History of Mercer and Henderson Counties : together with biographical matter, statistics, etc, Part 117

Author: Mercer County Historical Society (Ill.); Henderson County Historical Society (Ill.)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago : H.H. Hill and Co.
Number of Pages: 1424

USA > Illinois > Mercer County > History of Mercer and Henderson Counties : together with biographical matter, statistics, etc > Part 117
USA > Illinois > Henderson County > History of Mercer and Henderson Counties : together with biographical matter, statistics, etc > Part 117

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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together with the dam, have foundation on solid rock. The dam affords a fall of eighteen feet for both mills. The original mill was torn down and rebuilt and changed into the present one, which is still running.

There were two other mills running about this time in the county, one near Oquawka, called Jack's mill, and one at Warren. The streams which fed these mills would in very dry seasons fail to supply the required quantity of water, and remain motionless until there was water enough to turn the wheels. It was during these times that the people had to travel long distances over a roadless country and bridgeless streams, with nothing but the sun and stars as their guides. When we now have to go ten to fifteen miles to mill it is a long way, but what would some of the young farmers of to-day think if they had to travel seventy-five or eighty miles to have a grist ground, which the early settlers of those times were compelled to do or go without bread ? In performing the long journey to and from the mill they would some- times get lost, lay out all night on the prairie, not knowing where they were or what might be their fate ere the dawn of day. They would often be gone a week or ten days before they returned to their log huts, their homes ; though they were humble they were dear.

Such were some of the early times of the history of South Hender- · son precinct. It is related of John Woods and John Tweed, Sen., in December, when no grinding could be done at their home mills, they went to Burlington to have their grist ground. They hauled it to the Mississippi river with a team, then put it on hand sleds and dragged it across the river on the ice, and, as the narrator says, "had three grains knocked into one, and it was the best bread I ever ate."

The first threshing machine, if they may be called such, said to have been used in the precinct was in 1842. It was what was called in these days a chaff-piler; that is, the straw, wheat and chaff came through the machine simultaneously, all in one heap. The straw then had to be separated from the chaff and wheat. After this was accom- plished the wheat and chaff were sent through a fanning mill, which separated the chaff from the wheat. This was considered a great im- provement over the ancient process of tramping out the wheat by either horses or oxen, saving time and being much the cleaner mode of the two.

They cut their wheat, rye and oats with the sickle and cradle, and were just as well contented to cut their grain in that way as we are to cut our grain with the reaper, harvester or self-binder. A day's work with the sickle was one-half an acre. A day's work with the cradle was called from two to three acres.

WILLIAM H. GETTINGS.

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SOUTII IIENDERSON TOWNSHIP.

As an illustration of what reapers would do when they were first introduced into the settlements, the following is one: Maj. Sam Hutchinson with his Virginia reaper, which he calls the Western Clipper, ent in four and a half days sixty-five acres of very heavy wheat, on the farms of William Graham and Thomas MeDill. The wheat on Mr. MeDill's farm was decidedly the heaviest in the county.

Some of the oldest settlers were compelled to live on potatoes alone for several weeks at a time, and they thought it preferable to living on acorns and a small portion of parched corn, as did their pilgrim fathers on the shores of New England during the first settlements there. During the drouths, when the mills could not grind, they would resort to many devices of obtaining meal, often making graters of some thin metal on which to grate their corn ; some using the coffee . mill, and others the mortar for crushing it.

The following market quotations, from the Oquawka "Spectator," show the prices prevailing February 12, 1848: Wheat (winter), 55@ 57 cents ; wheat (spring), 40@50 cents; corn, 15@18 cents; oats, 15 cents ; barley, 30 cents ; flax-seed, 60 cents ; white beans, 38 cents ; potatoes, 20 cents ; dried peaches, $2; apples, $1.12; salt (Kanhawa), 50 cents ; ground alum, per sack, $2.50; dry hides, per Ib, 6 cents ; green hides, per 1b, 3 cents ; lard, 4 cents ; tallow, 9 cents.

The first road through the township was the Monmouth and Bur- lington road. This road was traveled before the country was fenced into farms and before any regularly laid out road was surveyed. This old road followed very nearly the old Indian trail, which began in the northeastern part of the township, through the Jameson and Sam Lynn settlements, running southwest to South Henderson ford near Glad- stone, and from there southwest along a sand ridge across the bottom to Burlington.

