USA > Illinois > Kendall County > History of Kendall county, Illinois, from the earliest discoveries to the present time > Part 7
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103
FIRST CASE OF PROHIBITION.
ing to their claims. Two miles further on they found Mr. Macomber and his step-son, Marshall Everest. Mr. Morgan found his chosen creek undisturbed, and there he located for himself and sons eleven hundred acres of land, building his cabin in Specie Grove. Mr. Adams built the pioneer cabin on court house hill, his axe first awakening the industrial echoes on the site of our county seat. The following spring he sold to Mr. Bristol and settled at Specie Grove, remaining there several years before removing to Big Grove.
One incident of their trip is worth relating. A single man by the name of Slayton, came with them. He was so addicted to the use of liquor that it had become to him almost a daily necessity, and he replenished his bot- tle at every watering place along the road-where the water was strong enough. But after leaving Beaubien's tavern, in Chicago, there was no more fire water to be had, and Mr. Slayton was in a pickle. It was practical prohibition, and was at least one generation in advance of public sentiment as represented by Mr. S. He grew thin. He tried the Yorkville water, but there was no taste to it. He sampled the river, but it was insipid. He crossed to the Bristol side, but there was no relief. The days dragged wearily by, but at last his health began to return, and he found he was better without liquor than with it. A grand discovery for any drink- ing man to make. But truth compels us to add that his habit was never wholly abandoned. He was a steam engine for business, but liquor was his enemy. He lived and died at Squire Morgan's.
About the time Adams came, John Schneider, who
104
HISTORY OF KENDALL COUNTY.
was helping Capt. Naper build a saw-mill at Naperville, came down prospecting, and chose a site for a mill across the river, at the mouth of Blackberry creek. He hewed two logs and hauled them on the ground, to hold his claim, and left it until the next Spring.
LYMAN AND BURR BRISTOL
made the claim where John Evans now lives, and built a log pen covered with bark. In 1834 they bought the claim of Mr. Adams, embracing a large tract of land west of Yorkville, as far out as the J. P. Black place. It made several good farms. In 1837 Lyman Bristol and Isaac Hallock bought out John Schneider's Bristol claim and mill for $7,000. Mr. Bristol gave the pres- ent park to the village. He went to California, and was killed while teaming over the mountains. The father. Justus Bristol, came a year or two after his sons. In the fall of 1833, Isaac Hallock, Samuel Smith and Eph- raim Macomber lived in one cabin, below Oswego. and were all sick together with the ague, with no one to help them. A child belonging to one of the families died, and William Harris came up from Long Grove and bur- ied it. Many such incidents have never been recorded, and are now buried in the graves of the actors in them, there to remain until the Great Day.
John Matlock bought Mr. Harris' claim, intending to move his family the following Spring. June 1st,
DANIEL PEARCE
and family arrived at Oswego, having come all the way with ox teams. They had a tedious journey, for the season was wet and the mud very deep. They often met droves of cattle knee deep in mud. Mr. Pearce at
105
MORE NEW SETTLERS.
once took up his present farm-one hundred acres of prairie, surrounded with timber, on Waubonsie Creek. Before this, two new settlers had come in on the other side of the river. Samuel Devoe had settled the year before at the forks of the DuPage, and leaving there took a claim where Myron L. Wormley now lives. Far- ther up the stream, Ansel Kimball made a claim at the Nicholas Young place, arriving there in April. He broke up some land and sowed ten acres to winter wheat, and sold it the same fall to Levi C. Gorton. Mr. Gorton and Benjamin Phillips came together that fall from Pennsylvania.
THE WORMLEYS,
John and William, came at the same time. They trav- eled on foot from New York, with nothing but their rifles and a change of clothes, averaging thirty-six miles a day. William made his claim where Oswego Station now stands, and John where he still lives. Jacob Car- penter settled near by, on the opposite side of the river from Montgomery. His brother, David Carpenter, came at the same time, and still lives at Oswego. Also, Philip Mudgett. In the Newark timber, Owen Haymond, from Ohio, settled on a claim adjoining Clark Hollenback's, where Bosworth now lives. At Big Grove, Henry and Marcus Misner settled in the fall. Their claims were on the north east corner, between Drumgool's and Rich- mond's. Marcus hired Mr. Booth to make hay for him, while he returned after his family. It was in August, and while Mr. Booth was at work,
JOHN WEST MASON
came on the ground and bought his claim. He had just
8
106
HISTORY OF KENDALL COUNTY.
finished a large addition to the house, making it double, with a passage between ; and having sold it, he at once bought the next claim north, and built a log house, 16x32, on the north edge of the strip of prairie west of Mr. French's. He dug a well there, but all is oblitera- ted now.
