USA > Illinois > Vermilion County > History of Vermilion County, Illinois, Volume One > Part 30
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CHAPTER XXX
A CIVIL WAR TIME MYSTERY (By Hud Robbins)
DISCOVERY OF SKELETONS - NUMEROUS EXPLANATIONS - SUPPOSED GUERILLA WARFARE-REMINISCENCES OF OLD RESIDENTS-"LOST ISLAND."
One phase of Vermilion County's history that seems to have been hitherto unpublished was revived in August, 1929, with the discovery of two complete skeletons buried under about six feet of ground about one-fourth mile north of the old Boiling Springs road on the banks of the North Fork River.
For a long time after they were found by Herman Tengen, Jr., who was excavating for a new house, the mystery of these bones was unsolved. Later, however, several old-timers in the vicinity came forth with the belief that they were the bones of the victims of a band of South- ern sympathizers who camped near that place during the Civil War, and carried on a Guerilla warfare with the resi- dents of the community.
These nefarious wanderers, according to those who remembered them, were scattered in many camps between what was formerly known as Beaver Lake, which has since been drained, and Paris and other Edgar County towns.
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They were engaged mostly in horse stealing but would beset the lonely wanderer with the least provocation and rob him of all valuables. If he offered resistance, he was in danger of losing his life. Headquarters for the band were maintained on an island in the middle of Beaver Lake.
Certain shallow places in the lake, known only to them, afforded means of getting their stolen stock to the rendevous. There they were held for a while and taken northward and sold. The camps along the way furnished stopping places for the raiders on their way to Lost Island, as the rendevous came to be known.
An accurate description of the members of the band or their names has been lost in the passage of time. But the authentacy of the stories of their activities can hardly be doubted because of the many persons who can still recall the tales of their depredations.
One of the men who furnished part of the material for this chapter was Fred Buy, who has spent virtually all his life on his farm which is located on the west banks of Lake Vermilion. He recalled many hunting expeditions on which he accompanied his father and how all the hunters avoided contact with the members of the outlaw band.
Their reputation, according to Mr. Buy, was of the worst. Several men, in fact, disappeared entirely and the Guerillas were supposed to have murdered them for their horses and guns. The skeleton bones seemed to bear out this fact because of the absence of identification marks of any kind.
The bones were in a perfect state of preservation. They were not decayed nor broken despite their entire lengths being covered by piles of rocks and buried under six feet of dirt. The absence of shreds of cloth or buttons
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or marks of any kind seemed to indicate that they had been buried without any clothes in order that identification would be difficult.
The skeltons apparently had been lowered into the graves on flat boards. Particles of the boards still re- mained. They were not intact but they were still evident in small pieces that had become disintegrated with time and the dampness of the ground.
One of the skeletons was that of a large man. The other might have been the skeleton of a woman. Both sets of teeth were perfect. They showed signs of being worn slightly on their grinding edges but this was taken to prove that they were both adults. None of the teeth were missing.
They had been lowered into the ground in separate graves and the bodies covered over with a layer of rocks. These rocks had fallen into the graves but none of the bones was damaged in the least.
For a long time they were objects of curiosity seekers. Many believed them to be the remains of Indian warriors who had fallen in battle. However, the absence of any foreign subject such as pieces of blankets or skins, imple- plements or beads, seemed to disprove this theory.
It was then that word was received that perhaps Fred Buy, who was known to have been a resident of that sec- tion for many years, might have some explanation for the strange discovery. And it was he that first advanced the story of the Guerilla band.
Many other old residents of the community were called on and all of them faintly remembered the presence of the outlaws, although their recollections were hazy.
But another phase of the tale was told by Frank Culp, who also has lived in Vermilion County for many years.
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His story was not that of his own recollection. It was told to him by another man many years ago, although he remembers the general story from his boyhood days.
The man with whom he talked told him the story of the activities of the Guerillas. It seems as though they were headed by a bold and fearless leader. The headquar- ters were used to gather together the collections of stolen goods for marketing.
The sub-camps were scattered along all the trails between Paris and Lost Island. Horses would be stolen and cabins of sparsely settled neighborhoods raided and personal belongings of the occupants stolen. Many tales that hinted of murder were included in the story told to Mr. Culp.
