History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois, Part 5

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 5
USA > Illinois > Wayne County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 5


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


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"Aged matrons frequently attended these shooting matches with a neat, clean keg of metheglin to sell. This drink is made of honey and water, with the proper fermenta- tion. It is pleasant to drink, and has no power in it to intoxicate. The old lady often had her sewing or knitting with her, and would frequently relate horrid stories of the Tories in the Revolution in North Carolina, as well as to sell her drink.


" In the early days of Illinois, horse-racing was a kind of mania with almost all people, and almost all indulged in it, either by being spectators, or engaged in them. The level and beautiful prairies seemed to persuade this class of amusement."


The earliest settlement in this portion of Illinois it appears was made by Michael Sprinkle, the first white man to settle in Shawneetown. He was a gunsmith, and the Indians had petitioned Gov. Harrison for permission for him to reside among them to repair their guns, and he fixed his residence there in the year 1802. Other people were attracted to the locality, mostly on account of its convenience to the Salines, and in 1805 an unprovoked murder was committed by the Indians in the killing of Mr. Duff near


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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.


the Island Ripples in the Salino Creek, and he was buried near the old salt spring. It was supposed the Indians were hired to com- mit this murder. Shawneetown was occu- pied by a village of the Shawnee Indians for many ages, and it was the place where Maj. Croghan, the English officer, camped in his explorations of the country in 1765. He had a battle at this place with the savages. The old salt spring is situated about twelve miles northwest of Shawneetown, and around it a colony commenced to settle about the year 1805. In 1803, Gov. Harrison had purchased of the Indians the salt works and adjoining lands. and the same year the Saline was leased by Capt. Bell, of Lexington, Ky., and this attracted the attention of immigrants.


The attention of the early pioneers who had settled along the Lower Wabash and Ohio Rivers was attracted to this portion of Illi- nois by some of them passing over what is now Wayne County as rangers-those heroic men who went out and braved the savage, and, at the risk of their lives, protected the helpless and scattered families that had vent- ured out in the solitary wilds and com- menced to build permanent homes.


The first settler in Wayne County was Isaac Harris, and until three months ago, when she died, his daughter, Mrs. Betsey Goodwin was not only the oldest living in- habitant in the county, but the first. She came here with her father's family in 1814, she being then ten years old. Her death, in September, 18S3. severed the last link con- necting the present with the first settlement in the county. Her father, Isaac Harris, left his Kentucky home with a few provis- ions and cooking utensils packed on horses, and followed a dim Indian trail to the terri- tory now comprised in Wayne County-then a perfect wilderness. Mr. Harris was the first white man to settle and build a house


in our county. The site chosen was a high bluff at the edge of the Wabash bottoms. nine miles sontheast of Fairfield. A large spring at the foot of the bluff was doubtless an attraction. Thomas Harris, ex-Supervisor of Leech Township, now lives on the exact site of the first building erected in Wayne County. This first cabin had a dirt floor and its size is shown by Mrs. Goodwin's state. ment as to the carpet used. Four bear skins, cut square, filled the cabin and made a lux- urions carpet. The daily food of the pio- neers was corn meal, hominy, bear meat, ven- ison, honey and sassafras tea. The meal and hominy were ground in a mortar made out of a stump, a wooden maul attached to a spring. pole being the pestle. The breadstuff for each day was pounded up before breakfast. Mrs. Goodwin thinks she has ground over a hundred bushels of corn in this way. The grist was sieved and the finer portion called meal, the coarser hominy. These mortars were used for three years. Bear meat was plentiful, Mr. Harris killing four or five a week. Venison was not a rarity in a honse- hold where the head of the family has been known to kill nineteen deer before breakfast as Mr. Harris did. But this was doubtless an unusually good morning for deer. Mr.


Harris' method of bringing home honey when out on a hunt was decidedly aboriginal. When he found a bee-tree, he would kill a deer, take off' the skin in a way best suited to the use he had for it, till the skin with honey, tio up the holes made by the legs and neck, throw it across his horse and make his way homeward. Honey was so abundant that great wooden troughs were provided for it.


Mrs. Goodwin stated to her friends only a short time before her death, that she remem . bered many times of seeing a hundred gal- Ions of honeyed sweetness in a rude wooden trongh. When a surplus of honey had been


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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.


gathered, it was hauled on a sled to Carmi and sold for 25 cents a gallon. The pioneers' luseious bill of fare was served on pewter plates, sometimes accompanied by milk poured from a gourd, and which had been strained through a gourd strainer.


