USA > Illinois > Vermilion County > History of Vermilion County, together with historic notes on the Northwest, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources > Part 103
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to do, but for twenty-five years practiced the avocation of midwife all through these woods. When I was kept from home on these errands longer than I thought my nursing child would permit, I used to send the anticipating father back to my house to bring me my baby. So we lived, and now, at seventy-five, I do my own housework, cook, wash and manage my farm." Seeing is believing, an old proverb says, and yet there is one who, though he saw and believed, cannot yet under- stand how the good mothers of the olden time escaped certain death from overwork.
They went to Paris for their grinding, until Mr. Treat built his mill at Denmark, and after high water carried that away Alex. Bailey began a mill, which Wyatt completed and used. They used to pound corn in a mortar with an iron wedge, for a month at a time. Once the good woman thought she was ruined. In moving from Edgar county her sieve got torn up, and there was not one for sale anywhere for miles around. She was unhappy; but the Lord, or some one, dropped a deer-skin in the road, and she had heard of a sieve being made out of a skin, and she went to work at it. She wet the skin and rolled it up in wood ashes, until the hair came off, then soaked it, and when partially dry, perforated it with a pegging awl. It answered the purpose finely, and all the neighbors borrowed it. Snakes were the chief canses of fear. At one time, just as she had finished getting breakfast by her fireplace, she picked up her baby off the floor and dropped down into her chair, when she saw a snake crawling out of the hollow fire-log. She called her husband to kill it, and, by the time that was done, another came out of the same cavity. At another time she saw one hanging down from the unlathed floor-timbers over her bed before she had got out of bed in the morning, swinging back and forth, apparently hunting a good place to fall. The expedition with which she gathered up her baby and disappeared from that immediate vicinity is said to have been somewhat marvelons. Of the other Fair- childs who came here early, Zenas died at Bean Creek a few years ago, Lyman on the Middle Fork, and Timothy a few miles south of here, where his widow still resides.
Morgan Rees, now one of the few earliest settlers left in the town- ship, came from Pennsylvania to Indiana with his father in 1818. His father, John Rees, died there, and Morgan came to this county in 1827, and has remained here ever since, though not all the while in this township. He lived at Butler's Point one year, and then entered land, one hundred and sixty acres, in section 26 (21-13), just across the line west from that town. He remained there eight years. He went to the Black Hawk war in Capt. Thomas' company. He helped
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lay out and bury the fourteen who had been killed by the Indians fifteen miles above Ottawa on Indian Creek. They had been dead eight days, and had been shockingly mutilated and hacked to pieces. He moved into Blount township in 1836. At that time James Smalley, Wallace Sperry (who committed suicide near his house), William and Freeman Smalley, Enoch Oxley, were all living within two miles of Higginsville. Two miles farther on was the Fairchild neighborhood, and some ways still east of that the Copeland neighborhood, where Samuel Copeland, Mr. Johns, Truax, Humphrey, Cosat and others lived. In the southern part of the town were the Howard and Luman neighborhoods.
In 1834 and 1835 a large number of people, probably twenty-five families, sold here and went to Wisconsin. The lead mines were just beginning to attract attention, and people rushed there as they do to Leadville now, expecting to get rich in a little while. Among those who went there at that time was Mr. Blount, after whom the township was named, Mr. Win. Lane, who still lives here at an advanced age. Old John Snyder, grandfather of Barton Snyder, and his family, and Messic and Magee, were then here.
