USA > Illinois > Clay County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 18
USA > Illinois > Wayne County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 18
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John Darrah appears upon the records at this term as the first citizen naturalized in the county.
At the September term, 1820, the grand jury was James Bird, foreman; William Clark, James Gaston, Thomas Cox, Thomas Lee, John Turney, Stephen Coonrod, Daniel Kenshelo, Robert Gaston, Epraham Merritt, Richard Locke, John Owen, Robert L. Gray, Solomon Shane, George Close, Tirey Robin- son, Thomas Ramsey, John B. Gash, Rennab Wells, George Turner, Andrew Carson and John Walker.
At the September term of the court, Enoch Wilcox presented his bond as Sheriff and entered upon the duties of that office. His sureties were Tirey Robinson, John Carson, Solomon Clark. Samuel Leech, Andrew Kuy- kendall and Andrew Carson. John Walker was the County Coroner.
The first lawyer to locate bere was a man named Osborn. He came here from Clay County. This was about 1840, it is supposed.
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He was meager and somewhat stunted, and his career was insignificant and it is said was cut short by an order of Judge Wilson's. About 1842, a lawyer named Selby, from Portage County, Ohio, came. He was a fine looking man, and a fair lawyer. He remained . only a short time and left.
The third was a man named Ward. He was from Memphis, Tenn. Died in early part of 1845. His widow and family event- ually returned.
Judge Edwin Beecher came in April, 1844. Born in Herkimer County. N. Y., which place he left when eighteen years, and in company with father's family removed to Licking County, Ohio, remaining there until 1844, when he came to Wayne. Read law with Henry Stanberry and Van Trump, rela- tives of Judge Beecher. When he was ad- mitted to the bar, he turned his eyes west- ward, and through the solicitations of an old schoolmate, came to Salem and thence to Fairfield. The coming to Fairfield through a letter from Rigdon B. Slocumb, the then County Clerk of Wayne County. He found office with the Circuit Clerk, J. G. Barkley. The first court he remembers, or was at here, was in August, 1844. Wilson, Judge, Ficklin and Linden, from Coles County. Bat Webb. S. F. S. Hago, Albert Shannon, were attor- neys from Carmie, and Charles H. Constable from Mt. Carmel; Kitchell, of Olney, was Prosecuting Attorney. Gov. A. C. French, from Palestine, was also an attendant. He says the average length of a court then was two days; recollects no jury trial at the term.
The first case the Judge had was an assault and battery before John H. Brown, Justice of the Peace. Daniel Wheeler made an as- sault on a woman. Was elected Probate Justice-now called County Judge -- in Au- gust, 1846, and served until the constitu- tional amendment of 1848, which created the
new office of County Judge. On the 4th of June, 1855, he was elected Judge of the Twelfth Judicial Cirenit. This circuit then consisted of Wayne, Edwards, Wabash, Ma- rion, Jefferson, Hamilton, Saline. Gallatin, and White Counties. The term served was six years.
Judge Beecker was appointed Paymaster by President Lincoln, on the 19th of Novem- ber, 1862, in the army, and entered upon active duties of the office in January, follow- ing. He was mustered out about 1872. He had been retained under some orders in ref. erence to the Freedmen's Bureau.
John Trousdale came in 1845, from White County. He had read law in Carmi, and was there admitted to the bar. He died in 1864, in Fairfield, leaving a widow and six children, three girls and three boys. Trous- dale was a fair lawyer. He was a much bet- ter lawyer before a jury than before a court. He went to California in 1850, as much for his health as anything else. He died of consumption.
Louis Keller, from Indiana; Bob Bell came from Mt. Carmel. These men were partners here. Keller was a very fine young man, universally popular, and promised well in his profession. He died in Mt. Carmel when young, to which point the firm had re- moved after practicing here nearly two years. Bob Bell is still in Mt. Carmel-a good law- yer, very clever and pompous gentleman. It is said that on the smallest occasion he could start a covey of spread cagles and soar them all up at once, and send them higher, and spread their pinions wider than any other lawyer in the Wabash " deestrict."
Joe Conrad, a partner of Judge Constable, was located a short time here.
Jacob Love, of whom we can learn noth- ing, except that at one time in the early day he was here a short time as an attorney.