Bears were so bold that have been known to come within twenty steps of the house and carry off' pigs. Their skins were made very useful. Mrs. Goodwin said she had made at least 500 pairs of bear skin moccasins, and could do the work as well as an Indian. They were made with the hair on (turned inside), and for men, cut about as high as socks; for women, about the length of stockings. Mrs. Goodwin said she would enjoy wearing a pair even in 1880.


The young ladies of the pioneer period wore deer skin dresses. The hair was re- moved, and the skin dressed so as to be soft and pliable, and when colored red and yellow made rather a stylish looking suit. The number of "breadths in the skirt " were about as few as in the tight-fitting, figure- displaying costumes of the super-fashionable belles of the present day. The men wore leather breeches and jackets.


In 1SSO, Mrs. Goodwin related to the ed- itor of the Wayne County Press her recol- lections of her first calico dress. She said: " Daddy loaded a lot of deer skins and veni- son hams on a sled, and took 'em to Carmi and bought us gals each a calico dress. We thought they were powerful nice, and that was nice." The barter was at these prices: A pair of venison hams 25 cents, and calico 30 or 40 eents a yard. A few years later, shoes and stockings also became fashionable, but they were too highly valued for wearing even a whole Sunday. The girls would carry them tied up in their handkerchiefs until near the church or farmhouse where church was held. They would then take a seat on a


log, don their shoes and stockings, and go into the house with as much of a dressed-up feeling as a city belle alights from her car- riage to enter the opera. Plainness of dress was the rule for girls, and wearing of " ruf- fles and bobs" to church was not generally allowed.


At the earliest day of Mrs. Goodwin's rec- ollection, the Indians seem not to have had any permanent village in our county, but were frequently camped here in large num- bers. Mrs. Goodwin remembered seeing about 300 camped near Nathan Atteberry's present home. Once she was so badly fright- ened by unexpectedly coming upon an Indi- an, that she ran a mile and a half at full speed, arriving home almost dead. Her father " gathered a parcel of men, and moved 'em out." Mrs. Goodwin attended the first Fourth of July celebration ever held in Wayne County sixty-seven years ago. Fairfield then consisted of two cabins, and the patri- otic observers of the day we celebrate num- bered about thirty persons, prominent among whom were the Barnhills, Slocumbs, Leech- es and Jo Campbell. It was, Mrs. Goodwin said, " a sort of pay celebration." The re- freshments consisted mainly of a roasted pig and blackberry pies-regular "turnovers "- baked in a skillet. Sam Leech was the ora- tor of the day. Mrs. Goodwin remembers that our fellow-citizen, J. W. Barnhill, was one of the patriotic pioneers. He was two years old, barefooted and wore a home-made cotton dress.


Isaac Harris, the first settler, loved to joke. Dick Lock one day wanted some corn fodder (blades). Isaac told him to bring his wagon and get it. Lock, however, took a rope with him, intending to carry a bundle only. As he started off, Harris touch a chunk of fire to the load. While Lock was wondering how he fodder happened to burn up so suddenly,


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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.


Harris told him to go get his wagon and come for it like a white man. Mr. Harris had a pleasant way of dealing with speculators who came into the country to buy large tracts of land. He was sought as a guide and would invariably take the Eastern fellows through some of the most radically swamp land that could be found, and skip the good portions. On more than one occasion he purposely got lost, and compelled the land buyers to sleep a night in the woods. and go supperless to bed.


Isaac and Gilham Harris (brothers), with their families, had spent the winters of 1812- 13 in a camp, near where Nathan Atteberry's farm now is, bringing their hogs from their home in Big Prairie, White County, on account of the superior mast of that locality. And in 1814, as stated above, the families moved into the county as permanent settlers. Aunt Betsey Goodwin was then twelve years old, and from an interview with the old lady in 1880 by the editor of the Press, we extract the following interesting reminiscences: Her father, Isaac Harris, built the first cabin ever erected within the borders of Wayne. Mrs. Goodwin was twelve years of age then, and has a very distinct remembrance of that first low hut, with its dirt floor, carpeted with bear skins (and it took only four bears to supply the carpet). Mrs. Goodwin is seventy- seven years old, and promises fair to live out the century. Her mother lived to be ninety- one, her grandmother to be one hundred and seven, making a visit to Ireland after her one hundredth year.


