History of Lee County, together with biographical matter, statistics, etc., Part 26

Author: Hill, H.H. (Chicago) pbl
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, H.H. Hill
Number of Pages: 910

USA > Illinois > Lee County > History of Lee County, together with biographical matter, statistics, etc. > Part 26

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SUBLETTE TOWNSHIP.

WM. W. IRELAND, farmer, Sublette, was born in Harrison county, western Virginia, in 1826. He is the son of Jonathan and Eliza (Boring) Ireland, both of Maryland. He was brought up to farmning, his father's occupation, and received a common-school education. His people moved to Clinton county, Ohio, when he was a year old ; here they lived a few years ; thence to Bureau county, Illinois, where his father bought a claim. William Ireland came to Sublette in 1850, and bought of Stiles and Eustace for $130, a warrant for the S.W. ¿ Sec. 23. The same year he bought twenty acres of timber. He now owns 215 acres of land, having bought the last in 1876. For several years Mr. Ireland lived with his brother on the N.W. } Sec. 23. He built on his own land in 1857, was married in the fall of 1856 to Sarah Ver- trees, who was born in Indiana in 1833. They have had seven chil- dren, five of whom are living: Theodore F., born September 1857; Ida E., born December 1858; Della J., born August 1860; Miriam A., born March 1862; Fay, born September 1865 (died April 1880) ; Willie, born March 1864 (deceased); Chas. A., born 1868. In poli- tics Mr. Ireland is a liberal republican. Mrs. Ireland is a member and officer of the Sublette Methodist Episcopal church. She taught school in an early day in the vicinity of Knox Grove, named after her mother's people, who were early settlers there. Her great-grandfather Knox came from Scotland, and settled in North Carolina. Her father's father was in the war of 1812. Her mother's grandfather (Brooks) was all through the revolution. John Knox, her uncle, when above fifty years old went with three sons and a son-in-law from Lee county, Missouri, into the federal army of the rebellion. He died in the hospital at Nashville. One of the boys, wounded at Allatoona, Georgia, went home, and was replaced by his youngest brother. None of the other four ever returned from the battle-fields.

EMERSON W. PATTEN, railroad agent, Sublette, was born September 25, 1826, in Greenwich, Hampshire county, Massachusetts. He is the youngest of four children of Calvin and Laura (Warrener) Patten, Mrs. R. H. Millen, of Amboy, being the eldest. His father was from Connecticut; his mother was born in Massachusetts. There is a tra- dition that three Patten brothers came from Scotland very early in the history of our country, one landing near Boston, one near New York, and the other in Rhode Island. "Great Uncle Billy " Patten was a revolutionary hero, and until he was almost a hundred walked annually to Taunton, Massachusetts, a distance of eight miles, to draw his pension. Emerson Patten was raised a farmer, and lived in his native town till 1853 when he came west to Amboy. Here he dealt in books and jewelry, but chiefly in real estate, losing heavily in the latter business in 1858. He lived in Amboy till 1873 ; was one year

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

in Freeport, Illinois, and in 1874 came to Sublette, where he has since been employed by the Illinois Central Railroad Company. He was married in the fall of 1859 to Lucy E. Morse, born in New York. Three children are the fruit of their marriage: Alfred E., born Decem- ber 1864; Calvin E., November 1866; Lena, September 1860. Mr. Patten is a Mason and a republican, and since he was nineteen years old he has belonged to the Congregational church.

