USA > Illinois > Vermilion County > History of Vermilion County, Illinois, Volume One > Part 7
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or Fort Chartres, if he wished to legalize the ceremony. This, however, was not often done.
At the close of the French Colonial War in 1763, the country east of the Mississippi River and west of the Alleghanies was ceded to Great Britain. During the prog- ress of the Revolutionary War, this western country came under the control of Virginia, through the conquest by George Rogers Clark and his soldiers of Vincennes, Indi- ana, and Kaskaskia, in 1778.
What is now Vermilion County then formed part of Illinois County in the State of Virginia. Later the United States obtained title to the northwest by deeds of cession from Virginia, together with releases from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, each of these states claiming title under their old charters from the British crown. Under the ordinance of 1787, passed by Congress, the ter- ritory became known as "The Territory of the United States Northwest of the Ohio River."
In 1800 the territory was divided, that part west of a line drawn from the mouth of the Kentucky River to Fort Recovery, the old battlefield of Saint Clair's defeat, in the edge of Mercer County, Ohio, four miles east of the present Indiana state line, thence north to the British possessions, being named and governed as the Indiana Territory, with the capital at Vincennes.
Governor William Henry Harrison on February 3, 1801, directed that the east half of Vermilion County should be in Knox County and the west half in Saint Clair County. This split the county in half with a north and south line, while more than fifty years before Mons. Vaudreuil, governor of New France, divided it in an oppo- site direction.
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In 1809, after the Illinois Territory had been formed out of the Indiana Territory, by a line running from the mouth of the Ohio River up the Wabash River to Vin- cennes, thence north to the British possessions, and acting Governor Nathaniel Pope issued an order on April 28, 1809, reforming the boundary lines between the counties of Randolph and Saint Clair and that part of Knox lying west of the territorial line, Vermilion County came wholly with- in the confines of Saint Clair County.
The county seat was now Cahokia, on the west side of the state, opposite the lower suburbs of Saint Louis, Mis- souri. Anyone at that time wishing to record a deed would have been compelled to travel nearly two hundred miles to Cahokia.
In 1816 Crawford County was formed and Vermilion County became part of that district. The new county seat was at Palestine, at the mouth of LaMotte Creek, where, in 1812, stood Fort LaMotte, a blockhouse, on the extreme northern limit of settlements in eastern Illinois.
One year after Illinois became a state, 1819 to be exact, Clark County was formed off the northern part of Craw- ford County, and the new county seat was at Aurora, a few miles farther up the Wabash River. Clark County took in all the territory bordering on the Indiana line and north to the Illinois and Kankakee Rivers.
January 3, 1823, Edgar County was organized, its ter- ritory being taken from Clark County, and it included by an act of the State Legislature, all that tract of country north of Edgar County to Lake Michigan, this being attached to Edgar County for judicial purposes.
The first official business after this change was trans- acted at the home of Jonathan Mayo, on the North Arm Prairie, but on April 21, 1823, the county commissioners
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fixed the county seat at Paris, the original town being laid out by Amos Williams, the surveyor, whose history is inter- twined so much with that of Danville and Vermilion County.
January 18, 1826, Vermilion County was created by an act of the State Legislature, the boundaries being described in the act as follows:
"Beginning on the state line between Illinois and Indi- ana, at the northeast corner of Edgar County (the act organizing Edgar County fixed its northern boundary by a line running east and west between townships 16 and 17), thence west with the line dividing townships 16 and 17 to the southwest corner of township 17, north, of range 10, east; thence north to the northwest corner of township 22 north; thence east to the Indiana state line; thence south with the state line to the place of beginning, should consti- tute a separate county, to be called Vermilion."
For judicial purposes the territory now embraced by Champaign, Iroquois and Ford Counties, two tiers of town- ships on the east side of Livingston County, two-thirds of the width of Grundy County south of the Kankakee River and nearly one and one-half of the congressional townships in the southwest corner of Will County, was attached to Vermilion County.
Iroquois County was formed in 1833, and by the terms of the act the boundary line of Vermilion County was moved six miles north to the present northern limit. Cham- paign County was formed in February, 1833, reducing Vermilion County ten miles on the west in its entire length. Livingston County was formed in 1837, Vermilion County losing ten full townships and a half of two others. Grundy County was formed in 1841, and in January, 1836, Ford came into being.