CHAPTER XVI.
S. G. MINKLER'S STORY.
T WOULD be impossible in a single volume to relate the adventures of every pioneer in his journey to the far off west. The fol- lowing narrative is therefore given as a sample. It is interesting in itself, and is valuable for the insight it gives of the hardships our fathers underwent for their children's sakes. It is the story of Smith G. Minkler, one of our neighbors and one of the found- ers and staunch supporters of the Illinois State Horti- cultural Society.
In May, 1833, Joel Alvard, William and Joseph Groom, Madison Goisline and Peter Minkler, and their families, Mrs. Polly Alvard, a widow with two children, and Edward Alvard and Jacob Bare, unmarried men, left Potter's Hollow. Albany county, N. Y., for the
107
THE MINKLERS' JOURNEY.
West. There were three covered wagons and twenty- five persons, and as they came on their numbers were increased. Joel Alvard had been to Illinois before, and had selected a tract of land in Tazewell county, and it was to that point the company were destined.
After nearly three weeks' travel through New York and Ohio, they stopped a few days at Adrian, Mich., to recruit, and were strongly urged to settle there by a man who had been to Illinois and returned disgusted. He declared that all the trees he saw had to be spliced to make rails. He was, doubtless, honest in his opinion, for he had made but a flying visit, and seen only the bushy edges of the groves. The party, however, were not persuaded to abandon their original intention.
While passing through Indiana they were several times stuck so fast in the sloughs that it needed six horses, with a man at each horse's head, to draw a wagon through. At one time they were detained all day, and were pulled out by a prairie breaking team of five yoke of oxen. At Morgan Settlement, near the Illinois line, a man called Farwell, with two wagons, joined them. It was reported they could not cross the Calumet to go to Chicago, so they hired a guide to Hickory Creek. The guide offered his services, saying he had been over the ground and knew the route well. Sometimes they followed trails and sometimes they made their own track. At Salt Creek the hills were so steep they were obliged to chain the wheels and slide down. Part of one day they were detained in a slough, and most of the next day they traveled through hazel brush which cleaned the wagons again. Then followed a terrible thunderstorm,
108
HISTORY OF KENDALL COUNTY.
lasting all night and until nine o'clock the next morn- ing. The women were protected with quilts in the wagons, but the men were obliged to stand the drench- ing. They were now on an Indian trail, and the guide returned, saying there was no use in his going any fur- ther, as that trail led straight to their destination. But soon after he left they came to an old Indian town from whence the trails radiated in every direction, and they escaped from their perplexity by taking the wrong one, that led them to a second deserted town. They were then convinced they had
LOST THEIR WAY,
and half of the company unloading the goods and leav- ing them behind, set out by compass with empty wagons to find the Calumet river, for somehow they were per- suaded that they had to cross that stream. They returned unsuccessful, however, and then two men were sent back to Morgan Settlement, and Morgan himself came on to pilot them out of their dilemma, and they regained their route by retracing their steps some twenty miles. It afterward proved that their guide had deceived them in regard to his knowledge of the route. Coming to a stream they were told was the Little Calumet, Smith Minkler waded in for a sounding pole, and as he kept his nose above water in the deepest place, it was con- cluded to be fordable, and the wagons crossed. 'The women were put on the top of the baggage, and when they reached the other side everything was taken out to dry. The Big Calumet next was reached, flowing through a marsh as level as a floor as far as the eye could see, and bordered on either side by acres of tall black rushes.
109
DIFFICULTIES OF TRAVEL.
Over this stream they built a rude bridge of logs, and part of the teams crossed, but part could not, on account of the soft ground, and were obliged to remain there three days. Finally they reached Hickory Creek, and remained a week for one of the Alvards, who was sick, to get better. By this time it was near the beginning of harvest. They crossed the O'Plaine at Joliet-though not a solitary cabin marked the spot-but at Plainfield found the DuPage too high to ford. There was a camp- meeting in progress at the time, and the tired emigrants were offered and gratefully accepted the hospitality of the tents while the river was lowering its banks. It was a more formidable stream half a century ago than in these degenerate days. Now, in summer time, a boy may easily wade it. The spring and summer of 1833, how- ever, were unusually wet. In a week the river became fordable, and the party separated. Farwell returned to the Calumet country and entered a large tract of bottom land. Minkler remained at Plainfield and assisted in the harvest ; but his son, Smith, with the rest of the party, proceeded toward Tazewell county. They stopped at The Springs for dinner-a few weeks before Mr. Platt erected his cabin there-and some of the men, taking hold of the wagon wheels, shook like leaves, with
THE AGUE.
