USA > Illinois > Lee County > History of Lee County, Illinois, Volume I > Part 33
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"George E. Haskell, a merchant of Inlet Grove, had his little trunk with its cash contents taken from under his bed one dark, stormy night, and broken open at the neighboring blacksmith shop, and of course, the money taken. Nobody could explain the probable villain concerned, yet four of our best appearing citizens were the transgressors.
"Proverbially, 'Murder will out,' and the same may be said of all other transgressions.
"A quantity of merchandise had been stolen in an adjoining county, and samples of the stolen goods betrayed clothes of the same cloth in the tailor's shop of Thomas Brown, at Inlet Grove. Four of our honest neighbors had engaged garments made by Mr. Brown, and had furnished material corresponding with sam- ples two gentlemen carried who were in pursuit of the transgress-
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ors. The magistrate confided the fact of the find to only a few of us until the papers of arrest were ready and the four gentlemen simultaneously were arrested by the sheriff and taken to prison.
"These men, when taken before two of our magistrates, were ordered to be delivered to the sheriff of LaSalle county, where the goods were stolen. By (their) counsel, the verdict was declared to be illegal and resistance was advised. The people then came for- ward in a rage. We took the ground that two judges had decided the law, and they were the best and only civil court just then at hand; so the people volunteered what necessary aid the sheriff might need to see the verdict executed.
"The prisoners were loaded into the LaSalle county conveyance and the play, up to that point, was complete. After examination, I think three were allowed bail for appearance at the circuit court, and the fourth one sent to jail for want of bail bonds. The fourth man in jail threatened to turn states evidence if his richer con- federates did not bail him out. He was duly encouraged to do so, and he did. Some of the guilty gang were allowed to visit the jail, and sleep there so they would converse and acknowledge facts the people wanted the jury to know. Before the final trial came testi- mony sufficiently fatal was gained. Three of the prisoners went to states prison and he who testified against the gang disappeared from sight and hearing among us to this day. We watched him with rifles as citizens, in his and our own defense. I think he might have been spirited away and his valuable testimony lost, had we not given him needed protection."
With the publication of this valuable diary, the story of the conviction in the LaSalle county circuit court. of Adolphus Bliss. Joseph Sawyer and Daniel Miller Dewey, is told. Never before has it been possible to tell the story accurately. Reasons of fear, or maudlin sympathy for others, has kept it from the pages of history until at this minute not one living person out near the old scenes of action knows for what crime the culprits suffered. In every single instance T have been told that it was for fencing stolen property, instead of receiving it. even by the few who were alive though young, at the time. Once West had told his story and his companions had been removed, he disclosed other important stories. Among the names disclosed of other guilty participants as well as actors, were Charles Oliver, Jr., and William McDowell, of Rock- ford, Fox and Birch, Bridge. Davis, Thomas Aiken and Baker. Among other revelations made by West, was the plan by which MeKenney's store was robbed, and the names of the robbers. In
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Bureau county another cumulative circumstance dovetailed very nicely with West's confession.
There, the gang tried to railroad another member to the peni- tentiary who was feared to be getting weak-kneed. While in jail the fellow confirmed the secrets of the Mulford robbery, already communicated by one Irving A. Stearns and West, and in conse- quence Oliver and McDowell of Winnebago county and William K. Bridge of Ogle county were indicted for committing the Mul- ford robbery, and after considerable strategy, all were arrested and taken to Rockford. Bail was refused. A month later, the murder of Colonel Davenport, July 4, 1845, fanned the slumbering anger of the people into a fury. Ang. 26, 1845, the trial of Oliver et al. was commenced at Rockford before Judge Thomas C. Browne. Stearns, who had gravitated into the Michigan peniten- tiary, and West were produced as witnesses. West testified that while Oliver was not present, he planned the Mulford robbery and received a share of the stolen money. A sharp cross-examination failed to break his story and Oliver was found guilty and sentenced to the Alton penitentiary for eight years. Later McDowell was convicted. Bridge took a change of venue to Ogle county, where he pleaded guilty and was sentenced.
Bliss died in the penitentiary. Miller Dewey never returned. Sawyer, however, did return to brave publie feeling and he lived not far from the early scenes of his activities until the day of his death many years afterwards. In this connection it may be interesting to know that Sawyer was appointed first overseer of the poor for Lee county on April 16, 1840.