About one-half of this township was then timber; some of it has been made into farms, and timber has grown up where before it was comparatively open. Hunting was the principal business followed. There was not in these parts much of such enterprise as we have since seen. Sickness was terrible. Whole families would be down with sickness at the same time. The ague, the milk sickness, and other diseases that were consequent upon early settlement, were so common that people were broken in spirit, and their energy was sapped. Rees rode as constable in this county twenty-one years. He has had all the experiences of an early officer who had the tracks of horse-thieves to follow in times when the name "horse-thief" carried with it as much opprobrium as "abolitionist." He taught the first school in this part of the town. It was in a little cabin just southeast of Higginsville that had been abandoned by its builder, and as no certificate was re- quired and no rent to pay, he conceived the idea of putting the vacant cabin to use for a seat of learning. He carried around a subscription- paper and got enough subscribed, so that he thought he could live by it, and opened a school. There were few who could teach it any better than he, and those few would not teach so cheap. There were no other schools in the neighborhood to compare it to, and no big scholars who could "stump the teacher" in " rule of three" or grammar. So he made it go pretty well, and taught two quarters. As a wielder of the gad and rule he had few equals, and no superiors, in the Higginsville of
56
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HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
that day. The quarter's schooling was placed at two dollars and a half per scholar. He had eighteen one quarter and twenty-two the other. He received about ten dollars per month and boarded himself. The furniture was primitive. The benches were made out of slabs and rails, and he could hardly afford a blackboard. He used the old United States Spelling-book, English Reader and Testament, and Pike's Arith- metic. Each scholar had a different book, and no one had a full sup- ply. The scholars studied aloud, and the one who made the most noise was understood to be making the best progress. He never heard of a schedule, thinks it would have been a decided improvement. The roll of scholars, as far as he now remembers it, embraced John, Almeda and Rachel Storms, Jennie and William Smalley, three children of Mr. Truax, James, Freeman, Frank and Sabie Smalley, John Smalley's children, Malinda Freeman, and John, David, Moses, Christopher and Thomas Loving. William Loving lived one mile and three-fourths east of Higginsville, where his sons still reside. James Smalley be- came a minister, drawing his theological as well as his literary learning no doubt from Rees.
The ancient law required punishment by whipping for theft, and the whipping was sometimes pretty severe, too. Thomas Wyatt lived down near Decatur, and used to come up here and trade with the Indians. Whisky was his legal tender, and he used to trade on the basis of one quart of whisky for a pony. He frequently got hold of a dozen ponies in this way, or by stealing them outright, and would then run them off and sell them. He buried a jug of whisky on the hillside in Butts' land, and expected to come back and turn it into ponies; but before he got around to it he was run up into Indiana and caught, tried, and convicted of horse-stealing. He was whipped, and died. A man by the name of Griffiths was tried as his accomplice, because some of the horses were found on his premises. Some years after this Rees found the jug of whisky which had been secreted, and that portion of it which he sampled was pronounced a very superior article, rather better, indeed, than the "sour mash " or " benzine" of the present day.
Mr. Oxley, about the year 1832, made a tannery east of Higgins- ville. He had about eighteen vats, using the oak bark, which was very plenty on the trees, but difficult to obtain. This may seem strange, but the reasons for it are plain. Bark will peel only during the sum- mer months, commencing about the time of corn-planting, and sticking fast by about the middle of September. A sudden change in the temperature, such as occurs in September, will stop bark peeling in an hour. The months of the year in which nature allows bark-peeling 1. .... 1. . ] 1 2 1
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was an industrious man who could find time between corn-plowing and harvest, or between harvest and threshing, to peel a few cords of bark. Tanners had in those times not sufficient capital to buy sections of tim- ber land, ent off the oak for the bark, and let the land go back. The vast aggregations of capital which are now employed in tanning and leather were then unknown; so Mr. Oxley's speculation, while it did not cost him very much to inaugurate it, never was a great success, be- cause he never was able to drive it very hard. He tanned all kinds of hides, and found a market for his leather in every little shoe-shop in the country around. Rees carried it on for him a while. After him John Hilliard had it three years, after which Mr. Oxley took charge of it himself for a while, until 1845, when he sold out the whole concern, with other lands, to J. W. Goodwine, who came in here from Indiana, looking for good land where he could put in his time to good advantage, and fatten his steers, as well as the next man who came.
