USA > Illinois > Stephenson County > History of Stephenson County, Illinois : a record of its settlement, organization, and three-quarters of a century of progress > Part 16
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But particulars and incidents are more valuable and more interesting than generalizations. It is when we consider these pioneers as individuals, and not the life and experience of each, that we come to appreciate truly the plain and simple life, the dangers and the hardships, and the triumph in conquering the wilderness, and, above all, the power and influence of the pioneer character wrought in adversity.
One of the best accounts of early travel is that of George Flower, from England to Illinois. He spent fifty days on the ocean from Liverpool to New York. He arrived in America alone. "With an ocean behind him and a vast continent before him." He went on horseback from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. He joined the Birkbeck family at Richmond, Virginia, and the party consisting of Morris Birkbeck, Geo. Flower and Birkbeck's two daughters and another young lady, started for Illinois. He had heard the stories of the prairies and "shrank from the idea of settling in the midst of the wood to hew and hack away to a little farm ever bordered by a gloomy wood." The stage broke down and the party walked twelve miles to Pittsburg. Men and women then started on horseback for Illinois. Each had a blanket, a saddle and well filled saddle bags all secured by a surcingle and a great coat or cloak and an umbrella strapped behind. They left Pittsburg and plunged into the wilderness across Ohio and Indiana. Once, while crossing a log bridge, a horse leaped and plunged into the river, twenty feet below. The excitement and danger of fording streams
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troubled him in his dreams to his old days. Taverns were mere shanties, often destitute of windows and doors. They slept on a blanket on the floor. At times, they slept on the ground under the open sky. They passed Cincinnati and after tedious travel across southern Indiana, they arrived at Vincennes. The slow journey had some advantages for, before the journey was many days old, Flower and Miss Andrews were frequently riding together, much to the an- noyance of widower Birkbeck who had ambitions in that same direction. Youth won, and at Vincennes, Flower and Miss Andrews were married. The party often followed the dangerous "trace" that ran from Vincennes to St. Louis and were soon past the frontier cabin on the wild unbroken prairies of Illinois, where Flower says, "For once, reality came up to the picture of the imagination." In the spring of 1831, John H. Bryant, a brother of William Cullen Bryant, the poet, left Cummington, Mass., for Central Illinois. At Albany, he took a boat on the Erie canal and reached Buffalo in seven days. The lake was full of ice and he hired a team to Dunkirk and then to Warren on the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania. There he joined an English family that was making the trip down the river to Pittsburg in a craft called the Ark. This required seven days. At Pittsburg he came by steamboat to St. Louis, then by boat up the Illinois River to Naples. He then walked twenty-two miles to Jacksonville, Illi- nois, completing his journey. From Pennsylvania to Illinois, required one month or more of tedious travel. The journey was made by wagon, rail, canal, stage and steamboat. On the canal, the progress was slow-no faster than a mule could walk or trot. There was no haste and there seemed to be an abundance of time. Mr. W. W. Davis thus describes that part of the trip to Illinois: "On rising in the morning, a tin dipper was at hand to dip the water from the canal into a basin for the face and hands, and towels were ready to complete the toilet. These were limited in number and soon became saturated with abundant and indiscriminate patronage. There was a common comb and brush which fastidious folks hesitated to employ. The meals were substantial but monotonous : breakfast, dinner and supper consisting mainly of tea and coffee, bread and butter, ham and bacon, liver and sausage. Perhaps, the most ex- citing diversion of the voyage was the gymnastics required of the passengers when the lookout warned of the coming obstacles. "Bridge," meant the slight ducking of the head, but "Low bridge," meant a violent contraction of the whole anatomy to escape contact with some low roadway, crossing the canal. Night was our worst trial in the frail bark. There was no sound of revelry. Ex- temporaneous shelves were placed along the sides, one above the other, and a delicate man below was in danger of being crushed by some stout fellow above. A close curtain, swung on wire, separated the sexes. Long before day, the air of the narrow cabin had become distressingly foul, and at the earliest streak of dawn, there was a generous scramble for the deck and the pure air of heaven. We came one hundred and three miles in thirty hours."
The trip down the Ohio by steamboat was interesting in many ways. Charles Dickens made the journey on the "Messenger" in 1842. Thwaites speaks of the river as the "Storied Ohio." At the beginning, there was old Fort Pitt, once Fort Du Quesne, recalling the struggle for a continent between the English and the French. Associated with Du Quesne is the name of Washington, the first .