The camp near Danville was located just north of the Boiling Springs road, which, at that time, was used as a fording place across the river. Lone hunters and travelers avoided coming within close proximity of the camps.
Another camp was reputed to have been located near the old site of Higginsville, a few miles west and north of Danville. Bands of stolen horses would be kept during the day at these stopping places and taken to the next under the cover of darkness.
Soon after the war closed, these outlaws were routed. According to the story told to Mr. Culp, a group of resi- dents of the territory between Georgetown and Sidell banded together and decided to rid the community of them.
They rode northward and were joined by others along the way who had had their farms infested with the out- laws. By the time they reached Danville, they were more than one hundred strong. They rode into the camps of the outlaws and put them to flight.
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Somewhere near Bismarck, according to the story, the outlaws were overtaken by the self-appointed Vigilantes. A running gun battle ensued. The outlaws headed for their rendevous, closely followed by the pursuers. Many shots were exchanged along the route as the two factions encountered one another.
When the outlaws reached their main camp at Lost Island they made a last stand. But they were outnum- bered and many were killed by the vengeful citizens. Some of them died in the water as they attempted to escape. The island was surrounded by members of the Vigilantes.
Traces of Lost Island can still be found in what is now known as Beaverville Sloughs. There is an area about fifteen miles square that was opened to settlers by draining the waters from Beaver Lake. The oblonged-shape of Lost Island can still be seen as higher ground than that of the surrounding community.
However, nothing has ever flourished on the soil of the old lake bottom. There seemed to be an alkali content that rendered the soil unproductive. This tract still remains in its wild state. It has been considered useless by the residents of that section of the state.
CHAPTER XXXI
WHEN LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW IN DANVILLE (By Clint C. Tilton)
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE-FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE-EARLY POPU- LARITY-INNUMERABLE LINCOLN STORIES-ADMISSION TO THE BAR IN 1837- RIDING THE CIRCUIT -EARLY LAW PARTNERSHIP -THE FRIENDSHIP OF WARD HILL LAMON-ELECTED PRESIDENT-ASSO- CIATION OF LAMON AND EUGENE FIELD-PERSONAL HABITS OF LIN- COLN-LAST APPEARANCE IN DANVILLE-NEWS OF LINCOLN'S ASSAS- SINATION.
Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Ken- tucky, February 12, 1809, the son of Thomas Linckhorn and Nancy Hanks. At best his parents could be classed only as "poor white trash" and lived in direst poverty. His father could neither read nor write and his mother's knowledge was but little more. Add to this, the father was shiftless and erratic and his only profession, if it could be so called, was that of a carpenter of the hatchet and saw variety.
But he seldom labored. In 1817 he decided to seek a healthier location, as he expressed it, though some writers assert that the illfeeling roused in the neighborhood by his action in biting off Abe Enlow's nose, while engaged in a rough and tumble fight with that worthy, was his real reason for going. Accordingly, he sold some of his belong- ings and with the proceeds purchased four hundred gallons
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of whisky. Building a flatboat, he loaded the whisky, his carpenter tools and other junk thereon, and started in search of his Eldorado.
After a strenuous voyage, in which the boat capsized at a point near where Knob Creek empties into the Ohio River, he finally landed at a point in Perry County, Indi- ana. Leaving his plunder in the care of a settler he set off on foot into the wilderness. He soon came to a spot to his liking, near the present town of Gentryville, Indiana, six- teen miles from the river. Then returning on foot to Ken- tucky, he borrowed two horses from a brother-in-law, and loading his bedding and his pots and pans and his wife and his two children, Sarah and Abe, returned to the place where he had stored his goods. Here he rented a wagon and moved to the chosen spot. A rude three-sided cabin was hastily erected, the front being open except for the protection of a sail-cloth. In this rude hovel an entire Indi- ana winter was spent by the family before the father could generate sufficient steam to build a cabin. In the fall of 1818 the frail mother fell a victim to milk sickness and died. She was without medical attention and was laid to rest in a rude coffin fashioned by the husband. She was laid to rest unsung and without a prayer, but a few months later an itinerant preacher came to the neighborhood and services were held at the grave. Possibly it was the horrors of this motherless winter that saddened the soul of the man whose memory we revere today. With the coming of the birds and flowers the mind of the father again turned to thoughts of love, and that fall he hied back on foot, of course, to his old Kentucky home.