ALFRED L. WILDER, merchant, Sublette, was born in Conway, Frank- lin county, Massachusetts, in 1825. He is the son of Joshua and La- vina (Long) Wilder, of the same county, and his mother's mother was a revolutionary pensioner. He was raised a farmer, staying with his father till he was twenty years old; and was educated at the Shel- burne Falls Academy, Shelburne, Franklin county, in which town both his parents were born, and he lived from his early youth. In 1854 Mr. Wilder came to Chicago ; he elerked one year in Putnam county, where he was married to Mrs Elvira Hewitt, of Franklin county, Massachusetts, born in 1826. In 1854 he bought land in Iowa. In 1855 he settled in Sublette, and built a store. Mr. Wilder is now do- ing a large business, carrying a stock of about $10,000. He occupies the store began in 1855, to which he has added from time to time, the last improvement in 1877, and which is now worth about $3,000. His house was built in 1865 or 1866 at a cost of $2,500. His children are : Wm. A., born 1856; Nellie M., 1858, married T. F. Ireland, son of W. W. Ireland, and is now living in Mills county, Iowa ; Raymond A., 1862. Both sons are working with their father in his business, a general dry-goods, grocery, boot and shoe trade. William is married. Mr. and Mrs. Wilder, the parents, are members of the Baptist church. Mrs. A. L. Wilder's father, Horace Benton, a native of Massachusetts, who has lived in Sublette since 1855, is in his eighty-sixth year, and possesses remarkable mental and physical vigor for one so old.

MRS. HARRIET L. GARDNER, daughter of Sherman L. Hatch, and widow of Dr. Francis B. Gardner, was born on the homestead in De- cember 1839. She went to the common school but three months ; was sent to Lee Center and Janesville, Wisconsin, to school, and com- pleted her education at a private school in West Chester county, New York. She taught school a few terms, and was married to Mr. Gard- ner in 1861. He had received his education at the Bridgewater, Mass- achusetts Normal school, and was a graduate from the Cincinnati Ec- lectic Medical School. He afterward graduated from a homœopathic school in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Gardner was born in February 1822, in Swansea, Massachusetts. His father was a sea-captain, and Francis was the youngest but one in a family of ten. He settled in Sublette in 1861. He had been in California most of the time since 1849,

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working mines or practicing medicine, having returned three times from that country. In 1863 he bought from Elder Morrison the house where his family are living in the village of Sublette, a little west of the Baptist church. At that time he purchased two lots, since increased to five acres of farm land. His heirs now own in May and Sublette townships to the amount of 160 acres. Two boys and a girl are the fruit of his marriage: Seraphine, born July 1862; Frank, March 1864; Charles, November 1865. In November, 1880, the doc- tor met a cruel and unexpected death ; he was tossed by a bull and fell on the back of his head, from the effect of which he died the third day after the accident. He was a hearty, rather stout man, and had never experienced any sickness worth mention. He and his wife were Epis- copalians, though the latter recently united with the Congregational church, there being no Episcopal church in Sublette. He joined the Masons about a year before he died ; he was a brother of Dr. Charles Gardner, an early settler in Nachusa township.

FRANK THOMPSON, hardware merchant, Sublette, was born in La Salle county, Illinois, in 1853. His father, John B., was born in Ohio in 1825 ; his mother, Clementine Eastman, in Maine in 1822. They came west in 1844, lived about a year in Bureau county, then settled in La Salle county, Ophir township, where Mr. Thompson took up a claim. In 1853 he took a contract to grade a part of the Illinois Central railroad between Amboy and Sublette; he came to Sublette in 1867. Frank Thompson is one of a family of three boys and two girls. He was raised a farmer, and was graduated from the Valparaiso (Indiana) Commercial School. For a time he was a clerk in Amboy ; went with his eldest brother, in the spring of 1875, to California, where they worked a mine. Frank came back in the winter of 1876-7, and began in the hardware business in Sublette in 1878, under the firm name of F. A. Thompson & Co. He now has a stock of $2,500. Mr. Thompson was made postmaster at Sublette, February 1881. He is a Baptist, and a member of the Lee county guards. He was mar- ried October 28, 1880, to Stella S., daughter of James Dexter, and sister of Mrs. William Wilder.