In 1836 Amando D. Higgins (a brother of Judge Van H. Higgins, of Chicago), and Marens C. Stearnes entered the east half of the north- west quarter of 36 (21-13), and bought sixteen acres off the south end of the east quarter of the southwest quarter of section 25, to bring them out to the road, and laid it out in town lots, platting and record- ing it in January, 1837, and called it " Vermilion Rapids." The plat was on both sides of the stream, and showed the "river" to be about ten rods wide, and large enough to float a steamer. The " rapids" were the main feature of this speenlation, as no boat could pass up stream any farther than here. Along the river front of this "town," boats could take on the products of the rich farming lands for miles around, and discharge the merchandise brought from foreign elimes in rich profuseness. Direct communication would be kept up all the year with New Orleans, Rio, Cuba and Europe, except a couple of winter months, when the people would be in constant anticipation of the opening of spring, and the revival of business activity along her wharves and in her great warehouses. The rapids, unless removed by government authority and appropriation, must ever remain a bar to extending navigation farther up stream, and this city could not help being the grand mart of trade for a hundred miles around. The prin- cipal streets running north and south to the "river front" were four rods wide, and were named Parish, Higgins, Chicago and Main ; those running east and west were three rods wide, and named Williams, Buffalo, Bluff, Spring and La Port. A wide " levee" lay between these streets and the "river," giving ample room for " business." This town was beautifully platted, and was taken to New York city to find pur-
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older ones, some of them, remember) the extent to which this species of speculation was carried on just before the financial crash of 1837. The times were "flush," business of all kinds was in the high tide of apparent prosperity ; money was plenty, the banks were liberal, rail- roads were building all over the country ; every river town was looked on as a bonanza which needed only to be well " blowed " to make it a source of untold wealth. Nobody knew what property was worth, and the fictitious prices which specific speculation always puts on its wares looked very reasonable upon water lots which were only waiting the dull toot of the steamboat on the one side, and the shrill whistle of the locomotive on the other, to give it life and real value. Such was the condition of things when A. D. Higgins took his plat to New York to sell lots to the Wall street speculators. He was a little too late, however, for the panic had struck the center of trade, and western lots would hardly bring the price of the paper they were platted on. He never sold a lot. Morgan Rees now farms the land which Higgins intended for a mart of trade. The writer of this waded across the "rapids" of this paper city in May, 1879, without wetting his feet, although there was water enough there to have wet his feet if he had been shoeless. The property was sold to Parish, Metcalf and Ebenezer Higgins, and came to be known as Higginsville. Amando had a store, and commenced to build a mill half a mile west of where the Higgins- ville store now is, and Ebenezer finished it after it came into his pos- session, and ran it a few years, when the high water swept it away.
Naffer & Smalley built a saw-mill three-fourths of a mile southeast of H. in 1832. It did very good work and sawed up a good deal of stuff, for hardwood lumber was in demand for fencing, building, furni- ture and other such purposes. A grist-mill was afterward added to it, and did pretty good custom-work. It run till about 1860. Not a ves- tige of it remains now.
Henry Harpaugh, who still pounds his anvil in the mansion which Elder Herron used to live in, came from Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1836, and has been almost continually blacksmithing from that time to this, more than forty years, the oldest and probably the earliest blacksmith in this part of the town. He built a shop right in the road east of Higginsville, then built a house near by. For eighteen years he has been using the old log house which was once the abode of Mr. Herron ; portions of it are torn away. It has settled so, and the refuse from his forge which he has thrown around the door have so raised the ground, that you could scarce get a horse inside of it. Of those who lived about here when he came, only Morgan Rees remains to tell the story of early life along this part of Middle Fork.
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Cyrus Crawford settled the same year, 1836, southeast of him, on the Danville road, and still lives there. He has been a worthy and respected citizen for more than forty years, and still lives on the farm which he entered. His eight children live around him, making his sunset days pleasant in the enjoyment of their society and love. Mr. Elliott lived a half mile out on the prairie east of them, which was the farthest extent anyone had then tried. He is now dead, and his farm is a part of the Goodwine land. In the same neighborhood, one mile east, resided then Michael French, who afterward went to Indiana; Cornelius and Abram Peterson, F. Smalley, Robert Lockhart, Milton Anderson and Munroe Rees. Goodwine became owner of all their lands.