After a four-day courtship he wooed and married Sarah Johnston, who was Sally Bush, a boyhood sweetheart, then the widow of the town jailer. She had three children, but
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best of all, she had furniture and bedding and other articles needed in a home. She had some money, too. Back to Indiana came Thomas with his bride and her family, and she, good soul, seems at once to have taken little Abe to her heart. She was a woman of refinement and some edu- cation, and it is to her good offices that the Lincoln of history owes much. She aided him in his effort to learn to read and write and furnished the inspiration necessary to his self-improvement. That she was a woman of real ability is proved by the fact that she even taught her hus- band to sign his name, although he never mastered the rest of the alphabet. Still seeking a healthy location, in 1830, he again loaded his belongings, and after a three weeks journey, settled at a point ten miles west of Decatur, Illi- nois. With the family safely placed, Abe, who was now twenty-one years of age, decided to strike out for himself. Thomas Linckhorn passes out of the picture. He moved at least three more times in search of a healthy location, and died in Coles County, Illinois, of kidney trouble, at the age of seventy-three. And it was as a professed Christian that he passed on to his reward, if we are to believe one of Old Dennis Hanks' ill-spelled notes to his friend Billy Hernden, which reads, "Old Tom wuz a Babtiss in Ken- tucky, a Camelite in Indiania, but he diede a good Presby- terian in Illinoy."
Here began the odyssey of the boy from the hovel of the very poor, which was only to end its upward trend when an assassin's bullet brought him to his grave. In the next seven years we find him successively as a laborer, a flatboat hand, a clerk, an Indian fighter, a failure as a mer- chant and an unsuccessful candidate for the Legislature. But each disappointment found him just a bit surer of him- self and just a bit better fitted for the next venture. All
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this time he was making friends who were to remain con- stant and true in the years to come. His election as captain of a company in the Black Hawk War is an indication of his popularity. He was without military experience yet was the almost unanimous choice of his comrades in arms. While engaged in this adventure he met and served with Captain Robert Anderson, afterward commander at Fort Sumpter; Albert Sidney Johnson, who was killed at Shiloh, Capt. Jefferson Davis, afterward president of the Con- federacy, and Maj. Zachariah Taylor, afterward president.
It was during this service that we have one of the innumerable Lincoln stories. It seems that his company was marching twenty abreast when they came to a fence with but a narrow gate. The captain did not know the proper command in order to get the company in single file. Nothing daunted, however, he cried : "Halt, This company will now be dismissed for one minute and will then reform -on the other side of the fence."
Returning from the war he was elected a member of the Legislature in 1834, and re-elected the next three suc- cessive terms, when he declined to again be a candidate. In 1837 he was admitted to practice as a lawyer and removed to Springfield, forming a partnership with John T. Stuart, which lasted until 1841 when he united with Stephen T. Logan. Two years later this partnership was dissolved and he opened an office with William M. Herndon, which association lasted until he left Springfield for Wash- ington to assume the presidency.
Soon after his admission he began riding the circuit along with Stuart, Logan, Henry Whitney, Oliver Brown- ing, William Bissell, Stephen A. Douglas, David Davis and others. Gradually he expanded the circuit of his travels
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until the late forties, when he became a regular attendant at the sessions held in Paris, Urbana and Danville.
His services were in unusual demand here and he formed a partnership with Ward Hill Lamon for the handling of local business. This partnership began in 1850 and lasted until 1858, when Lamon was appointed district attorney. The last two years of their association the office was removed to Bloomington. Their association was one more of friendship than of business and in the later turbu- lent years it is asserted by those who knew Lincoln best that Lamon was the one man whom he trusted more than any other. He was not only his friend and confident, but his guard and protector as well. A word regarding this eminent Danvillean will not be amiss.
