USA > Illinois > Clay County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 35
USA > Illinois > Wayne County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 35
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Lilly Methodist Episcopal Church. - It has been a matter of considerable difficulty to obtain sufficient data concerning the history of the churches of this township. That there was preaching on stated occasions in the township in an early day is an authenticated fact, but where and by whom is not so easy to ascertain. Some years ago, what is known as the Lilly charge of the Methodist Epis- copal Church was organized. Its first mem- bers were Elsberry Gregory, Samuel Garri- son, William McCoy and family, and a Mrs. Walters. At present the membership is about fifteen. The first place of meeting of this organization was in the old log school- house in District No. 2, and afterward in the west frame schoolhouse of that district. In the summer of 1883, it was decided that the so- ciety erect a building of its own. This idea was put into effect, and subsequently a struct- ure, 24x36, was built at a cost of about $600. In this place of worship services are now held on stated occasions.
Sunday School .-- The first Sunday school in the township was organized in the sum- mer of 1877. It was held under the auspices of the Methodist denomination in School- house No. 2. During the summer the at- tendance was on an average about fifty. At the beginning of the cold season, the school was disbanded, and has since then not been re-organized.
PART II.
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.
PART II.
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.
CHAPTER I.
AN INTERESTING CHAPTER AS WELL AS MUCH INFORMATION-PRACTICAL QUESTIONS CON- SIDERED-SOME IDEAS ON EDUCATION-IIOW FARMERS MAY BECOME THE FIRST PEOPLE
IN THE WORLD-WONDERFUL THINGS FROM THE SOIL-ROCKS, SOIL AND THIE NATURAL PRODUCTS OF THE COUNTY-COAL AND MINERAL SPRINGS-ETC.
TT is the purpose and object of this chap- ter to make it of more money value to our patrons than the cost of the book. We sincerely believe that if the writer succeeds in his purpose-reaching properly the under- standing of his readers-that we will not only here repay the outlay of the work, but give benefit that will be many times such values, and that will be permanent and last ing and continuously increasing.
The question of paramount and supreme interest to all civilized men is that of the soil and climate in that particular section in which they pass their lives. Is this assertion startling ? It is true, not only in a temporal sense, but in those highest types of thought that pertain to a future existence, a heaven and God.
From the soil comes all life, all beauty, pleasure, wealth and enjoyment. Of itself it may not be beautiful, but from it comes all beauty, all good; the golden fields, the fragrant flower, the blush upon a maiden's cheek, the flash of the lustrous eye, that is more powerful to subdue obdurate man than au army with banners. From it direct springs up the great cities, whose temples and mina-
rets glisten in the morning sun, and whose ships with their precious cargoes fleck every sea-the sigh of first and passionate love and the smoke and roar of the wheels and paddles of the world's commerce-the bird singing and swinging upon the limb, and the rippling laughter of blessed, inno- cent childhood. The rich draught from the old oaken bucket, and the far richer and deeper draughts from Shakespeare. The very intelligence that beams its love upon your entranced soul from the eyes of your child, as well as the bread and meat upon which it lives to spread your pathway with the high- est joy of life. In short, upon the geological structure of a country depends the pursuits of its people (not on this or that circumstance, as the world has foolishly supposed) as well as the very genins of its people, nay, its morality and its religion, and there is noth- ing about civilization that does not spring directly from the rocks and the soil. Agricult- ure is the outgrowth of a fertile soil. Mining results from the mineral resources, and from the waters come the great navies and the world's commerce. Men who have studied the varied and wonderful force and the al-
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most supreme power of heat in the economy of the universe, have been free to say that they blame the ancient sun-worshipers but very little for their faith. But had the an- cients understood geology, they would have had a much more rational worship at their feet instead of the sun and its many millions of miles away, with all its intense and con- suming heat. A god whose ability to con- sume is such that could a million of his live worshipers have been bundled into one bun- dle as a sheaf of wheat, and thrown at the face of their deity, before the vast body of human life could have touched the sun's face, it would have been burned into the original gases, not leaving even a speck of ashes. Yet heat in the economy of the uni- verse is the chief factor, and at the distance of 95,000,000 of miles it is the source of life, with its genial rays and its vast labora- tory that it puts to work upon the rocks, and our rivers, seas and oceans, unlocking as it has the secret wealth and glory of this world and forming and fashioning it as we now possess it to enjoy.