Mrs. Goodwin yet thinks that the corn meal she ground or pounded in a stump mortar was better than that made by the steam mills of to-day. It was sifted through a home- made seive made by stretching a deer skin. tanned with ashes. over a hoop. The holes in the sieve were made with a small iron


instrument heated hot. The smaller the iron the finer the meal. That portion of the grist which went through the seive was called meal-that which remained was used as hominy. As civilization advanced, home- made horse-hair seives came in fashion. Aunt Betsey remembers seeing Granny Hooper weave lots of 'em. The dishes and spoons used were almost wholly of pewter and were sold by peddlers. There were no stores in the county, and men and women both wore buckskin clothing made of deer skins, dressed with deer's brains, and colored yellow with hickory bark and alum, or red with sassafras. Three ordi- nary deer skins made a dress. Leather whangs or homespun flax thread was used in making them. No frills, ruffles or diagonal pleatings were allowed.


Clad in a short, red leather dress. and wearing a sunbonnet made of homemade cot- ton or flax, our hostess, then Miss Betsey Harris, must have been an attractive young lady when at the age of fourteen, and " wild as a deer," she struck the fancy and won the affections of Tom Jones, a stout young pio- neer in leather breeches and a coonskin cap. But the tender feeling was not reciprocated. Young Jones tried to make headway in his suit by presenting Miss Harris with a pair of side combs. She wouldn't take them, and Jones tried a flauk movement by giving the combs to her little brother. But she never would wear them.


While on this subject, we will state that many of the pioneers made their own combs. An old case knife was converted into a saw, and with this rude tool combs of overlasting quality were made from cow's horn. Mrs. Goodwin's mother wore such a comb of Wayne County manufacture for thirty-two years, and was buried with it in her hair. At a later period. Andrew Wright came from


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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.


New Jersey, settled three miles south of Fairfield, and added to the scanty revenues of his farm by making wooden combs with saws especially made for that purpose.


Mrs. Goodwin's first fine bonnet was bought of J. G. Barkley forty-two years ago, when he kept store in the north room of Mrs. E. Trousdale's residence in Fairfield. This bon- net was a palmetto, and was much larger than the shaker hoods which were worn a dozen or more years ago.


About this time those enormous tortoise shell tuck combs were in fashion-immense semi-circles, twelve inches in length, and with teeth four inches long. They were about as large as the bonnets of to-day.


In those days, Uncle Charley Wood kept hotel in a log building just north of the Lang Hotel. Hon. I. S. Warmoth made saddles and harness in the present residence of A. R. Swan, near Thomas L. Cooper's residence.


Caleb Williams and R. B. Slocumb were among the pioneer merchants. After they " broke up" no store existed in Fairfield for a year or more, and Mrs. Goodwin was com- pelled to send to Carmi for a set of cups and saucers. A little later, Page came with a stock of goods, and the pioneer did not have to go thirty miles to make little household purchases.


Tallow candles, made by dipping, were first used for illumination. When the iron lamp was introduced, with its hook to hang on a nail and its sharp point to stick in the cracks in the logs. it was deemed a great in- vention. When filled with " coon" or bears oil it made a splendid light. Candles were also sometimes made from beeswax.


The first school which Mrs. Goodwin at- tended was taught by Uucle George Meritt. There was not an arithmetic or slate in the school room, the studies being confined to the Testament and spelling-book. And Mrs.


Goodwin added, " George was counted a big scholar in them days."


Archy Roberts (grandfather of N. E. Rob. erts) was one of the first preachers in this part of the State. He was a Methodist, as were most of the early ministers.


As to weddings in the early times. Mrs. Goodwin said she didn't have much of a wedding when she was married to Steven Merritt-her first husband. "Daddy cut up powerful about it-thought nobody was good enough for his gals, and we run off and got married." Mr. Harris soon afterward be- came reconciled to the match, and gave the bride money enough to buy a full set of pew- ter dishes.


Mrs. Goodwin is a very large woman, and has been remarkably stout, well fitting her for the trials and hardships of a frontier life. R. B. Slocumb, many of our readers will re- member as a large man, yet Mrs. Goodwin one day won a bushel of salt from Mr. Slo- cumb by outweighing him, tipping the scales at 190 pounds.