When a survey for a county road was made, the surveyors followed the old track from the Sam Lynn place to South Henderson ford ; from this place it only followed the old road in the main. James Ryason, Peter Butler and James Jameson were the viewers to South Henderson creek. The first road from the southern part of the township started from Honey creek, leading north through Warren to Gladstone; this road was extended on to Oquawka, the present county seat.

FIRES.

Tall prairie grass everywhere covered the township when the red man roamed the bluffs for wild game to make his breakfast on, and for some time after settlements were made. In the fall of the year the grass would often catch on fire, by some Indian chief smoking his pipe

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HISTORY OF MERCER AND HENDERSON COUNTIES.

of peace, or from the fire of some hungry hunter who had started it to cook his venison or turkey. It would run like "wild fire," as is the common saying, roaring, leaping, seathing, spreading wider and wider, like the mighty waves of the ocean, over the plain, up the high bluffs, across the hills and vales, out on to the vast prairies, carrying destruc- tion to everything which interrupted its progress.

When the settlers would see the smoke of this destroying element, it would be the signal for every man, woman, boy and girl in the whole settlement to turn out to save their own and the homes and property of their neighbors. They would go miles away to assist their neighbors to stay the fires ; they would often fight fire, to arrest its progress, from twelve to twenty hours at a time without rest. It was in one of those fires in which Tamatown, an Indian town near Gladstone, was burned ; the fire came up so suddenly that they had no time to save anything.

One Monday morning, about one o'clock, Mr. MeFarland's distillery at Sagetown was discovered to be on fire. On Saturday evening, as usual, the fires were put out and the house closed for Sunday, the only fire left in the building being in a stove in the room in which the yeast was kept; this had been replenished again on Sunday evening with the same care that was always taken to keep the room warm, but it is supposed that the accident originated from the fire in the stove in some way, as the flames were first discovered in the roof over the yeast-room. Some persons, however, among the workmen are of the opinion that the fire was the work of an incendiary. The loss must have been large, as the beer in the tubs would have run out. Over sixty barrels of highwines, with the large building and all its contents, were totally destroyed.

During the Blackhawk war a fort and block-house was built in the yard where Mr. Samnel Lynn's house now stands, as a place of refuge for all the surrounding settlers' families. A place was first enclosed by twelve foot slabs set in the ground, inside of which was built the block-house, consisting of two stories, the upper one project- ing out about two feet over the lower one, each having loop holes on all sides, through which to shoot. Previous to this a temporary fort was built around W. R. Jameson's house, by setting pickets in the ground around the house. This was, so far as known, the second fort in Henderson county built against the invasion of the Indians, the one at Yellow Banks being the first. The only remaining thing to mark the spot where the fort stood is the wall of the well for the use of the fort.

In the winter of 1832, when there was a great deal of excitement in the settlements about the Blackhawk war, there were several families

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stayed in the block-house near by. The names of those living in the block-house were as follows : Samuel Jameson and his family, his son James and his family, William R. and his family, among which was Calvin Jameson, Stephen Short and his family, and Abner and Gabriel Short, William Russel and his family, Aaron Earnest and his family, James Ryason and his family, Eliza Griffith and her family, making forty-five in all.

RELICS.

Mr. John Tweed has in his possession an old sword which is a relic of the Blackhawk war, used by his father, John Tweed, Sr. It is a short narrow-bladed sword with an ordinary brass handle. He has also a pair of tongs, plowed up in his field, which were used nearly fifty years ago by one of the first blacksmiths of this county.

On the summit of the bluffs, on the left-hand side going north of the Gladstone and Olena road, at the mouth of what is known as Tweed's Hollow, are found about 100 mounds, which are thought to be of ancient Aztec origin. Human bones have been taken out at a depth of eight feet, the corresponding ones of which are larger than those of the largest man in Henderson county, thereby proving the people who made them to be of more than ordinary stature. The mounds are of rather a mysterious origin, are prominent, at intervals, on the tops of the bluffs extending through the Precinct. In one of these an unburnt red clay pot, having flowers rudely etched on one side, was found in the bluffs just east of Gladstone, by C. Lilteich, while leveling off one side of the bluff.

Mr. Alexander Lynn, living just in the northern part of Gladstone, on the S. W. ¿ of Sec. 10, has the lower part of a post found while plowing on his land about twenty rods north of his residence, which belonged to the Sac Indians council house. It was taken out by him several years ago and can be seen at any time at his house.