Every phase of life, and the very modes of thought of every people that has ever lived, has depended upon the geological and climatic structure of their country. If these control their phases of life and modes of thought, then there is no question bnt that it creates and directs their moral and intel- lectual qualities. Where the soil and sub- jacent rocks and climate are profuse in the bestowal of wealth, man is indolent and effeminate; where effort is essential to life, he becomes enlightened and virtuous. A perpetually mild climate, and fruits and even bread is found growing upon the trees, the country will produce only ignorant and brutal savages. In the Sandwich Islands the soil will produce enough poi to subsist an average family, on a piece of ground twelve
feet square, and hence hundreds of years' contact with civilization has left them to-day the same ignorant, lascivious breeders of timid savages and lepers that were found there when Capt. Cook landed his vessel at the island. South America is so rich in nature's gifts that it is simply uninhabitable. Sailing along the treacherous shores of this immense country, the eye of all navigators has been struck with its rich beauties, its majestic rivers, the sweep of its hills and its vast savannas, its immense forests and beds of flowers-the forests so dense, the foliage so luxuriant, that it resembled the rolling sweep of one of our prairies, and filled with birds of song and beauty; and perched perhaps upon the tips of the tallest trees sat the birds of paradise, fitting jewels of nature's master- pieces, to cap and crown the entrancing scene. If you could penetrate on down from this view, you would find that life increased every inch you went, but it is all deadly life that is fittingly represented by the striped panther and the snake spotted with deadly beauty-these standing at the head of the colnmn, down to the deadly parasite that swarms and creeps in its innumerable armies over and around and through all this world of havoc and death. It is all death and destruction, simply because of its endless profusion of nature's bounties.
The heaviest misfortune that has so long environed poor, persecuted Ireland, and not so much her want of representation or even a separate Government, has been her ability to produce in such great abundance the pota- to. The yield is so enormous per acre, and this, coupled with the other fact, that like the poi of the Sandwich Islands, the potato alone will keep life in the body, without anything else, for a long time, if not indefinitely, is the secret of the woes of her people. This makes a people hopeless
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bondsmen, and prevents them entering the great avenues of commerce and trade, the two great civilizers of all half-enlightened people.
The Islander cannot export his poi, but must eat it at home and go naked and be a savage. The Irishman cannot export his potato, and he to-day would be worse off than the Islanders were it not true that he can and has produced other industries that would furnish a nucleus for the world's com- merce.
And thus it is all over the world. The soil, the subjacent rocks and the climate rule imperiously and make and unmake all civil- izations.
There is another fact the reader should think of and bear in mind, namely, it is only a certain zone or belt spanning around the world, and not a very wide belt either, from which alone have come any of the world's truly great men. The equator never has produced one, nor have the arctics. And a most extraordinary fact is that the half of the world south of the equator has produced nothing, and in the world's history has been nothing. The isothermal lines must be remem- bered when it is answered that it is impossible to fix that belt exactly. Yet the belt is there, has been there, and so far as can know, will remain unalterable forever.
When we speak of a great man, we do not mean a great warrier, prize fighter, ruler or king, who may have gone into history as great, or the grand monarch, when for the world's good they should have been strangled in their cradles. For such men cannot be great. But we mean some man who has thought out or done something that has ad- vanced civilization, whose life has been a real blessing and whose good works will endure to bless man forever.