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President. Below Parkersburg Blannerhassett's Island. Here, the young Irish- man, the brilliant scholar and his accomplished wife built Castle Blannerhassett. And here, too, Blannerhassett was entrapped by the wiles of Aaron Burr.
Below Cincinnati is North Bend where the tomb of General Harrison could be plainly seen. At Louisville, an omnibus carried the travelers around the rapids. Thirty miles below Shawneetown, was Cave-in-Rock, the resort of Mason, the outlaw.
It was a three days' journey from Pittsburg to Cincinnati and seven days from Pittsburg to St. Louis. Above St. Louis was Alton, where Lovejoy was slain while standing for the freedom of the press.
Some immigrants came on up the Mississippi in steamboats to Savannah. Others went by stage to Springfield or Jacksonville. Still others by small steamers came up the Illinois River to La Salle, and then by stage or wagon struck out for the frontier settlements and the public land offices.
The poet, William Cullen Bryant, visited northern Illinois in 1832, spending a time with his brother at Princeton. The great prairies gave him an inspiration ยท that made him write the following lines:
"These are the gardens of the desert, these, The unshorn fields boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name The prairies, I behold them for the first, And my heart swells, while the dilated sight Takes in the encircling vastness: Lo! they stretch, In airy undulations, far away, As if the ocean in her gentlest swell, Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed, And motionless forever."
Bryant tells his own experience in frontier travel. He says, "A little before sunset, we were about to cross the Illinois Canal. High water had carried away the bridge and in attempting to ford, the coach wheels on one side rose upon some stones, and on the other sank in mud, and we were overturned in an instant. We extricated ourselves as well as we could. The men waded out; the women were carried and nobody was drowned or hurt. A passing farm wagon carried the female passengers to the next house. To get out the bag- gage and set the coach on its wheels, we all had to stand waist deep in the mud. At nine, we reached the hospitable farm house, where we passed the night in drying ourselves and getting our baggage ready to proceed the next day."
Samuel Willard says his father went from Boston to Greene County, Illi- nois, in 1831. He shipped his household goods by vessel to New Orleans and then by boat to St. Louis, where they arrived months afterwards. With his wife and three sons, he went by stage and steamer to Pittsburg, and then by boat down the Ohio and up the Mississippi and the Illinois. Henry Holbrook's father and mother traveled from Steuben County, New York, to northern Illi- nois in a buggy drawn by one horse, while the family and goods came by wagon. After five weeks of suffering from exposure, they arrived in Whiteside County. Edward Richardson came the entire distance on foot.
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The difficulties of travel were great. There were no bridges over the smaller streams and fording was a hazardous undertaking. Sloughs and swamps added danger and delay. It took time to drive around them, and when a wagon and team mired in the mud, it required several teams to pull them out. For that reason several wagons usually went together. Ten to fifteen miles a day were allowed for an ox team. A common mode was to have a yoke of oxen at the wheel and a horse in the lead. David Hazard brought his family from Penn- sylvania to northern Illinois, nine hundred miles in twenty-eight days, all the way by wagon.
But Stephenson County has an abundance of incident in the account of travel to the west to make an interesting volume in itself. One of the earliest and best is that of Mrs. Oscar Taylor. On May 9, 1898, Mrs. Taylor read a paper before the Freeport Woman's Club, entitled "Reminiscences of life in Free- port, sixty years ago." At this point, nothing so well could be done as to quote that part of her paper which dealt with her trip to Freeport in 1839. For this, the writer is indebted to the Freeport Daily Journal, August 28, 1909.
"It was in the autumn of 1839 that I began my life in Illinois. I came west by way of the lakes and stopped for several days in Chicago. That city numbered some 3,000 inhabitants at that time and was proud of its two brick buildings. Chicago River was crossed by ferry boats, bridges being things of the future. The lake lapped the shores now occupied by the Central Railroad tracks, while cows placidly pastured where the Art Institute now stands. Sidewalks were an unknown luxury and Michigan Avenue was more or less of a swamp. The one object of interest was old Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the river, then the military post under the command of Lieutenant Leavenworth. But Chicago was not my ultimate destination, and at 2 o'clock one September morn- ing, in a Frink and Walker stage-coach, I left the lakeside town for my future home in Stephenson County. The stage was a commodious affair, and I found ten fellow-passengers, all young men westward bound, as eager fortune seek- ers as those who are today rushing to Alaska.
In the darkness of the early morning I could see nothing; but the con- tinued splashing caused by the four horses gave the impression of low land nearly under water.