But it was not Kendall county ague. It was a harvest from the miasmatic breath of the Calumet swamps, and was one of the severest of their Illinois experiences. A more amusing experience was with the wolves. They had heard big stories of wolves calling each other together for prey, and when one night in camp the howling com-
110
HISTORY OF KENDALL COUNTY.
menced all around them, they were thoroughly alarmed, and forming a ring around their wagons, with loaded guns, prepared to sell their lives at a cost which would be fearful for even wolves to pay. But they were attacked only by their fears, and afterward enjoyed many a laugh at their wolf panic. Passing Holderman's, Donovan's, and Ottawa, they came to Bailey's, now Tonica. There two of the party bought claims, and that stopped farther progress in the direction of Tazewell county. Others went up the Vermillion river, fifteen miles from its mouth, and purchased. In the meantime, Mr. Minkler, meet- ing Peter Specie in Plainfield, had accepted the offer to come out to the Aux Sable grove and work Specie's claim. It provided him a present home and would give him more time to look around. In a few weeks Smith Minkler set out to go to his father's, and Mr. Goisline, who was his uncle, came with him. When this side of Ottawa, Goisline shot himself in the shoulder while pull- ing his gun to him out of the wagon, muzzle first, intending to shoot a chicken, and leaving young Mink- ler, he pushed on to Holderman's for treatment. Soon after Goisline left him, Mr. Minkler met Peter Specie
DRESSED IN HIS FATHER'S CLOTHES,
riding horseback. As soon as he saw him he was so shocked that he could hardly stand on his feet. He thought, " That man has killed my father." As soon as Specie ascertained who young Minkler was, he said, " If you want to see your mother alive you must get home to-night." It appeared that Mrs. Minkler was taken dangerously ill, and Specie was asked to go after the absent son. But he had no clothes to wear. His only
111
DEATH OF MRS. MINKLER.
garments were his squatter's suit of buckskin and jean, so greasy and antiquated and powder-stained, that after living a month in the same house with eastern raiment, he was ashamed to wear them through so progressive a town as Ottawa. The poor, but kind-hearted man, therefore, borrowed his tenant's coat and hat, and was then willing to set forth on the journey. Smith Mink- ler arrived at the Specie cabin at midnight, and at nine in the morning his mother died-the first of the party to lay down her life in the new land. She was buried on Mr. Minkler's new claim, now owned by James Stevenson, on the west side of Specie Grove, where the rays of the setting sun would fall upon her grave. The remains have since been removed to the cemetery. She had said before starting on the long journey to the unknown West: "I do not expect to enjoy it myself, but for the sake of my children, I am willing to go." And like many another mother, she gave not only her enjoyment, but her life, for her chil- dren's sake.
After the funeral, Smith Minkler returned to his uncle at Holderman's, and the following day he also died. Ansel Reed was sent there one morning on an errand, and remembers seeing the injured man with his wounded arm swollen frightfully. Ebenezer Morgan was there at the time. The Pearces and Wilson had arrived a little before. Hazel brush covered the present site of Oswego, and an Indian trail ran through it. Mr. Mink- ler was down there one day when Wilson's boys were astride of an Indian pony, and the Indians with wild shouts of glee were pulling it along the trail. It seemed
-
112
HISTORY OF KENDALL COUNTY.
to be great fun for them. Such little photographic scenes give us more vivid ideas of the times than pages of description. One picture might be entitled, "Kill- ing hogs." for those animals after the Indian war rapidly increased in the woods and were added to by the stock of every new settler. The elements of a picture are a man on horseback, dressed in a "warmas," an overcoat made of an Indian blanket, and carrying a rifle. He sights his game, and at the first shot brings it down, ties it by the snout to his horse's tail, and wends his way homeward.
Those wild hogs were often the most dangerous beasts that roamed the woods. Long nosed, long legged, gaunt and fleet, and savage as wolves : they could be caught alive only by separating them by dogs.
