USA > Illinois > Kane County > History of Kane County, Ill. Volume I > Part 2
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"Aurora, Illinois, September 3, 1908."
Black Hawk was captured and the uprising suppressed.
This was the last attempt of the redmen to prevent the settlement of northern Illinois. The Indians remaining were friendly and all were shortly after removed to lands provided for them west of the Mississippi, the United States having purchased their lands. But few remained when the first pioneers came to Fox river. These fast disappeared westward, the last departing in 1836.
Not many marks of the presence of these sons of the forest now remain. An arrow head or stone war club, or the vestiges of ancient graveyards now and then found in opening gravel pits being the only reminders of the savages who once here hunted and fished and warred, as their ancestors had done for ten thousand years before them.
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KANE COUNTY HISTORY
The chief seats of the Indians appear to have been at Mill Creek, just south of Batavia; in the hills east of the river just south of what is now the village of Dundee; and on what is now the site of the city of Aurora and northeast through the Big Woods on the east side. Well worn Indian trails led from one to the other. Others ran west to Indian settlements on Rock river ; others east. An Indian village also existed where Dundee now stands.
Where Calvary cemetery, Aurora, is now located, was in early days an Indian graveyard, and on the hill just north of where D. C. Cook's publishing house stands at Elgin, an old burial ground was disclosed in excavating for a gravel pit. This was seen by one of the authors about two years ago and indicated a collection of perhaps a dozen graves on a hill overlooking the river. Mounds have also been opened at St. Charles and Batavia and on Wing farm, a mile west of Elgin on Tyler creek, the inviting valleys of which tradition says were once the home of the Indian.
The colonization and settlement of new lands is an old story begun so long ago that no history or tradition tells of its first movements. Of the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Chinese, and general settlement of Asia, little is known. But of the great movement of which the settlement of America and of Illinois and of this beautiful Fox River valley, where now dwell in peace the descendants of nearly every race that has peopled the world, much is known.
We here, battling with our problems day by day, and in our time passing as pass all, forget that we are but a link in a chain, but a branch in a tree vast and widespreading ; but a tributary brook of a broad moving stream covering the western world from Russia and India to San Francisco, and now threat- ening to invade the Orient; the Aryan race-the Indu-European group of mankind.
The settlement of Kane county was no spasmodic incident, but was part of the onward movement of humankind that began beyond the Caspian sea when Europe was a wilderness and America an undreamed of continent. There is interest in that fact, rightly seen; that we here are not disconnected but are a related part of world history; that our ancestry dwelt there on the Caspian mountain hills and tended their sheep and cattle and raised their crops, ten, perhaps fifty thousand years ago. Yet there are few men now dwelling in Kane county but who, could they trace their lineage, would have found kin among the Aryans of the Himalaya mountains north of India, in that remote past. Frenchman, Italian, Spaniard, Irish, German, Hindoo, Russian, Englishman, American-all were there, speaking then one language from which has come all the languages these peoples now speak.
For thousands of years they had dwelt in those mountains and filled the valleys, until their communities grew too large for the earth to support, though none more willing than she.
The western movement began with the Greeks, who left the home of the Aryan race, possibly 3000 or 4000 B. C., and in going north around the head of the Caspian sea, spread into the Danube valleys and finally through the mountain passes into what is now Greece, to the sea. They went not as individuals, but as tribes, carrying their women, children and possessions
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with them. Wherever they settled the general government and tribe remained the same. They came to Greece, fought the people found there, enslaved them, and possessed the land. They developed in time the most splendid civilization the world has ever seen, and in many regards never since equaled. A second emigration followed, and became the Romans of later days. They moved farther west to Italy and repeated the experience of the first emigration.
Still the Aryan population increased and a third movement began, which continued until times when history was written. Its later story is well known. This was the invasion of what is now Europe. Forced out of the old home, they were unable to go south, for their cousins, the Greeks and Romans, had for a thousand years held the land. They turned north, passing through the Alps into what is Germany, Austria, Sweden, England. Ireland and Spain. The first to come in were the Irish, old Welsh and Britons. They found a sinall. dark race. known as Basques; a remnant of which still dwells in the mountain fastnesses of the Pyrenees. They drove them to the mountains and poorer lands. Following this first movement to Europe, came wave after wave of new and younger blood, the Gauls. Goths, Visigoths, Vandals. Huns, Slavonians, and numerous Russian tribes. Each pushing on from the Caspian sea forced the tribes next west further west; these in turn pressed on those in Europe proper.
