USA > Illinois > Lee County > History of Lee County, Illinois, Volume I > Part 32
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In some places the name has been spelled Crofts; in others, Croft, but by far the best authorities spell it Croft.
It will be noticed too that the girl's given name is spelled in two ways. I would think the one used in the verdicts was right.
CHAPTER XXIV
HAMILTON TOWNSHIP
Hamilton is comparatively new in the matter of history, for the very good reason that for a long period, most of it was under water. Winnebago swamp covered it until a general system of drainage brought the land into a state of cultivation.
I may say just a word here to the effect that for years at first, Winnebago swamp was applied to both the very large swamps which lay in Lee county. After settlements grew, however, the eastern portion was called Inlet and the western portion was still called Winnebago. Inlet creek or Green river connects them. Between, for a distance of six or eight miles, the land was not sub- merged. In fact the city of Amboy lies midway between them.
For a long while all that territory now embraced within the township of East Grove, May, Hamilton and the south half of Marion, was called Hamilton. Later, East Grove and Hamilton were thrown together and known as Hamilton. Until Lee county was organized, this territory was a part of old Inlet.
In 1856 May was organized ; in 1859 Marion was organized and in 1865 East Grove was organized and taken from Hamilton. Since that date, Hamilton has remained six miles square ; a government township.
The earliest history of Hamilton has not been preserved and dates at first will be found but seldom.
Either Charles or Ross Freeman, brothers, was the first man to build a house in Hamilton. He built on the south half of section 32, but the date is not known. Subsequently this house was moved to another location and converted into a schoolhouse.
Jacob Pope, a German, was the first man to build a house and make a home. and he built on the southeast of 26 in 1854. Morris Logue from New Jersey came in 1854. David and John Knight Vol 1-23
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from Ohio came in 1854. David Griggs, another Ohio man, settled there in 1857. J. F. McMurray, a Pennsylvanian, arrived there in the spring of 1857. In 1856 Amos T. Keigwin bought the north- west of 27 and in 1858 built a house thereon. He came from Wind- ham, Connecticut. In 1858 E. D. Carpenter built for Amos Stone, a house on the northeast of 26. J. Shields bought and moved upon land in 13 and 24, in 1858. William Scully settled on the northwest of 24 in 1858. Michael Dunn settled on 24 in 1859. Bennett Havens came about the same time. L. B. Moore and M. Fleming came in the early sixties.
By reference to the old maps it will be noticed that the Rev. N. C. Collins was a conspicuous figure in Hamilton lands. HIe bought swamp land heavily and held it for many years. He lived in LaMoille at the time.
All of the above named settlers moved into the township from the south and settled on the south side of the swamp. The north side remained vacant for some time longer, evidencing the oft repeated story that the settlers worked outward from the highways and even then ventured but slowly because of the fear of the prai- ries. In such a town as Hamilton, which not only was treeless, but covered with water, it should cause no surprise at its lateness of settlement.
On the north side of the swamp Arold T. Anderson, of Polo, opened up a farm on section 7. William Rink of Dixon was the first to break up land on the north side of the town. He owned part of section 3. The first settler there was John D. Shafer, a bachelor. He built a cabin on section 8 and herded vast numbers of cattle over the unoccupied lands. That was a favorite spot for people from far and near to send their cattle to be pastured for the sum- mer. From as far as Dixon stock was sent down there.
James Durr settled on the northwest of 19 in 1862.
William B. Stuart served Hamilton as its first supervisor. R. B. Viele succeeded him. In 1855 Stuart was elected again.
Though slow to settle, Hamilton was alive to its needs from the start. Mrs. Cornelia Mayona, daughter of A. T. Keigwin taught the first school of the township in a room in the house of what later became the David Griggs house. Miss Lizzie Larkins and Miss Lavina Swisher followed. When MeMurray moved back into Burean county, his abandoned house was converted into a school- house and Mrs. Mayona taught there. Up until the fall of 1863 teachers were paid by subscription. Then district number one was formed and the next spring a building was bought from Ross Free-
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man on section 32 and moved over on section 34. This was used until 1874 when a new school building was built on section 35. District number two was organized at the same time as number one and Miss Lydia Havens taught the first school in a part of Thad- deus May's dwelling. In 1864 the first schoolhouse was built in the southeast corner of section 25. Afterwards it was moved to the southwest corner.