He was born in Virginia and came to Danville in 1847. He was admitted to the bar in 1850 and the local partner- ship began at that time. Ward Hill Lamon was one of the outstanding characters of early Danville. He was a cham- pion wrestler, an ardent drinker and a leader in every movement to promote the growth of the settlement. He and the late lamented "Chickamauga Jim" Kilpatrick shared the honors of being the two first to be arrested after the town had attained the dignity of a government. It was for disorderly conduct and resulted from giving a beating to Jacob Schatz, a grocer, who had refused them further whisky except on a cash basis. The store was on the site now vacant just west of the Woodbury drug store. I had this statement from Jim himself. While truth for- bids the statement that the arrest caused either of the assailants to forego the use of the product made by Distiller Bushong at his plant north of the town on the site now occupied by Will Hartshorn's fine residence, it may be that the beating was the cause of the following advertisement,
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which I find in Chicamauga Jim's own paper, the Ver- milion County Press, under date of April 11, 1860:
"Quit Selling Whisky
"I wish to inform the people of this vicinity that I have concluded to deal no more in the article of whisky. No person need apply to me for any hereafter, because I am determined to sell no more after this date.
"Jacob Schatz. "Danville, April 4, 1860 .- n147mI."
When Lincoln was called to Washington as president, Lamon was a member of the party who accompanied him. He had expected a foreign appointment from his friend, but ten days before the date of departure he received a short note from Lincoln asking him to accompany the party, and come prepared for a long stay, as he needed him. When it was decided at Harrisburg that Lincoln should enter Washington secretly, he personally chose the Danville man as his sole companion. When this decision had been made, Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, in his memoirs states that he called Lamon to one side and asked if he was prepared for every emergency. He replied by exhibiting a fine brace of pistols, a huge bowie knife, a black jack, a pair of brass knuckles and a stout hickory staff. Shortly after the inauguration Lincoln desired trustworthy information regarding conditions in Charles- ton, South Carolina, and also wanted to send a verbal mes- sage to Major Anderson at Fort Sumpter. As happened when a later president wanted dependable information concerning conditions in Cuba, a Danville man was chosen for the dangerous mission. It was performed with credit, but not before the agent came dangerously near hanging when his identity was discovered by a mob in Charleston.
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In May of that year at a personal expense of twenty- two thousand dollars for which he was never reimbursed he organized a regiment and was commissioned as colonel. He only served until the following December, when at the personal request of the president he returned to Washing- ton and assumed the duties of marshal of the District of Columbia under which title he was the personal bodyguard of the executive. Many historians assert that the assassi- nation of Lincoln would not have occurred if Lamon had not been absent in Richmond on a secret mission at that time. He accompanied the funeral train on its journey to Springfield and later spent a few days with friends in this city. This was his last visit to the scene of his early struggles. President Johnson offered him a cabinet posi- tion, which he declined. With his friend dead, public ser- vice had lost its charm. After some years in the practice of law in Washington, he went to Denver in 1879, in an effort to regain his health. There he met and became a chrony of 'Gene Field, the poet, and I want to close this reference to the eminent Danvillean with a little story told by his daughter, Dolly Lamon, who now resides in France with her husband.
One day when Field dropped in to see Lamon he found him asleep on the floor. Field waited some time, thinking Lamon would wakeup but he did not; so finally Field pen- cilled the following verses on a piece of paper, pinned it to the lapel of Lamon's coat and quietly left :
As you, dear Lamon, soundly slept
And dreamed sweet dreams upon the floor,
Into your hiding place I crept
And heard the music of your snore.
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A man who sleeps as you now sleep
Who pipes as musically as thou- Who loses self in slumbers deep As you, oh happy man, do now Must have a conscience clear and free
From troublesome pangs and vain ado; So ever may thy slumbers be- So ever be thy conscience, too
And when the last sweet sleep of all Shall smooth the wrinkles from thy brow,
May God on high as gently guard Thy slumbering soul, as I do now."
This incident occurred in the summer of 1882. Eleven years after Colonel Lamon lay dying. He was conscious till the last moment, but had lost the power of speech. His daughter watched beside him all these hours, hoping for a word. She was so stunned during this long watch that she could not utter a prayer to comfort her father's soul, but just before the final summons, the last lines of the little poem came as an inspiration, and she repeated aloud to her dying father :
"And when the last sweet sleep of all Shall smooth the wrinkles from thy brow, May God on high as gently guard Thy slumbering soul, as I do now."
