavoring to make the best of that condition of it under which we live."

It is natural, when age begins to dim the vision, and the twilight is seen in the dis- tance, for man to turn back in memory, and find his pleasures of life in the contempla- tion of those sunshiny spots of youth, of bounding young hopes and rippling laugh- ter, of joy, and pure and passionate love, when the world was new and life was new and gleeful and gladsome. Time when it was

"Sweet to hear the honest watch-dog's bark

Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home;"

and to linger lovingly here, and to con- trast then and now. This is inevitable to all old age, as it is sure to draw the picture

always with the same result -the sweet then, the bitter now. True, the times and manners have changed, but age forgets that it has changed, too. The change in man- ners are generally a necessity and for the better, while the changes in age are inevita- ble; they should be, and generally are, for the better, but not always. To shake the head and say, "It was not so when I was a child," is the blessed province and privilege of age. This has passed along with every period and generation for thousands of years, and it will continue, no doubt, indefinitely. It is harmless as any other fiction, except to those who permit themselves to dwell too long upon the dark side of the picture, until they become almost convinced that mankind is rapidly degenerating and civilization is passing away. But in any light, or from any point of view, the fleeting years, the blessed long ago, " the good dames handling the spindle and the flax," is the sweet picture of life that deserves the richest setting, the best light in the favorite family room, and the first place in the hearts of all mankind. Yes, good dame, and venerable sire, all is for the best. You are looking upon the same struggle that was present to your grandfa- thers of many hundreds of years ago-the mighty struggle between truth and error. In this contest there can be but one result, even thongh, at long stretches of time, error and

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wrong seem to prevail and riot in their vic- torious power, yet in the end it will perish, and truth and right will be completely vic- torious. This is the order of nature-this is destiny. The victories of error and wrong are temporary in their effects; they pass away and are forgotten; while those of truth en- dure forever. Governments and nations, creeds and religions, imperial principalities, with their armies like unto the leaves of the forest, have come upon the world, ruled mightily the globe, fretted their brief hour and are gone-gone like the baseless fabric of a vision that leaves not a wrack behind. While truth, in her patient triumphs and dis- coveries, is perpetual-she alone is immortal. It is not, therefore, best to mourn too much over customs, manners and times that have been and are not, but to remember that in their day they were good, perhaps the best, and to send back the sweet recollections, like radiant sunbeams of joy, when will come, like music over the waters, the echo to the poet's aspiration -- " Backward, turn backward, oh, time, in thy fliglit, and make me a child again, just for to-night."

Some idea of the changes that have been wronght here the past fifty years may best be had by comparisons of some of those things most familiar to our readers. For instance, the post office is a matter of transcendant concern to all. It would be difficult to think of society at present as without it. It is one of the most important and useful institutions to civilization that is given to us by the Gov- ernment, and the fact that it is a self-sus- taining institution is evidence that, had Government not supplied this want, private 1

enterprise would have done so, and possibly have done it better than Government can, as it has in the express and telegraph depart- ments. At one time, the pony mails passed through the county weekly, when they were

permitted by the streams to go through at all. The first Postmaster, Hankins, at one time had received two letters, and this news passed around among the people. The office was in the Postmaster's hat, weighted down by a red bandana. The coming of this mail matter was a sensation. Fac similes of these old letters, sealed with red wafers, and upon yellowed foolscap paper, and somewhat awk- wardly folded, without envelope, would now be interesting to look upon, and the time is not very distant when, framed and hung upon the wall, they would surpass in interest a painting, or the finest steel-plate engraving. The news then traveled, if at all, among the people, much as it had done among their im- mediate predecessors, the Indians. Not a newspaper, daily, weekly or monthly, at one time came to the people. There are no rec- ords by which we can tell how much mail matter now comes daily into the county, but a reference to such facts as can be gleaned from the office in this city may give an ap. proximation thereto. The number of pos- tage stamps sold at this point for the quarter just ended was $917.16. This would indi- cate the quarterly receipt of about thirty thousand letters-ten thousand per month, or three hundred and thirty daily. In addition to the five county papers with an average circulation of over five hundred each per week, there are distributed here 135 daily papers 225 weeklies and 100 monthlies. This in- crease in mail matter is not the proper measure of the growth of population in the county, nor is it a measure of the spread of intelli- gence or education. It is a mark of the age, an index in the change of the habits of the people, that applies to the whole nation. People now read more than did their forefa- thers, and the rapid growth of the various is- sues from the press is another remarkable feature of the time. But he is silly who es-