It took courage to combat that lawless gang ; but the good people of the Inlet community had that courage, and in a new center of social activity the community's refined enjoyments were carried to loftiest points.
That removal was begun in 1844, and very soon thereafter it was completed. Lee Center was planned in 1846, and with the erection of the Academy, Inlet left the map. But before leaving its actors altogether I may as well add that an Inlet man, Milan Barnes, drove the stage coach from Chicago to Dixon which con- tained Bonney and his prisoner, Birch.
Inlet was located on both sides of Inlet creek at the point where the Chicago mail and stage road crossed it. The business portion of the place was located on the east side, although improvised taverns were to be found on the west side, and Bliss and the Deweys lived on the west side. The Travelers Home was on the west side.
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Oscar Dewey, son of Corydon R. Dewey, who was born in the old log cabin at Inlet in 1840, informed me that his father located there in 1836. He told me also that Thomas J. Gray kept tavern on the east side and also the barns where the stage horses were changed. Gray and his sister, subsequently Mrs. DeWolf (now of Dixon), kept a grocery store whose stock included tobaccos. And right here it should be explained that Corydon R. Dewey, though related, should not in any manner be associated with Miller Dewey. He also is my authority for the statement that David Tripp, Sr., kept a log tavern on the east side of the creek, one room of which was used as a school room. Corydon R. Dewey permitted his house to be used as a tavern during the California fever, but that was all.
He erected a sawmill on the west side of the creek and a Major Chamberlain erected one on the east side. By a trade made soon after, Dewey became owner of the Chamberlain mill and he ran both until into the fifties.
Mr. Albert Z. Bodine confirmed the Tripp tavern and school room story and added that there had been three David Tripps in Lee Center, the grandfather of the tavern and his son and grand- son.
At Lee Center, when Inlet had removed there, Mr. Bodine clerked in the Hitchcock store for two years while Luke Hitchcock was postmaster, in fact, the first postmaster of Lec Center; and during that time he received the mails from the stages going in each direction ; that from Chicago was due at 10:30 P. M., and that from Dixon was due at 10 P. M., when on time. When, however, the roads were muddy and the going bad, the mails came along at any time of night and sometimes not until the noon following, pretty much as trains nowadays come along.
He told me also that the fare from Dixon to Chicago was $5 and from Inlet and Lee Center, $4.50.
Corn at market then was worth in trade 10 cents; wheat in Chicago was worth 35 and 40 cents; cattle on the hoof, 2 or 21/2 cents ; dressed pork, 215, cents.
From Dixon, Lee Center was the first stop, then at Inlet, the stage still stopped to change horses: Melugin's Grove was the next stop, where at JJohn Gihore's the horses were changed. Then at West Paw Paw, the next stop was made, it being the desire of the Frink and Walker people to make no more than twelve miles at a time. Trips were made every day but Sunday.
At Lee Center the old Daniel Frost tavern still stands, pretty much as it did then. John Eisenberg ocenpies it. I also learned
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from Mr. Bodine that groceries were bought pretty generally at Peru; but that Chicago was the best wheat and livestock market.
A day and a half, or a day and half the night, were consumed generally in making the stage trip to Chicago.
Mrs. James M. Shaw, daughter of Russel Linn, of Lee Center, gave me the best account of the old days I was able to get in all of my Inlet work. The old red and yellow stage coaches, droning along, appeared to her vision as distinctly as when they used to travel past the home of her father, on the old Chicago road. They were of the old Concord type, rounding up front and rear, and given their easy swinging motion because they rested on leather springs, layered together in fourteen lavers.
Mrs. Shaw went through the fearful tornado or cyclone of 1860. She and Mrs. E. M. Grose, who live in Dixon, and Ira W. Lewis, also of Dixon, all of whom passed through the storm, have given me the information from which I am able to give the first connected story of that devastating storm.
The storm struck Lee county at about the center of the west line of Harmon township. It passed directly through Harmon and Marion townships, almost in a straight easterly direction, and aside from little destruction of fencing, did nothing destructive in either town. In continued its easterly course into Amboy township, but almost immediately it veered to the northeast and, passing to the north of the city of Amboy, it did the first real damage when it reached the farm of Michael Morse on the northeast quarter of section 9 in Amboy township. Here the buildings were demolished. Mr. Morse was badly hurt and his wife, Trial, and their daughter, Emma, were killed.
