History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois, Part 16

Author:
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago : Globe Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 704


USA > Illinois > Clay County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 16
USA > Illinois > Wayne County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 16


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ren that were worshiping at what was called the Gunion school about four or five miles northeast of Cisne, built a neat, frame church house and organized a congregation. The congregations named are all the out- croppings of the old Buckeye Christian Church. All have good houses of worship and are in good condition, no two of the church houses being more than seven miles apart. Another fact that should be named in this counection is, that the territory cov- ered by the membership of these five congre- gations has always been noted for morality, industry and christianity. From the first settlement of the country the membership of these five churches will aggregate about 800 members with a church property which will aggregate in value $8,000. Soon after the organization of the Buckeye Church, a few brethren from Tennessee settled in and around Turnoy's Prairie, about six miles south of Fairfield and organized a congrega- tion at what was called the Walker School- house, among whom the writer recollects the names of William Baze, P. J. Pucket, Thomas Pucket, Joseph Odell, John Shruse- berry and Anderson Walker, who toiled to- gather under great opposition to build up the cause of primitive christianity; the pioneers of this organization have all fought their last battle and won the victory and gone to rest, except Brother Odell who is still lingering on the shores of time, waiting for the Master to call him home. The con- gregation still has an existence and has a comfortable house of worship and a live membership. The congregation at Barnhill was organized from a portion of the member- ship of this congregation. The Barnhill congregation has a comfortable house of wor- ship and a live membership.


The Fairfield congregation has a member- ship of about one hundred ; at present is


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meeting in the Opera Hall; is building a brick house of worship which, when completed, will cost about $3,500. The congregation has a live and zealous membership, and assist largely in throwing restraint and religious influence around the citizens of the growing little city of Fairfield. There are many other small con- gregations in the county that the writer is not acquainted with the history of. There are two organizations in Four Mile Township, two in Leach Township, one in Zif, one in Elm River Township, one in Brush Creek, one in Arrington Township, one in Indian Prairie. There are in the county fifteen or sixteen church organizations, with an aggregate membership of about one thou- sand five hundred, with a church property that is worth about $14,000. These peo- ple have done a good work in this county, and are all working faithfully to restore the apostolic order of things, discarding creeds and confession of faith, taking the Bible and the Bible alono as the rule of faith and prac- tice, pleading for a nnion of God's people on the one foundation of Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ being the Chief Corner Stone.


Zachariah W. Wood, the present serving pastor of the church, was born in Rocking- ham County, Va. He removed to Missouri with his father's family, and in 1855, came to Wayne County, and commenced preaching in 1867.


Catholic Church was organized in this place about twenty five years ago. The serv- ices were first conducted by Father Fisher, who in passing through the county would serve mass at the residence of S. Rider. The first organization was principally of the Rider families, and John and William Bowles and their families, and meetings were at their houses.


The present church edifice was erected by these families, assisted greatly by James Hil-


lard, James Henings, Miss Josie Cooper, Nelly Barnhill, John Taafe and others. The present serving priest, L. Reisner, took steps and commenced and completed the building in 1881. It is a one story brick and cost $3,000. The Rider brothers, J. and A. B. were made trustees, in which position they are now ac- ceptably serving. The present membership is about forty five.


Presbyterian Church .- There was a Pres- byterian Church organized, perhaps as early as 1825, by B. F. Spillman.


It was called by three or four different names, Fairfield, Franklin and Bethel, aris- ing probably from as many different places of preaching. The principal point was Bethel, or New Bethel, now Mount Erie, about twelve miles northeast of Fairfield. The Elders, so far as now known, were Isham B. Robinson, aged eighty, still living ; Alex- ander Ramsey and Samuel MeCracken. It had quite a considerable membership. Among them, Mrs. Gen. Leach, whose husband was quite prominent in the early history of the county, and Mrs. Slocum, B. F. Spillman, and Thomas A. Spillman paid them occasional visits. Rev. Isaac Bennet, from Eastern Penn- sylvania, Bucks County, and a graduate of Jefferson College, Penn., with the highest honors of his elass, also a graduate of Alle- gheny, Theological Seminary also served them. He was the greatest preacher-as a preacher -- who had ever appeared in this part of the country; and the impression he made was worthy of his talents. He was devoted and zealous and successful. Rev. Mr. Bennet labored here during 1829, and probably after- ward. He was at this time only a licenciate and was not ordained for some three years afterward (April 13, 1833). He purchased here of George Russell that; famous horse, "Jack," with whom he lived in such close intimacy at Pleasant Prairie, Coles County.


