USA > Illinois > Effingham County > History of Effingham county, Illinois > Part 2
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These ignorant superstitions, sucked by the babes with the milk from the mother's beast, have done far more to beat back the cause of civilization among the common people than could all the swarms of greenhead flies, the murderous Indians, the poisonous snakes and wild beasts, the deadly malaria, disease and poverty. Their tendency was to breed igno- rance, to raise np a people that believed enor- mously, that never questioned, never doubted, but the more impossible the story the more implicitly they believed.
Yet as widespread as were these beliefs in goblins and spells, there are to-day men and women in our county who grew up among such pernicious influences that will tell you of the terrifying beliefs of their childhood and laugh at them. We note this fact with the greatest satisfaction. By their own strength of mind they have grown away from the faith of their fathers. A hard thing for any one to do-an impossible thing for the weak and slothful- minded to do. An ignorant man of large be- liefs rears his child very differently from a man of large mind, or a man who often doubts and always investigates. The ignorant man takes charge of not only the body of his child which he guides with a rod of iron, but he is equally watchful for its mind and soul and equally severe with his gibbets, chains and slavery upon the slighest signs of deviation from his precepts. He believes in education, provided
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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.
the educator he employs is as ignorant and credulous as himself. He believes what his fathers believed, and, by the eternal, his chil- dren shall believe as he does. When the world was, or if it shall ever return to this condition of affairs generally, it will have reached ca- lamities that will surpass all the afllietions of the sword, fire, disease, famines and pesti- lences.
To some this may be regarded as wandering somewhat from our text, especially our sketch of Griffin Tipsward. It is not. To write the history of the pioneers, it is of the utmost im- portance to bring prominently forward every circumstance, so far as they can be discovered, that had any marked influence upon the prog- ress of the people. The reader will readily perceive that among all the calamities that befel the very earliest settlers and their children, a widespread belief in witelies, ghosts, spells and goblins was the greatest of all. Tipsword carried with him to the day of his death many of the customs and characteristics of the In- dian. He was always reticent of speech, and a ringing, hearty laugh-he had forgotton all about it. In approaching a neighbor's house, he would never be seen until standing in the door.
He lived here a long time after the sparse settlements of whites had come and the Indian had gone. When the Indians first went away, it was not fleeing from the pale faces, but fol- lowing the game. They would, for some years, annually return, and often Tipsward would go with them and not return for a year or more.
death that they well knew that the red devils had in store for them. In the calmness that comes of despair, they talked over the situa- tion. A few, but very few, gathered their lit- tle families and fled, but the majority eould only make a feeble attempt to put themselves upon the best defense of their household gods that they could. They had hoped at first that Tipsword could intercede for them, but when appealed to he could give them no hope, as he, too, was in the list of warned. On the after- noon of the third and last day the Indians held a general pow-wow in the woods, and Tipsword attended it as a spectator. lle had friends among the chiefs and braves, and he had no doubt talked as much as he dared to them, and told them the certain consequences that would follow a general massacre of the whites. The first speakers urged that they adjourn the meeting, paint themselves, and at early dark commence the bloody work, and allow no pale faec to escape. These sentiments met the ap- proving grunts of the braves. But late in the evening better informed Indians talked. They told their people that, while it was true they had it in their power to murder the whites, but suppose they did, would not the word go to the people of the States, and would not an army, numbering as the leaves of the forest, come here and kill every Indian in the Terri- tory. Such representations soon turned the attention of the Indians to questions of their own safety, and they determined to postpone the massacre.
The settlers had been spared. Ilow much they owed of this good fortune to Tipsword will never be known.
On one occasion, after the whites had settled in Shelby and Fayette Counties, the Indians warned them to leave in three days, or they would massacre all in the country between Griffin Tipsword died in the year 1845, and lies buried on the banks of Wolf Creek. He left surviving children - John, Isaae and Thomas. Shelbyville, by way of Vandalia, to St. Louis. The warning came like a death knell to the poor defenseless whites - they were terror- stricken. Three days was too short a time in John Tipsword married, and was the father of Jackson, Griffin, Jerusha, James and Car- which to get away, yet it was too long a time to await in dread horror the cruel torture and , lin. These all married and had large families.
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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.