Continuing northeasterly, it reached the farm of Isaac Gage. In passing it shook the Linn house in which Mrs. Shaw was sitting. like a cradle, and the vibrations of that awful evening come back to her in all their awful realism, whenever the day returns to her memory.
Every building on the Gage place on the northwest quarter of section 1 in Amboy township was destroyed, and Ethelbert, a young son, was killed. Another son was injured so badly that he died soon afterwards. Another son, Luke, also was injured so seriously that he was an invalid for many years. A daughter. Helen, by name. also was disabled for a long time.
Mrs. Grose in describing the scene told me she felt sure the duration of the evelone was not more than a minute and a very short one too.
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At the same instant ahnost, the wind struck a tenant house just across the road from the Gage place, on the premises of Judge Lorenzo Wood, lifted it from the ground and never again did any- body ever hear of that house. Not a single board or splinter of all the debris was ever found or recognized. The homestead in which Judge Wood lived was wrecked a little but not much. The tenants in the tenant building were spilled out, but not injured to speak of. The ceiling above in the Wood house was pushed down and it pinned down Judge Wood, who was lying on the bed, so that he could scarcely move ; yet he was not scratched. The Peter LaForge house was hit next. His kitchen was cut off neatly from the main part of the house, but the damage was very slight indeed.
The Horace Preston place was visited next. Mrs. Grose is a daughter of Mr. Preston and she went through experiences in this storm which come to few people, and she earnestly prays that it never will come again to any members of her family. Upstairs, Mr. Preston said to his wife, "Go down into the cellar." Mrs. Preston picked up the little three-year-old boy and started down stairs and Mr. Preston picked up the little eight-year-old daughter, Ella, now Mrs. Grose, and the little four-year-old daughter, one under each arm, and started for the cellar ; but before Mr. Preston had advanced six feet the roof went off and he and the children, still in his arms, were sent sailing over the tops of trees, and he landed on his feet in the garden, about three hundred and fifty feet away. Mrs. Preston held on to the boy, Horace, Jr., and he was killed in her arms.
A splinter was sent into the side of Mr. Preston which troubled him fearfully and ultimately took him off in death.
In the cellar of the Preston house there were eggs, pans of milk, and other articles, but not one single thing was disturbed by even so little as a hair's breadth. The clothes of the girls were torn to shreds.
While visiting Mrs. Grose on Nov. 21. 1913, she brought me the family Bible which was sent over the fields a great distance and later recovered. This book sustained scarcely any damage, but another smaller book, entitled "The School and the Schoolmaster," by Alonzo Potter, published by Harper and Brother in 1844, was so covered with inud that its contents were nearly obliterated, and to this day the mid sticks just as closely as it did the hour it was recovered. A churn was blown five miles. In the Preston house stood a stove. Its top was taken off as smoothly as though removed
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by a cold chisel and sent half a mile away. A crock, too, was sent along for company and it was not cracked.
An iron kettle which Mrs. Grose owns still was thrown into the well and into it was hurled a flatiron, yet the kettle was not scratched.
Between the Preston house and barn stood a straw hog house. When the storm had passed it was discovered that not one straw seemed to have been disturbed. The cattle and horses all were driven away, but the horses all returned and the cattle were found subsequently and brought back home.
One incredible incident occurred on the Preston place which has been vouched for by many who saw it. A corn stalk was driven clear through one of the boards of the wagon bed. Chickens were plucked of their feathers and the next morning the poor things were running wildly about the place until relieved of their suffer- ings by shooting.
At the Daniel Frost place next in its path, little damage was done. At the Martin Wright place the tornado did some very freakish anties. Every bit of the house was demolished with the exception of one part of one wall. On a conch against this wall Mrs. Wright, an invalid, had been lying. While her sister sustained fearful bruises, including a broken jaw, Mrs. Wright was not dis- turbed.
The storm just grazed the village of Lee Center. From this point it veered northeasterly and caught the barn of Cyreno Saw- ver and killed a horse. On the John Lane place on the Franklin Grove road, not far from Lee Center, the premises were leveled off as smoothly as a floor after a sweeping.
Then crossing over still further to the northeast, the Colton place was struck. The house was demolished and Nettie Colton, a beautiful young girl in her early teens, was killed instantly. Her older sister, in her night robe, crossed the fields to the house of her uncle, Cephas Clapp, for help.