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But Mr. Bennett was called away from them, and their organization was lost. But immediately after the re-uniou of the two largest branches of the great Presbyterian family -- known as Old School and New School-Father Galbraith, a most earnest, zealous and self-denying missionary, who was then preaching at Flora, Clay County, came down to Fairfield, and after repeated visits and after earnest invitation, the Pres- bytery of Cairo organized or reorganized the Presbyterian Church of Fairfield, which was done on the 23d day of April, 1871, when the following persons gave their names and united at its organization:


John Robinson, Mrs. E. A. Robinson, A. R. Robinson, James R. Dales, Susan Dales, Mrs. Belle Ball, Dr. William M. Kerr, Mrs. Grace Fetherstone, Henry L. Beecher, Mrs. Eliza Rea, J. C. Claudy, Alexander Moore, Mrs. Jane Moore, John Rankin, Mrs. Eliza Rankin, Mrs. L. Claudy.


At the same meeting, Rev. Robert C. Gal- braith was called as pastor for half his time. The other half of his time was occupied by the church at Flora.


Mr. Galbraith was born in Indiana or Pennsylvania February 26, 1814. was the son and grandson of ministers. He gradu- ated at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1834, and at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1837.


Mr. Galbraith was a scholar and a gentle- man of the old school. Most of his minis- try had been in Virginia and Baltimore, Md. He came to this State in 1865. He preached for a time in Odin, Marion County, Ill., but the cessation of business and travel after the war closed, resulted in his removal to Flora, and afterward in substituting Fairfield, Wayne County, for Odin, which led to his removal to Fairfield in 1873, giving his full time there.


He remained here as pastor until June, 1880, when the pastoral relation was dis- solved by the Presbytery of Cairo.


He thence removed to Metropolis and sup- plied the church there for one year and a half. He is now, 1884, pastor of the church of Golconda.


At this first meeting of the church for its organization, the following gentlemen were elected elders: Messrs. John Robinson, of Wayne City; James R. Dales, now of Olney; J. C. Claudy, now of Newville, Penn. Also the following gentlemen were elected its first Board of Trustees: Messrs. C. A. Beecher, Oliver Holmes, T. L. Cooper and Dr. William M. Kerr to serve for three years, and Mr. Joseph T. Fleming, William H. Robinson and Adam Rinard for the term of five years; and also that said Board of Trustees act as a building committee in the erection of a church building.


Rev. R. C. Galbraith was installed pastor of the church by the Presbytery of Cairo May 14, 1871.


The proposed church was erected during the summer-a very fine one for the time; one of the best, if not the very best, in South- ern Illinois, costing about $7,000, the last $1,000 not being paid until $1,000 had been spent in interest, just ten years after, in Au- gust, 1881.


Fairfield, when the church was erected, was a village of less than 1,000 inhabitants.


The years have mainly been years of growth, but one year without some uniting on profession of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.


The church was organized with but six- teen members. Its first report to the General Assembly of the church was thirty-four. It has had on its roll about 135, but by reason of death and removals it has now sixty.


Its present pastor, Rev. Edward P. Lewis,


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was called here August 30, 1880, when he visited the church. He entered regularly upon his work the last Sabbath of Septem- ber, the 26th, 1880, since which time there have been twenty-five members united with the church, all but four upon profession of faith in Christ, as Presbyterians moving into Southern Illinois are few and far between.


Rev. E. P. Lewis was born in Indiana . County, Penn .; was the son of Rev. David Lewis, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Lewisville, Penn .; the same church as was Rev. Joseph Henderson, the grandfather of Rev. R. C. Galbraith.


After the death of his father, the mother removed to Washington, Penn., the seat of Washington and Jefferson College, for the purpose of educating her three sons and daughter.


Mr. Lewis graduated at the college in 1860, and afterward at Allegheny Theologi- cal Seminary in the spring of 1864.


Immediately afterward, he was called to the Presbyterian Church of Atchison, Kan.


