History of Madison County, Illinois With biographical sketches, Part 22

Author: Brink, W.R. & Co
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Edwardsville, Ill. : W. R. Brink & co.
Number of Pages: 698

USA > Illinois > Madison County > History of Madison County, Illinois With biographical sketches > Part 22

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" . Bill,' a slave of Mr. Marney, of the American Bottom, was a few weeks after the massacre of Mr. McMahan's family carried away captive by two of the Indians engaged in that transaction together with two other Indians. Bill was never restored to his friends ; but it was reported that he was poisoned by his mistress, to prevent his restoration according to the treaty of Greeneville,"

"Robert McMahan married a second wife, and raised a large family. Ile resided many years in Ridge prairie, southwest of Troy, and died in the year 1822, aged sixty-three years."

" Sally MeMahan was born March 9th, 1785; was married to Mr. David Gaskill, and raised a large family. She lived in Ridge prairie, during the greater portion of her life. Towards the close of her life she removed to the city of Alton, where she died on the 23d of Jan- mary, 1850, in the sixty-fourth year of her age. To her I am indebted for such of the facts stated in this memoir as occurred in her presence."

" In Gov. Reynolds' account of the above transaction it is stated that tuo danghters of Mr. McMahan were led away captive, and no mention is made of Mr. McMahan's preparations for defense. It is evident, however, that if he had seen the Indians before they entered his house, he could have defended bimself successfully until the re- port of his blunderbuss would have brought him assistance from the station. "

Jesse Renfro was married in 1817 and settled a short distance east of the present town of Troy where he has since lived. After a married life which extended over the uuusually long period of sixty-five years, his wife departed this life in the spring of 1882.

William Hall became a resident of the present Jarvis township in 1815. James Watt, who came to Illinois from Green county, Kentucky, settled three miles south of Troy in 1817. For nearly sixty years he was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He died in December. 1861. George Churchill made his home on the Ridge prairie west of Troy, in 1817, and was one of the most meritorious aud deserving citizens the county ever had. He was born at Hubbardton, Rutland county, Vermont, in 1789. He learned the printing business in Albany, New York, and afterward worked as a journeyman in New York city, and then came West by way of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louis- ville and Shawneetown, from the last-named place proceeding on foot to Kaskaskia. A view of the Illinois prairies made him resolve to become a farmer, and he entered land in township three, range seven, on which he lived till he died. lle was a close student, a writer of fine ability, and a man who paid great attention to exactness of detail and the collection of historical data. He had amassed a large quantity of valuable matter concerning the early history of the county and this part of the state, but his papers were unfortunately destroyed in the great fire at Chicago, to which place they had been sent after his death. His habits were somewhat eccentric, and he never married. He was several times chosen a member of the Legislature and one of the warm opponents of the movement for the introduction of slavery into the state in 1824.

Joseph Eberman was one of the first settlers on the site of Troy, and the first Justice of the Peace in that part of the county. Calvin and Horatio MeCray, natives of Connecti- cut, settled near Troy ju 1816 or 1817, and brought the first infusion of "yankee " blood to a settlement the pre- vions members of which had been almost entirely of south- ern origin. James and Harry Riggin came to this part of the country in 1818, and the next year James Riggin and David Hendershott laid off the town of Troy. John C. Riggin, a brother to James and Harry, followed in 1822. The Riggins were natives of Sevier county, Tennessee.

Jacob Gonterman, who was born in Maryland in 1764, and from his native state removed to Shelby county, Keu- tucky, came to lllinois in 1816 and settled in township four, range eight. Soon after his arrival he duga well on his farm, which faithfully served the people of that neighbor- hood for many years. James Pearce made an improvement in this part of the county in 1815. The Rev. Thomas Ray, a Baptist preacher, came in 1818, Alvis Hanskins in 1819, and John Minter aud Mathias Handlon at an early period. The Fruit family was one of the earliest to settle in this part of the county.

Laban Smart, a North Carolinian and a soldier in the Revolutionary war, emigrated from Chatham county, North Carolina, to Kentucky in 1806, and thence to Madison county, Illinois, in 1816. He settled in township four, range cight,

HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

and Smart's prairie was named from the circumstance of the settlement of the family in that part of the county. Henry B. Smart, his son, was sixteen years of age when his father came to this county, and for many years was a resident of Smart's prairie, where he died on the twenty- third of January of 1882.