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There still remained a "bootleg" or "panhandle" as it was called, lying between Iroquois and Will Counties, this part of Will County later becoming Kankakee County, six miles wide and nearly fifty miles long. South of this was a block of sixteen miles north and south and eighteen miles east and west, with a toe of two townships extending eighteen miles still further south. The three northern townships of the "bootleg" were divided between Will and Kankakee Counties. The remainder was organized into Ford Township in 1859.
Cook County was never a part of Vermilion County, except when Vermilion was a part of Edgar County, be- tween the years of 1823 and 1825, and before the formation of Peoria and Vermilion Counties.
The act creating Vermilion County named John Boyd and Joel Phelps, of Crawford County, and Samuel Prevo, of Clark County, as commissioners to meet at the home of James Butler at Butler's Point the second Monday in March, 1826, and select a site for the new county seat, "with an eye to the future population and eligibility of the place."
The act further required that the owners of land selected as a county seat should donate not less than twenty acres in a square form to be laid off in lots and sold by the county commissioners for the purpose of raising money for the erection of public buildings.
The act also directed that all courts should be held at the home of James Butler until public buildings could be erected, which made Butler's Point in reality the first coun- ty seat of Vermilion County.
The commissioners appointed by the legislative act selected a site on the bluffs near the "Salt Works." This was six miles west of the present site of Danville and back
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a distance from the south side of the Salt Fork. The sur- face was flat, cold, clay ground. Water would have been difficult to obtain and drainage would have been a problem.
Major John W. Vance, lessee of the salt lands, refused to yield his rights and the pioneers also remonstrated against the selection and petitioned the state for a more desirable location.
The Legislature, accordingly, on December 26, 1826, passed another act appointing William Morgan, Zachariah Peter and John Kirkpatrick, of Sangamon County, as new commissioners to select the county seat.
January 31, 1827, the new commissioners reported to the county commissioners "that, in their opinion, the lands donated by Guy W. Smith and Dan W. Beckwith, near the mouth of the North Fork of the Vermilion River, was the most suitable place in the county for such county seat."
This selection was based upon the combined natural advantages of drainage, surface soil, water, timber, stone, gravel and other factors in the development of an inland city, not to speak of coal, which has played an important part in the later years of the city.
This site had been part of the location of the ancient Indian town of Piankeshaw, which was mentioned in old French documents as far back as 1719, and in subsequent accounts of early English and American writers. The Indian town was strung along the North Fork of the Ver- milion River from the northwestern limits of the present city to Main Street, thence along the Vermilion River as far as the extreme east limits of the present city and ex- tending back on both sides in irregular lines a half mile or more.
There was a line of stalwart oaks upon the river bluffs, and others scattered at intervals over the open plain. West
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of Stony Creek and extending northwest from east Dan- ville were patches of hazel and jack oak.
In the vicinity of where the Washington school now stands and extending north and west well toward the bluff, was a broad blue-grass meadow, and showing the marks of the old corn hills of the Piankeshaws. Under the hill west of Mill Street and in the other bottom, extending from the mouth of the North Fork to below the bridge were other ancient Indian corn fields overrun with blue-grass. East- ward of Vermilion Street there was then a prairie, with a few stunted bushes.
Only a few years before there had been scattered Indian wigwams along the bluffs, at a convenient distance from the numerous springs, the temporary homes of roving Kickapoos and Pottawatomies. The original Piankeshaw owners had been driven away by these later tribes.
The board of county commissioners-Asa Elliott, Achilles Morgan and James McClewer-accepted the re- port of the committee on the county seat location, and accepted the land donated by Beckwith and Smith, ordering the land to be platted into town lots and sold at auction on April 10, 1827.
Notice of this sale was ordered published in the Illinois Intelligencer at Vandalia, then the state capital, and also in a newspaper in Indianapolis, Indiana, these being the two nearest newspapers.
Dan W. Beckwith was employed by the county commis- sioners to survey the tract and lay out one hundred lots and on the day of the sale Harvey Luddington officiated as auctioneer.