In the carly day the settler generally took his gun out on Sun- days. Game was more than abundant. It was almost a nuisance. Water fowl almost clouded the skies when in flight over the swamps of Hamilton. Large flocks of ducks, geese, sand hill cranes, snipe and plover might be had almost with a sling shot. For years Ham- ilton was the sportman's paradise.
Meeting houses were not well attended in consequence. One was started over in Bureau county just over the line, in the Dodge schoolhouse. In order to interest the Hamilton people in church matters, several men took the matter in hand. They were David Griggs, William Griggs, Solomon Welch. J. F. McMurray, John- son Griggs and J. H. Knight, who contributed the salary of Rever- end Ford, a neighbor, who consented to preach. And pray, what do you think he was paid per Sunday for preaching? Fifty cents! Yet he succeeded in getting together a congregation. Prof. I. B. Dodge led the singing with his violin. Many of the congregation were not devout at all times. But the services were attended regn- larly and they had a beneficial influence on the community.
Religious services later were held irregularly at the homes of A. T. Keigwin, John H. Sayers and Ezekiel Savers.
The Hamilton of today is a township of wealth. Only a few days ago one solid section of land sold for $100 per acre. That was a rare bargain.
CHAPTER XXV
HARMON TOWNSHIP
Like other towns far removed from the old highways or stage lines, Harmon was one of the newer towns in point of settlement.
John D. Rosbrook is said to have been the first settler in this township. He bought a tract of land in the eastern part of the township, subdued it and very soon other settlers followed. But Mr. Rosbrook had few neighbors for a very long time.
In 1853, with three sons, he came from Niagara county, New York, and settled at the "Lake," a clear body of water covering something like forty acres of land. The following spring the two other sons came out. George Rosbrook held the plow that broke the first sod in Harmon township. Pretty soon Mrs. Robert Tuttle brought her family from Knox county and settled in Harmon. Mr. Tuttle, who had come from New Hampshire, settled in Knox county. He had been a lumberman, and desiring to obtain employ- ment in the forests of the North, he started to walk northward. At Dixon he was taken very sick. A man named Henry Stores drove down to Knox county and brought Mrs. Tuttle back to Dixon just in time to see her husband before he died. She was a sister of Mitchell Rosbrook and very soon she with her five children located in Harmon and built a good house. This was in 1854. Very soon she opened a private school in her house ; Miss Vienna Tuttle taught, and many a good old-fashioned dance was given in the early days by that same estimable lady, Mrs. Tuttle.
Ox teams were used to break the sod. Fortunately sod crops prospered with the new settlers so that no especial hardships were encountered.
In the early days of the country snakes were very plentiful and to some of Harmon's early settlers it seemed as though there were many more in that township than in any other town in the county.
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Rattlesnakes especially were a source of great annoyance. Blue racers would crawl over on the sod to bask in the sun and remain until the ox team came along to frighten them away. The blue racer many times grew excessively familiar. So much so that he would wind himself around the ankles of the plowboys and frighten them half to death.
In 1854 Thomas Sutton and his large family came to Harmon and settled a mile south of the lake. It is said of Sutton that there were nineteen children in his family and often he lamented because there were not an even twenty.
In 1854 Mitchell Rosbrook came to Lee county from New Hampshire with his family of wife and six children and two years later settled in Harmon. This devout gentleman founded the first Sunday school in Harmon township. It was held in the granary of John D. Rosbrook. This same Mitchell Rosbrook built the first house erected on Mount Washington in the White Mountains.
Lewis Hullinger, John L. Porter and James Porter, Jr., came along soon after. The first two elections were held at the house of Mitchell Rosbrook.
In 1856-57 Austin Balch with his wife and two children moved into the township. So did Joseph Julien, C. H. Seifkin, Israel Perkins, George Stillings, Henry and Louis Isles.
At this first election just mentioned, James McManus was elected supervisor: Mitchell Rosbrook, town clerk and George Stillings, constable.
Bogs, swamps and impassable sloughs bothered the Harmon people fearfully in the early day ; more perhaps than almost any other people, and the stories of miring down and the difficulties encountered in dropping into the mud, taking off the load and then taking the wagon apart to get it ashore, would baffle the autoist of today.