It was hard times for a few years. Mr. Minkler's family once lived on frozen potatoes and hulled corn while the father was away for provisions. Mr. Macom- ber had a mortar in a burned out stump, and a pounder hung over it on a spring pole, where the corn was pounded up. Yet the times were weathered through and prosperity waited on the other side, though as Mr. Minkler says, " Any young man who will let tobacco and cigars and billiards alone can pay for a farm now, at present prices, easier than we did at the government price." Mr. M. began early in the horticultural career which he has since followed so successfully. He got his first apple trees of Specie, cradling wheat for a dollar a day, and giving the dollar for four trees. Specie had raised them from the seed, and he thus became the pioneer nurseryman of Kendall county. Those apple
113
THE FIRST APPLE TREES.
trees are bearing yet, and with praiseworthy persistence in well doing, yielded their usual crop in the centen- nial year. Fit pattern for mankind. It is only a useful life that leads to an honored old age; and in the Christ- ian's service there is no discharge until death, and that old age only is truly honorable that bears good fruit unto the end.
CHAPTER XVII.
TOWNSHIP PIONEERS.
AAVID EVANS, from western North Caro- lina, was the first settler in Little Rock. He had a friend in the army, in the Black Hawk war, who was with his com- rades, under General Scott, in their chol- era-stricken march through northern Kendall. He liked the appearance of the country, and told Mr. Evans where to find the best land in the Fox River Valley. He followed directions, coming up the Illinois river to the Fox, up the Fox to the Big Rock creek, and up the creek two miles and a-half, and made his claim where Noah Evans now lives. There were none to dispute his claim ; no mark of white man's hand was anywhere to be seen. The following spring he brought on his fam- ily-wife, two sons and a daughter-and the only sur- viving son owns and occupies the farm still.
Another who could have competed with Mr. Evans for
114
HISTORY OF KENDALL COUNTY.
the honor of being the first settler in Little Rock was
JOHN DARNELL,
who in 1833 made his claim on the west side of Little Rock creek timber, and built his cabin where his widow, Leah Darnell, still lives. Except at Oswego and Bristol he was the only settler with a family for many miles north of the river. He, too, was from North Carolina, and had been four years in Marshall county, in the same region with the Hollenbacks and Havenhills and others. Fort Darnell, in the war of the previous year, was built on his father's farm, near Magnolia, by running a stock- ade around his house and well. Three years before, a poor boy by the name of John S. Armstrong, stopped there on his way from Ohio. The good success that has since attended the skill and energy of that same poor boy is too well known to us all to need relating here. It is a pity, however, that he did not locate nearer the borders of Kendall county, that we might legitimately expatiate on the romance of that early journey, and his coming to the Darnell cabin forty-eight years ago.
The news sent back by John Darnell was so encour- aging that the ensuing spring his father, Benjamin Dar- nell, and his brothers, James, Abram, Enoch, Benjamin and Larkin came on. The latter died soon after. James claimed on Big Rock creek, below Evans', and Abram and Enoch by the Fox river timber in Fox township. Other settlers in Little Rock in 1833 were Holland Par- sons, William Campbell and Mr. Cox.
The first improved claim in Seward was made in the spring of 1832 by an Irishman by the name of Hugh Walker, an acquaintance of Thomas Covill's of Ottawa.
115
TOWNSHIP PIONEERS.
He built a log hut on the east side of the Aux Sable timber, on land now owned by Mr. House, broke up ten acres and sowed it to wheat, and barring his puncheon door with a basswood back log, hurried over the prairie away from the Indians, and forted at Plainfield. He boarded with a Mr. Fish, and having nothing else where- with to pay his board bill he turned over to his host his Aux Sable field of wheat, perhaps regarding the danger of harvesting it to be as much as it was worth. But Fish secured the services of the home soldiers and they cut it for him, part standing guard while part reaped the grain. The war closed in time for Mr. Walker to sow his field to winter wheat, but neither did he reap that, for the next spring he sold to
CHESTER HOUSE,
of Oneida county, N. Y., who came to Plainfield pros- pecting. and meeting Mr. Covill, was piloted out to Kendall county. He visited the springs at Plattville first, but finally made his claim on the west bank of the Aux Sable, opposite Walker's. There, a few rods from a beautiful sulphur spring, he built his cabin, hauling the necessary lumber from Plainfield. It contained but one room, the roof leaked, and snakes gathered the crumbs that fell through the wide seams in the floor. But it was a home, though so different from the com- fortable surroundings that were left behind ; and not only a home, but a frequent resting place for the trav- eler, and a beacon light, for persons were so often lost on the prairie that through the whole of the ensuing win- ter on dark nights Mrs. House kept a candle burning in the west window,-and so level was the prairie, and so
116
HISTORY OF KENDALL COUNTY.
clear from underbrush and trees, that the feeble "light in the window " could be seen for six or eight miles.