The man who conceived the idea of putting
the eye of the needle in the point is a man that deserves a rich immortality. He did more for the human family than all the war- riors, lawyers, teachers and preachers, who were only and exclusively such, that have ever lived. And the beauty of his thought was, it cannot be lost to the world, for it only grows and widens its benefits and will reach all mankind and then be ready for still greater blessings for all the unborn genera- tions. The spinning jenny had just been or was about to bo nshered into existence, and if we believed in Providential interferences, we would have no hesitation in saying that the Great Ruler sent His special messenger to start upon its way the idea that resulted in the sewing machine.
A geologist of sufficient intelligence to philosophically comprehend the full import of his profession, can examine the soil and rocks of a country, and foretell precisely the remotest future of its people, and the stand- ard and type of their civilization. He can foresee their wants and their modes of sup- plying those wants. What we would impress by this is the fact that geology is one of the greatest practical subjects in the world. It is full of knowledge, every iota of which is ripe wisdom and possesses a moneyed value.
When Agassiz was approached by some gentlemen and questioned as to some of the conditions for a locality for breeding a superior horse, simply answered: "Gentle- men, it is a question of rocks." It was a certain rock formation that gave off and pro- duced the Blue Grass Region of Kentucky, and here, until a similar or superior spot is found, is the home of the fine horse. That entire region is underlaid with a peculiar formation of limestone, and the intelligent geologist may be able to find whole sections and innumerable places where he may be enabled to say: "Here raise your horse."
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If geology teaches you all about raising fine horses, may it stop there and be able to tell you nothing about pumpkins and splendid women, hay, apples, peaches or the finest physical people in the world. Blind chance has ruled the world, and afflicted men, too, long enough. Let the one subject, that will better educate the people than all the schools and colleges in the world, come to be universally understood, and as sure as fate it will lift up communities and even the greatest of peoples more than all else.
And a word here upon that vital subject of education will not be out of place, because it is a natural sequence to what we have said above.
Education should be eminently practical, but for seventeen hundred years the one idea has prevailed to find teachers who knew the miserable text books best, but who seldom or never knew anything else, and now the best men in the land are constantly asking, "Does education educate?" And the astounding fact is, that not one single man of erudition has answered this carping inquiry in the affirmative, ex- cept it be a school teacher. We are not go- ing here to argue the great question, but to present to the school men a practical idea, we think, which we ask them at least to consider. When children are shut up in a school room, that very fact has deprived them of one of nature's best weapons for the mind. The playful gamboling and varied movements which are so characteristic of the young of all animals, man not excepted, and which are at once so pleasing and attractive, might have taught us that activity of feeling and affec- tion, and sprightliness of mind. are intended by nature to be the source and accompani- ments of healthful and invigorating muscular exercise; and that the system of bodily con- finement and mental cultivation, now so much
in vogue, is calculated to inflict lasting in- jury on all who are subjected to its restraints. Muscular or mental growth and development can only come of active nervous and mental stimulus. To walk, for instance, under an order from the teacher, with no wish, pur- pose nor stimulus from the mind in view, is tiresome drudgery, and had better be omitted. Hence the superiority, as exercises for the young, of social and inspiriting games, which, by their joyous and boisterous mirth, call for the requisite nervous stimulus to put the muscles into vigorous and varied action, and hence the dull walk or the duller drumming in the room are each in open defiance of that law of nature, that from the muscles to the brain, and from the brain to the muscles, there must run that nervous stimulus, or neither will do its work well. Without buoyancy of spirit the mind will drag, and so will the body, and it is passing strange that this idea has not suggested the experiment to some community in the world to hire a teacher to play with the children, and sub- stitute him foi one term for the stern, great man of the birch and ferule. Now we have no hesitation in the assertion that this pas- time could be found, with all its healthy men- tal and physical stimulus in rambles and ex- cursions, in which the teachers would be the mere jolly companion of the class, and in this way every pupil may be made a fair bot- anist, geologist, and have at the same time a reasonable smattering of the rudiments of natural history. Such a teacher would train mind and body at the same time, unconscious though he might be of it. About the only use that should ever be made of the school room would be to make a kind of meeting place of it. Two years of such education, running the terms as the schools do now, un- der a competent practical teacher, would startle the world with the grand idea of a
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new invention at last in the science of school- teaching.