PRESCOTT BARTLETT, farmer, Sublette, was born in Conway, Franklin county, Massachusetts, August 19, 1821. His father, born in 1789, was a tanner by trade, and raised a company during the war of 1812. His mother, Narcissa Robinson, was born 1787. Mr. Bartlett came west in 1844, to Du Page county, Illinois, and soon after to Sublette, taking a claim of a quarter-section on Sec. 20, a part of which is now owned by H. C. Chapman. After living here about five years he went to Bureau county and bought a farm. He now owns and lives upon the E .¿ Sec. 17, Sublette, having bought it in 1850 from

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

William Erskine for $500. In 1868 he built a fine residence of Batavia stone at a cost of $12,000. Having passed through Texas and Arkansas in 1855, he became convinced that war was imminent; he studied cavalry tactics in the winter of 1860, and in the following spring began to raise a cavalry company. He took several horses from his own farm, giving one to a hired man as an inducement for him to enlist. Mr. Bartlett enlisted in June 1861; was sworn into service August 7, and received a captain's commission in Co. C, 7th Ill. Cav. The company, when mustercd, numbered about ninety-eight, about twenty-five or thirty of whom were from Sublette; the rest chiefly from Mendota, Amboy, and Lee Center. They went first into Mis- souri, thence through Kentucky and Tennessee, early in 1862. In September 1862 the 7th cavalry was encamped at Tuscumbia, Ala- bama, at which time Co. C was detached as special escort to Gen. John M. Palmer, in which service they continued until January 1864. They were in all the hard fighting of the Rosecrans' campaign, the battle of Stone River being their first general engagement. They did gallant service at Missionary Ridge, and were in much skirmishing, especially at and near Nashville. Capt. Bartlett was six weeks presi- dent of a military commission at Memphis. That he was not pro- inoted during his service was from no lack of merit. He escaped promotion more than once through accidental circumstances, over which he had no control. To his worth as a true soldier many freely testify. He was married January 4, 1849, to Caroline Whitney, born in Warren county, Ohio (her father was from Maine, her mother, Ohio). Of their eight children four are living, the others having died young : Silas Wilton, born March 1853 ; Eugene P., born March 1858 ; Howard, born November 1865; Cora May, born March 1869. Wil- ton, was admitted to the bar in May 1881. Eugene is a master pen- man. Both have attended school at Normal, Illinois, a considerable time. Mr. Bartlett has been a stirring, industrious man and lias seen much of the world. He has traveled widely in the purchase and sale of horses, having gone to Boston and Providence several times, for the latter purpose. In an early day he was elected constable, and was a deputy under sheriff Campbell at the time of the famous " banditti " prosecutions. He is a Mason and a staunch republican. Mr. Bartlett has always been a generous, public spirited man, identifying himself with every progressive movement. But for lack of space many an interesting anecdote might be related illustrative of his enterprise in civil life and his willingness to assume responsibility during his mili- tary career.

EDWARD FESSENDEN, farmer, Sublette, was born April 4, 1839, in Lee county. The Fessendens were among the very early settlers of