Forty-two lots were sold, the county receiving nine hun- dred twenty-two dollars and eighty-seven cents. The aver- age price was twenty-two dollars a lot. Most of the lots
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sold were on Main and Vermilion Streets in the vicinity of the public square.
The commissioners, in selecting a name for the new county seat, decided to honor Dan W. Beckwith, one of the donors of the land and the earliest settler on the site of what was to be a new city, and named the seat of the county government Danville.
The day of the sale was warm and pleasant and many of those present amused themselves in the afternoon with a snake hunt, killing around seventy-six reptiles, some of which were six feet long.
The rock ledges stood out along the river bluffs in and near Danville and the open seams provided an excellent refuge for the rattlesnakes. They were protected by the Indians who regarded them with superstitious awe never permitting one to be killed. They called these snakes their "grandfather." These rock ledges were later destroyed by quarrying operations by the state, the stone being used for abutments of the first Wabash Railroad bridge across the Vermilion River.
The first houses erected in Danville were those of George Wier, Seymour Treat, Gilbert's Tavern, Dan Beck- with's new house on Main Street, his pioneer cabin being on the edge of the bluff; Amos Williams' new home on the bluff at the foot of Clark Street, and another house at the foot of Walnut Street.
On Vermilion Street and northeast from the public square were the cabins of Hezekiah Cunningham and John H. Murphy; across the street and west of the alley was Dr. Asa R. Palmer's log residence; and west of Vermilion Street and on the north side of the square was a two-story hewn log house, the largest and most palatial building in town, which was owned by George Haworth.
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Beasley's blacksmith shop was the first of its kind in the county and this later was purchased by Leander Rut- ledge, who converted it into Vermilion County's first fac- tory, where the foot-operated lathe turned out bedstead posts and table and chair rounds.
There were about eleven or twelve families living in Danville at the time. The houses were scattered around with little or no attempt at regularity as no streets had been cut through and the only traveled road followed a zigzag course across lots in a northwest direction to the pioneer woolen mill.
The first meeting of the county commissioners, who were John D. Alexander, Achilles Morgan and James D. Butler, was held March 6, 1826, at the home of Mr. Butler at Butler's Point. March 18, another session was held in the Butler home, at which time Vermilion County's first grand jury was selected.
The members of this first grand jury were: John Haworth, Henry Canaday, Barnett Starr, Robert Dixon, Edward Doyle, John Cassaday, James McClewer, Alexan- der McDonald, Henry Johnson, Henry Martin, Jonathan Haworth, William Haworth, Jacob Brazelton, Peley Spencer, Sr., Isaac M. Howard, Robert Trickle, John Cur- rent, John Lamm, Francis Whitcomb, Amos Wooden, Jesse Gilbert, Cyrus Douglas, Harvey Luddington and George Beckwith.
The names of Asa Elliott and James McClewer as new commissioners appear first at the September meeting in 1826. The board met at the home of Asa Elliott in June, 1827, and on the first Monday in September, following, it met at the home of Amos Williams in Danville.
The county affairs were conducted in the home of Amos Williams until the first courthouse, a log house built on
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the site where the Lincoln Hall was later erected, was established. It was one story in height with space for a low attic above, about sixteen feet square and made of heavy logs, hewn inside and outside. It was built by Wil- liam Reed, the first sheriff, for a home.
This courthouse was sold a few years later to Hezekiah Cunningham, who agreed to provide the county with a place for holding court and doing business in the upper story of the large frame building erected by Cunningham & Murphy on the southwest corner of the public square, for a term of two years unless the new courthouse should be completed in the meantime.
The pioneer courthouse was later moved to the corner of North and Hazel Streets, where two wings were added to it and it was weatherboarded. In 1876 it was destroyed by fire.
At the December, 1830, term, the commissioners ordered notice to be given of the plans for a permanent courthouse and that bids would be received for its con- struction. Nothing was done, however, until December, 1831, when another similar order was issued. Work was begun on the new courthouse early in 1832, the contractor being Col. Gurdon S. Hubbard. John H. Murphy was in active charge of the construction work as superintendent.