Steven Merritt came to Fairfield one Satur- day and won $10 in a horse-pulling match. He bought a hat for himself, a calico dress for his wife, and expended the balance of the money, $3, in coffee. He got a meal sack full, as coffee then sold eighteen or twenty pounds to the dollar. Mrs. Merritt had never made a cup of coffee, having always used milk and sassafras tea, and this big lot of coffee was kept lying in the loft of the cabin untouched for a year or more, until a Ken- tucky cousin visited the family and explained to Mrs. Merritt the mysteries of making coffee.


Mrs. Goodwin never seemed to learn to appreciate amuch of the modern luxuries. Even the spring seat in a two-horse wagon is an effeminate invention for which she had no use. She preferred to take her seat on a


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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.


quilt or a pile of straw in the bottom of the wagon. And this sort of conveyance she thought more comfortable than a buggy.


The commercial poverty of the country in its first settlement is shown by the fact that the smokers made their own clay pipes when they became too aristocratic to use a corn cob. Such a thing as a cigar was unheard of.


What would the ladies of to-day think of a bedstead with only one post? On first thought they will say such an article of fur- niture is an impossibility. Not so, if the bedstead is built in one corner of the room, and holes bored in the logs for the insertion of the poles which constitute the one side and one foot rail needed. Such were the original Illinois bedsteads.


Shoe blacking is a modern fashionable folly which was unknown in the days when venison hams sold for 50 cents per pair and wild honey was stored away by the bushels in large wooden troughs. When Uncle Eph- raim Friend, lately deceased, was being mar- ried to his second wife, he felt the necessity of putting on a little extra style. In this respect he did not differ from the widowers of 1883. Shoe blacking was not to be had, and he inverted the oven used for baking corn bread and the soot on the bottom thereof was made to do service on his wedding boots.


Window glass was unknown in the early cabins. A hole in the wall was left for light, but this was scarcely necessary, when we con- sider the pioneer's love for open doors, even in extreme winter weather.


T. T. Bonham brought the first buggy to Wayne County. It was a stylish affair, im- ported from Pennsylvania. E› Bonham, when a young man " cut a splurge " by driv- ing in this buggy to camp meeting. The civilization represented by the Eastern buggy was in great contrast with that of which Mr. B.'s dinner was a type. He was a guest at a


farmhouse where the principal dish was baked 'possum. Mr. Bonham would have preferred fried oysters.


The first show Pomp Scott ever attended was in Albion. He went on horseback, but not being the owner of a saddle, a bed quilt was used as a substitute. On this, with his gal behind him, he rode to the show, had a bully time, and thought himself as much of a bigbug as any aristocrat present.


One day, Mrs. Goodwin and Sally Moffitt wished to visit the family of Alexander Camp- bell, Sr., the father of Sheriff Campbell. They had on the farm a gentle steer which the boys had been in the habit of riding. The ladies thought that a ride on this steer would be better than walking. It was a rainy day, and they took with them an umbrella which had been left at the house by some land hunters. After getting fairly started, they stretched the umbrella, when the steer started off like mad. Both were thrown off, and the land speculator's umbrella broken all to smash.


Soon after the first settlement of the county, when peace existed between the Indians and settlers, Joe Boltinghouse was killed by In- dians, while he was herding hogs on the heavy mast near Massillon. He was shot, scalped, and thrown in the fire of his camp so that his hands were burned off. His famn- ily were advised that something was wrong by his faithful dog "Beve" coming home alone. When the friends went to the camp, they found him scalped and mutilated, his horse stolen and the Indians gone. Three years after this, a party of seven Indians came to the same place and camped for a few weeks hunting. Among their ponies Joe Boltinghouse's horse was seen and recognized by one of the pioneers. The news was car- ried to his family, and a party organized to investigate. Joe Boltinghouse's father, his


.


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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.


brother Dan and Isaac Harris visited the camp. By strategy they obtained the guns of all the Indians but one. This warrior, an immense savage, was last to surrender his gun, and as soon as he did so ran and swam across the river. As he climbed the opposite bank he was seized by the half-wolf dog " Beve," dragged into the water and drowned. What became of the other six Indians the three revengeful pioneers would never tell. It was suspected that all were killed and thrown in the river. The stolen horse was reclaimed by the Boltinghouse family, and the ponies posted as estrays. Mrs. Goodwin says there " was a powerful stir in the neigh- borhood " about the matter, but no close in- quiry was ever made as to what became of the Indians.