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the Massachusetts colony. His father, Thomas Fessenden, was born in Fitzburg, New Hampshire, February 1, 1805, and was raised a farmer, being the son of William and Rebecca Fessenden, whose family con- sisted of three sons and four daughters. One of the latter, Mrs. Joel Jewett, settled with her husband on Sec. 18, a few years after Thomas and his family settled in Sublette. Mr. and Mrs. Jewett are both dead. In 1830 or 1831 Thomas Fessenden married Sarah Pearsons, born June 13, 1804. With his brother-in-law, Addison G. Bragg, he came west in 1834, passing through Chicago, Peru, Illinois, and down the Illinois river to St. Louis, returning in the fall of the same year. In 1837 with his wife, three children, and his brother William, he came west again, directly to Lee county. They lived three months on the Blunt place, in Amboy township; thence to Sublette, where they settled, William on Sec. 7, where John H. Long lives, and lived there till about 1852, when he sold to J. B. Wyman. Thomas settled on Sec. 8, and lived there till 1869. Selling out to his sons, he went to Missouri for his health, and thence after three years to Santa Barbara, California, where he now resides. Of the family of Thomas Fessenden but four of eleven are now living. Three died in infancy. The names of the others are Frederick A., born December 20, 1830 (died at the homestead Decem- ber 7, 1862); George F., January 24, 1833; Frances J., December 1, 1835 (deceased November 16, 1867); Edward, April 4, 1839 ; Austin, October 7, 1842 (died June 22, 1862); Emeline and Caroline, twin sisters, May 24, 1844 (Emeline died February 5, 1866) ; Warren G., Decem- ber 14, 1846. George is living with his wife and two daughters in Kansas, whence he went from Lee county in 1878. Caroline (Mrs. Benj. Dexter) is living in Santa Barbara, California. All of the boys, except the youngest, served their country in the late rebellion. War- ren entered the 104th Ill. Vols., in the one-hundred-days service. Edward and George enlisted in Co. E,75th Ill., September 1862. George was with this company until he was mustered out, June 12, 1865. He was in the fighting at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, with Sher- man through Georgia to the sea, and around to Richmond. Edward was transfered to the Veteran Reserve Corps, July 1863. Was at El- mira and Buffalo, New York, and afterward, except two months, was at Camp Douglas, Chicago, until he was mustered out, July 1865. The subject of this article was married February, 1862, to Harriet E. Dex- ter, youngest daughter of John Dexter, the first settler in Amboy township. Their family consists of three children living : Thomas E., born September 1862 (deceased January 1863); Francis D., born August 1867; James H., born January 1871; Stella, born July 1873. Mr. and Mrs. Fessenden are members of the Congregational church. Mr. Fessenden sold his farm, the old homestead, in the spring of 1881,

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

and is going to California to reside. He is the last of the family in Sublette, and like all the rest is a republican. He will be greatly missed by his neighbors and friends, who have long known him as an upright and conscientious man.

WARREN CLARKE, carpenter, Sublette, was born in Medfield, Nor- folk county, Massachusetts, February 22, 1825. His father, Jacob Clarke, was born in 1792 and died in 1865; he was of Scotch ancestry. His mother, Cyntha Ann Morse, born in 1795, is still living. His father was a fifer in the war of 1812 ; he was a first cousin of the celebrated Lowell Mason, of Boston, to whose singing-school Warren went when a youth. Warren Clarke learned the carpenter's trade when eighteen years of age, having previously worked at shoemaking, his father's trade. He came west in 1854 to Mendota, Illinois; worked five years in a foun- dry there, and, except two years in the insurance business, he has since followed carpentering in Mendota and Sublette, having moved to the village of Sublette in 1877. While in Mendota he did many first- class jobs, building the west side school-house, besides many of the finest stores and dwellings. He has been a Mason since 1862, and be- longs to the order of I.O.O.F. He has always been a republican. Mr. Clarke has been twice married : first, 1849, in Vermont, to Julia- etta L. Aldrich, by whom he had two children : a son, born February 1852 (deceased 1854), and a daughter, January 1857 (now Mrs. Allen, Mendota, Illinois). In 1876 he married his second wife, Melphia Stearns, of Sublette, his first having died in 1873. The fruits of this second marriage are two daughters : Mary, born June 15, 1877, and Lina Stearns, December 1878.