On the bluffs near Frank Galbrath's Mr. William McChesney picked up a small flat stone nearly three inches in diameter, round, concave on both sides, bird tracks on one side, a bird on the opposite, and having a hole in the center. This small stone is called an Indian totum. This totum was taken to Burlington, Iowa, and is supposed to be in the Iowa State Museum.

Mr. J. Smith has two Indian relics, one of which is a small dark brown round and flat stone, concave on both sides, about an inch in thickness, and about two and one half inches in diameter ; the other one is a yellowish and gourd-shaped stone; it is about three inches long, the largest part of which is about two inches in diameter.

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HISTORY OF MERCER AND HENDERSON COUNTIES.

FIRST SETTLEMENTS.

Mr. James Ryason, the first settler in the township, was an Ohioan. In 1827, leaving his wife and child with his father-in-law, he started from Edgar county, Illinois, intending to take a flat-boat load of whisky to New Orleans, by way of the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Before he reached there, on learning the state of the market, pulled oars for Galena, Illinois. Here he disposed of his load, worked in the mines, and not striking a bonanza, he abandoned his prospect, loaded his canoe with lead and hides and sailed down the river for Oquawka. Landing at Oquawka, he began looking out a site for a wood yard. It was located on N. 3 of N. W. } Sec. 2, which he afterward improved, and built, in the fall of 1828, the first house in the township, two miles south and one-half mile east of Oquawka, and a quarter from main Henderson creek. The cabin was built near his present house, and made of hewed logs covered with clapboards ; the floor was of hewed logs ; the chimney of sticks and clay. It was a single room and one story high.

What caused him to select this piece of land was on account of a fine spring of water at the foot of the bluffs on this land ; not pre- empting as much as he expected he was getting, he subsequently bought a tract lying east of his would-be choice. This land he pre- empted and bought of the government when it came into market. At one time he came near losing it. He proved his pre-emption before the magistrate, and sent it to the land office. at Quincy to have it re- corded, but the land agent neglected to record it. Just as Mr. Ryason was recovering from an illness he heard that one of his neighbors, who knew that his pre-emption had not been recorded, was then on his way to Quincy to pre-empt his land. Notwithstanding his convalescence, he borrowed a horse, and, after riding nearly the whole of the follow- ing night, succeeded in reaching Quincy ere his would-be neighbor and land jumper, and preventing him from filing his fraudulent pre- emption title.

During the winter of 1828 everything in the way of eatables, especially pork, which was part of their living, was very scarce in the Yellow Bank settlement from which Mr. Ryason obtained his food. It was during one of the coldest spells of that winter he went over to a settlement on Drown creek to engage some pork from that settle- ment. On his way back he got lost ; night coming on, had to tie his horse in the woods and walk around all night to keep from freezing. He went back with team to help Stephenson over with the pork. While going over with Stephenson he became separated from him, and was compelled again to stay in the timber all night, without

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anything to eat or but scant wrappings to keep him comfortable from the excessive cold.

When he pre-empted his land he said he could carry all the property he had on his baek, and did not have twenty-five cents in his pocket. He worked at rail-making at fifty cents a thousand, to obtain money to keep him and family and make some improvement on his place. He made all the rails to fence his place by moonshine. He also chopped wood during the winter of 1828-9 for a living. Following the putting in of and tending of a small crop of corn, he started back in August for his wife and child with an ox team, which he borrowed of his brother in Fulton county. . He returned in November with his family to the little log cabin which was to be their future home, and the first one in the township, and among the very first in the county. Mr. Ryason claims to be the first agricultural settler in Hen- derson county.

During the winter of .1829 the only food they had was bread, meat and potatoes. For a bushel of meal he had to work two days. While on his journey after his family, he traded a rifle for four hogs, which were to be fatted and ready for him when he ealled for them in the fall. When he went after his hogs he found them too fat to drive, so he was compelled to butcher them there and haul the pork home after- ward. As he had no cow, and thinking he could do with less meat if he had one, he traded one hundred pounds of this meat to Jerry Smith for a cow. Some time following this bargain he bought a young heifer, and from these succeeded in getting a start in cattle.

He bought a couple of hogs from Mr. Richey, and captured some wild ones on shares with him. His excellent prospect for raising hogs was set at naught when the Indians came in and drove off or killed all but four of them. Some of his neighbors, through a mistake, drove off two of these so he could not find them, leaving only two for his winter's meat.