In 1816, came George Merritt, with his father, Ephraim Merritt, and settled near the Harrises, and also John Jones (preacher "Jacky " Jones), in company with his father, Cadwalader Jones, and settled in what is now Leech Township, on the east side near the county line. George Merritt, in answer to the question, when he came to Wayne County, replied: " Well, sir, I got here on the 3d day of August, 1816, half an hour by sun." There's exactness for you. Unele George said he "helped raise the fourth house that was built in this fork"- that is the country between the Skillet Fork and Little Wabash. He said that in 1817 a vote was held as to whether Illinois should be a Slave or Free State. The territory now comprising Wayne County was at that time a portion of Edwards County. Mr. Merritt's first going to mill was to New Haven, below Carmi. The settlers here had no corn, but borrowed of Toliver Simpson, then living at Concord, White County, four miles below Big Prairie. A year or two later, Mr. Simp- son moved to Wayne, and by that time our


pioneers had small pieces under cultivation, and were able to return the borrowed bread- stuff. Uncle George took two horses when he went to mill, putting three bushels of corn on one and two bushels on the one he rode. The Skillet Fork was crossed in a log canoe. The corn was taken over first, and he then went back for the horses, making them swim beside the canoe. In 1816, only three small patches of ground were in cultivation in Wayne County. The first settlers preferred the timber to the prairie, on account of the toughness of the sod of the latter, requiring, Uncle George said, three yoke of cattle to break it. The first corn-fields were greatly annoyed by "varmints," and every farmer had a pack of hounds to keep the coon from destroying the corn. Uncle George said that the third winter he spent here his brother Steven killed seventeen bears. Venison hams were then as staple a product of the county as wheat is now. And the price was uni- formly " two bits a saddle." Uncle George has hauled many a load to Shawneetown. He remembers that it was very difficult to raise wheat in the early days. It looked well enough, but failed to mature and make per- fect heads. Corn was the sole reliance for bread.


Notwithstanding the eighty winters that have silvered his head, he is as lively as a cricket, and from the cheerful words and pleasant smiles he fires sometimes at a robust widow of sixty-six years, we think he has some notion of marrying, and beginning life anew to " grow up with the country."


The first mill in the county was built by Jo Martin, who hauled the stones from Bar- ren County, Ky. Gaston's " band mill " was soon afterward built in Little Mound Prairie. Its name was derived from the manner in which the wheel turned by the horses com- municated power to the grinding machinery.


James Inchartuy


٢٠


UNIVE


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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.


Many of our readers know of the creek which crosses the Liberty road just beyond Nathan Atteberry's farm, four miles south of Fairfield. It is now perfectly dry nine months of the year. It will be astonishing information to many of the present genera- tion that on this creek was built the first wa- ter mill ever in the county. Mr. Atteberry said that a dam across the creek furnished water power enough to run a small pair of corn stones two feet in diameter. A heavy rain would fill the dam and enable the miller to receive business. This mill was of great atility, saving the scattered settlers many a trip to New Haven. It was universally rec- ognizel as one of the most valued publie en- terprises of the day. Such being the case. the capacity of the mill will be an interest- ing fact to note. Each damful of water would grind six or eight bushels of corn! Only that and no more. Abe Chapman used to illustrato the speed of the mill by the re- lation of a little incident: One day the mil - tor, John Carson, started the stones and went to his home a short distance off. His favor- ¿te hound pup went to the meal box and ate the meal as fast as it came from the buhrs. When the miller returned, the grist was fin ¿shed but no meal was in the box. However, the improved appearance of the valued hound was soon noticed and fully explained the mystery.


Between showers, the neighbors were wel- come to come with their grists and grind by hand. after the oriental style.


George Merritt came with his father's Family from Union County. Ky., March 25. 1816. first stopping at Concordia. White County, where the family made a crop. and then, in September, came to Wayne County, in Leech Township. He found then living here Alexander Campbell, in the edge of White County, and Isane Harris. Mr. Mer-


ritt now thinks these included all the settlers who preceded his coming. With the Merritt family came Daniel Gray, Clarinda Hooper, and Samuel Slocumb (the father of Rigdon B. Slocumb). Merritt went to Concordia to get the first corn they had for bread, and took it down the river to New Haven to mill, on horseback. He had to cross the Skillet Fork on the trip, as is mentioned above.




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