Game abounded in the township during its infancy to such an extent that to repeat some of the stories related of hunters would set down the person telling the story today, as an extravagant liar; vet those stories were true.
Mr. C. J. Rosbrook is the reliable authority for the statement that Charles K. Shellhamer shot one hundred geese down there in one day-a wagon box full. A hunter from Dixon, named Kipp who will be remembered by some of us older people, shot and killed thirty-six mallard ducks with one shot. Five deer out of a gang of thirteen were killed by a party of hunters. Cattle herding in Harmon was done on a scale as large as in Hamilton. Harmon too
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seemed to be in the line of cattle drives and Mr. Rosbrook has told us of one band of five thousand Texas cattle passing through Har- mon on the way to the Chicago market.
He also has told of us once seeing a colony of sandhill cranes not far away which covered nearly one thousand acres. Game was that plentiful.
When Alonzo Kinyon projected his road from Rock Falls through Lee county, it was graded through Harmon.
Lewis Hullinger, who came to the township in 1855, was super- visor at about the time the railroad demanded the issuance of bonds in consideration of the building through the township. Amboy, Brooklyn and Wyoming had voted the bonds and issued them. They litigated their legality, but ultimately the bonds had to be paid. Not so with Lewis Hullinger. He opposed the bond scheme and the issuance of any bonds and Harmon was spared the liability which nearly bankrupted Amboy, Wyoming and Brooklyn, largely through the pertinacions fight put up by Lewis Hullinger.
But the Harmon of today is a splendid body of land. Large sums of money have been spent to drain the land, and while some portions of the Harmon lands are sandy, the great majority is black loam, rich, and great crops are raised. As a grain market Harmon keeps pretty well in the lead. I doubt if there is more than one other town in the county which ships more grain than Harmon- something like six hundred thousand bushels last year, by the Neola and the other elevators.
D. D. Considine does an enormous business in general merchan- dising. Thomas P. Long also does an enormous business in agri- cultural implements. W. H. Kugler and Frank Kugler cach enjoy a fine general trade. Harmon has a bank, of which Mr. W. H. Kugler owns controlling interest.
The Harmon schools long have been noted for their efficiency. The building is a beautiful brick. H. J. Durr also runs a nice hard- ware business.
Harmon has one of the best plants for fire protection and domestic use in Lee county. A very modern standpipe produces a force sufficient to throw four streams over the tallest building. It is also forced into various homes and business blocks in the village.
At present. Harmon has a population of 350. It is located on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad.
It was through Harmon that the big tornado crossed before devastating so many homes further east. But in Harmon not a
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bit of damage was done. Of course not many people dwelt in this township then; but those who remember, say the storm had lost control of its force while crossing Harmon.
Recently, the Northwestern Railroad in reaching Peoria, entered Harmon township, but no station has been established in this township along the line of the road.
Harmon early learned the benefits of hard roads and now, year by year, her people are spending considerable sums for macadam for her muddy roads. The rural schools of Harmon township number six, I believe, and I am told that they rank just as high as the splendid village schools. County superintendents tell me that Harmon for years has had the best of schools and that the children rank high in all their examinations. Only a few months ago, St. Flannen's Catholic church burned down. Nothing was saved. Yet with commendable perseverance, the congregation went to work and in less than three months arrangements had been perfected and the funds had been provided to build the present beautiful new church and parsonage. Church work in Harmon and Marion takes front rank among the towns of Lee county. The new church and parsonage were dedicated last fall.
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CHAPTER XXVI
LEE CENTER TOWNSHIP
Seldom indeed, does one meet in fact or in fiction a spot around which so much and such intense dramatic interest has centered.
In the field of human activities, Lee Center township has wit- nessed scenes ranging from the very highest social and intellectual refinement and culture, as well as the sweetest religious privileges, down to revolting crimes and a veritable reign of terror.
Inlet, the first settlement of Lee Center township, in section 9, on the banks of Inlet creek, was the rendezvous of thieves, counterfeiters, fence-men and even murderers.
The house of one was made a common hiding place for stolen property. On the broad highway of the great state road, men came and left by night. Strange horsemen would alight; their horses would remain tethered in the deep grove near by, until the small hours of the morning, when as if by magic, horses and riders would disappear. The noise of loud voices would be heard, and behind those doors plans were concocted for all manner of crime from the stealing of peddlers' packs to their last crime, the murder of Colo- nel Davenport, July 4, 1845.