Added to this, the Romans came into Europe by way of France and held all Europe west of the Rhine. The story of the conflict of these barbarian tribes with Rome in the first centuries A. D. is well known history; as is also the result, and the final formation of France, Germany, England. and all European states, from the peoples who had contested so hotly for the advantage. They were of one race-of the race that is now American-but knew it not; and would doubtless have fought as well had they known it. Kinship of blood has dulled few swords. So by tribes and moving villages of men was Europe settled.
When America had been well discovered and land claims between nations adjusted. its invasion began in a manner not unlike that early invasion and settlement of Greece, Rome and Europe. The nations were dealt with peace- fully, if possible, but in any event, were dealt with, disposed of, and the land occupied. These invaders came not as barbarian tribes in paint of war, but none the less they came as communities, not as individuals. The force of united numbers was necessary to make a permanent stand against the native Indian. And here was repeated the story of every settlement in every country since the world began. Those in possession have never willingly shared with new comers. It is ever a question of power, and the victory to the strong. In 10 place has the native maintained his place against the better equipped invader. It is the survival of the fittest.
But, as above suggested, when the American nation had become a nation, and the government established-when the movement of settlement begun in the Caspian hills those thousands of years ago. had come over the Alleghanies to the western prairies, it assumed a different aspect. The eastern colonies had all been settled by groups of men: by communities armed and equipped for a contest, they knew they must and did meet. This western
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country was settled by individuals. This was a new fact, a new experience in the history of the world,-that an individual might go into a new country alone or with his family, there build his home and dwell in comparative peace, contesting less with fellowmen than with nature; bringing with them no tribal gods or set standards save those dictated by the well-being and happiness of free men. That this western country has so rapidly advanced in the arts and standards of civilized conditions is accounted for doubtless by the fact that they met few hostile fellowmen, but only a fertile soil and kindly climate, where the toil of men gave back full profit. To defend against the savage or wild beast required little attention in the middle west. To the land and its development went the energies of the pioneers. It was a new fact-a new condition. No walled city was required, and after 1832, no fortress and no soldiery. The pioneers came in, built their cabin homes, touched the waiting hills and they blossomed into fields of grain. There were none to dispute them : none to question their possession or the fruits of their industry.
CHAPTER II.
THE ANCESTORS OF THE PIONEERS.
Much has been written, much is known of the personnel of the pioneers who in the '30s settled Kane county, building their log cabins of rough hewn oak, from Dundee to Aurora, but not so much has been recorded of the ancestry of these men, and the nest where they were reared. There is a tradition, much repeated, that they were largely of that ancient and honored people, the Puritans of the New England colonies. Many were so derived, but not all, nor perhaps most of them.
The type from which these early pioneers came was not the type of Salem, but rather a type formed by an admixture of many races during two centuries from 1620 to 1830; a peculiarly American type that had been made from the struggles of the New England colonies before, during and after the Revo- lution, with forest and savage and Englishman and Frenchman. They were as unlike the original Puritans as they were unlike the English, the Scot, the Irish or the Dutch, from which they were derived. They were the new Amer- ican race of men .- sturdy, bold, brave farmer warriors, who cleared the forest and planted their crops within the hostile view of barbarian redmen; their guns always within reach; their homes fortresses made ready for momentary attack.
The land along the Atlantic seaboard was settled and permanently occupied by different races; the English in the north, the Dutch in New York and Pennsylvania, where also were English settlements under Penn; in Virginia and the South many English of a different class and time than the Puritans of the North. The Cavalier of the Carolinas was as different from the Puritans as either were from the Dutch. A sprinkling of French Huguenots might be added.
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As originally settled, these colonies maintained themselves and realized each an independent existence, with little intermarriage and much contest, particularly upon religious and political matters.