Among the first settlers were the Jameson and Short families, who settled in the northeast part of the township. In the fall of 1829, James, William R. and John C., sons of Samuel Jameson, came and settled in this county. Calvin (John C.) settled on the N. ¿ of Sec. 1, which was bought of Thomas Richey and designed for the family, where the father, Samuel Jameson, spent the remainder of his days. William R. settled on section 12, and also James, where the latter died. William Jameson raised a crop of wheat the next summer. He sowed " a half bushel and a half peek" to the acre, and raised thirty- three bushels to the acre, which would be fifty-two bushels to one bushel of seed. He sowed nine acres, and reaped from it 297 bushels

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HISTORY OF MERCER AND HENDERSON COUNTIES.

of good wheat. Calvin and James cropped together, and raised fifteen acres of corn, twelve of which was sod, a first-rate yield. The second year's crop was still better, the yield of which was about sixty bushels per acre.

The remainder of the Jameson and Short families, consisting of Samuel Jameson and his wife, three children, Joseph H., Nathan and Elizabeth, his two step-sons, Abner and Gabriel R. Short, in Septem- ber, 1830, left Perry county, Indiana, for Henderson county, Illinois. They brought one wagon and team, two yoke of oxen and one span of horses. They drove cattle and sheep, and Mrs. Jameson rode all the way on horseback. Mr. Jameson and most of the family, after they had gotten in what is now Henderson county, got lost after night in trying to find the road to his sons'. They hallooed for considerable length of time, when friends, hearing them, came and directed them to their destination. The balance of the family remained on the prairie for the night, near James McDill's place. Stephen Short, a brother of Gabrel and Abner, preceded them and built a pole cabin on the N. E. ¿ of Sec. 1, in which the family were to live temporarily. After the corn was planted they cultivated it with a single shovel and horse. The corn was not pulled until after a three-foot snow had fallen, but they were glad to have corn to pull in the snow. They gathered and hauled it home on a sled with an ox team.

Food being quite scarce when they first came, they lived on veni- son, wild ducks and turkeys, until the pork, which they traded for on their way to the settlement, came. During the winter they ground corn in a hand mill, the meal of which they made into bread. The bread was made with salt and water. Goods and groceries were hauled from St. Louis that winter, and they paid $16 per barrel for all the salt they used.

Mr. Joseph De Hague, a Frenchman by birth and a sailor by occu- pation, was born about 1796 and died in 1856, making him sixty years of age at his death. He went to sea at the age of fifteen, and at which life he lived until he was twenty-four, when he gave up a sailor's life, went to Terre Haute, Indiana, from there to Edgar county, Illinois, where he married Mary Laswell. Afterward he went to Galena, Illi- nois, leaving his family with his wife's father, where he was engaged in mining for awhile. From there he, with James Ryason, came to Oquawka. After running on the river for a few years he took up a claim and settled and built on section 33 in 1832. De Hague's cabin was like most of the cabins in those times, a one story hewed-log cabin, hewed puncheons for floor, roof made of clapboards, stick chimney laid up with clay, the back wall of which was made by laying up a

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frame on the outside as high as needed, and one of the same height on the inside ; this frame then allowed to dry, when the inside frame was burned out, leaving a solid, hard clay wall. He brought his family, consisting of his wife and two children, from Edgar county, with James Ryason, to Fulton county, where he stayed two years. Came to this county and rented a place one season, previous to pre- empting. Though he built on section 33, he farmed on section 34. He broke and cultivated thirty acres on the I. J. Brooks farm. After De Hague remained at the old place a few years he sold out to I. J. Brooks in the year of 1837, built a double-hewed log house in the Mississippi bottom, in township 9, range 5, where he kept tavern, making money quite fast, and where he lived until his death. His remains were buried in the cemetery on the bluff, in township 9, range 5, where his wife and several children were buried.

Mr. Right Lynn, one of the early settlers, settled on the south bank of South Henderson Creek, on the N. W. ¿ of Sec. 10, in the limits of the present town of Gladstone, in about the year 1833. The primi- tive log cabin was built in the same lot in which the residence of his son now stands. Mr. Lynn was much better off financially than most of his cotemporaries, he having about $1,300 in money when he came. In the spring of 1833 he, with his brother, went to St. Louis, where he bought two yoke of cattle. To get some trunks home which he had there he put them on a forked pole, and hitching the oxen to it, hauled his trunks all the way from St. Louis to his home in Henderson county. His brother, who had accompanied him there, left him and went east. When he began farming he used a mold-board plow ; after the scouring plow came into use he got one of the first of them. He farmed without horses until 1856, and these came from Connecti- cut. He tilled but few acres at first. He possessed a wagon which was a decided improvement over the forked stick which he used com- ing from St. Louis. It was a wagon which he himself made, the wheels of which were made by sawing off the ends of logs, and he called it his truck wagon.