The corner-stone upon which nearly all of lifo rests is the farmer, who tickles the earth, and it laughs with the rich harvests that so bountifully bless mankind To him espe- cially is a knowledge of the soil the very first consideration in life. Vile demagogues talk about the "honest farmer," the intelligent farmer, and tell him he is the greatest man in the world. Such stuff is an insult to every intelligent farmer in the land. To catch his votes does he throw him this slush, and per- haps when in the Legislature, in order to feed his henchmen and bummers at the pub- lie crib, he may pass some swindling State Industrial School bill. This talk of educat- ing the farmer simply means to rob him and have him send his boys to college, where they may return as graduates, more ignorant really than when they left home; their only acquire- ment generally is to be unfitted for being a farmer, and he starts to town to look out a situation. That boy has been cruelly wronged, and the chances are one in three his whole life has been wrecked. The farmer grows to be an old man, and he will tell you that he has learned to be a good farmer only by a life of patient toil, experiments, and many and se- rious disappointments. And if you should tell him that these experiments had made him a scientific farmer, he would think you were poking fun at him. He tells you, perhaps, he was reared poor, and had no advantages of education. If he was reared on a farm- especially under the eye of an intelligent father or guardian-we would not hesitate to tell him that the luck of his life was that he was too poor in youth to go to college:
Suppose that in his youth a well-digested chapter on the geological history, that would have told him in the simplest terms all about the land he was to cultivate, how invaluable
the lesson would have been, and how much in money value it would have proved to him. In other words, if you could give your boys a practical education, made up of a few les- sons pertaining to those subjects that im- mediately concern their lives, how invaluable such an education might be, and how many men would be saved the pangs and penalties of ill-directed lives.
The parents often spend much money in the education of their children, and from this they build great hopes upon their future that are often blasted, not through the fault, always, of the child, but through the error of the parent in not being able to know in what real practical education consists. If the schools of the country, for instance, could devote one of the school months in each year to rambling over the hills and the fields, and gathering practical lessons in the geology and botany of the section of country in which the children were born and reared, how incomparably more valuable and useful the time thus spent would be to them in after life than would the prosent mode of shutting out the sunshine of life, and spending both life and vitality in studying metaphysical mathematics, or the most of the other text- books that impart nothing that is worth the carrying home to the child's stock of knowl- edge. At all events, the chapter in the county's history, or in the history of any community or country, that tells its geolog- ical formation, is of first importance to all its people, and if properly prepared it will be- come a source of great interest to all, and do much to disseminate a better education among the people, and thus be a perpetual blessing to the community.
The permanent effects of the soil on the people are as strong and certain as they are upon the vegetation that springs from it. It is a maxim in geology that the soil and its under-
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lying rocks forecast unerringly to the trained eye the character of the people, the number and the quality and the civilization of those who will, in the coming time, occupy it. Indeed, so close are the relations of the geology and the people that this law is plain and fixed, that a new country may have its outlines of history written when first looked upon; and it is not, as so many suppose, one of those deep, abstruse subjects that are to be given over solely to a few great investigators and thinkers, and to the masses must forever remain a sealed book.