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
Tom Houts, before he got to be a reverend, was one of the regular practicing attorneys who visited the Fairfield courts. He was a good lawyer, and rapidly laid the founda- tions for an extensive and lucrative practice. But when young in life, and especially in the practice of the law, he laid down the law and turned his attention to theology, and was soon ordained a minister of the Method- ist Church. His commanding talents, and his power and force as a preacher, has here singled him out from his brethren even more strongly than it did in the law. He is still actively at work in his- chosen path of life, and was recently made Chaplain to the Southern Illinois Penitentiary.
A. B. Campbell, the temperance lecturer, came here ten or twelve years ago from Indi- ana, and formed a partnership and practiced law for a while. When business would be dull with him in the law line, he would en- liven things generally by a lordly spree. He left here and went to Bloomington, where we believe he now makes his home. He is a relative of Campbell, the founder of that church. In person he is large and inclined to be portly, very brilliant, and at times elo- quent when speaking, and always forcible and commanding. For the past few years, he has given up all other business, and has traveled and lectured over many of the West- ern States in the cause of temperance. The writer saw Mr. Campbell at the general United States Conventions of the "Murphy movement " at Decatur, Ill., and Bismark, Kan., and has always remembered him as much the most conspicuous figure at either one of these gatherings of the lights of tem- perance. In his private confidences, he tells his friends that when his law practice would keep him busy-always when his work would literally rush him'along-he then had no desire for stimulants, but the moment a lull
came and he had nothing to do, then he must have drink. That it was only upon such oc- casions that the uncontrolable desire would come upon him, but that when it came at such times he could no more restrain him- self than he conld control his heart beating, etc. Then he went down, down, down, un- til the bitter cup would be drained to its bitterest dregs. For him to tell the simple story of his horrible sufferings that would follow such a debauch, was always a power- fnl temperance lecture, that would impress the hearer like a hideous nightmare. But it has always been a serious question in the writer's mind whether such recitals by these gifted but unfortunate erratics were not of evil tendency in their final results upon the minds of our young people or not. Their commanding eloquence in their recitals- their erratic genius and its loud applause, are ever returning to take their places in the mind of the young listener, and unconscious- ly, in the end he will clothe the drunk and the genius in one and the same glamour, and, in the end, that which is low, beastly and horrible, is in some indefinite way mixed with the gifted and admirable; and then he saw the open way to win the world's pity and applause by making of himself a drunken genius. They can command the drunk, but the gifts of genius are as far out of their reach as the farthest star, and they are the simple, disgusting drunken beasts that po- lute the pure air of Heaven and defile the fair face of the earth. How many youths, think you, have been made drunk by reading the story of Daniel Webster and his fond- ness for wine in his boyhood? Webster's transcendant genius made him a nation's idol, and the only way a boy can be like Webster is to drink, and, therefore, in the language of Byron, " Man being a reasoning being must get drunk."
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
I. S. Warmoth was at one time one of the regularly enrolled attorneys of Fairfield. He came here, we believe, a harness-maker, and for some time carried on his trade. He was from Kentucky, and was born a little over seventy years ago, and came to Illinois when a young man. At one time he kept a hotel here, and the Judge and lawyers often stopped with him during the term of courts. He was for years a Justice of the Peace, and his attention being thus directed to the stat- ute laws, he soon became sufficiently ac- quainted with the practice to be licensed by the court as a regular lawyer. His son Hen- ry. now a citizen, and ex-Governor of Louisiana, was reared in Fairfield. He was always a bright, though very mischievous boy. He attended the public schools, played " hookey," and went fishing and swimming, and thus successfully passed through the cat-killing-bird-nest-robbing age of boyhood successfully, and heroically encountered the usual assortment of measles, whooping-cough and mumps, and when eighteen or nineteen years old commenced reading law with W. B. Cooper, of Effingham. The mischievous boy at once became the attentive student, and he set about seriously preparing himself for the battle of life. He was soon admitted to the bar, and removed to St. Louis, and here he actively engaged in politics, and became the editor of a paper that soon commanded considerable influence. Here he soon at- tracted the notice and patronage of Gen. Frank Blair and other leading anti-slavery men of Missouri. Then came the late war, and this was the ripened opportunity of young Warmoth's life. He raised a regi- nient, was made Colonel of it, and soon was widely and favorably known to the country. While in the South with the army, he looked about him and saw here a most inviting field for ambitious young men from the North.