Isaac Tipsword married Nancy Stanberry, and their children-Isaac, Ashby, Sallie, Ruth, Thomas, Martha, Marion, John, William, Re- becca and Mellissa - all married, and have reared large families.
Thomas Tipsword was the father of Albert, Jonathan, Isaac, Jackson, Millie, Lydia, Mary and Bell, and from these there is another ex- tensive branch of the family.
From the above it will be seen that the Tips- words were pioneers and the sons and dangh- ters of pioneers. They seemed to realize that the great want of a new country is people, and unflinchingly they responded to their country's call.
No stone marks the spot where the old patri- arch of this numerous family sleeps.
Of all the men now living we believe that Dr. John O. Scott was the first to kindle a camp fire within the confines of our county. There were a few who had been here before hiim, but none of them are now living.
Fifty-seven years ago, 1825, Mr. Scott, in company with a man named Elliott, and his wife, traveled through this county on their way, moving from Wayne to Shelby County. They camped near Blue Point. In passing the tim- ber at the head of Brockett's Creek, a smoke was seen curling up from a camp fire, a clear- ing, or a wooden chimney. Mr. Elliott, who had made the trip through here before, told him that it was smoke from the cabin or clear- ing of a man's place named Fancher. This was Isaac Fancher. That Fancher was here then is strongly corroborated by the oft-re- peated statements of Ben. Campbell to his step-son. Thomas Andrews, that when he (Campbell) came here in 1826 he found the Faneher family here; that he stopped with them for several weeks, and they put in their time hunting bee-trees, of which they found a great many. Campbell also stated that he thought the Fulfers were here when he came, or that they came soon after.
This brings up the record of early settlers to 1826. It is brief and soon told.
Griffin Tipsword and family, 1815.
Isaac Fancher and family, 1825.
Ben Campbell, and Jesse and Jack Fulfer, 1826.
And John O. Scott, and Elliott and wife passing through here as movers in 1825.
Fancher and Fulfer in 1834-35 moved away from here into Coles County, where they died years ago. With the exception of Mr. Scott, these, the earliest of the pioneers in our coun- ty, are all gone-sleeping peacefully in their unmarked graves.
In 1828, Thomas I. Brockett and family, and Stephen Austin, Dick Robinson, John McCoy, Bob Moore and Richard Cohea came.
In 1829 came John Broom, Jonathan Park- hurst, Ben Allen, Mrs. Charlotte Kepley, Jacob Nelson, Andrew Martin, Alexander Stewart, John Ingraham, John Trapp, Samuel Bratton, John Fairleigh, Alfred Warren, Amos Martin, and old Aunty Bratton, Andrew Lilley, Henry Tucker, William Stephens, Allec Stewart, Bill Stewart, and Jacob Nelson.
In 1830, Jesse Surrells, T. J. Rentfro, James Turner, John Allen, Micajah Davidson, Henry P. Bailey, George Neavills, Alexander McWhor- ter, Jesse White, Enoch Neavills.
In 1831, Jacob Slover, Isaac Slover, John Gallant, William Gallant, Seymour Powell, Thomas Loy, William J. Hankins, the Hutchi- sons, and John Galloway, the fiddler.
Here were the fifty-one families that were here prior to February 15, 1831-the date of the act of the Legislature organizing the county. Why did they come? What was it that stopped here this meager stream of emigration and fixed them permanently in this place? What was there here to tempt and lure them to brave all, endure all, and cause them to fix here the nucleus around which all this present people, and their wealth and enjoyment has gathered? True, they could not see the toils
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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY. 1
and danger that lurked unseen upon every hand, yet there was much to repel them that they could see, enough, one would think, to have settled the question, and forever have pre- vented them from flying in the face of dangers that they knew not of.