John Giger, a Pennsylvania German, became a citizen of township three, range six, in 1816, as also did Gilmore Anderson, William Faires, John Herrin, Nicholas Kyle and William Parkinson. Anderson came from Bourbon connty, Kentucky. John Herrin gave his name to Herrin's grove. In 1817 there were two arrivals from Tennessee, Philip Searcy and Wesley Dugger. The latter built a horse-mill and kept a store. He had served under Gen. Jackson at the battle of New Orleans. Henry Burton Thorp, a native of Connecticut, came in 1819, and Washing- ton Parkinson in 1818. John Howard, one of the family which made the pioneer settlement east of Silver creek, near the present town of Highland, was the first Justice of the Peace in township three, range six. He was a member of the first legislature after the organization of the state government.

In 1813 Abner Kelly and Josiah, William, Andrew, and John Wallace made settlements under the bluff in township three, range eight. The Wallace family finally moved to Missouri. As early as 1814 Michael Squire settled near Collinsville, and John Williamson came to the same part of the county in 1819. David Morgan, William Combs, Abraham Claypole, and several of the Muirheid family, made their homes in the present Collinsville township pre- vious to the year 1820. Stephen Johnson, who became a citizen of Collinsville in 1829, came to the county in 1818.

William Montgomery came from Kentucky to St. Louis in 1809, and in 1814 made his home in Madison county. After living three years in Fort Russell township, he re- moved to Wood River township. Mrs. Anna Collet, with her three sons, John W., Robert, and Mark Collet, in 1817, came to Illinois from the city of Philadelphia, and settled at the old town of Milton, on Wood river. Thomas Lippincott, in 1818, became a citizen of Milton, where he opened a store and carried on the mercantile business in partnership with Rufus Easton, of St. Louis, the founder of the city of Alton. Mr. Lippincott was born at Salem, New Jersey, in 1791, and in 1817 started for the West, arriving in St. Louis in Feb- ruary, 1818. Milton proved an unhealthy place. About 1821 Mr. Lippincott removed to Edwardsville, of which place he was a resident for some time. He died at Pana in 1869. The town of Milton had been founded at an early date, perhaps about 1809. John Wallace and Walter Seely were largely interested in the place in 1818. At that date it contained three mills, two saw-mills, and a grist mill. Besides the store there was also a distillery and a tavern. Joel Bacon was proprietor of the tavern. Wallace, in an advertisement in the Edwardsville Spectator, describes the steam distillery as " a valuable property, calculated to work twenty-five bushels a day." The dam thrown across Wood river to furnish power to the mills seems to have generated a miasma, which rendered the place undesirable for habita-

tion. Sickness was prevalent, and the deaths many. The town declined, but its history should be perpetuated for the one reason, at least, that here was organized by Thomas Lippincott, in 1819, the first Sunday-school in Illinois.

In the "Geographical Sketches of the Western Country," written by E. Dana, and published in 1819, appears the following reference to Milton and to the Six mile prairie :

"Two miles from Alton, at the place called Wallace Mills, on Wood creek, which empties into the Mississippi, is the little town of Milton, on the route from Alton, by Edwardsville to Vincennes. This place contains about fifty houses. The creek here drives both a grist and saw mill, each of which does a large business. The soil extending from this town to St. Louis, twenty-four miles, is mostly excellent, being all bottom lands, except the Six mile prairie, which is one and a half miles wide, surrounded by trees of a hand- some growth. The greater part of the last described tract is covered with settlements made since the United States ac- quired a right to the soil. A peculiar disease among the cattle prevails here, which the people call milk-sick, that produces in beasts strange tremulous motions, and so strongly affects them as often to prove mortal. Nowhere, except at this place and about the mouth of the Missouri, has this dis- ease made its appearance. The milk of cows thus affected has proved injurious, and sometimes mortal to those who drink it."

A colony, among which were Isaac Braden, Valentine Kinder, the Hawk, and other families, settled in township three, range nine, in 1817. They came from Pennsylvania, making the voyage down the Ohio, from Wheeling, Vir- ginia, to Shawneetown by flat boat, and thence to St. Louis by keel boat. About 1815, John Anthony, of Pennsylvania Dutch descent, built the first house on the site of Venice, and entertained travellers in a single-room house built of cotton-wood logs. He also hired skiff's to persons wishing to cross the river-a fore-runner to the regular horse-ferry established between Venice and St. Louis in 1826.