But in the 18th century, when the land near the sea had long been the seat of a contented people little disturbed by the presence of savages and pur- suing the works of peace, just west of them upon the new frontier line pushed west to the Alleghany mountain valley, a new battle was being fought for land and place by a new and mixed people made up from the adventurous or persecuted who left the older settled colonies and pushing to the frontier forest, there joining the newer immigration of many nations pressing west- ward for free land: as years ago the Swedes came and settled in the frontier land of the Dakotas and Minnesota. The tide of incoming immigration has not stopped among the settled Eastern districts, but has flowed past them into the West. So in the last century, a hundred years after the first seaboard settlements, this new immigration was coming in and passing to the foothills and valleys of the mountains, and beyond into the forests of New York, Vermont. Pennsylvania and Virginia. All which country was being rapidly filled by this mixed people. By the time of the French and Indian war ( 1763) it had been estimated there was a population of many thousands, who realized a bulwark of protection between the more settled seaboard colonies and the western wilderness, where bands of hostile savage tribes dwelt at perpetual warfare with these newer pioneers-the entering wedge to the western prairie lands. The growing eastern populations and the constant stream of immigra- tion necessitated this acquisition of new lands ; and coming not as communities. but as individual families, pride of race and nationality lost much of its force. All mingled here in one common democracy tinited by the need for common defense against an alert foe habituated to forest conflict. Here grew up the first American people unprejudiced by the traditions of any particular state. All were on a common footing : each equal to any: all imbued by that spirit . of independence and courage ever developed by contact with the freedom and wildness of nature; where none may dictate and the individual alone is valued.
They were a rough, sturdy race of men and women, endowed with the qualifications of the pioneer in a degree never surpassed in the history of the world. They came of the Scotch, Irish-English stock, with a strain of Penn- sylvania Dutch; a sprinkling of French Huguenots. No stronger foundation was ever built for conquering a wilderness and making a nation. They were the "backwoodsmen" of the latter part of the first century of American settlements : a class by themselves-unique in America and in the world-the first Americans.
They dwelt along the border land of the older colonies in the Alleghanies. spreading westward into New York and Pennsylvania, hundreds of miles from the eastern settlements. They had here, during several generations of conflict and conquest, acquired a strong likeness in thought and ways of living. The dominant blood was the Scotch-Irish-English Protestant, who came to this new land that they might enjoy freedom in act and thought ; free from the oppression of the state or church. They were of the old Covenanters; followers of Knox and Calvin; hard headed, strong hearted
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men and women. Men who would rather face the forest and the savage than endure the conditions then prevailing in Europe and England.
That the early settlers of Kane county were of this new American type is evidenced. not only by the communities they built up, but also by the territory they came from into the West. Christopher Payne, the first arrival, was from New York state. Joseph and Samuel McCarty, the founders of Aurora, were of Scotch-English descent, and from New York, though natives of New Jersey. Hezekiah and James T. Gifford, founders of Elgin, were from the same state and of the same descent. Judge Isaac Wilson, an early pioneer of Batavia, was from New York state; as were Joseph Lyon ( 1835), A. M. Moore ( 1838). William Van Nortwick ( 1835).
In Big Rock, L. J. Lamson came from New York in 1837, as did Matthew and William Perry, 1835. James W. Swan ( 1836). Joseph Summers ( 1836), Robert Nash ( 1836). Robert Norton and Silas Long were from Ohio. Jesse Brady ( 1837) was from New York: as were Isaac Hatch ( 1837), Shepherd Johnson ( 1839). Paul Colburn ( 1836).
In Blackberry, William Lance, the first pioneer, came from New Jersey in 1834; David Beeler was a Scotchman : as were David W. Annis, from Ver- mont (1835), R. Acers, of New York: Loren D. Kendall ( 1834). C. H. Spaulding, of New York; E. G. Moore, of the same state, and others.
In Burlington the first to come was Stephen Van Velzer, from New York: also Allison Baker, Solomon Wright and Asa W. Lawrence; John Halden was from Pennsylvania. Stephen Godfrey from Vermont. Nearly all were men of the Scotch-Irish-English type.