The war over, he located in New Orleans, and in the work of reconstruction he was the one commanding figure. He was soon made Governor of the State, and filled the posi- tion, even in the most trying time in the State's history, with ability, so much so, that to this day his administration is remem- bered with respect by his political friends and foes.
Hon. Charles A. Beecher was born in Her- kimer County, N. Y., August 25, 1829, and with his family removed to Licking County, Ohio, September, 1836, and located in Fair- field June 8, 1854. He had been a pupil- irregular attendant-in the Wesleyan Uni- versity, Delaware, Ohio, from September, 1849, to December, 1853, and during vacations he taught school during the winters and attended school during the summers, and sometimes performed hard manual labor during vaca- tions. He attended the Law Department of the Farmer's College, College Hill, near Cin- cinnati, Ohio, from December 1, 1853, to June, 1854, and was admitted to the bar in February, 1856, and at once entered actively upon a lucrative and successful practice. During five years, from 1870 to 1875, he was out of the active practice of the law, and was bending all his energies toward the con- struction of the Springfield Branch of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad. In December, 1868, he had been elected Vice-President of that road, which position he held until the property was sold to the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad in January, 1875. In September, 1873, he was appointed Receiver with Alex- ander Storms by the United States Circuit Court of Illinois, of the Springfield & Illi- nois Southeastern Railway, and this position he continued to fill until the sale of the road by a decree of the court in September, 1874. Mr. Beecher was then appointed the agent of the bondholders, and operated and controlled
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
the road in their behalf until the formal transfer of the road to the Ohio & Missis- sippi Railroad March 1, 1875. He was then made Division Superintendent of the Ohio & Mississippi, in which capacity he acted until June 1, 1875, at which time he was appointed General Solicitor of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad and branches. This road was placed in the hands of a receiver in November, 1876, and Mr. Beecher has continued to the present time its general solicitor. October, 1876, he was elected a member of the Board of Di- rectors of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad and is still a member, and his term of office to this position will not expire until 1886.
The charter of the Illinois Southeastern Railway was granted in 1867, and Mr. Beecher was made one of the incorporators, and upon the original organization of the company he was elected Treasurer. In 1872, the duties of his office required him to move his residence to Springfield, Ill., where he remained for three years, and, in 1875, he removed to St. Louis, and, in 1879, the growth of the work in his office as General Solicitor of the great corporation of the Ohio & Mississippi Railway required his removal to his present residence in Cincin- nati, Ohio. These are the dates and figures that are the strong outline, when well stud- ied, of the career of Mr. Beecher since, as a very modest and unassuming young attorney, he commenced life in Fairfield. The dates and figures tell much of the story of a man who was destined to rise by the inherent power that was within himself. He entered the corporation of the Springfield & Illinois Southeastern Railway as one of its most un- assuming corporators. A stranger would notice in the young attorney but little else than a pleasant, smiling face, affable man- ners and a retiring modesty. He was given, much by accident, an obscure and unimport.
ant office-Treasurer to a corporation without a dollar, and with but little hopes of ever being more than a paper railroad. His nature was not self-asserting, and yet no great progress had been made in putting the enterprise on its feet until it was most mani- fest he was the master spirit of the scheme, and many men from Shawneetown to Spring- field soon came to know that if the road was ever built it would owe this good fortune largely to Beecher. His genius and untiring energy gave all that part of Southern Illinois the railroad now running from Shawneetown to Beardstown. The ordinary rule in life is for the big fish to swallow the little ones, but it is a very easy matter to read most plainly between lines, as we give the dates and facts above of Mr. Beecher's connection with the great corporation at which he now stands at the most important post, that he controlled its destinies. From his first connection with the railroad interests he was thrown in con- tact with some of the ablest financiers, as well as some of the most eminent attorneys in this country as well as in Europe, and yet he came in conflict with none that in either law or in large and intricate financial schemes that ever overreached him, or that probably did not retire in the faith that in some way the rural attorney from Wayne County had left them at the foot of the class.
Mr. Beecher cast his first vote for Presi- dent in 1852, for Gen. Scott. In 1856, he voted for Fremont, and has since voted reg- ularly with the Republican party. From 1862 to 1868, he was a member of the Re- publican State Central Committee. In 1867, he was one of five Commissioners appointed by Gov. Oglesby to locate and build a South- ern Illinois Penitentiary, but the Legislature failing to make the necessary appropriation, therefore nothing further was done.
