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 34

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company
Number of Pages: 1164

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 34

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The discovery of enormous quantities of brine upon the Ka- nawha River, and the completion of a government pier at the mouth of the Chicago Creek, making a practical harbor so that vessels on the lake could safely enter there, created a competition that put an end to the further manufacture of salt in Vermilion county. The works after this were a loss to every one who under- took to run them. They were abandoned, and the long row of buildings that had grown up in palmier days became vacant. For many years afterward the sole occupant was a singular old lady whom the people called " Mother Bloss." She lived all alone, spending her time in knitting or in boiling a little salt at the old furnace when the weather was pleasant, and would bring the pro- duets of her industry to town and barter them for sugar, coffee, snuff and such other little luxuries as her limited means would allow.

Nothing now remains of the old salt works except the furrowed hillside, where some of the furnace stones point above the overlay- ing grass, and a few depressions in the ground that mark the posi- tion of several of the wells. They are situated over half a mile west of the crossing of the middle fork, in the bottom, near the north bank of the salt fork, and between the cultivated fields and the river. The Indians told Maj. Vance that they and the French traders had made salt at these springs for at least seventy or eighty years before they were developed by the white people ; and the old Indians said they had no recollection of the time, it was so long ago since their people first commenced making salt there. The well- worn trails of buffalo and other wild animals were found converg- ing to this brakish ooze from many directions, and the abundance of game that collected there to eat the salty earth is proven by the quantity of broken arrow-heads which have been found in this locality ever since the settlement of the country.

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HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.

The salt works were the nucleus of settlements in that vicinity, as they were, also, the beginning of the county. The next begin- ning, in the order of time, was made in 1820, by James D. Butler, who "took up a claim," as squatting on a piece of land before it was surveyed or put in market was called, just west of Catlin. He was from Chittenden county, Vermont ; moved to Clark county, Ohio; lived there six years, when, with two or three other persons, he came to Vermilion county. His cabin was erected on the right hand side of the road leading from Catlin to the fair ground, and on the east side of the branch which still bears his name. He put in a crop, and, in company with his neighbors, returned in the fall to Ohio. The next spring he brought out his family. His neighbors would not come back with him ; they abandoned their " little beginnings " be- cause their families were afraid to submit themselves, so far from civilization, to the mercy of the Indians, whose numerous bands were roaming over this country at that time. When Butler's fam- ily moved in, their nearest neighbor south was Henry Johnson, on the Little Vermilion, while Treat's family, at the salt works, with Whitcomb and the two Beckwiths, Dan and George, were their only neighbors in that direction. Within two or three years Robert Trickle came to Butler's Point, then John Light, and soon after Asa Elliott. Whitcomb took a wife and went from the salt works to Catlin, where he built a home and lived for many years.

At a later day, Butler, greatly prospered by his industry and thrift, built a larger house-in fact, a mansion, so considered at the time-out on the prairie near the northeast portion of the present Catlin fair-ground inclosure. The logs were square hewn ; the cor- ners of the building were cut even with the line of the walls. Butler was a man of good business capacity, and possessed a practical mind. This, with his good house and the accession of enterprising neigh- bors, soon made "Butler's Point " the focal center of the country many miles around.

Near Butler's house stood a large oak tree, all alone, out well beyond the line of timber skirting the branch, where for years it had bid defiance to the annual prairie fire. It was called " Butler's lone tree," and was a landmark and sentinel that served as a guide to travelers crossing the prairies from the south and west.

A Lewis Bailey, in 1823, made a " tomahawk improvement," as little clearings in the timber were called in those days, west of the salt works some six miles, on what is now known as a part of the old Radcliffe farm. Bailey sold out to Harvey Luddington, who was well known in Danville, where he lived since 1828 until his

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death within the past year. The branch near by became known to the early settlers as Luddington's branch. It is now called Stony Creek. Within a few years afterward a Mr. Walker opened a farm higher up the creek, and the place became known as "Walker's Point."