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timates the increase of value by the increase of quantity. A look at the news depot coun- ters, or in the book stores is enough to read- ily convince even the skeptical that there is but very little more of the best books and publications read in the county to day than there was fifty years ago. The insufferable trash comes from the press like snow-flakes, and is no more healthy mental food than are cobble-stones and rusty nails food for the physical organs. The preacher with his in- terminable sermons, the lawyer with his gift of gab, the political stump-speaker and the country debating society were once the flow- ing fountains free to all the world-the great man of all being always the orator, that re- markable production that could talk like an angel even when he could only think as a poll parrot. This phenomenon is now passed or is rapidly passing away. His successor, it appears, is what may well be termed the yellow-back literature of the day. There is no healthier sign of the public sense than the incredulity and humor that plays over the faces of the audience nowadays when the muggy chairman of a political meeting in- troduces the Hon. Sluggum as "the silver- tongued orator," when the said Honorable, fragrant with the fumes of the pot-house, rises and pours forth his incoherent scream uf bruised, battered and murdered King's English to the gaping groundlings. The phenomenal production of this age is the demagogue-the Hon. Slumscullion, the "sil- ver tongued " combination of horse-fiddle, tom-tom, huzzy-guzzy and wind-power hew- gag-simplicity and soap-locks, wisdom and wind-power, impudence and ignorance. His cotemporary and compeer is the Police Ga- zette; his fattening food is his fellow-mor- tal's ignorance and simplicity. The times and the age call for this strange creature, and he steps forth, regal in low cunning,

mastodonic in cheek. When the last of the public teachers - Clay, Douglas and Web- ster-had passed away and ceased to teach their noble schools, from the rostrum, the Senate, the bar and the stump, the dema- gogne came to sit in their high chairs, and caw and cackle at the people, and be great- be real buzzards roosting in the dead eagles' nests. Here is a change in the then and now-but where is the improvement?

There was the singing master then, armed with his tuning-fork and Missouri Harmony, "From Greenland's icy mountains, from Ju- dia s coral strand." A mighty man in his day was he-the glass of fashion and the mold of form-the toast of the belles of the neighborhood, the envy of the swains; and, when he took his position before his class, and struck his fork and gracefully inclined his head to catch the sweet notes of inspira- tion from it, and broke forth " Do-ra-me-fa-so- la! Sing!" his graceful poise as he would beat time for " Pisgah " after the fashion of a battle with mosquitoes, won many stolen glances from swelling young maidens' hearts, as all mouths flew open in unison, and the good old hymn came rasping, jerking along, in every key, tune and time. "Again!" would shout the autocrat master, when it was gone over once, " and every one open his mouth and sing loud," and away go the med- ley in a noisy race for the grand flourish at the end, and then all look meekly up for the teacher s approving smile, which sometimes they got, but much oftener he gave only crushing frowns, as much as to say they hadn't sung loud enough, until he came to the belle of the neighborhood, when his great connte- nance would relax, and he would smooth his wrinkled brow, smile winsomely and majes- tically spit at a crack ten feet away, which he never missed. But this wonderful creature has gone-gone like a school-boys tale, and

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in his musical place did come the jangled, out-of-tune piano, and the strolling organ- grinder, and the patent medicine street op- eras-music and physic! let heaven be praised!

Do fond recollections falter in recalling that weird magician of the pen, the writing- master ?- the king of the clarified goose- quill, the master of the pen and pot-hooks, the gifted architect of those inspired flour- ishes and amazing spread-eagles. He mar- ried the belle of the county at the end of his school, and, "Othello's occupation gone," he quit the trade, and, instead of eagles, has been content to raise and look after barnyard chickens, and play Jumbo for the grandchil- dren. How are the mighty fallen!

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History of Effingham county, Illinois, Part 16

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? ed Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago, O. L. Baskin & co. Number of Pages: 650

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? ed
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, O. L. Baskin & co.
Number of Pages: 650