In township six, range nine (Fosterhurg), the first settle- ments were made about 1816, by Joseph S. Reynolds and Orman Beeman, who resided there till 1822. Settlers by the name of Honeycutt and Dabbs gave their names to the streams known by that appellation. Mrs. McAfee and her family lived here for a few years subscquent to 1816, and then removed to Greene county. William R. Rhodes began making an improvement in 1818, which three years later he sold to Joshua Wood. Jacob Deck came in 1820, and became a permanent citizen. His brothers, John and Isaac Deck, settled in the same neighborhood. Green W. Short, a Tennesseean, removed to this township in 1820, having previously lived two years in Wood river township. James Dooling, a native of Ireland, who came to the state in 1818, settled in this township in 1821, and Oliver Foster in 1825.

Gershom Flagg came to the county in the spring of 1818. He was born in Vermont in 1792. He served with the Ver- mont troops in the war of 1812-14. He started for the West in 1816, and spent the winter of 1816-17 in Ohio. The following summer he came down the Ohio, in a small flat- boat, to the mouth of the river, and thence journeyed by

HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

land to St. Louis. He there assisted in painting the first steamboat that ever reached St. Louis. In the spring of 1818 he began making an improvement on section three, of township five, range eight, where he resided till his death. A number of letters written by him to relatives in Vermont are still preserved. In one he says, speaking of Illinois : "I will only say it is the handsomest and best country that I have ever seen. In places there is prairie as far as the eye can reach, covered with tall grass higher than a man's head." These letters show that he was a man of keen ob- servation and good ability. His son, Willard C. Flagg, boru in 1829, became one of the most distinguished citizens of the county.

Gaius Paddock settled near Mr. Flagg the same year. He was a native of Massachusetts, and was born in 1758. He entered the colonial army at the commencement of the Revo- tionary war, then seventeen years old, and served till its close. He was in Washington's commaud at the time he made the crossing of the Delaware and captured the British force at Trenton. He removed from Vermont to Cincinnati in 1815, to St. Charles, Missouri, in 1816, and the next year to St. Louis. He died in 1831. John Springer became a resident of this part of the county in 1814; he served in the war of 1812-14, and was a lieutenant in Captain Jones' company. He raised a large family of children, and was for years one of the prominent men of his section. The Springers have always been among the leading citizens of the county-further mention of them is made elsewhere in this work.

Another old and well known family, whose several mem- bers became prominent and distinguished citizens in the his- tory of this county, was that of David Gillespie, the father of Matthew and Joseph Gillespie. He was born, reared, and married in County Monaghan, Ireland, and emigrated to New York in 1807, where he resided until 1818, when with his family he removed to Madison county, Illinois. Here he lived until 1834, when he went to Wisconsin, and there died. The family were of Scotch origin, but settled in the North of Ireland in the year 1688. An uncle of David G llespie emigrated to America previous to the Revolutionary war, and settled in Virginia, from whom the persons of that name throughout the Southern States have descended. From tradition we learn that the Gillespies were a branch of the clan of the Campbells, and that their original habitation was in the Highlands of Scotland. David's family consisted of the parents and two children, Matthew and Joseph, who were born in New York city. He was a man of good com- mon sense and honesty. He had no ambition but to make a living for himself and family, and transmit to his children a reputation for integrity. He disliked the dealings of the English Government with Ireland, and early in life deter- mined to make America his home. His wife Sarah, the mother of Matthew and Joseph, was a woman of remarkable strength of character, and endeavored to inspire her sons with an ambition to rise in the world, and availed herself of every opportunity to procure books for them from which to obtain information. Schools in early days in Illinois were very limited. She was a deadly foe to the institution of

slavery, and would not reside in a slave state. She was a thorough Whig in politics, and her two sons took their ideas from her in that regard. The two sons of David and Sarah Gillespie ever remained firm and true exponents of the prin- ciples of the Whig and Republican parties; patriotism and loyalty to the principles of liberty were the standard by which they measured their political conduct. They assisted in the formation of the Republican party in Illinois-and the venerable Joseph Gillespie, who is still living, is one of the well known men of the state. Further mention is made of them elsewhere in the work.