The facts narrated in reference to the early settlement at Butler's Point, and upon the Little Vermilion and Stony Creek, are produced from a narrative given the writer by Annis Butler, daughter of Jas. D. Butler, afterward the wife of Marquis Snow, and after this the wife of Cyrus Douglas. Her reminiseences are quite lengthy, and were taken down in writing by the writer of this, at the time and substantially as related to him at her house in Fairmount, on the 12th of August, 1876. The lady was in excellent health at the time, and exceedingly quick in both mind and body. Her recollection of events was remarkable, and her faculty in relating them minute and exact. She had always enjoyed excellent health, and time had dealt so gently with her that her appearance betrayed no evidence of her age. The writer has been thus particular, that the reader may give proper credit to her statements wherein they differ from the " recol- lections " of other "old settlers." She was born in 1805, and was about sixteen years old when she came to Catlin Township with her father. She lived in that part of the county until in March, 1877, when she died at her home in Fairmount. Concerning her first marriage, she says that her husband, Marquis Snow. drove one of her father's teams when the family moved from Ohio to Illinois, and that her acquaintance with him began before that time. Mr. Douglas and his intended bride were at the salt works. She was there also, as was Marquis Snow. The groomsman took their girls on horseback, each pony carrying two persons, the groom in front, the bride behind, following in single file along an Indian trail. leading from the salt works to Denmark. Dan and George Beckwith, dressed in buckskin blouse, breeches and moccasins, brought up the rear on foot. Squire Treat's cabin was about fourteen feet square, built of sinall round logs. Douglas was married first, and then Marquis and Miss Annis stood up, and joining hands, their marriage was next duly solemnized. The ceremony of this double wedding was per- formed on the 27th day of January, 1825. It has been erroneously stated that these weddings were the first ever celebrated in Vermil- ion county. These were, perhaps, the first in this part of what is now known as Vermilion county. Then Vermilion was a part, and only a small part, of Edgar county, and Squire Treat was one of the justices of the peace for the county of Edgar. Before laying aside

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Mrs. Douglas's narrative, we will extract two or three incidents which she relates. They are unimportant in themselves, but will illustrate the necessities of society, and the condition of this part of the country at that time, and will assist the reader in drawing con- trasts between the " early days " and now.

After Baily sold out to Luddington he cleared ont to the "Illi- nois River country, " leaving his wife and two or three small children at the salt works. The children were taken sick. The wife soon became ill, too. There was no other woman at the salt works, the men laboring there being all unmarried. Whitcomb took care of the siek mother and her children. With his own hands he did all their washing. No female help could be had. No doctors or drug stores, from where aid or medicines could be proenred, were nigh. No food, such as invalids require, could be procured. One by one the chil- dren, wasting away, day after day, died. No plank or lumber was to be had, and coffins were made out of rough boards, split from a walnut tree that grew a short distance from Butler's branch. In these rude caskets, roughly made by the men with such tools as they possessed, the bodies of the little ones were placed in the ground. The sick mother, unable to leave her conch, could drop no tear at the graves of her dear ones. There were none to mourn at the funeral, -no relatives, no friends, no minister, - only the sad faces of strong men inured to hardships, who silently performed the last rites.

The walnut tree, says Mrs. Douglas, was called the "coffin tree." Neighbors came from a long distance and rived boards from this tree. It was straight-grained. and slabs could be split off of it with little difficulty. From such material as this were formed the burial- cases of a number of the early settlers.

One spring, some two years before Mr. Snow's marriage, he was making sugar at the camp near the salt works, and as he was hauling sugar water from the trees to the camp on a " bob-sled." a panther came near him. He motioned to Lewis Bailey, who was at the camp fire, to bring the rifle, but Bailey did not see him. All the while the panther was eyeing Mr. Snow sharply ; whenever he moved, the panther would move in the same direction. He mounted a fallen tree. still trying to attract Bailey's attention. He was afraid to run, lest the panther would spring upon him. The panther got upon the log himself, and followed Snow up as the latter slowly retreated, walk- ing backward upon the log and facing the crouching animal. At last Mr Snow gave a loud halloo, not daring to turn his eye away from the panther in the direction of the camp. His shout quickly brought

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HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.

Bailey to his assistance, and frightened the panther away at the same time. No more sugar was made at that camp until the next year.