Peter Cosat came here in 1830 and commenced a farm on section 11, just west of Samuel Copeland, and lived there about thirty years. He died, and his family is scattered, one son living in Ross. His brother David came in 1834, and took up land near him in the timber, and lived there nntil 1849, when he sold to Mr. Gunn and went to Wis- consin, where his father-in-law had gone. The first tax he paid was ten cents- that was when Thomas Short was collector -and he suc- ceeded in paying all of it in silver without being sold out by the col- lector. Mr. Cosat came back from Wisconsin a year later, and bought one hundred and twenty acres of B. M. Kirk, at five dollars per acre. When he first came here he could ride anywhere through the timber without encountering so much as an ox-goad, and it was not until the fire had been kept ont several years that the undergrowth began to fill up the timber. He engaged in farming and raising cattle and horses. He still resides on the farm, but thinks he has nearly passed his work- ing days. Several of his children live near him. His son, John J., is a justice of the peace, and is an ordained elder of the Christian church.
William White, now one of the oldest citizens in town, took up land where he still resides, just east of Copeland's, about 1831. He was a man of excellent character; very decided in his religious convic- tions. He raised quite a family of girls, several of whom now reside in the vicinity. He is now very old and feeble. His memory will long be held in just esteem by those who have long known him.
John Johns came here from Kentucky, having lived a while in In- diana, in 1829, and settled in the Copeland neighborhood. It was at his house that the first preaching was held. His brothers-in-law, Ben- jamin Stewart and John Mills, and his father-in-law, Mr. Humphrey, came on here to live a few years later. They were all excellent people and much esteemed. Mr. Johns now lives in Danville. He remained in Blount, farming, until 1852, when he removed to D. and engaged in
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the lime and plaster trade. He is the father of ten children, eight of whom live in Danville. Mr. Mills now lives in Fairmount.
John Ricard moved here from Ohio in 1835, took up land in sec- tion 14, and owned some on the prairie farther north. He lived here about twenty-five years, and for sixteen years served as justice of the peace. He was a prominent and influential man, and was instru- mental in getting the township laid off; Alvin Gilbert succeeded in getting the name Fremont given to it. This stirred up every demo- cratic drop in his veins, and he rebelled. He did not propose to stand it. He would never permit his township to be named after the aboli- tion candidate for president. His reasons for selecting Blount were that it was an uncommon name; that he was a good man and had early settled in the town, and was one of the earliest preachers living in it, and was no abolitionist by several degrees.
Old Abram Blount came here to live in 1830, and took up land in section 28 (20-12) in the timber, where Elisha Grimes lives. He was a man of powerful frame, and loved hunting better than working on a farm. He had the best gun in town, weighing eighteen pounds. He was a preacher of the Christian church, a good neighbor and an excel- lent citizen. He became dissatisfied with the country, however. He had lost seventeen horses, and thought their death was caused by milk- sickness, and offered to sell out; he sold to Mr. Snyder, and went away. When the question of changing the name of the new township came up, Norris Young proposed the name of Blount. The people remembering the jovial old man with kindly feelings, accepted the name.
J. B. Cline came from Kentucky in 1829, and settled on section 25. He made a good farm, and was a good citizen. He had nine children, who are all dead but Spencer, who lives still in the same log-house his father built. Mr. Cline died many years ago. His widow died within the year past at the age of eighty-four. Spencer, the only living child, has lived here fifty years. Of ten children five are living, three of them at home. Jacob Grimes came here in 1832. He rented awhile, and then bought land in section 26. He now resides in Danville.
Wm. Cannady came from Kentucky in 1828, and made a home on section 35, where Joseph Creamer now lives. He died about ten years ago, and his family are either all dead or moved away. He was a good man, kind hearted and true. During the time of the deep snow, and at times of seareity, he used to seek out families who were in want and carry cornmeal to them when he had nothing better. After he got too old to work, he spent his time whittling brush-brooms, to give to those whom he supposed stood in need of them.
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Joseph Dyserd came to Blount about 1830. He had a large family, four of whom yet live in this vicinity; one is the wife of George Pentecost, of Danville. Mr. Gillen, who came here about the same time, died soon. His son still lives here.