At daybreak we reached a country tavern where we breakfasted on the Rio coffee, fried fat pork, potatoes boiled with their jackets on, with hot sal- eratus biscuits, the color and odor of which warned us what to expect in flavor. But the gay spirits and vigorous appetites of my traveling companions added piquant sauce to the emigrant fare.
On emerging from the stuffy little breakfast room into the fresh air of the morning, there before me lay the great prairies of the west, seen for the first time in the full splendor of a magnificent sunrise, the sea of green stretching unbounded in every direction, the vast expanse unbroken by any sign of habi- tation.
The curtains of our stage were rolled up, as we drove on through the beau- tiful morning, I was perfectly entranced. I had heard of the western prairies, I had imagined them, I had read of them with Cooper, my father had written of them, but I had not formed the slightest conception of the actual vision of
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this country which was then almost as it had been a century before, when the red man roamed over it at will. Gradually the flat levels changed to a more billowy surface, and small groves of oak appeared. Sometimes we passed through what seemed veritable gardens, so gorgeous were the fields of yellow golden-rod, broken by the deep purple and snowy white of the wild aster. And the gentians, blue and purple, fringed and closed, bloomed in bewildering beauty, while the great cloud-shadows floating across the scene continually altered the face of the landscape. I looked to see deer or wolf or some other wild crea- ture start up as we passed, but in that I was disappointed.
Our late lunch had been a repetition of breakfast and I, tired and hungry, fell asleep as darkness gathered, to be aroused by a shout from the driver: "Rockford, Rockford! Here you can get a good Yankee supper." Most wel- come news! It wasn't a Yankee supper after all, but a most delicious supper of native prairie chickens, cooked, however, with the skill of the traditional eastern housewife. At midnight we left Rockford, crossing the river by ferry, to me a frightful experience in the black darkness. Hardly were we on solid earth before the driver announced that the passengers must leave the stage and climb the sand bank just ahead, as the horses could not pull the load up the bank. I think I should have been buried in the sand had not one of the young men gallantly assisted me.
After reentering the stage my journey was unbroken until in the early dawn I reached my new home on a farm four miles east of Freeport. What was my first home in Illinois? It was one of the low log houses in general use among the early settlers, soon to be supplanted by the regulation frame farm house.
In the joyful excitement of meeting my family, and in the novelty of all my surroundings, there was at first no chance for homesickness; but the realization of all I had left behind came with my first introduction to Free- port. My father had spoken of Freeport as the town of importance, the county seat, the centre of interest in the farming community, and I had pic- tured an eastern village nestling among trees, with church spires pointing heavenward and homes ranged side by side along the streets."
One of the most interesting records and one that will have increasing value and interest as time goes by, is that of Luman Montague, who settled West Point Township. He married a Miss Elmira Clark in Massachusetts, and soon after began one of the most remarkable honeymoon trips on record, the trio driving an ox team from Northampton, Massachusetts, over one thousand miles to Stephenson County, Illinois, sleeping in the wagon and camping by the way. Only a high hope and a tremendous will set out on such a tedious journey of innumerable hardships and faltered not till the goal was reached in triumph. Such was the spirit of the men and women who laid the foun- dations of this county.
James H. Eels and family drove through from New York. The Reitzels came to this county by two different routes, from Center County, Pennsyl- vania. John Reitzel, father of Captain W. H. Reitzel, partly by canal and partly by Incline Railroad, came over the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburg. From Pittsburg with his family, household goods and a set of blacksmith tools, he traveled by steamer down the Ohio River and up the Mississippi to Sa-
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vannah. The trip from Savannah to this county was made by wagon. At Waddams, Pells Manny volunteered to take his team and help pull the Reit- zels across the Pecatonica River, one of the many evidences of whole-souled frontier generosity. Mr. Reitzel settled on a claim at Buena Vista, June 22, 1840. Phillip Reitzel accompanied by John Wolford, rode horseback from Center County, Pennsylvania, to Stephenson County, via Chicago. Wolford was offered eighty acres of land on State Street, Chicago, for his horse, saddle and bridle. He declined. It seems that when people start for Stephenson County they will not be turned aside even by the offer of a future million. Of course, at that time Chicago did not give much evidence of becoming a great city.