The Blackmans and Treat brought up a lot of hogs from Terre Haute to the salt works in 1820 or 1821, and turned them loose in the woods, where they throve and multiplied astonishingly. The animals lived upon grass and the abundance of must found in the timber. In time the hogs grew wild, and the males were dangerous. They spread their numbers many miles up the Middle Fork and Salt Fork, and down the Vermilion below Danville. The round, plump form, the result of domestication, gave way as the animals bred back to a wild condition. and their bodies became tall and thin, their legs long, and their whole appearance grew so changed that they looked very little like civilized hogs. They became common property in the woods, and were killed off as wild game.

Leaving the narrative of Mrs. Douglas, the writer was told by Mr. Jackson, now living on the Little Vermilion, that these hogs were so wild it was impossible to domesticate them. His people caught a large one, with dogs, and brought it to Danville and put it in a pen. It would eat no corn or any other food, but walked around the pen continually, chafing and frothing at the mouth, like the wildest beast he ever saw caged in a menagerie. Thus it walked and chafed and starved to death under the restraint of its confine- ment. Resuming Mrs. Douglas' narrative, this lady states that her father in 1823 made the first mill, or " corn cracker," ever used either in Vermilion or Champaign counties. It consisted of a "gum," or section of a hollow tree, some four feet long by two feet in diameter. Into this was set a stationary stone, selected with reference to as flat a surface as could be procured. The revolving burr, like the stationary stone, consisted of a granite boulder, or "nigger head," as the old settlers called the stone, which are distributed freely over the ground everywhere. The stones were broken and dressed into a circular form, and the grinding surfaces were furrowed, so as to give them cutting edges, by Mr. Butler, with the aid of such tools as he could manufacture at his forge for the purpose. A hole was drilled on the upper side of the rotary burr, near the rim. A pole was inserted in this, and the other end placed into a hole in a beam some six or eight feet directly above the center of the hopper. By taking hold of the pole with the hand near the burr, and exerting a " push and pull" movement, a rotary motion was given to the mill. Its capacity, with a lively, muscular man as the motive power, was about one bushel of tolerably well cracked corn per hour. The corn was put into the gum with one hand, while the burr was revolved

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with the other. "I have," says Mrs. Douglas, "ground many a time on this mill, and so has Unele Harvey Luddington." It served the wants of the settlement at Butler's Point until the water-mill was built on the north fork at Danville. Afterward it was taken to the "Big Grove," in Champaign county, by Mr. Trickle, where it did work for the whole neighborhood, then consisting of five or six families, among whom it sustained its reputation as a good and reli- able mill. During the time this machine was the only "first-class mill" in the county, the nearest place where flour and good meal could be procured was from the water-mill on Raccoon Creek, across the Wabash, below Montezuma.

The year before I was married to my first husband, continues Mrs. Duglass in her statement, he, in company with Seymour Treat, George and Dan Beckwith, went off " on a lark" to Chicago. The Indians had told them abont Chicago, the trading post, and the "big, big water," and the young men were curious and determined to know for themselves how the country looked up that way. They had a little bacon and meal, an Indian pony to carry their provisions and blankets, and to help them over the streams, and a pocket com- pass. Thus equipped, they started. They got lost on the way, in the confusion of trails crossing the country ; however, they were put on the right trail by an Indian whom they met. They got through pleasantly and safe enough, saw what was to be seen at Fort Dear- born, and returned. They had a first-rate time going up and re- turning, which occupied the better part of two weeks. After the party had returned to the salt works, although they had gone one hundred and twenty-eight miles to Fort Dearborn, they might have traveled sixty miles farther north, and, if asked where they had been, might have replied, in truth, that they had not been outside of the county, for at that date Edgar county extended to the Wisconsin line. They slept out in the open air all the way going and return- ing, except one night when they were the guests of a Pottawatomie chief, and an old acquaintance, at his village on the Kankakee. The Indians treated the travelers with the greatest kindness, giving up their skin blankets for them to sleep upon, while they themselves lay upon the bare ground. There were then no white men's houses between the salt works and Chicago, except Treat's cabin at Den- mark, and Genrdon S. Hubbard's trading house at the Iroquois.