Did a settler at Inlet own a fine team, the circumstance was learned in Nauvoo, a favorite retreat, very soon, and very presently the settler's team disappeared. Did the settler remonstrate, a letter attached to a stone was thrown at night, through a window, to the effect that any further demonstrations by the settler would be followed by a hasty exit of the settler, dead or alive, from the settlement.
The ravages of this banditti of the prairie extended from Ohio and Kentucky to Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin. Inlet being a central and well known point, and favored by nature as well as by a small number of the first settlers, it early became a rendezvous of
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its members. Of those who at last resolved to take their lives in their hands and make the attempt to rid Inlet of their presence, were Sherman Shaw, Charles F. Ingalls, Rev. Luke Hitchcock, Dr. R. F. Adams, Moses Crombie, Lewis Clapp, Benjamin Whittaker, a Mr. Starks and his sons, and through their heroic efforts Inlet was cleansed. Those sturdy pioneers of Lee Center township sent to the penitentiary at Alton, Joseph Sawyer, Adolphus Bliss and Daniel Miller Dewey, and the witness who squealed. Charles West, so soon as he had delivered his testimony, left the country for his country's good. This drastic action was not taken so soon as the vigilance committees from Ogle, DeKalb and Winnebago, when in 1841, they shot the Driscolls; but the very instant the evidence was secured, that minute the Inlet branch of the banditti was dealt its death blow.
The heroic bravery required of that Lee Center Vigilance Com- mittee cannot be comprehended fully today, surrounded as we are by the highest safeguards of civilization. The Haskell robbery in June, 1844, and its extraordinary success, emboldened the thieves to the point of careless bravado, and in that moment of weakness the opening wedge was seenred by which a conviction was made possible.
Dewey "got up the sight" for the Haskell performance and Fox and Birch did the work : Fox on the inside of the Haskell house and Birch on the outside. Bonney in his "Banditti of the Prairie," page 14, second edition, mentions the matter thus:
"West acensed one Fox, alias Sutton, and John Baker of having committed the robbery at Troy Grove, and said that most of the goods had been secreted at Inlet Grove, and subsequently taken to Iowa. He also avowed that Fox and Birch, alias Becker, alias Harris, committed the robbery for which Bliss and Dewey were sent to prison, and that the former was totally innocent, while the latter was accessory, having 'got up the sight.' He further stated, that Fox had robbed one HFaseal, a merchant at Inlet, by entering the house during a very severe thunder storm, and crawling upon the floor till he reached the trunk, wherein was deposited the money, and having secured it, left without being heard, although Mr. and Mrs. Hascal were lying in the bed awake, at the time. To prove this, Fox subsequently stated the conversation that had passed between them while he was in the act of rifling the trunk !" P. 14, 2d ed. 1881.
The trunk was taken to the blacksmith shop and there opened and riffed.
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The operations of the banditti at Inlet contributed materially towards the establishment, in 1846, of the village of Lee Center, further to the northwest, on the Chicago road. Of course, rivalry and "feeling" had their influences, but the presence of such evil doers contributed most. Luke Hitchcock denominated Inlet, "A perfect Sodom."
Adolphus Bliss, the first settler, who came in 1834, was followed by Joseph Sawyer, Daniel Miller Dewey and Charles West, in 1836. With the opportunities afforded by the stage road for making a little ready money by keeping tavern, Sawyer took out the first license to keep a tavern ever issued in Ogle county and Bliss took out the second. They were issued by the county commissioners of Ogle county while in session at the house of F. Cushman, Buffalo Grove, March 6, 1837, and each paid therefor the sum of ten dollars. A schedule of charges they were permitted to make, will be found in that part of this work which treats of Ogle county.
Bliss called his tavern The Travelers Home. The sign, a rough board, was lettered irregularly, and nailed to the long log cabin. In order to boom the same he proceeded very much after the fashion of the present day town site people. On the next day, March 7, 1837, he and others presented a petition to the commis- sioners asking that viewers be appointed to view for a road, a route past The Travelers Home. He deposited the sum of five dollars to pay the viewers expenses, which according to the rules of the day, was to be returned to him in case the road was located accord- ing to the prayer of the petition. If not, it was to be used to pay the expenses of the commissioners. Those commissioners were John Dixon. Corydon R. Dewey and Zachariah Melugin and they reported unfavorably to the proposed road. .