He resigned this church in 1868, on account of his health, and returned to Pennsylvania, where he remained until accepting the invi- tation to the church at Fairfield, in the sum- mer of 1880.


This church in all its history has been marked for its special liberality, not only to homo expenses, but to outside and missionary objects, its gifts amounting annually to thir- ty-three and one-third dollars per member.


Alexander Moore was elected an elder January 3, 1875, and remained an elder un- til his death, which occurred on the 19th of August, 1883.


The present officers are:


Pastor, Rev. Edward P. Lewis.


Elders, John Robinson, Michael Heid, Oliver Holmes and J. C. Youngkin.


Deacons, Joseph T. Fleming, John Keen, Jr., and William J. Sailor.


Trustees, Oliver Holmes, Joseph Ball, C. W. Summers, Joseph Fleming, Adam Rinard, William H. Robinson and Thomas Cooper.


CHAPTER XI.


BENCH AND BAR OF WAYNE COUNTY-THE PEOPLE OF " PRECEDENTS"-THE COMING LAWYER- THE LAWS AND OTHER LEGISLATION-FIRST COURT, GRAND JURY AND LAWYER IN THE COUNTY-HUBBARD, WILSON-EDWIN AND C. A. BEECHER-CAMP-


BELL, HANNA, BOGGS AND MANY OTHERS, INCLUDING THE PRESENT ACTIVE PRACTITIONERS, ETC.


neither churches, preachers, doctors, nor lawyers. A good dog and a trusty rifle were a greater necessity than any of these now probably necessary evils of modern times, and refined villainies and wide-spread demoralization that have not only kept pace,


[THE vory earliest settlers in Illinois had ' but apparently outstripped, the wonderful growth of schoolhouses and splendid churches, whose bristling steeples, piercing the sky, and are kissed by the earliest morning sun, and point so eloquently the way to Heaven, that now so plentifully are dotted all over the land. At one time in the his-


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tory of the early settlement of Illinois, was here a people without courts, officers of the law, churches or schoolhouses. There are some astounding truths to be read between lines in this recital of a simple historical fact, by that reader who has the comprehen- sion to read all that there is in the naked announcement of this truth. It is full of food for the unprejudiced and reflective mind. Look on this picture and then on that.


Gov. Reynolds has given us the following account of the people he found here in 1800, the year he came to the Territory: " They were an innocent and a happy people. They were removed from the corruption of large cities, and enjoyed an isolated position in the interior of North America. In a century before 1800, they were enabled to solve the problem that neither wealth, nor splendid possessions, nor an extraordinary degree of ambition, nor energy, ever made a people happy. These people resided more than a thousand miles from any other colony, and were strangers to wealth or poverty; but the Christian virtues governed their hearts, and they were happy. One virtue among others was held in high esteem and religiously ob- served. Chastity was a sine qua non, and a spurious offspring was


almost unknown among them. * * * Their energy or ambition never urged them to more than an humble and competent support. To loard up wealth was not found written in their hearts, and very few practiced it. They were a temperate, moral people. They very seldom indulged in drinking liquor to ex- cess, etc."


Remember, reader, this was away back in the year 1800, and the old ranger was writ- ing his recollections after he had lived here fifty-five years, and had seen and been a part of all the wonderful changes that the half


century had wrought. There are none living here now who saw the people of Illinois at the time he did. And the traditions that we have are often wholly wrong when they are called upon to tell us what manner of people these were who lived here, sans churches, sans preachers, sans courts, sans everything. They had no schoolhouses, and they were, as a rule, illiterate, and that unthinking man who confounds illiteracy with ignorance would foolishly say that they were very ig- norant. Yet the truth was, that the promi- nent men of that day would be great men now, or in any age or in any place.