John Turneaure came from near Meadeville, Crawford County, Pennsyl- vania, in two covered wagons, one drawn by two horses and the other by three. He brought with him some simple household furniture, a trunk full of victuals, his wife and eight children. They drove ocress Ohio to Cleveland and across Indiana to Chicago. Owing to the muddy sloughs in Chicago, he drove around to the south and avoided the city. Just out of Chicago, his wagons mired down to the axles and he had to unhitch his teams and lead the horses out to solid ground. He then proved that necessity is the mother of invention, by taking off the bed cord, fastening it to the end of the wagon tongue, hitch- ing his team to the cord and pulling his wagons out of the mire. A set of modern bed springs would have been of little value in such an emergency. Mrs. Amanda Head, Mr. Turneaure's daughter, was a girl of twelve, and remem- bers how delighted the children were with the prospect of a trip to the west. She says the people along the way were always generous and hospitable. At the close of a day's drive they would stop at some farm house. Beds were made on the floor and her mother cooked the breakfast on the host's stove. There were no charges-the traveler paying what he pleased. In 1842, Mr. Turneaure made the trip to Belvidere in three weeks. Later, in 1848, he bought 160 acres near Van Brocklyn at $1.50 per acre.
William Baker, the first resident of Freeport, drove a wagon with his fam- ily from Orange County, Indiana, to Sangamon County, Illinois, in 1823. In 1827, the Bakers moved over the Sucker trail, via Peoria and Dixon, through Stephenson County to the lead regions in Jo Daviess County. In 1829 they moved to Peoria and in 1832 they came back over the trail to the lead mines of Wisconsin. During Black Hawk's War they "forted" in Fort Defiance. After the war, the family spent two years in Dubuque and moved to Freeport De- cember 19, 1835. Two years after his marriage to Miss Harriett Price, in Cortland County, New York, Mr. Auson S. Babcock and his wife drove in a one horse sleigh from New York across Ohio and Michigan to Chicago, and then on to Stephenson County, settling first in Ridott Township. They left New York February 12, 1859, and arrived here after a four weeks' journey.
Mr. Charles Baumgarten came to America from Lorraine, France, in 1833. He lived in Detroit three years and walked to Chicago in 1835, coming to Freeport in 1850. W. L. Beebe and wife, formerly of New York, drove from Michigan to Ogle County in 1840, bringing with them all their worldly posses- sions in a wagon. Mr. Beebe found that he had just $30 when he reached his
,
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destination. They came to Stephenson County in 1862. Benjamin Goddard was born in Grafton County, New Hampshire, 1804; moved with parents to Vermont in 1806; moved to St. Lawrence County, New York, in 1825; drove in wagon with his wife, family and household effects from New York to Steph- enson County in 1835 and settled three miles from Freeport. Thomas F. Goodhue, born in Belfast, Maine; educated in New England; studied law at Troy, New York, and after practicing law in New York City four years, came to Freeport in 1842. Hon. A. T. Green came to Stephenson County from New York in October, 1839, walking from Rockford to Freeport. He stopped on a hill and resting on a stump counted in all, forty roofs in the village of Free- port. From the Grand Duchy of Baden, came Fred Gund, Sr., in 1848. Cap- tain J. R. Harding arrived here from Oxfordshire, England, in 1857.
Mathias Hettinger, a native of Keffenach, Alsace-Lorraine, came to New York with his brother in 1836. He worked at the wagon maker's trade in New York and at Canton and Portsmouth, Ohio, driving overland to Stephen- son County in 1841 and started a shop in Freeport. John Hoebel, a boy of fourteen, came alone to America from Phenish, Bavaria, in 1825. He came west and drove to Freeport in 1842. Mr. Hollis Jewell, born in St. Albans, Vermont, left home with only $50 at the age of 18; learned the carpenter's trade in Albion, New York; in 1835 worked at his trade in Cleveland, Ohio; in 1837 he built a viaduct in Chillicothe, Ohio, and came to Freeport by wagon in 1840. Thomas W. Johnson was born in England, 1825. He landed in New Orleans at the age of fourteen, came up the Mississippi River to Galena and walked from Galena to Freeport in 1839, and became a successful mer- chant. F. E. Josel, once city engineer of Freeport, came in 1866 from Austria, where he studied engineering in Vienna. Mr. Louis Jungkunz, Sr., came to Freeport in 1854 from Bavaria. In 1856 he married Miss Caroline Lucke of Prussia.