Daniel A. Lanterman, one of the early residents of Fort Russell township, was born in Pennsylvania, of Dutch ances- try, in the year 1786. Ilis father moved with the family to Fayette county, Kentucky, in 1788. Mr. Lanterman came from Kentucky to Illinois in 1818, and taught school two years near the Baptist church on section eighteen, of town- ship five, range eight. In 1821 he settled on the adjoining section, nineteen. At that time there lived in that neigh- borhood, John Springer, Ephraim Wood, Lowe Jackson, William Montgomery, John Drum, Solomon Preuitt, and Jacob Linder, who had settled in that vicinity in 1815 or 1816, and had removed to Greene county. Beside the Rev. Wil- liam Jones, another William Jones lived in section twenty- nine. William Green lived in the neighborhood, but in 1821 went to Greene county. His place was purchased by a Kentuckian named Norman, who likewise stayed only a short time. William, James and Abraham Preuitt lived along the bluff in that part of the county.

When Mr. Lanterman came through Edwardsville on the nineteenth of December, 1818, there were two stores in the place Some of the party went to buy some whiskey, but could find no bottles. After he settled in township five, range eight, a great many used to go past his farm inquiring for Alton He asked a neighbor what kind of a place Alton was, and received the reply, " About fifteen sink holes to the acre." He was in Lower Alton in 1822, when there were no women residing in the place, and only three men. He used to go to the old town of Milton to mill. There were two stores there at that time. In some seasons the place was very sickly. He went there once to buy some cotton yarn, and Thomas Lippincott, who lived on the east side of the bridge and had his store on the other side, told him he would not walk across the bridge for all there was in the store, so fearful was he of the pestilential air of the stream. The streets at that time were grown full of weeds.

A few miles northeast of Edwardsville, in township five, range seven, a settlement was made in the winter of 1817- 18, hy Henry Keley, with whom came to the county, Robert and Anson Aldrich. The latter were born in Mendon, Worcester county, Massachusetts, and in September, 1816, Robert, then being twenty-two years old, they set out on foot for Illinois, reports of the wonderful fertility of which country had reached them In the vicinity of Xenia, Ohio. they found some friends from Massachusetts with whom they stayed and worked till the fall of 1817. They then resumed their journey to Illinois, and at Cincinnati, fell in with Henry and George Keley, two brothers on their

HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

way to Edwardsville. With them Ilenry Keley had his family. The Keleys had what was called a family boat, and the Aldrichs decided to go with them on the voyage down the Ohio. Shawneetown was reached in October, aud there the party decided to follow the river no farther, but to go overland. The Keleys had brought on the boat three horses and'a wagon. The journey was made over bad roads. The men were often obliged to wade into the mud holes and lift the wagon, by sheer strength, out of the mire. The streams had no bridges, and the wagou box was used as a boat in which to ferry over the women, children and house- hold goods. At one stream, greatly swollen, they encamped on the bank four days, waiting for the waters to subside, and an opportunity to continue their journey. Finally the women children, and household goods, and running gear of the wa- gon were ferried over, while the horses swam. They ar- rived in Kaskaskia, November the first, 1817. After resting there a few days, Henry Keley and the two Aldrichs mounted horses, and came to Edwardsville, crossing the Mississippi on the route, aud taking a look at the French village of St. Louis. A: Edwardsville they found quarters at the public house, which John T. Lusk had just erected. Indeed, this new log hotel was not quite finished, some chinking and daubing remained to be done.The cracks between the logs were wide, a blustering storm arose during the night, and so furious was the blast that the bed clothing was swept from the would-be sleepers. After looking around for a day or two, Mr. Keley employed George Coventry, father of John W. Coventry, the present post-master at Edwardsville, to show him the country in the vicinity of the town, and especially to point out the sectional corners of the land surveys. Mr. Keley selected a location on section twenty-nine, of township five, range seven. The north line of this township was the limit of the government surveys that had been made up to that time.

With the exception of a small improvement made in the year 1811, by a man named Ferguson, (who abandoned it at the commencement of the hostilities in the war of 1812-14) just below where the Alton and Greenville road crosses the Cahokia creek, the dwelling erected by Keley, into which he moved his family on the fourth of January, 1819, was the first ever built in Hamel township. At Lamb's Point in this township, Bennett Jones built a cabin in the early part of 1818, and a couple of miles farther west two men, by the name of Allen and Keltner, brothers-in law, made small improvements the same year, which, however, they left in a short time. Archibald Lamb settled in 1818 at Lamb's Point, and resided there for many years afterward. In the west part of the present Alhambra township, William Hox- sey made a settlement in 1818. He was born in Rhode Island in 1766, emigrated to Greenbrier county, Virginia, where he married, then to Christian county, Kentucky, and from there came to Illinois in 1818. He died in 1832. He was an enterprising farmer, and brought a considerable. quantity of land under cultivation. Near Mr. Hoxsey, his brother in-law, James Gray, settled the same year, and after a residence of ten or twelve years in this county, moved to Montgomery county In the Silver creek timber, near the

ford where the old trail leading from the Wood river settle- ment to Bond county crossed that stream, David Aikman built a cabin, but after living there a few years, sold his improvement and moved to other parts. In the southwest part of Hamel township, Thomas Barnett settled in 1818, and lived there till 1852, when he died at the age of seventy- three.