On the 6th of March, 1837, at that same meeting, Inlet was set off as an election precinct and so far as its political independence was concerned, that day was the beginning of Inlet.
The judges appointed for the precinct were Zachariah Melugin, Thomas Dexter and the subsequently notorious Charles West.
Inlet took in a vast territory as must be noticed by the distance these commissioners lived one from the other. It was bounded on the north by Dixon, Grand Detour and Oregon City precincts ; on the east by the county line and on the south and west by the "lines of said county." The house of Corydon R. Dewey was made the polling place. At the same meeting an election was called for Dixon and Inlet, the only voting precinets in what now is Lee county, to be held April 12th, following, at which justices and
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constables were to be elected. Now, notice with what care the interests of the gang were conserved. Daniel Miller Dewey was elected justice and Charles West was elected constable, each receiv- ing seventeen votes. Quoting from an old Ogle county history we are told, "Justice Dewey, Constable West, Adolphus Bliss (of the old Travelers Home), his wife, Hannah, and a few others of their gang, because of their 'close' connection and seeret and suspicious ways of transacting public and private business, came to be known to the pioneers as 'Bliss, Dewey, West & Co.'"
If Dewey issued a writ against a member of the gang, Constable West never was able to find the offender. But he always provided himself with a very large supply of information as to the point in Iowa, Wisconsin or Indiana the culprit had fled.
The killing of the Driscolls on Monday, June 28, 1841, was supposed by thinking men to be sufficient evidence of the deter- mination by the settlers to rid the country of the banditti and to awe the other members of it. But that action only subdued certain of the Ogle county members. Other robberies continued with shocking frequency. On the night of Sept. 18, 1843, the store of William McKenney, of Rockford, was robbed of a trunk containing between seven hundred and eight hundred dollars. Scarcely had the excitement over this enormity subsided when a four-horse mail coach of the Frink and Walker line, about four miles out of Rock- ford on its way to Chicago, was robbed. The coach was full of passengers at the time and in full motion, yet the loss of the trunks and baggage was not discovered until the coach had reached New- burgh. Next morning the trunks and baggage were discovered, near the road, broken open and their valuable contents gone. It was a daring and a skillful robbery, but not more so than the one perpetrated a few weeks later, in which the house of William Mulford was entered.
It had been rumored that Mulford had received $15,000 from New York. That report soon reached the Inlet and other members of the band. Mulford lived in Guilford township, Winnebago county. Part of the gang stood over Mr. and Mrs. Mulford, while others searched the house and found $400 which they carried away. Of course the countryside was aflame with indignation ; but so well did the thieves cover their tracks that for the moment, they escaped.
In the summer of 1845, West became offended at other members of the firm "Bliss, Dewey, West & Co.," which fact very soon reached the ears of some members of the committee. West was prevailed on to squeal, and convictions followed. To repeat the
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matter as the story comes to me, let me copy an old diary I resur- rected just the other day in the family of the late J. H. Adams, of Amboy. It was kept by C. F. Ingalls. No names are mentioned for the very good reason that it was unwise to even commit to paper the names of members of the gang:
"Banditti of the Prairie.
"These misereants had a line of operations extending from Texas, through Indian Territory, Missouri, the corner of Iowa, and Illinois. The route of this gang extended through Lee county and directly through our settlement, and by my cabin.
"Members of the gang lived among us and often supposed to be worthy, first class citizens, harbored, lodged and fed these traveling cut-throat thieves and scoundrels. Those committing overt acts of crime, traveled mostly by night and were unknown among us, even if they were ever seen.
"The chances of theft were described to them by our good neighboring rascals, and the traveling expert sinners did the rest.
"The whole stockholders then divided the booty.
"The gang operated mainly among people who were neither rich nor poor. If the settlements were poor, there was not much to steal, and if rich, detection and punishment were likely to be dealt out to them. Dr. Adams had a valiable horse stolen, and the track was followed twenty-five miles to Princeton, Bureau county. A stream ran through a deep, unfrequented common in the neighbor- hood, and the horse had slipped its bridle and came out to its owner making its search.
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