Wm. Lane came in 1836, and took up land in section 22, where he still resides. He has been several times married, and has a large family, the older ones of whom are scattered through the country and elsewhere. One was the first wife of Judge McDowell, of Fairbury, and another the wife of John Wapples, jr., now living in Livingston county. Mr. Lane has been a successful farmer, raising and feeding stock largely, and now, though past seventy, is strong and able to do considerable work. He has always been a man of influence, and that influence always for good.
The Nebiker family, who were here carly, went from here to Nau- voo, and joined the Mormons. So far as known, they were the only representatives of Blount who have openly espoused those doctrines.
I. R. Gritton came here from Kentucky in 1840, and bought land of the estate of Abram Rees. Mr. Rees owned a farm on section 23, and, while at work building a mill at Denmark, dicd. Mr. Gritton had a family of five children, only three of whom survive. One was killed a year since by Mr. Clem, in a difficulty growing out of the lease of a piece of land. One of Mr. Gritton's first acts, after coming on to his farm, was the selection and planting of an excellent orchard, which, owing to his good judgment and care, was for a long time a source of increased revenue. Gritton's orchard was known far and near as one of the best in this neck of woods. He never has been a member of any church, but his conversation shows that he has a true appreciation of the results of a sincere religious life in a community like this. The now aged couple are saddened in their last days by the tragedy which took the life of a dear son.
Isaac Smith came from Ohio in 1838, and entered eighty acres in section 32 (21-12), and lived here until his death. His son, G. G. Smith, who for many years has served the township as supervisor in so capable a manner as to indicate that he has a life lease of it, lives on the farm which his father made. While himself a member of the immortal Smith family, his children rejoice in lineal descent from the honored family of Fairchild.
The Smalley family, the names of whom have frequently appeared in these items as among the very first in the northwestern part of the town, exerted a very beneficial influence on society, as leaders in reli- gious and educational affairs. The tone of the neighborhood, indeed of the entire town, still feels the effects of their early earnest efforts.
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HISTORY OF YERMILION COUNTY.
In and around what is now called Higginsville, these old pioneers up- held the doctrines and practices of the Baptist believers, and organized several churches in the vicinity. That another denomination seems to have supplanted the institutions which Mr. Smalley planted there, does. not argue that the good he did was interred with his bones. Local and altogether natural causes have given to the Methodists the territory which he first occupied. Their methods, the shade of doctrine which is made most prominent in the gospel as presented by their local preachers, who, as a rule, were men of more spiritual than intellectual gifts, rendered the Methodist church the most natural home for the class of people who redeemed this country from a wilderness. Many who had first, from location or from choice, attached themselves to the Baptist church, found in the more frequent ministrations, the simplicity and the earnestness of the itinerants and their assistants, and more than all in the class-meeting, the particular spiritual food and practice they so much needed. The good results of Freeman Smalley's labors are yet seen everywhere. The old First Baptist church was formed at Mr. Smalley's house about 1834, as recorded in the history of Middle Fork. There was no house of sufficient size to accommodate those who desired to attend his preaching, and the people began to perfect measures for a house of worship. In 1837 the church was built a few rods west of where the store now stands at Higginsville. The entire neighborhood turned out to help get up the "meeting-house." Some hewed timber, some drew it, some made the foundation, others the shingles. Moses Jarrett, Levi Asher and D. S. Halbert were the ear- penters. The siding was made of black-walnut, quite common before the days of pine lumber; the floor they made of ash. The seats were as nice and comfortable as could be made. The building was 24x 36, and was well considered a great undertaking. Like Nelson's crew, every man did his duty and performed his share of the work. The building stood there until it actually went to pieces from old age. Be- sides Elder Smalley, Elder Bartlett Dowell Crede Herron (all one man, reader), the Blankenships, and others, used to preach here. The Baptists, under the same leader, organized a church in the southern part of town, and built a house of worship in 1848, on land donated for that purpose by Mr. James Pentecast. Under the terms of his donation other Christian churches are to be permitted to use the build- ing when not wanted by the Baptists. The building is 30x40, and is a very neat and comfortable building. Elders Smalley, Dodson and Blankenship preached here.
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