JOHN D. TOURTILLOTT, farmer, Sublette, was born June 26, 1827, in the town of Howland, Penobscot county, Maine. His father, Thomas Tourtillott, born in Orino, Maine, April 1786, was of French descent. His mother, Hannah Douglass, was born in Hancock coun- ty, Maine, April 1797, and was of Scotch ancestry. His grandfather was a "Revolutioner." His parents were married in Howland, Maine, September 20, 1826. This was the second marriage of Thomas Tour- tillott, Charlotte Inman, by whom he had eight children, being his first wife. By his second wife he had seven children, of whom John is the eldest. In 1839 the Tourtillotts came west in two wagons drawn by three horses. There were fourteen in the company, and the journey occupied seventy days. They stopped at La Moille, Bureau county, and in the following year, 1840, came to Sublette and settled on Sec. 31. Here the senior Tourtillotts lived till 1868, when they ceased housekeeping and went to live among their children. Hannah Tourtillott died March 19, 1878, at the residence of her son-in-law, Joseph Hodges, two miles north of Sublette. She had reached the

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ripe age of nearly eighty-one years ; she had seen her family grow up and settle, some near her and others in Kansas, Iowa, California and elsewhere. She survived only one of her children, a son who died October, 1876. She was a devoted christian mother, having experi- enced religion at the age of seventeen. "She possessed an extraor- dinary self-sacrificing and sympathetic spirit for her family." In the following year, December 8, 1879, she was followed by her aged companion, who, in the ninety-fourth year of his life, went to meet her in the " better land." When twenty-three years of age he united with the Methodist Episcopal church, and "lived for many years an active and zealous member, enforcing both by word and example the holy re- ligion he professed." John Tourtillott, the only one of his family left in Lee county, received a common school education, and was married October 5, 1856, to Mary Jane Dexter (deceased October 1878). Four children are the fruits of their wedded life: John Fremont, born July 1857 (deceased October 1858); Thomas A., September 1858; Ella Mary, July 1862; and a deceased infant, born October 1864. He went with his family to California in 1869, with some view of remain- ing there, but returned in 1871. He is now living on the homestead on Sec. 31. In politics he was an old-time whig, but he has been a republican since the organization of that party. He and his family are members of the Congregational church.

NEWTON STANARD, farmer, Sublette, was born in Madison county, New York, November 1819. His father, Libeous Stanard, born in Vermont, was a farmer. His mother, Luceba Fay, was born in Con- necticut. They had a family of twelve, ten of whom are living. The father was in the war of 1812, and was at Sacket's Harbor some time in the fall of 1840. Libeous Stanard came west with his family in two covered wagons to Perkins' Grove, Bureau county, to which Newton and his brother had come the year before. The family were six weeks on their way. They bought 160 acres of land, timber and prairie, from the widow of J. Kendall, some of which they afterward entered. In 1842 the mother and one son died with typhoid fever. The father survived till October 1859. Newton Stanard was married in Novem- ber 1844, to Emily Reniff, who was born in New York state in 1823. Her parents, when she was an infant, moved back to Massachusetts, whence they came west. In the spring of 1847 Mr. Stanard bought from John Dement the S.E. ¿ of Sec. 19, Sublette, and settled there. He hauled lumber from Chicago and built a house 24×30, with an addition 16×16. This was then one of the best in that vicinity, and is still in good condition. His family are : Charles, born February 1846; Ora, December 1852; Irvin, February 1857; Laura E., Sep- tember 1859; Adella, May 1861. They have all enjoyed good edu-

Charlie Stauran

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

cational advantages, Ora being a graduate from the college at Naper- ville, Illinois. Charles enlisted, October 1864, in the 75th Ill., Co. E, and was mustered out October 15, 1865. He was in the Hood campaign in Tennessee, and saw his first fighting at Nashville. During the lat- ter part of his service he was in Texas. He is married and living in

Sublette; has two children. All but one of the family of Newton Stanard belong to the Baptist church. Of the first family mentioned, three own property in Bureau county, two of whom are living there. The rest are widely scattered.

SETH F. BAIRD, farmer, Sublette, was born September 1846; son of Daniel and Charlotte (Field) Baird, early settlers in Sublette town- ship. He received a common schooling and took a commercial course at Aurora, Illinois ; was married June 12, 1870, to Amanda S. Thompson, of Lee county, who had come from West Virginia with her people the previous year. She died July 27, 1873, leaving two children : Carrie A. and Robert Daniel (deceased infant). Mr. Baird was again mar- ried, February 4, 1875, to Martha A. Rees, of Indiana. She has given birth to one child : William M., born May 1876. The family are now living on the old homestead on Sec. 19. They are Methodists.