In Campton township, John Beatty, from Pennsylvania ; Harvey Warne ( 1837), was a New Yorker; John Whitney ( 1837), from Ohio; Harry and Spaulding Eddy were from New York: Luke Pike, from Ohio; James Ward came from New York ( 1836) : as did Franklin Walkins ( 1837).
In Dundee township the first settlers were Jesse H. Newman and Joseph Russell, of Scotch-English descent. and originally Virginians and Kentuck- ians. Jesse Oatman. A. R. Dempster (1835) : Thomas Deweese. T. H. Thompson. I. C. Bosworth. William Hale and George McClure, all were of Scotch-Irish-English descent.
In Elgin township. Isaac Stone (1835). E. K. Mann (1835), Joseph Tefft (1835), Nathan Collins ( 1835). William G. Kimball, S. J. Kimball were New Yorkers; as were Ira Minard. J. D. Owen, N. G. Phillips, Calvin Pratt and Washington Wing; James Hanks, the first settler near Elgin, was from New York; General Elijah Wilcox, L. S. Eaton ( 1838), A. B. Fish (1845), George Renwick (1838), Levi S. Stowe (1843), M. C. Town (1846), were from the same state.
In Aurora township. Joseph McCarty was from Elmira, N. Y. ( 1834). During the same year came W. T. Elliott. Elijah Pierce. Seth Reed, Zaphira Lake and Hiram. In 1835, Daniel Eastman. Lindolph Huntoon, Winslow Higgins. George Gorton, Theodore Lake, E. D. Terry. B. F. Fridley, John Barker. M. D. Cone. Charles Bates. L. Muzzy. R. Matthews. D. Gorton, B. F. Phillips, Elgin squires: all clearly of Scotch-Irish-English descent,
KANE COUNTY HISTORY
and of that new American race that developed in the valleys and forests of the Alleghanies.
In Rutland township the first settler was E. R. Starks, from Vermont; Nathaniel Crampton (1836), Noble King ( 1836), Elijah Rich (1835). Andrew McCornack, were Scotchmen; William Moore ( 1838), William Lynch ( 1838), and John Hunter (1838). were Irish.
This typical American people, most of whom had back of them three generations among the hills and frontiers of the eastern states, had been molded by the experiences and hardships of a century. They were, as suggested, a mixed people, but in standards, mostly Scotch Presbyterians ; descended largely from Scotch ancestors. They were strict Protestants of the older type, when each sect was content to believe the members of other beliefs would go into outer darkness and they into everlasting joy. They had no liking for the Catholics nor the Episcopalians. A headstrong, rough and ready people: self-dependent and asking favors of none; instinctive antago- nists : descendants of the followers of Cromwell ; fighters by heredity.
The Scotch and Irish Presbyterians came to the new world in large numbers about 1700, and settled as before outlined. on new lands beyond the colonial habitations. They pushed into the wilderness, leading the move- ment westward, where they joined the New Englanders in the same terri- tory. They were among the first to force themselves into the Indian's country. With the Bible in one hand and a flintlock musket in the other, they penetrated the wilderness, made a clearing. built their log cabins, tilled a few acres of land, hunted in the unbroken forests, fished and trapped and made a meager living : meantime. pushing forward and opening prairie and forest for those who crowded in behind with industry and progress; and a civilization, such as has been the wonder of the world.
The original seat of this type which settled the entire Middle West before the modern immigration of German, Scandinavian. Italian. Pole and Russian had begun, was in New York. Pennsylvania, and in the Alleghany valleys of Virginia. Where their lands were near the more settled eastern populations. they built up small towns and villages, where might have been seen a store, blacksmith shop and possibly a tavern where the traveler might find rough rest for the night; in addition usually a log schoolhouse and church. The latter were the first necessities of this devout people. The minister, commonly termed the elder. dwelt in no parsonage, but usually was a missionary or itinerant preacher who boarded among the cabins and preached zealous. earnest, Calvinistic sermons to hearers who came not to criticise but to learn. But as a class, these frontiersmen did not build towns, but cultivated their farm lands. They settled near together for protection against the Indians. who were in the adjoining forest ready at any time to attack, burn and destroy
The forest and hill was everywhere. Nowhere prairie lands ready for the plow. Every acre had to be cleared and made ready for cultivation, while watchful savages were on every side. The gun and the ax were the necessary weapons of these pioneers of the Alleghanies, of whom many who first came to Kane county were grandchildren.