This was, perhaps, the first " free " or "grand excursion " from Vermilion county to Chicago. The reader can draw the contrast : Then, it was the Indian trail called " Hubbard's trace," over wild, uninhabited prairies, and terminating on the desolate sand-ridge

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crowned with stunted oak trees, relieved in the distance by the white- washed barraeks of Fort Dearborn, beyond which was a sluggish creek that meandered a devious course into Lake Michigan. Now, the trip is made on the cushioned seat of the railway car, speeding in a few brief hours, all the way through cultivated fields or by thrifty villages, to the mighty city that has since arisen and become alike a pride and wonder of the west.

In 1820 Henry Johnson and Absalom Starr began the nucleus of settlements on the Little Vermilion, some two miles west of George- town. The writer has a copy of a letter addressed to William Lowery, the member from Clark county in the Illinois legislature. from Henry Johnson, dated "Achilles township." November 22, 1822, in which he says that "he had a knowledge of the affairs of this township since October, 1820." From the text of the letter it is quite appar- ent "Achilles township" embraced the whole territory of Clark county watered by the two Vermilions and extending as far north as the Kankakee. Thomas O'Neil opened up the so-called Caroway Farm at "Brooks' Point" in 1821. A little later he settled on the Vermilion River. Capt. Achilles Morgan and his two daughters, -- the one married to Henry Martin, the other to George Broek, - arrived at the salt works in 1821, all the way from Virginia. They passed down through "Brooks' Point," where they lodged one night in an Indian wigwam made of bark. Then they pursued their way to the south side of the Little Vermilion, about three miles west of Georgetown, where they found a home. In 1822 Mr. Dickson Will- iams and others extended the pieket line of settlements still higher up the Little Vermilion. With them, or soon after, we hear of the Swanks, the McDonalds, Mr. McDowell and G. W. Cassiday. We might give other names, only in doing so we should encroach upon the field already covered by other writers, to whom were assigned the histories of the several townships, where the reader will find the names of the persons by whom and the order in which the several townships, respectively, were settled. The purpose in this connection is to show that the line of immigration into Vermilion county was from the south toward the north.

On the 3d of January, 1823, Edgar county was formed off of Clark, and by the fifth section of the act, passed on the 3d of Janu- ary, 1823, for its organization. all that traet of country north of said Edgar county, to Lake Michigan, was attached to the county of Edgar, for judicial purposes. Our county-seat was again changed, still working its way north. The first business transacted in the new county of Edgar was at the house of Jonathan Mayo, on the North

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HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.

Arm Prairie. Shortly after this the seat of justice was located at Paris. The date of the report of the commissioners fixing the county seats is April 21, 1823. Amos Williams, late of Vermilion county, was the surveyor who laid off the original town of Paris.

Within the next three years the population along the Little Ver- milion and northward of that stream had increased sufficiently to justify the formation of another new county. Accordingly, by section one of the act of the 18th of January, 1826 (Laws of 1826-7, page 50), it was declared that all that tract of country within the following bounds, to wit: "Beginning on the state line between Illinois and Indiana, 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 divid- ing townships 16 and 17 to the southwest corner of township 17 north, of range 10 cast; 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 constitute a separate county, to be called Vermilion." This description would strike off one tier of townships, or six miles, from the north end of the county, and extend its west line about ten miles into Champaign. By the seventh section of the act referred to, "all that tract of coun- try lying east of range 6, east of the 3d principal meridian and north of Vermilion county, as far north as the Illinois and Kankakee rivers, was attached to Vermilion county for judicial purposes."