Mr. Dexter A. Knowlton started west from Chautauqua County, New York, on a peddling trip in 1838. The next year he made his way into Stephenson County and settled in Freeport, opening up a general store. Mr. Jacob Krohn, a prominent business man, came to America from Prussia and located in Free- port in 1855. D. Kuehner came from Germany to Ohio in 1851 and moved to this county in 1856. Daniel Kunz, baker, came from Hesse Darmstadt, Ger- many. Michael Lawver drove from Pennsylvania to Stephenson County in a wagon, arriving at Lena after a seven weeks' trip, May 26, 1846. The parents of George and Henry Lichtenberger came from Bavaria to New Orleans in 1847 and to Freeport the next year. C. H. Little came from Massachusetts in 1855. John Loos came to America in 1852. He was born in the County Rhei- nich, Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, and his wife in Eblington, Groshertzogtum Boxburg, Baden. Rev. Thomas F. Mangan, of St. Mary's Catholic Church, was born in County Clare, Ireland, and came to Freeport in 1858. Pells Manny came from Montgomery County, New York, in 1836, and settled near Wad- dams. Edmund Merck is a native of Alsace. Charles E. Meyer came from Hanover, Germany, in 1853 and moved to Freeport in 1855. George Milner and Joseph Milner came to Freeport in 1855. They were natives of England. James Mitchell came to the Galena lead mines in 1827, took part in the Black
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Hawk War and settled, first in Rockford and then in Freeport. Elias Perkins, of Derbyshire, England, arrived in this county in 1849 and began his work as brick mason and contractor. J. J. Piers, a native of Hunterdon County, N. J., arrived in Freeport and began his trade as blacksmith. Hon. George Purinton, a native of Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College, a professor of Baltimore College, heard the call of the western prairies and opened up a law office in Freport in 1840. A. V. Richards with his parents moved from Mor- gan County, Illinois, to Wisconsin in 1847, later moved to Galena and then to this county. Henry Rohkar came from Hanover, Germany, 1856, and entered the baking business. C. H. Rosenstiel came from Hanover to Waddams Grove, 1842. D. B. Schulte, who came to Freeport in 1854, was a native of West Pla- lon, Prussia. Charles Seyfarth, of Saxony, came to America in 1849 and to Stephenson County, 1852. The parents of J. A. Sheetz drove from Pennsyl- vania in 1839. Mr. Leonard Stoskopf came here with his parents from Canada in 1842. Valentine Stoskopf came from Strasburg to New Jersey, then to Canada and then to Freeport. D. H. Sunderland, who came here in 1845, was a native of Vermont. D. C. Stover was a native of Franklin County, Penn- sylvania. Geo. F. Swarts came from Center County, Pennsylvania, in 1841. Horace Tarbox came here from New York State. Mr. Oscar Taylor drove from Saratoga, New York, to Joliet, Illinois, in 1838, settled in Rockford later, and came to Freeport in 1842. Mr. William Walton of Birmingham, England, be- gan business in Freeport in 1858. John M. Walz, of Germany, started the cooper's trade here in 1856.
Thomas Wilcoxen was born in Milledgeville, Georgia. The family moved to Portsmouth, Ohio, where produce was shipped to New Orleans. With a brother, on horseback he came over the Indian trails to the northwest. In 1837, he settled near Cedarville.
Mr. Chas. Berhenke came from Lippe Detmold, Germany in 1853. Bryan Duffy came from Ireland in 1846 and located in Kent Township. James A. Hughes of Kent came to Dutchess County, N. Y., in 1851 and to Kent in 1853. Edward Hunt came to Winslow from Norfolk County, Mass., in 1838. Charles Sheard of Yorkshire, England, came to New York in 1832; to Canada in 1836; to Jo Daviess County in 1849 and in 1858 to his farm in Winslow Township. James Turnbull came from Jedburg, Scotland, to New York City in 1833; in 1834 to North Carolina; in 1835 back to New York; in 1837 to Chicago; and in 1838, to Stephenson County. James Coxen came from Desleyshire, England, to Cin- cinnati in 1849, and to Waddams Township in 1850. Charles P. Guenther was born in Frankfort-on-the-Maine; came to Dutchess County, N. Y., in 1836; 1839 to Buffalo, N. Y .; 1847, to Allegheny County, Pa., and in 1853, to Stephen- son County. Alonzo Lusk, of Hartford County, Conn., came to Waddams County in 1840. William Shippee came from Bergen County, Pa., in 1839 and to Waddams in 1852. In 1843 Robert Sisson came from Cambridgeshire, Eng- land, to Waddams township.
Michael Bastian came from Alsace in 1858, to Florence Township. August Fronning, who came to Florence in 1857, is a native of Prussia. August Hoefer, also of. Prussia, came to this county in 1856. Henry Kruse came to Silver Creek Township from Ostsfriesland in 1853. Dr. Van Valseh, and a party, Henry S.
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