We can imagine nothing more dreary. lone- some or depressing than was the face of this boundless waste of cheerless solitude, where had sat through the ages silence and deso- lation. These vast prairie seas, with their long reaches of desert waste, their flat sur- face covered with tall, dank grass, often as high as a man's head on horseback. In the autumn when this grass became sear. it was burned, and the smoke from these fires filled the atmosphere for hundreds of miles with smoke that darkened the face of day and hung like mourning drapery upon the horizon. The prairies were wet, flat and marshy. Waters ! standing a goodly portion of the year on, per- haps, two-third's of the soil's surface. When the grass was freshly burned the weary eye could find no relief in the vast expanse save the crawfish chimneys that thickly dotted the face of nature. The water lay mostly where it fell, and could eseape only by evaporation, and from this cause it is believed the rainfall then was greater than now. Recalling these days when monotonous solitude was all that was here. is to modern people but ringing the changes on the story of the "Lost Mariner," when the poet tells us he was
" Alone, alone. all. all alone. Upon the wide, wide sea."
ease that you could in an orchard. People now express great surprise that the pio- neers always settled in the timber, or close upon the edge of it ; and as a rule the first seleetions were the poorest land. There were good reasons for their aets. The face of the country was immensely different then from now. They were compelled to hunt out, first, for a spring where they could get water. They could find these and dry land only in the woods. They were, too, a people who knew little or nothing about the prairie. It was not then possible for man to live upon these treeless marshes, pools and bogs, fit only for the home of the "green heads," the poisonous insects, amphibious snakes and the more deadly ma- laria. The prairies were then mere lagoons filled with rotting grass and death, that was carried away by the unobstructed winds to poison the pure air of heaven. There was very little chance for the water to drain off the land, the topography of the country then being such as to hold it in its naturally formed basins. Mr. Joshua Bradley suggested to the writer the most plausible theory as to how these prairie basins were formed. His idea was that when the tall grass was burned, the fire that traveled with the wind, burned everything as it went, but that which burned against the wind traveled slowly and burned the grass at the roots always first, and when a strong wind prevailed it would carry the long stalks of this burned off grass into the burnt places and leave it there. In the spring the heavy rains would cause the water to float these off and they would lodge at points until they were piled there in great quantities, and in the long course of time they thus received accretions until the waters were held back, sod formed on the embankment and complete natural dams were matle and a basin formed. It was the cows of the pioneers that first made beaten paths as they traveled to water or to the " late
The forests consisted of tall trees with no un- dergrowth of brush or vines. The annual fires that swept through them had done the work of the forester well. It cleared away the debris, burned most of the fallen trees, and trimmed smooth the sprouts and had trained the limbs not to grow out near the ground. You could ride anywhere through the woods, or, for that matter, drive a wagon with nearly the same | burns" to graze the tender and nutritious
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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.
grasses, and these paths were the lead-way for the water to follow, and as the cows killed the sod the water could ent its own ditch, so stream was added to stream until strength was accumulated, and in the years the prairie swamps became comparatively dry, rich land.
As great and numerous as were these ob- stacles that confronted the pioneer, they were not all. The hostile and treacherous savage was here. Milk-sick lay in wait for man and beast along nearly all the streams in the south- ern part of the county. The horrible malaria freighted the air, as it floated out from its noisome lurking places, with its deadly poison. Howling and always hungry wolves, both prairie and timber wolves, made night hideous with their howls, and the blood-curdling scream of the soft-footed panther added a terrible warning to that of the wolves, that there was little hope of ever having any domestic animals here. The "green-head flies," in countless billions and as ravenous and voracious as the migrating ants of Africa, held undisputed pos- session of the prairies always during the hot summer months. Their business hours were between sunrise and sunset. And in a very short time they could kill a horse or a cow. The " green-head" alone made the prairies wholly uninhabitable. Here, too, were all manner of beasts that devastate the poultry yards and break the good honsewoman's heart in the destruction of chickens, geese and turkeys. Such, indeed, were the surroundings that poultry, sheep, hogs, calves, and, in fact, most of domestic animals would have been secure only in a fire and burglar proof safe, with a time lock to do duty while the house- hold slept.
The galinipers, the mosquitos, the wood ticks, chiggers and lizzards, with "yaller jackets," bumble-bees and hornets and poison- ous insects were here and everywhere and all hungry or angry at the approaching pioneers.
The bald eagle, flanked by the hawks and egg devouring crows, screamed his defiance at civil- ization and swooped down upon the poultry, the pigs and the lambs in the sheep-fold. Here, too, was the snake-spotted with deadly beauty-but for snake stories, go to any of the old settlers, especially A. G. Hughes. For our part we are like Washington's hatchet, "I'd rather tell ten thousand lies than cut down a cherry-tree."