CHAS. D. HUBBARD, painter, Sublette, was born in Lee county, May 4, 1846, and is the youngest son of Royal Prescott Hubbard, who was born in Sunderland, Mass., September 1805. The mother of the lat- ter, Lavinia Prescott, was one of a family of Prescotts noted in Ameri- can history, and who trace their lineage to a certain James Prescott, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, of England. Moses Hubbard was the father of Royal P. Hubbard, who is the eldest of a family of thir- teen, only four of whom are living. In 1827 he sailed from New York in company with forty-one young men from Connecticut and Massachusetts, and settled in Macon, Georgia, where he engaged in mercantile business till 1835, when he had to flee for his life, having too freely expressed his sentiments in regard to the atrocities of slavery. This was the first abolition excitement there, and the mob surrounded the home of our subject a few minutes after he left it and fled to Charleston and out of the South, of course losing all his property there. In 1838 he came to Princeton, Illinois, and in 1844 to Sublette, settling on Sec. 17. In 1842 he married Mary (Boring) Berkeley, a widow with four children, by whom he had four inore, all of whom are living. Their mother died May 13, 1881. When the rebellion broke out Mr. Hubbard, having seen all the horrors of slavery, told his sons to " pitch in and clean them out." All of them, four in num- ber, went into the service, and the father also offered his life, but was rejected because of physical disability. Chas. Hubbard enlisted in the 75th Ill., Co. E, Captain Frost; was in the battle of Perryville. In

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this engagement Co. E lost eleven killed, twenty-six wounded and two prisoners. He was in the fighting at Stone river, and under Hooker at Lookout Mountain ; was at Crawfish Springs as a flank in the battle of Chickamauga ; was at Missionary Ridge, and with Sherman to a little below Atlanta. Came back with Thomas to Tennessee, and was in the fighting at Nashville and Franklin. He was mustered out June 12, 1865, without a wound, and having won the reputation of being a splendid soldier, being especially noted for his intrepidity and love for foraging. He was married August 26, 1871, to Lida K. Anderson, of Dixon. Their issue are: Louis P., March 1873; Mary G., August 1875; John, June 1878. Mr. Hubbard is living near the village of Sublette.

JAMES BLACK, farmer, Sublette, was born January 1823, in the province of Leinster, Ireland. His parents, John and Charlotte (Pilk- ington) Black, had a family of seven children, and James Black was educated for the ministry of the English Episcopal church at Trinity College, Dublin, leaving that institution when he was about to take the degree of A.B. About 1843 his father sold his property in Ireland to go to Australia, but in consequence of a wreck off Cape Good Hope he returned to his native land with his family and three or four thousand pounds, the remnant of his property. Remaining a few years in Ireland, he came to America with all his family except the eldest son, and settled in New Jersey, where he and his wife both died, and where their youngest daughter is now living. James Black was married, 1850, in New Jersey, to Sarah Wynne, by whom he has had ten children, eight of whom are living : William, born January 1853, Lottie (now Mrs. Levi Mead, Astoria county, Iowa), Susan, John, Jane (deceased, aged eleven years), Sarah, James, Hattie, George (deceased, infant), Edith. Mr. Black came to Lee Center township about 1853, and in 1860 to Sec. 1, Sublette, he and his brother buying 182 acres in the N.W. ¿ of same. Here he has since lived. The family are members of the Congregational church.

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History of Lee County, together with biographical matter, statistics, etc., Part 26

Author: Hill, H.H. (Chicago) pbl Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago, H.H. Hill Number of Pages: 910

Author: Hill, H.H. (Chicago) pbl
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, H.H. Hill
Number of Pages: 910