The Woodruff place was the last to suffer in those parts ; but not extensively. The loss was slight although the inmates of the house were shaken badly. Returning to an easterly course, the storm swept over the swamps and by reason of the lack of houses, no damage was done until it entered the town of Willow Creek. In that town it was very destructive and a detailed account of it will be found in that part of the book referring to Willow Creek town- ship.
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In Lee Center the churches were moved from their founda- tions, but it remained for the subsequent storm of 1862 to complete the work of destruction of the church property. In that year a cyclone destroyed the Methodist Episcopal church and played as many fantastic tricks with stoves and other articles as the one of '60 did at the Preston house. Aside from this damage, however, no serious damage was done around Lee Center.
In the storm of '60 everything struck by the cyclone was plastered with mud; the Preston baby was covered in a manner almost to defy human skill in the efforts made to remove it.
Mrs. Grose said the storm roared very like the passing of a train of cars at lightning speed. The day had been excessively hot and the air was hunnid. The destroying cloud was inky black and as I have stated, it seemed to Mrs. Preston as though no more than one minute at the very outside was consumed in its passage from the Gage house to its flight across the swamps.
Though third in point of settlement, Inlet early took on an importance second only to Dixon's Ferry, and although the lady did not settle in Inlet when first introduced to Lee county, a Lee Center lady came into the county in 1832.
Mrs. S. W. Phelps, starting from New York city, came via the Kellogg trail from Springfield in 1832 and her letter describing that journey, found in the section of this history which concerns trails, will be read with consuming interest.
In 1852, twenty years after, she came to Lce Center to live.
From the most reliable sources at hand, I am led to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Adolphus Bliss became the first permanent settlers of Lee Center township. They reached this township in May, 1834. Mrs. Bliss was the first white woman to come to the township and the second white woman to settle in Lee county. The family lived in their new home about a year before a neighbor came to settle near them, the Dixons being their nearest neighbors. Not far from their home two hundred Indians were encamped, waiting for their pay under recent treaties. John Fosdick was the blacksmith employed by the Goverment to mend their guns. These Indians must have remained some time for their money because when later Mrs. Tra Brewer and Mrs. Lewis Clapp had moved in, both testified to some quiet scares sustained from the Indians. In the case of Mrs. Clapp, she was frying doughnuts when several Indians walked unceremoniously into the kitchen and ranged themselves around the wall. Then the leader or chief relieved her of her doughnuts.
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From well authenticated authorities, I have found the follow- ing settlers to have reached Inlet in the following years. Some of them may have settled just outside of Lee Center township, but they were regarded as Lee Center people.
Volney Bliss came with his people in 1834. His father, Adol- phus, took up for claims the west half of the southwest quarter of section four and the northeast quarter of section 9, in Lee Center township. Charles F. Ingalls settled in the southern part of the township in 1836. Sherman Shaw, who drove from New York state all the way to Inlet with two pigs as part of his worldly possessions, reached Inlet in 1837. Moses Crombie came in 1837; Cyrenus Sawyer, 1835; Joseph Sawyer, 1835; Ira W. Lewis, 1842: Warren D. Clink, 1841 : Orrin M. Lewis, 1847; Ephraim Whitney, 1845; Joseph A. Hodges, 1845; Edwin Morey, 1847; Willard Sals- bury, 1847 ; Thomas Nicholson, 1848; John Wedlock, 1848.
Several families moved into the Inlet district in 1835-36 and 37. Besides Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Clapp and Mr. and Mrs. Ira Brewer, I find the names of Jolm Fosdick, the David Tripp family, Sher- man Shaw, C. R. Dewey and Orange Webster; in 1837 Mr. Birdsall and his sons-in-law, Luke Hitchcock and Oscar F. Ayres, all of whom stopped at the Tripp house. The Tripp house seems to have been a popular tavern because so many stopped with him.
Dr. R. F. Adams, the first physician, arrived in 1837, and he was made welcome.
Roswell Streeter made a claim in Lee Center, but he did not settle on it until the following year when he moved his family ont from Allegany county, New York. This man's claim ineluded the spot upon which Lee Center village now stands. These with a Doctor Hubbard, a Doctor Welch, Dr. Charles Gardner, Charles Ingalis, C. F. Ingalls, Dr. Ephraim Ingalls, C. L. Sawyer, Rev- erend De Wolf ( who stopped at the Tripp house ), Miss Ann Cham- berlin, Otis Timothy, were among the number who settled thus early in Lee Center township.