The people were in the way of supersti- tious beliefs more ignorant then than now- that is, than some are now. But remember. the whole world believed then in witches and spooks and a literal brimstone and hell fire. Hideous apparitions universally confronted men in every turn in life, projecting their ghastly presence between husband and wife, parent and child, and crushing out all the highest and holiest human impulses and pas- sions. The revolutions of the earth have brought us the times of universal faith among men-beliefs and so-called moral codes en- forced by fire and faggot, by the headsman's ax and the gibbet, by the bloodiest wars in the tide of time, turning this bright and beautiful world into a blackened and desolate waste, when men became moral monsters and every fireside was a penal colony, where the flesh was punished to the limit of endnrance, and the im- agination tortured until poor suffering men and women sought refuge in suicide and a wild plunge into the literal hell and the in- conceivable tortures of the damned. Time, when not only a whole nation. but all so-called civilized people believed the same belief, and the church and State were one and the same. The State was supreme over body and soul, and persecution had completed its


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slaughter, and the permitted science, litera- ture and philosophy of the learned world, consisted only of the Lives of the Saints-of which the pious and learned churchman had gathered many great libraries of hundreds of thousands of volumes.


Here then are the two extremes-the ear- liest pioneers without church or State-the old world with nothing else but church and State, that laid waste a world and dried up the fountains of the human heart, und made the whole earth desolate and sterile. One producing death and desolation, the other wresting the desert wilderness from the sav- age and the wild beast, and literally making the solitude to blossom with intelligence and bear abundantly the immortal fruit of glo- rions civilization. These stateless, church- less, schoolless people blazed the way and prepared the ground for the coming of the school teacher, the preacher and the lawyer, the hospitals, the insane asylums and the penitentiaries, the problems of life, the knot of the hangman, the saloon and the gambler, the broken-hearted wife and the bloated sot, the great sob of innocence betrayed, and the leer of human goats as they wag their scut and caper upon their mountain of offense, the millionaire and the starving tramp; and then, too, with all these, come the comforts of wealth, refinement and culture. And with that highest and most enduring pleasure of all life, the acquisition of new truths. With these lazaroni, these goats and monsters of civilization, thank God, there came also the man of doubts and questions, the star of hope in the universal gloom, the world's beacon lights that shine out upon the troubled waters.


The hardy and illiterate pioneer awoke here the resting echo, and following them, when they had fought ont the battle with the plumed hereditary lords of America, and his


congener, the wild beast and the deadly viper, came together into one plot all the ends of the world, and all the degrees of social rank, and now they offer to the same great writer, the busiest, the most extended and the most varied subject, for an enduring literary work. For is not their simple story a sublime epic? Their lives a tremendous tragedy -- their present struggles, their vast schemes, their whited sepulchers, a perpetu- al comedy ? The travail of ages -of the rev- olutions, wars, beliefs and bloody reforms and revivals-things that seem to retard, but really are the demonstration of the progress of the race. The creation, molding and building up of that philosophy that reaches out to the great mass of mankind, and re- sults in that culture and experience which deepons and strengthens the commnon senso of the people, rectifies judgments, improves morals, encourages independence, and dissi- pates superstitions. In the prolonged human tragedy of the ages -this chaos of ignorance and wild riot of bigotry-there has been born now and then the great thoughts of the world's few thinkers, and they are growing and widening slowly but forever, as truth alone is eternal, and is beginning to yield the world a philosophy that worships the beautiful only in the useful, and the relig- ious only in the true. A philosophy that is the opposite and the contradiction of senti- ment as opposed to sense, that requires a rational personal independence of thought on all subjects, whether secular or sacred, and that equally rejects an error, whether it is fresh and novel, or gloriously gilded by an- tiquity. A philosophy that yields no homage to a thing because it is a mystery, and ac- cepts no ghostly authority administered by men, and the root of which lies in a florid mysticism. There is a perceptible intellect - ual activity that marks the present age, and


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that prevades all classes, asking questions and seeking causes. It is practical, not theoret- ical, and its chief end is to improve the arts and industries, to explore and remedy evils and to make life every way better worth liv- ing. Its types are the electric light and the telephone, better ships and railways, cleaner houses and habits, better food and wiser in- stitutions for the sick, insane and destitute, and that has already scored upon its side of victories, that immeasurable boon of length- ening the life of a generation to forty years, where a few years ago it was scarcely more than thirty years. In the history of the hu- man race, all its advances, all its victories compared to this one, are as the invisible moat to the wheeling world. Let the mind dwell upon this magnificent miracle, and call these practical philosophers what you please, but what coronet is fit to crown their memory save that of the divine halo itself. They taught mankind the sublime truth that God intends us to mind things uear ns, and that because knowledge is obtainable, it is our duty to obtain it, and that the best re- ligion is that which abolishes suffering and makes men and women better and healthier.