Such are the outlines of the career of no
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
common man, and of all the attorneys who have ever pitched their tents in Wayne County we strongly incline to the belief he will go into history as the prominent central figure in the entire list. He is bat now upon the threshold of his professional life, and has already accumulated a large fortune, and a fame and name among the attorneys of the country that cannot be gainsaid.
Judge C. C. Boggs was born in Fairfield in 1842. He attended the Law Department of Ann Arbor University, and read law with Judge Beecher, and was admitted to the practice'in 1867. Was at one time State's Attorney from 1872 to 1876, and the year fol- lowing was elected County Judge of Wayne County. He was married, in Fairfield, to Miss Sarah Shaefer in 1870. A strong and brilliant attorney, a Mason, an A. O. U. W., and a stanch and unflinching Democrat, and don't you forget it.
A. M. Funkhouser was also a native of Wayne County. He attended the public schools here, and was awhile, we believe, a student in Ann Arbor University. He was at one time County Attorney of Wayne Coun- ty, and had built up an extensive practice, but, deeming his opportunities here circum- scribed, he went to St. Louis, where he is now engaged in the practice of the law.
W. J. Travis, a native of Kentucky, came to the county and taught school and studied law; was admitted in 1879. Was City At- torney, and in the early part of 1883 removed to Kansas, where he is now practicing.
M. H. Bacon. of White County, came here, studied law with Robinson & Boggs, married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas L. Cooper, of
this place. She died soon after marriage, and Mr. Bacon left the county and located in Florida.
James A. Creighton, born in White Coun- ty, came to this county when very young. Studied in the office of C. A. Beecher. He removed to Springfield in 1877, where he now resides.
W. J. Sailor was among the ante-bellum times. Was a student at McKendree Col- lege, and with some other students stole away from school and enlisted in the army in the late war. He practiced for some time in the firm of Beecher. George & Sailor, and finally he relinquished the active practice and became the cashier of the bank, a posi- tion he now holds.
Col. H. Thompson, formerly of New York, and later of the northern portion of Illinois, came to Wayne County about 1877.
Ben S. Organ, now of Carmi, was for some time a prominent lawyer here. He recently removed to his present home, where we un- derstand he has already a good practice.
James McCartney, the present Attorney General of the State of Illinois, is a resident of Fairfield the only man ever elected to a State office from Wayne County. His com- plete biography may be found in another chapter.
The present bar of Wayne County is com- posed of the following: J. G. Crews, W. H. Robinson, C. C. Boggs, G. W. Johns, R. P. Hanna, R. D. Adams, Edwin Beecher, John Keene, Jr .. Jacob R. Creighton, C. E. Sib- ley, G. J. George, W. P. Bunch, Edward Kramer, N. S. McCown, F. P. Hanna, J. I. Montray, H. Tompkins and Z. B. West.
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
CHAPTER X.
THE PRESS OF WAYNE COUNTY-MANY SALUTATORIES AND AS MANY FAREWELLS-WILMANS, JOE PRIOR, BAUGH, TILDEN, SIBLEY, SCHELL, SMITH, WALDEN, STICKNEY, LITZENBERGER, BARKLEY, McCLUNG, TRACY, HOLMES-SOME ACCOUNT OF TIIE MANY PAPERS THAT STARTED AND PERISHED, ETC., ETC., ETC.
A T the first view one would think the story of the printing press in a county would be an easy one to compile, from the fact that each paper is its own printed record, and all the writer would have to do would be to run over the old files, and there gather exact and full dates and records. But these files can never be found. Like many other things, when they were made the people could not imagine that they could ever become of any value, and hence their existence was short. Then, when the first newspaper in a coun- ty were started, it generally took only about three months to starve out the printer-editor, when the office would be closed, and some- times no files would be kept, and then others who had kept files would carry them away when they left. Thus the average experience of nearly every county is that no early files of the local papers can now be found, and hence no very accurate history of the first newspaper men of any county can now be given. It is only in the time when the county improves and the patronage of the paper ex- tends and begins to pay at least a scant liv- ing to the printer that it assumes the form of a permanent institution, and then men come into possession of the office who are careful to preserve their issues, and who realize that as these grow in age so will they grow in value.