When all these things are considered, and when it is further remembered that these earli- est pioneers were truly strangers in a strange land, with no anls of machinery or mechanical contrivances to help them, except their rifle, and wife and little ones ; no doctors, no medi- cine, no mills, no stores, no markets, no any- thing bnt appalling difficulties, is it not indeed a wonder that any one ever came here, or stayed after he did come, or lived to perpetuate his race and name.
We have named the people that were here prior to 1831. They were in settlements, in Blue Point, on Fulfer Creek, the Wabash Riv- er, Brockett's Creek, and Union Township. The earliest and largest of these settlements were the neighbors of Thomas I. Brockett. While this was yet a part of Fayette County, a voting precinct was formed, the voting place generally at Thomas I. Brockett's house, but one year it was held at the house of James Turner. The last election had there while it was Fayette County, there were, we are told, thirteen votes, solid for Andy Jackson ; we do not doubt it.
In this effort at pen pictures of the early settlers and the county when first they came, whenever we have found a strongly marked characteristic pioneer, we have told all we could learn of his leading traits, and tried to give the reader as perfect a drawing as we could as to what manner of man he was. In this connec- tion we deem it not inappropriate to close this chapter with a short sketch of Ben Campbell,
1
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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.
a king among his kind, a fine type of his class, with every trait abnormally developed.
Since the memorable days of '49, when the discovery of gold on the Pacific slope set all the world agog, the pioneers, the, men who skirt the outer confines of civilization on this continent, have entirely changed in their char- acteristics. They are now perhaps the most cosmopolitan people in the world, and we in- cline to the belief that the old Californians are the best practically educated people in the world, for they were suddenly gathered togeth- er in large numbers, representing every civil- ized people of the globe-many of the half civilized, and even some of the totally barbar- ons. This heterogeneous gathering of such varieties of people resulted in the world's won- der of a public school. It rapidly educated men as they had never before been taught. It was not perfect in its moral symmetry, but it was wholly powerful in its rough strength, vigor and swiftness. It taught not of books, but of the mental and physical laws-the only fountain of real knowledge-of commerce, of cunning craft-it was iron to the nerves and a sleepless energy to the resolution. This was its field of labor-its free university. Here every people, every national prejudice, all the marked characteristics of men met its oppo- site, where there was no law to restrain or govern either, except that public judgment that was crystallized into a resistless force in this witches' caldron. This wonderful alembic, where were fused normal and abnormal human- ities, thoughts, false educations, prejudices, and pagan follies into a molten stream that glowed and scorched ignorance along its way as the volcanic eruption does the debris in its pathway. It was the untrammeled school of attrition of every variety of mind with mind- the rough diamond that gleams and dazzles with beauty only when rubbed with diamond dust. The best school in the world for a thor- ough, practical education. Universal cduca-
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tion-we mean real education and not "learned ignorance " as Locke has aptly called it-is a leveler of the human mind. It's like the strug- gle for life, where only " the fittest survive " and the unfit perish. But its tendency is to lift up the average, to better mankind, to evolve the truth, and mercilessly gibbet in- grained ignorance and superstitious follies.
Ben Campbell's pioneer school life was spent in a wholly different one from that just named. The surroundings of the Illinois pioneers dif- fered radically from that of the California " forty-niners." They did not come here in great rushing crowds, but alone or in meager squads, they had abandoned home and the signs of civilization and plunged into the vast solitudes. They settled down to live where language was almost a superfluity, and a smile or laugh were as lost arts. These sturdy, lone mariners of the desert were men of action and silence. Not very social in their nature, moody often, almost void of the imaginative faculty, with no longing for the Infinite, and seldom or never looking through nature up to nature's God. They simply whetted their instincts in the struggle for existence, against the wild game, the ferocious beasts and the murderous savage.