These were the last words Col. Lamon ever heard on earth.
One of the good Lincoln stories has to do with Lamon. As told in his Recollections, one day while court was in session in Bloomington, between cases, he engaged in a
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wrestling match, in which the seat of his trousers was torn away. Just at that moment he was called into court to prosecute the next case. Hastily donning his coat, he be- gan the trial. But the coat was short. In a spirit of fun a young lawyer started a subscription for a fund to pur- chase a new pair of pantaloons. Each lawyer subscribed some ridiculous amount until the paper was handed to Lin- coln, who wrote, "I can contribute nothing to the end in view."
Lamon came here an ardent Democrat, but was the first of many who have since found it to their political, business or social advantage to jump over the fence into the pasture of the majority party, where the brousing was a bit better.
Like Washington, Lincoln had three love affairs. The first with Ann Rutledge, the belle of New Salem, has been the theme of countless pens. Molly Owens was the next one to attract him. She failed to enthuse and after a short courtship he gave up the struggle. Then came Mary Todd, the Kentucky belle, whom he met while she was a guest of her sister, Mrs. Ninian Edwards, in Springfield. The courtship was a stormy one, with an interval when the engagement was broken, but finally ended November 4, 1842, with their marriage. Herndon is authority for the story that on the wedding day a small boy in Butler's boarding house saw Lincoln attired in a new suit of clothes, and asked him where he was going. "To hell, I guess," he replied. If the testimony of those who were closest to Lincoln is to be believed, the squalls of the courtship days continued to blow. Mrs. Lincoln, at best, was quick tem- pered and prone to violent outbursts. That Lincoln avoided his home as much as possible, is the testimony of many. Raleigh Diller, a pioneer druggist of Springfield, some
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years ago told me that to his knowledge for a week at a time, Lincoln would sleep on the floor of his office in Hub- bard Row, rather than go home and face a tongue-lashing. It was also a matter of comment among those who rode the circuit with him, that Lincoln was the only one who never took advantage of a court recess, while on the circuit, to spend a week at home.
His personal habits were clean, and although the best testimony is that he occasionally took a drink, he never indulged to excess. It is generally agreed that he imbibed more as a matter of sociability than from appetite. Sev- eral of his historians quote him as personally being opposed to its use. Ward Lamon, however, tells of a party at une home of Mrs. Dr. Scott, here in Danville, at which he drank wine, and told his hostess: "I by no means oppose the use of wine. I only regret it is not more in universal use. I firmly believe if our people were to habitually drink wine, there would be little drunkenness in the country."
But while he was temperate in his own personal habits, a letter to his friend Josiah Speed shows that his wide tol- erance would not permit him to inflict his views on the other fellow. In a letter he tells of joining a White Ribbon society, but, he writes, "I only attended that one meeting. I joined because I believed the folks were banded together to give each other moral support against temptation, but I found out that their purpose was to make the other fel- low do likewise against his will-and I never went back."
Lincoln's love of personal liberty is also shown in another letter to Speed, discussing the Know-Nothing party, in which he says: "When the Know-Nothings get control it will read, 'All men are created equal-except negroes, foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they
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make no pretense of loving liberty-where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." But there is still another evidence of Lincoln's toleration. I refer to his defense of Father Chiniquy, apostate Catholic priest, whose trial on a criminal charge was held in Urbana in 1856, and later continued until the May term, 1857. Feeling ran high and it had been necessary to bring the hearing from Kankakee County on a change of venue. It was a case which many a young lawyer, with political aspirations, would have refused to take, but Lincoln, always the friend of the under dog, accepted and was the trial lawyer at both hearings. And his total fee was a due bail for fifty dollars, although the two Chicago lawyers who originally had taken the case, had charged one thou- sand dollars. It doubtless was this spirit of fair play that caused him to volunteer and defend the father of Joseph Jefferson, the actor, when the church people of Springfield sought to close his theatre. A great soul, this man Lincoln, who could find no evil in either Catholic or Protestant, wet or dry, strolling player or bigot churchman, but who was ever ready to give legal battle in behalf of the victim of intolerance in any form. Great, indeed, this boy from the hovel.
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