In the north part of township four, range five, Archibald Coulter, who came to Illinois from Kentucky, settled in 1816. In this year also arrived James East, who built a cabin and planted two acres of corn in the edge of the prairie, with a spade. The next year he brought his wife from Kentucky. Samuel McAlilly, who was born of Scotch ancestry in South Carolina, removed from Tennessee in 1818, and a few years found a home for his family in a cabin which stood on ground now comprised in the Highland cemetery. Thomas Johnson, a Kentuckian, came in 1817 ; Benjamin May at an early date, and Benjamin Reimmer in 1818.

In Silver Creek bottom, in section nineteen, township four, range five, west, there was a salt lick which attracted deer and cattle at an early day, an l here in 1823, William Biggs, a Kentuckian, undertook to bore for salt. Ile struck solid rock at a.depth of thirty feet, and continued the shaft to a distance of four hundred and forty feet below the sur- face, when salt water began to flow. Into the shaft he set the trunk of a hollow sycamore tree, cemented to the rock. The experiment was expensive, and ended in failure.

William Hinch, a hardy pioneer from eastern Kentucky, was the first white settler within the boundaries of township five, range six. He arrived in November, 1817, and settled a short distance north and east of Silver Creek. During , the succeeding winter he lived in camp and the next spring put up a cabin. He died in 1845. His widow still survives, and is now eighty-eight years of age. James Farris settled in the same vicinity in 1818, and the same year the Piper settlement was started in the southwest part of this town- ship, numbering among other settlers, John Piper, Richard Knight, Matthew Hall, and Jackson and Prior Scruggius.

James Pearce, in 1818, removed from township four, range eight, where he had settled three years previous, built a cabin east of Silver Creek, and made the first settlement in what is now Leef township. Tais was at that time the frontier settlement in that part of the county, the prairie from his residence stretched away toward the north wild and uninhabited.

Township six, ranges even (Omph-Ghent) had for its first settler David Swett, who in the fall of 1820 built a cabin near the site of the Omph-Ghent church. He had come to Edwardsville in 1817. He moved into this cabin in the spring of 1821. He was the first Justice of the Peace in the township, and was also a member of the Board of County Commissioners. Charles Tindall settled in the township in 1825, and Ezekiel Davis in 1826.

In township six, range six, (Olive) James Street was one of the early settlers, but in a short time moved away. Isham Vincent, a native of North Carolina, came to the county in 1817, and lived three years in the vicinity of Troy,

HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

then moved to the northern part of the county. He had a horse-mill. His house was the early voting place of Silver Creek precinet. He died in 1846. Abram Carlock settled in this part of the county in 1817, David Hendershott and Samuel Voyles in 1818, James Keown in 1819 and John Harrington in 1820.

New Douglas township six, range five, had only one carly pioneer, Daniel Funderburk, who was born in South Carolina, settled here in 1819 and died in 1838.

EARLY MARRIAGES.

The first marriage license found among the records was the sixth issued, and reads as follows :

ILLINOIS TERRITORY, MADISON COUNTY. ) 88. The Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Madison County, To all who shall see these presents, greeting.

Kxow ye that license and permission is hereby given unto any Judge of the General Court of the Illinois Terri- tory, and any Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Justice of the Peace, or Licensed Minister of any Religious Society in the County of Madison, to join together in matrimony, as man and wife, Daniel G. Moor, gentleman, and Miss Frankey Jarvis, both of this county, according to the usage, custom, and the laws of the territory, and for so doing this shall be their sufficient license or warrant.

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History of Madison County, Illinois With biographical sketches, Part 22

Author: Brink, W.R. & Co Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Edwardsville, Ill. : W. R. Brink & co. Number of Pages: 698

Author: Brink, W.R. & Co
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Edwardsville, Ill. : W. R. Brink & co.
Number of Pages: 698