Inlet comprised everything clear through to the western and southern county lines. In Inlet and Lee Center the abolition movement in Lee county had its origin. In the fall of 1846, the first abolition society was formed in the log schoolhouse one mile west of Lee Center. John Cross, a Congregational minister and a man who boasted of keeping an underground station for the assist- ance of negroes into Canada, issued a call to meet in that school- honse for the purpose of forming an abolition society.
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Owen Lovejoy was present and made a rousing speech. A Free Soil club was organized of which Russel Linn was made president. Among the members of the society who were present then were: Martin Wright, Lewis Clapp, Sylvester Frisbee, Ransom Barnes, Joseph Farwell, Bononi Hannon, Daniel Frost, Ira Brewer, Moses Crombie and John Cross.
So, too, the first temperance society was a Lee Center product. Joseph Gardner was its president and President Francis Leonard of the Academy made an address at its first meeting. Among the members were Doctor Wasson; Rev. Charles Cross, Doctor Welch, Rev. John Ingersoll, Rev. Ike Hitchcock, Rev. Erastus De Wolf, Rev. George Benton, Reverend Fisk, H. H. Andrews. (Last two from Dixon.) These gentlemen all addressed the meeting. Other members present were Charles F. Ingalls, Joseph Lewis, Bernard Whitney. Betsey Hale, Caroline Whitney, Miranda Strickland, N. Peterson, Warren Henry Badger, Michael Henry Blooker, John C. Church, William S. Frost, O. W. Clapp, Cyrus Bridgeman, Ransom Barnes, Lyman Wheat. At some of their meetings Deacon Joseph Farwell led the singing with his violin. On one Sunday a temperance tune was struck up to the tune of Old Dan Tucker. The minister remonstrated mildly, but the tune went to a finish.
The name of this temperance society was the Washington Tem- perance Society of Palestine Grove and its first meeting was held in the Wasson schoolhouse, September, 1847. Some four hundred signed the pledge, the first being Charlotte Doan and the last one Chester Badger.
As an educational center, Lee Center is entitled to more than passing notice and comment. For many years the village of Lec Center was the best known community in the county and students from every section of the country attended the Academy there.
In respect of education, Lee Center was started right. Almost every one of the early settlers, beginning with Inlet, were from New England and had received more than a casual education. Many were teachers and it is astonishing to notice the numbers of physicians and ministers who gravitated to that place. Naturally their first thought was of edneation for their children.
So early as 1836, a school was opened in the Adolphms Bliss house, one room serving the purpose. A room in Tripp's tavern also was used. Miss An Chamberlain taught the same during the summer of 1836 and thus became the first teacher in Lee Center township.
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In 1837, I believe, the first school building was built of logs; its cracks were chinked with mud ; the floor was laid with split logs. A fireplace with chimney made on the outside, of rough stones, fur- nished heat when the weather demanded a fire. Split logs or puncheons were made into seats; a desk for the teacher was con- structed after the same pattern as the seats. The building was built in the edge of the timber, not far from Mr. Bliss's house. A hazel thicket on the Bliss place sereened it off from the road effectually. Over the creek which had to be crossed by some, there was no bridge, and those pupils who came from the opposite side took off their shoes and stockings, and fording the stream, resumed the shoes and pushed forward to school. Ira Brewer helped to build this log school.
For three months in the winter of 1837-38, Mr. Otis Timothy taught in this school. Afterwards George E. Haskell, who came to Inlet early, taught in that schoolhouse and a most satisfactory teacher he proved to be. Mr. Timothy's salary was $15 per month and he was boarded round. During his stay he had twenty or twenty-five pupils. A. G. Streeter was one of his pupils, a gentle- man of national renown subsequently, having been a prominent candidate for President of the United States.
One of Mr. Haskell's methods for securing efficiency was to offer 50 cents to the pupil who left off head most times in a termn.
By the year 1843 there were several schools around Inlet. In one of those Mrs. Sallie P. Stark, or Starks, taught five boys and five girls ranging in age from the lisping child to the young person of twenty or a little more perhaps. This teacher taught twelve hours per day and the year round, I am told.
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