The brick was mostly made by Norman D. Palmer on his farm northwest of the city and the building was com- pleted in 1833 and used until its destruction by fire in 1872. It stood on the public square between the wings of the present courthouse, on the east and north and the side- walks of Vermilion and Main Streets on the south and west. It was two stories in height, made of brick, between forty and fifty feet square, with main entrances on the south and west sides and a door on the north. The lower
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story was in one room for the circuit court sessions. The second story was divided into four rooms.
The walls of this pioneer courthouse resounded fre- quently with the brilliant oratory for which the old school of lawyers was famous.
Abraham Lincoln, immortalized in American history, was unquestionably the most famous of the coterie of noted attorneys who practiced within its confines.
Judge Treat, later of the United States Circuit Court, and Judge David Davis, afterward in the United States Senate, were presiding judges during the life of the building.
Col. E. D. Baker, afterward governor of Oregon, and who was killed at Ball's Bluff, Virginia, during the Civil War, and Edward Hannigan, of Indiana, nationally known as an orator, with Leonard Swett, Usher F. Linder and D. W. Voorhees were among the brilliant group of attor- neys who practiced there.
Bradley Butterfield, of Butler Township; Henry Talbot, of Sidell; and H. W. Beckwith, member of the Danville bar, and a son of Dan W. Beckwith, were appointed as a committee to investigate the type of courthouse to replace the burned building and which preceded the present struc- ture. This committee examined three courthouses in Illi- nois, two in Indiana, and one in Michigan. The new court- house was built on land the county had owned since 1827, the location of this land in relation to the Public Square being responsible for the unusual shape of the courthouse. This was replaced about fifteen years ago by the present imposing structure.
It will not be amiss to refer to the lives of a few men intimately connected with the early history of Danville and Vermilion County.
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Dan W. Beckwith, after whom Danville was named, was born in 1795 in the present limits of Bedford County, Penn- sylvania. His father came from New London, Connecti- cut, and his mother was survivor of the Wyoming mas- sacre. Dan had five brothers and two sisters. Four of his brothers-Jefferson H., better known as Hiram; Norten, a, doctor; Sebastian, and George M., came to Vermilion County in its early years.
Dan and George left New York state, where their father had moved from Pennsylvania several years before, and settled in Vigo County, Indiana, in the summer of 1816. Two years later they moved to North Arm Prairie and were living at the Jonathan Mayo home when Illinois was admitted into the union as a state.
In 1819, the two brothers came to the salt works and George remained in this county until 1834 when he moved to a farm on the Kankakee River, a mile below the mouth of Rock Creek, where he died in 1859.
Dan W. Beckwith died in December, 1835, in Danville. He was a large man, six feet, two inches tall, weighing about 190 pounds. He was spare in frame but muscular.
His first mercantile venture was a small quantity of goods suitable for barter with the Indians, which he kept in a small log cabin in 1821 just about where the bandstand now stands on the west side of Harrison Park.
Later he moved into what is now Danville, building a log trading post on the brow of the hill, just a little south- west of the old Danville Seminary. His third place of business was at the west end of Main Street. He was also county surveyor from the time the county was organized until his death.
Col. Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, whose name is also linked with early trading days of what is now the city of
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Danville, was born in Vermont. He left Montreal, Canada, when sixteen years old, to come into the middle west and engage in the fur trading business for the American Fur Company, which maintained headquarters at Mackinaw.
He came to Chicago in October, 1818, and crossed what is now Vermilion County in 1819. The trading posts of the American Fur Company were located on the Iroquois, Embarrass and the Little Wabash rivers. Hubbard trav- eled the entire country between Chicago and Vincennes, Indiana.
In 1824 Hubbard succeeded Antonin Des Champs, who for forty years had been in charge of the company's trade between the Illinois and Wabash rivers, and abandoned the posts on the Illinois River, introducing pack-horses in- stead of boats and using "Hubbard's Trace," as his trail from Chicago to the salt works was called. In 1827 he abandoned the posts on the Embarrass and Little Wabash rivers, and shortly afterward built the first frame struc- ture, a trading post, in Danville. It stood on the south side of the public square.
This post became the headquarters of the Indian fur trade in this territory and it was nothing for fifty to one hundred Indians, with their squaws and papooses, to come to Danville and dispose of their furs at Hubbard's Post.