The attached territory embraced all of the country now occupied by Champaign, Iroquois and Ford counties, two tiers of townships on the east side of Livingston, two-thirds of the width of Grundy county south of the Kankakee (which comprises more than half the area of that county), and nearly one and one half congressional townships in the southwest corner of Will. This region was dis- posed of substantially in the following order: Iroquois county was formed in 1833, and by the terms of the act for its establishment, the old boundary line of Vermilion was extended six miles farther north, making the line where it now is. Champaign county was stricken off by the act of February, 1833, by the terms of which Vermilion lost half of range 14, fractional range 11 and range 10, thus reducing the old limits of Vermilion county ten miles on the west in its entire length. Livingston county was organized in 1837, by which ten full townships and a half of two others was taken from Vermilion. Grundy was established in 1841, and by the act for its formation she acquired that portion of Vermilion which we have indicated. In January, 1836, Will county was formed out of

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Cook and that portion of Iroquois between the present northern limit of Iroquois county and the Kankakee. After the formation of the several counties named, there still remained a remnant - a " boot- leg." or "pan-handle," as it was called -of the old attached ter- ritory. The " boot-leg" of this fragment consisted of a strip lying between Iroquois and Will (or latterly Kankakee county) on the east and Livingston and Grundy on the west. It was only six miles in breadth and nearly fifty miles long. South of this was a block sixteen miles north and south, by eighteen miles east and west. with a "toe" of two townships extending eighteen miles still farther east. The three northern townships of the boot-leg - Reed, Essex and Norton - were disposed of: The first went to Will and the two last to Kankakee county. The remainder was organized into the county of Ford in 1859. Our member in the legislature acted un- wisely. perhaps, in submitting to the loss of territory on the west side of the county in the organization of Champaign. The latter has the greater width of the two. The dismembered strip would have always been valuable to Vermilion, while the people living in it could have been, in all probability, as well. if not better. accommo- dated had the old relations been retained. A small county has a correspondingly less influence in a conference, at a political conven- tion, state or congressional, and in the legislature. than the larger and more populous ones, as little counties have, unfortunately, often learned to their cost. While Vermilion is by no means a small county as compared with Edwards or Ford. or many others in the state, still, when contrasted or coming in a collision with such coun- ties as Adams, Sangamon or McLean, her interests are apt to suffer. Hence it will be seen that Chicago, as well as all that territory lying north of the Kankakee, was never in, and formed no part of. Ver- milion county proper. True, while Vermilion was a part of Edgar the latter did embrace all the territory south of the Wisconsin line. Before Vermilion county was organized, however, to wit. on the 13th of January. 1825. Peoria county was formed off of Pike, and took in all the territory north of the Illinois and Kankakee Rivers, from Indiana state line west to the boundary established by that act, between the old county of Pike and the new county of Peoria. The writer is aware that old settlers yet living would. if necessary, make their affidavits that Chicago was at one time in Vermilion county, and that William Reed, the sheriff, paid out of his own pocket the taxes due from property-owners at Chicago rather than travel there to collect them, and that Harvey Luddington, having occasion to go to Chicago. was deputized by Sheriff Reed to obtain the taxes due

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in Cook county. Mr. Luddington, H. Cunningham and others have often told the writer this story. The old settlers were doubtless correct in their statements as to the manner of payment of this tax ; but they are mistaken as to the time, which could only have been between the years 1823 and 1825, while Cook was a part of Edgar, and before the formation of Peoria and Vermilion, during which period Mr. Reed was acting as sheriff of Edgar, and while Mr. Lud- dington and the others were citizens of that county, though residing within the present limits of Vermilion. In those days new counties were being organized with such rapidity, and the special laws were accessible to so few of the people, that a mistake such as the one here pointed out was quite likely to occur, particularly where the narrators are speaking of past events with no data to refresh their recollections.

By the second section of the act establishing Vermilion county, "John Boyd and Joel Phelps, of Crawford, and Samuel Prevo, of Clark county, were appointed commissioners to meet at the house of James Butler, on the second Monday of March, then next; and, after taking oath for a faithful discharge of their trust, to examine for, and determine on, a place for the permanent seat of justice of the county, taking into consideration the convenience of the people, the situation of the settlements, with an eye to the future population and eligibility of the place." The act required that "the owners of the land selected as a county seat should donate and convey the same to the county in a quantity not less than twenty acres in a square form, and not more than twice as wide, to be laid off in lots and to be sold by the county commissioners for the purpose of erect- ing public buildings. In case of a refusal of the owner to donate the required ground, the commissioners were required to locate the county-seat on the lands of some other person who would make the donation contemplated by the act."

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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 34

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903 Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company Number of Pages: 1164

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company
Number of Pages: 1164