The present residence of J. W. House stands on the site of the old cabin. Mr. House bought out Mr. Walker, and embraced both sides of the creek.
In the fall
JOHN SHURTLIFF
made the claim which he still occupies, on the Aux Sable creek, one mile below House's. He came from Vermont to Plainfield with Chester Smith in 1831, and had therefore been two years in the country before he became the second permanent settler in the town of Sew- ard. He hired Peter Specie to break seven acres for him, paying him by driving his breaking team one month. Specie had six or seven yoke of oxen, and did breaking and teaming for the settlers.
Mr. See's claim at the Aux Sable springs had passed into other hands, and was sold to
DANIEL PLATT
for $80. Mr. Platt's ancestors were the founders of the historic town of Plattsburg, N. Y., where the British troops, September 11th, 1814, while resolutely attempt- ing to cross the bridge, were mowed down by the Amer- icans until the river for three-quarters of a mile below was red with blood. He was but a little boy then, but well remembers that terrible battle. He came West with Burnett Miller, his brother-in-law, and Platt Thorne, following the Sac trail to Ottawa. Having bought his claim he erected a board shanty for his family while he was building a more commodious log cabin, and thus became the first actual settler in the town of Lis-
117
AUX SABLE WELLS.
bon. The name Aux Sable means Sandy creek. It was in those days a more pretentious stream than now ; forty years of civilization has tamed its spirit. It was remark- able for springs and ponds, and for abundance of fish. One pond, near the road, on Platt's premises, was eighty rods long and ten rods wide, and so full of pickerel that in summer when the long grass growing up impeded their progress, they would jump in the canoe. One could go out in the morning and catch enough fish for breakfast in a few minutes. The grass grew as high as one's head, and was three or four feet high over the prai- ries everywhere. The springs are magnetic. The entire district was probably at one time the bed of a large river which flowed at right angles to the present streams, but parallel with the main bed of the Aux Sable. Obadiah Naden, one mile south, and George Mason, six miles south-east, each have flowing wells. The latter was sinking a tubular well, and when fifty-five feet below the surface water was struck, which flowed over the top, and it has continued to flow ever since. The last of Mr. Platt's wells was sunk in 1871. They were located by Mr. Harper, a water wizard of Plattville, with a forked apple twig held fork downward under his nose. But how much the twig had to do with it is still undecided. The wells are at the store, house and barn ; the deepest, fifty-one feet; the third, thirty-one feet, and flows un - ceasingly through a two inch pipe.
Big Grove received several accessions from Oneida county, N. Y. William Perkins, Eben and Levi Hills came at the same time. Eben Hills came overland with the families, while the other men came by water, and
118
HISTORY OF KENDALL COUNTY.
selected their claims along by Big Grove, west of Haven- hill's. In 1835 Levi Hills rented the tavern stand and one hundred acres of land of Mr. Holderman, and re-let the land to Mr. Perkins. There was a large amount of travel, which had been increasing since 1833, for
THE STAGE LINE
between Chicago and St. Louis began to run that sum- mer, via Plainfield, Platt's, Holderman's and Ottawa. J. T. Temple was proprietor of the line. The first stage, with its spanking four horse team, left Chicago July 4th, and was piloted to Ottawa by J. T. Caton, since Judge. This was an important event for the infant settlements, and placed Kendall county at once on one of the national highways. And in the judgment of our fathers, sup- ported by the unasked and often emphatically expressed opinions of travelers, we had as flattering a prospect of becoming great as anything on the lake end of the line.
August 10th, Chicago was organized into a corporate village, and soon after the Chicago Democrat was started.
The village of Naperville, however, had at that time the largest number of inhabitants, and at Hadley, then called O'Plain, in Will county, the Baptist church was organized by Rev. A. B. Freeman, one week before the first organized church in Chicago.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE OLD TRAPPERS.
F
BOUT the time Mr. Goisline died at Holder- inan's Grove, and Mrs. Minkler at Specie Grove, Big Thunder, the renowned Winne- bago chief, died in his lodge at Belvidere, and was buried sitting up, wrapped in blan- kets. His tomb was a log pen, covered with earth, and it was carefully kept in repair by his people as long as they remained there. Their time was not long, for the edict had gone forth that all Indians must leave their native hunting grounds and cross the great river toward the setting sun. Sep- tember 27th, 1833,
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