He had a staff of clerks, including Samuel Russell and William Bandy and three Frenchmen; Noel Vassar, Nich- olas Boilvin and Toussaint Bleau. Boilvin married a daughter of Doctor Woods and Bleau a daughter of Dr. A. R. Palmer.
In 1832 the fur trade having declined because of the constantly increasing scarcity of fur-bearing animals, Col- onel Hubbard, following the departure of the Indians from this part of the country, changed his trading post into a
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY,
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mercantile establishment where merchandise for the white settlers predominated.
That same year, Colonel Hubbard sold his stock to Dr. William Fithian and in 1833 he went to live in Chicago, where he died a number of years later and where he be- came a prominent figure.
Another pioneer merchant was Hezekiah Cunningham, who came to Danville in 1828 and engaged in the mercantile business. He was born March 3, 1803, in Virginia, the son of David and Nellie Burnett Cunningham. He came west with his parents in 1819 and located on the North Arm Prairie in Edgar County.
He came to Vermilion County in 1825 and married Mary Alexander, daughter of John R. Alexander. After moving to Danville he was in business about ten years. Mrs. Cunningham was born in 1791 and died September 5, 1867.
A daughter of Hezekiah Cunningham became the wife of Judge Oliver L. Davis, and a granddaughter, Mrs. J. B. Mann, daughter of Judge and Mrs. Davis, is still living in Danville. Mrs. Davis was born in 1827 at the Cunningham home which was on the Little Vermilion River.
A son was W. T. Cunningham. This son was appointed collector for the seventh district by President Lincoln and aferwards became deputy circuit clerk for the county.
Hezekiah Cunningham was a captain in the Vermilion County Militia, but went into the Winnebago war as a pri- vate under Capt. Achilles Morgan. He was a soldier in the Blackhawk War.
The first election in the newly organized Vermilion County saw eighty votes cast, fifty seven of which were cast for William Reed as the first sheriff.
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VERMILION COUNTY JAIL IN 1860
Built about 1840. The central figure in long coat and "top hat" may be Abraham Lincoln. The man next to him in "top hat" may be Dan Beckwith, Sr.
CHAPTER VIII
ORGANIZATION OF COUNTY AND FOUNDING OF DANVILLE-Continued
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF DANVILLE AND VERMILION COUNTY-POPU- LARITY OF AMOS WILLIAMS-HIS INTEREST IN EDUCATION-EARLY CHURCHES-ALVAN GILBERT AND HIS INFLUENCE-HARDSHIPS OF PIONEER LIFE-EXPERIENCES OF EARLY SETTLERS-THEIR DE- SCENDANTS IN DANVILLE-TRANSPORTATION METHODS-COMING OF THE RAILROAD.
When the Vermilion County company was raised for the Winnebago War in 1827, Reed and Dan Beckwith both were anxious to go and after much argument between them, the sheriff won his wish to go with the Vermilion county soldiers and Beckwith agreed to look after his duties until his return, which was about two weeks later.
Amos Williams was another pioneer intimately con- nected with the birth and development of Danville and Vermilion county. He was the first county clerk, serving from the organization of the county until 1843. He also held the offices of clerk of the commissioners' court, clerk of the circuit court, judge of probate court, county re- corder, register of saline lands, master in chancery, Dan- ville postmaster and notary public. All of these offices he held uninterruptedly from the beginning of the county
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organization until 1843, and some of them he held until 1849.
Despite these varied activities, he was universally popu- lar and remarkably faithful and attentive to business. For many years, according to a memorial published in the Ver- milion County Republican, in November, 1857, "it was the prevailing opinion that no one was qualified to do county business well but Amos Williams. The influence of his cor- rect business habits will be felt in this and other counties long after he is forgotten."
Amos Williams was born June 15, 1794, in Franklin county, Pennsylvania. In early manhood he settled in Ed- gar county and from a school teacher and surveyor, he was promoted to the position of county clerk. This office he held until Vermilion county was set off, when he became one of its first citizens.
He located at Butler's Point where the first circuit court was held and assisted in surveying the county and laying off the county seat, building the first house in it.
He was specially interested in education and built and owned the first and only schoolhouse Danville had for many years. This was also used as a house of worship by all denominations and also for public speaking, lyceums and public entertainments of an instructive or educational character, and it is claimed he never received a dollar for the use of the building.
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