William Russell, of Sangamon county, Illinois, with nine children in his family, settled on Sec. 24, T. 10, R. 5, in the spring of 1831, and there resided until the year 1849, when the father and part of the family removed to Iowa.

In the spring of 1829, John Campbell with his wife and nine chil- dren, emigrated from Scott county, Indiana, and settled in close where South Henderson church now stands. Here they raised a small crop of corn, and the next year moved to Shokokon. He died in 1867. and she in 1851. Their son, Richey Campbell, is now a worthy

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citizen of Biggsville township, and a consistent member of the United Presbyterian church.

Lucius Cook emigrated from the State of New Jersey with his family in 1834. He drove his team through to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he put them and family on a boat, and going down the Ohio and up the Mississippi rivers, they landed at Warsaw, from which place they traveled the balance of the way by land to Henderson county. They first went into a small cabin built by Right Lynn on Sec. 10, on the north bank of South Henderson creek. Cook built a cabin afterward on the S.W. } of Sec. 15, where he lived until he died. He, like many other settlers, came here with limited means. He only had one team and $10 in money. He moved into the cabin ere it was completed, cold weather set in, and while the cabin was yet uncovered a young pioneer made himself known, who was afterward known as John Cook and who still lives on the home place.

Mr. J. S. Mitchel, who lives near Gladstone, came from Pennsyl- vania in 1839. He first stopped at Warsaw, Illinois, and went from there to the vicinity of Terre Haute, this county. He was county recorder in 1848. He served as a teacher for several years in Han- cock and Henderson counties. In the year 1849 he settled on the S.W. ¿ of Sec. 16. There was an old log cabin on the place when he bought it, and was one of the best of those days. This quaint old cabin, with its shingle roof and stone and brick chimney, still remains to remind the present generation of what their fathers and mothers had to live in when they were children.

LIST OF OLD SETTLERS.

As it is respectful, at least, to liave the names of the old settlers mentioned, the following is a list of all the names of the settlers, with dates of settlement when obtainable, which could be ascertained : James Ryason settled in 1828; Thomas Richey, 1829; John Campbell, 1829 ; Johnathan Viles, 1829 ; Samuel Jameson, 1830; W. R. Jameson, 1829; J. C. Jameson, 1829; Calvin Jameson, 1829 ; Samuel Lynn, 1830 ; Stephen Short, 1830; Abner Short, 1830 ; John Kemp, 1835 ; Joseph De Hague, 1834 ; D. McDill, 1836; I. J. Brooks, 1837; James McDill, 1838 ; James Meckenson, 1838 ; Mathew Graham, 1838; A. L. Porter, 1840 ; Cromwell Catlin, 1844; J. N. Bruen, 1844 ; John Caruthers, 1842 ; Mrs. Mary A. Bruen, 1840. The following persons were known to have settled here previous to 1840 : William Graham, Daniel Putney, Ezekiel Popham, Abraham Tweed, John Tweed, John McClintor, Alec. Spence, Daniel Gorden, Alec. Russell, Henry Russell, William D. Henderson, J. F. Maitin, Thomas B. McDill,

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Thomas McDill, Henry McCartney, John McCartney, Rev. John Freetly, Cyrel S. Ward, J. H. Henderson, Thomas Henderson, Wash- ington Fort, Edenezer Russell, Galbrath, Earnest.

Stoves were said to have been a real curiosity in early times, more so than a phonograph now is to the present settler, the settlers going long distances to see these novel cooking machines. Mr. Elan Catlin introduced the first cooking-stove into the settlement as early as 1841. Of course the stoves of those times, like all other patents, were not so perfect as our stoves of to-day, but a decided improvement over cooking by the fire-place, especially in the summer time. Only two of those queer articles were to be found in the precinct until later days of the settlements, Mr. Russell being in possession of the second cooking- stove.

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History of Mercer and Henderson Counties : together with biographical matter, statistics, etc, Part 117

Author: Mercer County Historical Society (Ill.); Henderson County Historical Society (Ill.) Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Chicago : H.H. Hill and Co. Number of Pages: 1424

Author: Mercer County Historical Society (Ill.); Henderson County Historical Society (Ill.)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago : H.H. Hill and Co.
Number of Pages: 1424