Geology traces the history of the earth back through successive stages of develop- ment to its rudimental condition in a state of fusion. The sun, and the planetary system that revolves around it, were originally a common mass, that became separated in a gaseous state, and the loss of heat in a planet reduced it to a plastic state, and thus it com- menced to write its own history, and place its records upon these imperishable books, where the geologist may go and read the strange, eventful story. The earth was a wheeling ball of fire, and the cooling event- ually formed the exterior crust, and in the slow process of time prepared the way for the animal and vegetable life it now contains. In its center, the fierce flames still rage with undiminished energy. Volcanoes are ontlets for these deep-seated fires, where are gen- erated those tremendous forces, an illustra- tion of which is given in the eruptions of Vesuvius, which has thrown a jet of lava, resembling a column of flame, 10,000 feet high. The amount of lava ejected at a sin- gle eruption from one of the volcanoes of Iceland has been estimated at 40,000,000, 000 tons, a quantity sufficient to cover a large city with a mountain as high as the tallest Alps. Our world is yet congealing, just as the process has been constantly going on for
billions of years, and yet the rocky crust that rests upon this internal fire is estimated to be only between thirty and forty miles in thickness. In the silent depths of the stratified rocks are the former creation of plants and animals, which lived and died during the slow, dragging centuries of their formation. These fossil remains are frag- ments of history, which enable the geologist to extend his researches far back into the realms of the past, and not only determine their former modes of life, but study the contemporaneous history of their rocky beds, and group them into systems. And such has been the profusion of life, that the great limestone formations of the globe consists mostly of animal remains, cemented by the infusion of animal matter. A large part of the soil spread over the earth's surface has been elaborated in animal organism. First, as nourishment, it enters into the structure of plants, and forms vegetable tissue; pass- ing thence, as food, into the animal, it be- comes endowed with life, and when death occurs it returns into the soil and imparts to it additional elements of fertility.
The realization of great defects in the education of our young farmers and of their losses and disappointments, and even dis- asters, in the pursuit of their occupation of tilling the earth, that come of their neglect in early education and training, prompts us to present a subject that many of our readers without investigating, may consider dry and uninteresting. The views of the writer are not wholly those of the visionary enthusiast, nor are they the mere theories drawn from books. Born and reared on a farm, with nearly a quarter of a century's experience in tilling the soil, qualifies him to tell, not so confidently, but with nearly the facility of H. Greeley, of what "I know about farming." The supreme subject is how to get a practi-
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cal, real education; how to fit our youths for the great struggle of life that is before them.
That the reader may gather some idea of the first lesson of the rocks, and in the hope it may stimulate him to look further into this simple but sublime subject, we give in their order the different groups and systems in the plainest and simplest form we can present them, as gathered from the geolo- gists. We only deem it necessary to explain that all rocks are either igneous or stratified, the former meaning melted by fire, and the latter sediment deposited in water. Their order, commencing with the lowest stratified rocks and ascending, are as follows:
The Laurentian system is the lowest and oldest of the stratified rocks. From the effects of great heat, it has assumed, to some extent, the character of the igneous rocks below, but still retains its original lines of stratification. A principal effect of the great heat to which its rocks were exposed is erys- tallization. The Laurentian system was for- merly believed to be destitute of organic re- mains, but recent investigations have led to the discovery of animals, so low in the scale of organization as to be regarded as the first appearance of sentient existence. This dis- covery, as it extends the origin of life back- ward through 30,000 feet of strata, may be regarded as one of the most important ad- vances made in American geology.
The Huronian system, like the one that precedes it, and on which it rests, is highly crystalline. Although fossils have not been found in it, yet from its position, the infer- ence is they once existed, and if they do not now, the great transforming power of heat has caused their obliteration. This, and the subjacent system, extend from Labrador southwesterly to the great lakes, and thence northwesterly toward the Arctic Ocean. They derive their names from the St. Lawrence
and Lake Huron, on the banks of which are found their principal outcrops. Their emer- gence from the ocean was the birth of the North American Continent. One face of the uplift looked toward the Atlantic and the other toward the Pacific.
The Silurian age, compared with the more stable formations of subsequent times, was one of commotion, in which fire and water played a conspicuous part. Earthquakes and volcanoes furrowed the yielding crust with ridges, and threw up islands whose crag- gy summits, here and there, stood like sen- tinels above the murky deep which dashed against their shores. The present diversities of climate did not exist, as the temperature was mostly due to the escape of internal heat, which was the same over every part of the surface. As the radiation of heat in fut- ure ages declined, the sun became the con- trolling power, and zones of climate appeared as the result of solar domination. Uniform thermal conditions imparted a corresponding character to vegetable and animal life, and one universal fauna and flora extended from the equator to the poles. During the Siln- rian age, North America, like its inhabitants, was mostly submarine, as proved by wave- lines on the emerging lunds.
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