The disputes of the schoolmen and theolo- gians are regarded as a jargon of the past, and to listen to them is time wasted. Noth- ing is considered worth studying but what can be understood, or at least sufficiently un- derstood to be usefully applied. This is kindly, tolerant and courageous thought, fres from the disfigurement of bigotry and preju- dice. This is where we can see the advance- ment in the school, the press, in the pulpit and everywhere. It is irresistable, and its inflowing tide is sun-lit with hope, like the blue Ægean, when the poet spoke of " the multitudinous laughter of the sea waves." This is the meaning of Bacon's idea, that the growth of truth is like the " delivery " of the


body of a tree. "It draws its sap and growth from the soil of ages, and its fruitage and perfection will be displayed in a distant but glorious summer."


In the slow, dreary centuries, the world looked to the learned professions-by some strange twist of the tongue called " learned " -the law, medicine and theology for their wisdom, that is, the bread of life, and re- ceived the stones aud husks that were cast to them; swallowed them, and thus puffed out, they thought they grew strong and fat. Theology appealed to the strong arm of the law and the bloody sword to make people moral, and in the faith, if their morals were strictly attended to, their intelligence would take care of itself. The medical men ap- pealed to Esculapins, in the belief that he knew all that could be known about "hot water and bleeding." And the lawyers ap- pealed to ancient precedent, and told the world that here was the concentrated wisdom of the ages. Each one of these learned pro- fessions had their special followers, who put their faith exclusively in them, while the great unthinking mass of mankind implicitly believed in the infallibility of all of them. This self-constituted trinity of wisdom was agreed upon one thing, namely, that all worldly or other wisdom must come through them, in order to be "regular." Any thought or [theory that was not "regular " in their judgment was to be ostracised, to the extent of being burned at thestake, if milder means failed to kill it off. They were all theorists, whose methods were exclusively metaphysical, and the greatest man among them was in- variably the wildest theorist, who talked the most about which he knew the least. Hence, medicine, theology and law became in the largest affairs of life coparceners, and one entrenched the other, and all wared upon poor, suffering mankind.


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To this bloody triumvirate came the orator and the poet "crooking the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawn- ing," singing their praises in word and song, and thus finally church and State, law and medicine and poetry. and eloquence and lit- erature were so braced and interwoven that they were nearly all-powerful in worldly matters, and they held high carnival over their possessions over men. They compla- cently deified the old and the mysterious, and they gave the world their unchanging ukase, and emblazoned their own glories across the face of the sky. They esteemed their victory over the thoughts of men as complete and perpetual ; they had put shackles upon the human mind, and imprisoned it in the im- penetrable cells of the gloomy dungeons. But at all times in the world's history there were other men, men who had never been of the "learned professions," or, if having been once members, had quit them. and turned their faces away from the ancient precedent, and looked ahead and not behind, and saw the slow, yet resistless power of truth as, it has, through these men. fought back ignorance enthroned in power, which has at last compelled even the learned pro- fessions to begin to look and learn-to inves- tigate and study for themselves. This is the one great page in the book of life-the most important lesson in the world's history. In all organized governments of laws and con- stitutions the lawyers are a component part of the government itself. A lawyer is in one sense an officer of the government under which he lives. Differing greatly, it may be true, from any other official of the ruling power, yet his status is as fixed as any of them. Upon him rests the highest of the temporal duties toward men that flow out to them from the government. Their cast of thought should have grown in a larger mold


than did any of the other so-called learned professions. Possibly it did. Yet it was never of that sufficiently large and ennobling quality that could fill a supreme mission and help the world to true freedom in the great fight between right and wrong. They not only left her to fight her battles with ignor- ance, but too often joined in the unholy crusade against truth-we mean that perse- cuted minority who asked questions and sought out causes. They who, if they looked at the old. it was to point out its errors as well as to perpetuate its few demonstrated truths. Their great concern was for the Now, and they could see no more reason for deep concern for a future that they could know nothing about than for the past, when "all was without form and void." And the work of these men is the adding of ten years to the average life of man. These were the men, when a man announced a new truth from nature's arcana, who never stained their hands in his blood for making the discovery, but if he could demonstrate his fact, they gave it a patient examination, and without prejudice for or against, yielded to their unbiased judgments.




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