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A number of the families settling in the wilderness made a clearing and built within it a stockade of logs, set upright, with loopholes all around, and a row of log cabins on one side, with a heavy wooden gate that might be quickly barred in case of assault. Sometimes a central loghouse was built in the middle of the stockade. These forest fortresses were used only for storing provisions and in case of threatened Indian attacks; the pioneers at ordinary times remaining at their cabins outside the stockade.
Corn was the grain mostly cultivated in the clearings and was relied on for food. But potatoes, melons and fruits were raised and orchards planted. Horses and cows, hogs and sheep were kept when practical, which was not always, owing to the depredations of wolves and bears.
The cabin was most frequently of unfinished logs with clay forced in between them, and of one room, in one end of which was built a huge fire- place of stone, clay, and sticks. This served for heating and cooking pur- poses. The floor was made up of logs, one side of which were hewn as even as possible and the uneven places filled with clay. This was the puncheon floor. The roof was of boards roughly cut out of logs. Pegs of wood driven into the logs served for hanging garments, or to hold the rifles ; although fre- quently the antlers of a deer served that purpose. For a table, a large, rough cut board was placed on four wooden legs. Chairs were three-legged hand- made stools, save where a prosperous family might enjoy the luxury of a rocking chair. The couch or bed of rough boards was covered with blankets of deer hides and bearskin ; sometimes a buffalo robe. Few pictures adorned the walls. Curtains were unheard of luxuries. The customary dress was a fur cap, trousers and shirt of buckskin or homespun cloth, and shoes or moc- casins of the same skin: the shirt or outer coat hanging loose nearly to the knees, and held at the waist by a belt. in which the hunting knife was carried. A long, smooth-bore flintlock rifle completed the pioneer backwoodsman's equipment as hunter and farmer. It was usually fired from a rest, being heavy.
Social life among this people, scattered in the wilderness, was necessarily very simple, and consisted largely in those pursuits that gave support to the family. The husband and father was the provider; the wife and mother, housekeeper. To feed and clothe the family from such materials as were provided was the mother's work; no small task in view of the fact that large families was the rule. The rule of cooperative help was universal. Log rollings, house building, corn shucking, quilting, and the providing of many of the needs of life were done by the united effort of neighbors, who gathered together, first at one cabin, then another, to do the work. Such meetings were made the occasion of such gaiety as was possible among such a people. Dancing was usual for the young folks. Intoxicants were plentiful. The hostess did her best to provide a table for the party, containing every luxury obtainable. Athletic games and contests among the young men were a usual feature of the occasion: racing, jumping, wrestling and lifting, husking corn, etc. Brawls and fighting were not infrequent.
A wedding was always the occasion of much festivity. The bride rode to church usually on a horse, behind her father, coming back on her future
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KANE COUNTY HISTORY
husband's horse. If no church was near. the marriage was at the cabin of the bride's parents : a dinner was had. and after that dancing all day and night. the music being furnished by a lone fiddler; the ballroom, the rough puncheon floor. After the wedding the neighbors got together and cut the logs and built a new house for the young people. and at the house- warming that followed its completion, general feasting and dancing was indulged in.
Education was meager in the wilderness. Few went beyond reading, writing and simple arithmetic. The teacher boarded with the families as part payment for his services. About three and one-half dollars was a year's tuition.
Every family in that day conducted a farm and factory. The women wove into homespun cloth the flax grown on the farm or the wool cut from the sheep's back. The men tanned and cured the skins they had secured in the forest. The kitchen utensils were mostly of wood. hand shaped into bowls. plates, spoons, etc. Plows were secured in the East. but harrows and other farming tools were hand-made of wood. The corn was usually ground on a hand mill consisting of a block of wood with a hole in the center. in which the corn was placed. It was then pounded and crushed with a stone or wooden pestle worked by hand. In the fall farmers would make up a horse pack of hides and skins which were sent to some near town and exchanged for necessary articles, such as salt, iron implements. etc., which they could not make themselves.
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