Such was Ben Campbell, and he was pre- eminently one of his kind. A man of tremen- dous physical organization, with coarse feat- ures, a sun-burned skin, that was covered with hair and unsightly " bumps " all over his face ; great scars upon his face and body, especially a frightful scar that ran down the whole left side of his cheek, injuring the muscles of the eye and giving it a strange expression. San- dy, coarse, stubby hair and beard, blue eyes, very large mouth, with thick lips, and teeth double-rowed and so large that they looked more like horse's than human teeth. Generally dressed in skins of animals he had slain, ex- cept a small, close-fitting red bonnet that was always on his head. Altogether a figure well
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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.
calculated to frighten children to death, and might even appall timid grown people when suddenly beheld for the first time.
While hunting one day, he met an Indian who had a splendid fresh deer skin on his shoulder. By a strange coincidenee Campbell had a bright silver half-dollar in his pocket. Campbell much wanted the skin and the other coveted the money. Negotiations resulted, and the hide and half-dollar were placed together on a log, to be fought for by the two men.
Campbell always wound up his story by stating that for nearly an hour he could not, for the life of him, tell whether he was going to get the deer skin or loose the half-dollar. But he eventually got it and walked off with his trophy.
At one time he went to Vandalia when the Legislature was in session. On his way he killed a fine fat turkey-gobbler. This he nego- tiated at the hotel for his dinner and horse feed, stipulating that he was to have his dinner earlier than the regular meal and to have some of the turkey. When he sat down to the table lie eat the entire turkey, as well as everything else that was on the table. Mother Maddox, the landlady, declared that she honored the guest that honored the food she put before them by eating heartily, and so she extended a life-time invitation to Campbell to always come, and, without money and without turkeys, to eat at her table free.
This story is made the more plausible by an- other one, that has been vouched for by at least one-half of the old settlers. A party was out camping and hunting. Campbell had with him a favorite and worthless dog of the bench-leg kind-very fat, clumsy and lazy. It was fit for nothing in the chase, so it stayed at the eamp- fire with the cook while its master would be hunting. On one occasion, Campbell had been gone all day, and when he returned, tired and hungry, he anxiously inquired what luck his companions had had in killing something to
eat. To his joy he saw roasting over the fire what he supposed to be an enormously large coon. Now, if there was one thing in the world that Campbell liked best of all, it was a coon, fat and cooked by a camp-fire. The coon was soon cooked to a turn, and Campbell's joy, when the others announced that they had had supper, was sincere, for he knew his capacity, and he wanted enough for himself. Without bread, potatoes, coffee, or anything else but coon, he sat down to a repast fit for a king, pår- ticularly in quantity, which was much in Camp- bell's eye. He pieked a bone and called his dog, but the dog did not respond. He would pick another bone and whistle again and call his dog; the dog never eame, and this went on until every bone was picked. The boys had killed and cooked the dog for a coon.
Like Daniel Boone, he could boast of tasting about everything he could get hold of in the way of bird or beast in the country. When hungry, he was willing to try, without prejudice, anything he could get. In this world's wealth he was never able to try a horse, but those who knew him best would not have gambled a cent that he would have made a failure here.
His capacity and love of eating were only equaled by his love for whisky and fighting. The prospect of a jolly big fight would take him to any part of the world. He was in the Nau- voo war, in the thickest of the fight, and here he got numerous of the sears that he carried to his grave. The ugly scar on his face was made by a man he found chopping in the woods one day. The man was a pioneer, too, who had concluded to stop and build a cabin. Camp- bell resented this, and leveled his gun at the stranger and ordered him not to trespass on his land. The wary stranger eventually got Campbell to put his gun down and enter into negotiations. He deceived the old hunter, and when he got between him and his gun, he sud- denly raised his ax and struck a wicked blow at his head. Campbell barely saved his life by
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HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.
dodging baek, but he did not dodge enough to prevent the wound.
Campbell was a man who was moved in every- thing by his own promptings. He knew little or nothing of the rules of society, and he cared less. He was an honest man, and as rough of speech as rough could be. He was crabbed, sullen and moody of temperament. A stranger seemed to affect him as a red flag does a mad bull. Such he would generally roughly insult withont cause, and while he was slow of speech and his words were few, he could make his taunts sting terribly. If the stranger, in igno- rance of the man. resented the insult, a fight was improvised at once; and in the old style of rough-and-tumble-knock-down-and-drag-out, he seldom met his match. Yet, the fight once over, he was ready to drink friends at his vie- tim's expense-get roaring drunk and savagely friendly.
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