We incline to the opinion that the first ad-
venturous spirit to come here and start a paper was Augustus A. Stickney, a native of St. Clair County, in this State, where the family were early settlers and prominent people. They were related to the Omelveny family. A. A. Stickney went to Jefferson County in 1852, and formed a partnership with John S. Bogan, now Circuit Clerk of the county, and perhaps the veteran news- paper man in Southern Illinois. He learned type setting in the Congressional Globe office, Washington, and followed his trade there un- til 1840, when he was induced by Gov. Casey to come to Illinois. Of Stickney Mr. Bogan gives us this account. He was a man of brains and vim, but not much physical strength. He worked the old Ramage press in Mt. Vernon, which required tremendous power to pull its four impressions to every paper, and used inked balls instead of rollers, which was too much for Stickney and caused him to commence spitting blood. He retired in a short time and came to Fairfield, and started in June, 1852, the Independent Press, in Fairfield, a six-column paper. John M. Walden became editor for Stickney, the puh- Jisher. They had anything but a paying success, yet as they did almost the entire labor themselves, and could get some little credit on the paper and ink used, they struggled along and kept the paper alive, probably waiting in great patience for some
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
ambitious man to come along and be willing to buy out the establishment and pay the bills for the pleasure of seeing in print his inward-surging great thoughts that were to turn the world upside down and spill out all this outrageous ignorance of men. In 1855, C. T. Lichtenberger bought out Stickney and Walden, and Stickney went South, and from thence to San Francisco where he commenced publishing the Alaska Herald, and for ought we know he is still publishing his iey organ, and pouring ice cannon-balls, " blizzards," and other iced condiments into the sacri- ligous Bible revisors for extirpating from the language the genial glow of the lake of fire and brimstone.
Walden is now the senior member of the firm of Walden & Stow, of Cincinnati, agents of the M. E. book concern.
Lichtenberger soon tired of the name of Independent Press and at a serious ontlay for streaked job type, changed it to the Illi- nois Patriot. The Press had been demo- cratic, and, of course, the Patriot was only moro so, only it was solicitous upon the sub- ject of the genuineness of its patriotism. We were enabled to find a few stray copies of this paper, that are now in the possession of D. W. Barkley, the latest date being Sep- tember 17, 1856.
There is a tradition, but not sufficiently confirmed, that Lichtenberger first changed his paper's name to Pioneer and then Patriot. If this should prove to bo true, it only is an additional evidence that the poor fellow was always beset by the great question of how to keep his paper from starving to death, and perhaps the gallant commander going down with his flag ship. At all events, in the lat- ter part of 1855 or the early part of 1856, he put away the Patriot's little slippers and went to Chicago, induced, no doubt, by the more alluring and lucrative business of
" blowing up" water lots and assisting the denizens in putting up ten-story buildings, with a mortgage on each floor. In the ex- citement we enjoyed in following the patriotic changes in names, we forgot to mention that Lichtenberger was a doctor, and while he poured drastic Democratie editorials into a deluded world,'he also compounded pills and potations for the sick and afflicted, and that now he is engaged in the practice in Cook County, near Chicago.
Rev. J. M. Walden was strongly anti- slavery in sentiment, and in politics he was a Republican before the party came into ex- istence.
J. D. Lichtenberger was here among the earliest of the printers and publishers. He died three years ago in the Government Hos- pital in New Orleans.
The Fairfield Weekly News, James H. Smith, editor and proprietor, was started in [856 .. It was strictly neutral in politics; was a four column folio, and the columns being long, gave the paper about as slim- waisted an appearance as Sara Bernhardt. Volume I, No. 1, of this paper has a long and high-sounding salutatory, and promised a great deal, and, as usual, we presume, found the pay too small to encourage such mighty efforts. In 1857. Smith enlarged the News to a six-column paper and otherwise made many improvements in the general make-up and its contents.
June 22, 1858, appeared the first number of the Fairfield Gazette, Alfred S. Tilden, proprietor. In his bow to the patrons he said, "I came to Wayne County to purchase the printing press here which has been lying idle for nearly two years." And he an- nounced that his politics were "like those propagated by every lover of State Sovereign- ty and Popular Rights."
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