History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois, Part 8

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 8
USA > Illinois > Wayne County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 8

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T mark the changes in the social and business habits of the people in this country the last half century is to start the reader upon the investigations of some of those remarkable revolutions that are histor. ical in their nature. Such a course of in- vestigation is one step in the commencement of the construction of real history-the ascer- taining the causes, in short, that have silent- ly worked these tremendous effects upon mankind, and that are the true eras to the profound historian.

The pioneer people were the possessors of that boon to the world of human equality in a degree nearer perfection than, perhaps, of any other numerous people in the world. Doubtless there have been isolated societies, composed of enthusiasts in the hunt of Uto- pia, where a more perfect equality existed; but these were always short-lived communi- ties, and their equality was in a degree al- ways to their isolation from the great outside world. But among the early people of the West there were none rich and none poor, and Gov. Reynolds tells us they were a sim- ple, contented and happy people. They slopt the sweet sleep of innocent content, where came no dreams of modern colossal fortunes, no nightmare of assassination for pelf or position, or those miserable baubles

that have plunged the world in bloody wars and blackened the fair face of nature.

To-day we boast of our great population, our schools, churches, magnificent public buildings, our numerous population, splen- did civilization, and our boundless wealth. But the thinking man, even when he beholds all this, is confronted with the curious fact that wealth concentrates in a few hands more readily in this than any other country on earth. We have followed out the traditions of Jefferson in this country, and given every one an equal chance in the making of money, upon the theory that this would result in the equalizing of fortunes. To help bring about this desirable result, our laws call for an equal division of property on the death of the parent. But unrestricted competition has not borne out the claim of the Declaration of Independence that " all men are equal." The facts of the last fifty years show that oppor- tunity, brains and unscrupulousness will en- able individuals, within a short lifetime, to gather to themselves enormous sums of mon- ey, which, under different institutions, would be diffused among the masses of the people. France, for instance, is a very rich conntry. but, outside of the Rothschild family, has few millionaires. It has a poor and frugal working class, but the great bulk of the

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.

French people belong to what is known as the " middle class," and are well-to-do. In Great Britain there are greater contrasts of wealth and poverty, but facts recently pub- lished go to show that the number of very rich is not large. It is safe to say that there have been more millionaires created in the United States since the beginning of the civil war than have been developed by a cent- ury of banking, manufacturing and trading in Great Britain. There are no single fort- unes in England comparable to those of Van- derbilt, Gould, Mackey, Flood, the Astor and the Stewart estates, and probably fifty others which might be mentioned. The great fort- unes in England have been aggregating- some of them -- for centuries; ours date back to the first year of the civil war, when vast accumulations were rolled up in contracts for supplying our armies. Then the Jeffersonian theory, which said to the Government, " Hands off," left the transportation field open to the monopolist. Our railway mag- nates have taxed the public, the Government declining to interfere until very recently; but our highest court has at length decided that the nation is supreme, and has a right to su- pervise railway passenger and freight charges. The freedom of our institutions had been vastly more advantageous to the capitalist than the poor workman. Should the present tendencies continue, the middle of the twen- tieth century will see the United States with a vast laboring population, a small middle class, and a few hundred millionaires, who will monopolize the great bulk of the prop- erty of the country.

Delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1817. from Wayne County, James M. Hogue; to the Constitutional Convention of 1570, Robert P. Hanna The first and only State officer ever elected from Wayne County is James McCartney, the present Attorney

General of Illinois. The first member of the Legislature from Wayne County was Alex- ander Campbell, in the sessions of 1822 and 1824; the second was Rigdon B. Slocumb, in 1824 and 1826.

James Bird was the State Senator from Wayne and Lawrence Connties in 1826-28.

W. B. Davis was a Representative in 1826. Mr. Davis was one of the remarkable early statesmen of Wayne County. He was known much better all over the county as " Black Bill" than by his baptismal name. His looks gave him this name. It is said that many of his acquaintances never dreamed but that this descriptive appellation was his only real name, and when they read his obituary notice they were innocent of sus- pecting that it was the story of the death of anybody they knew. Davis was a rare char- acter, who came to Wayne County at so carly a date that there was no chronicler here to give the day and date of this event. He was as illiterate as the game he hunted-a genu- ine, unpretentious, pioneer hunter, who used as little soap as any man in America. He lived an easy, careless life, and was innocent of even thinking he was a great statesman until, all at once, in 1826, he was elected to the Illinois Legislature, and, arrayed in all his buckskin glories, he shouldered his rifle and footed it to Vandalia to attend the ses- sion of the Legislature. He was much an- noyed at the style he there found, especially in the pompous grandeur of Gov. Edwards. It is said of Black Bill that he was told that it was customary for members to wash their faces before taking their seats, and he had repaired to a small pond of water in the pub- lic square and had laid down his coon-skin cap preparatory to his first ablution, when the Governor happened to pass by, when he addressed him familiarly by saying, "Cap'n. won't you have a wash with me ?"

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.

During the term, he never rose and ad- dressed the chair but once, and that was upon some question that threatened to divide Wayne County, when his monitor told him to move to lay the bill upon the table. He bounded to his feet and said: " Mr. Speaker, I ask you to please put that on the table," and he sat down exhausted with his mighty effort to the extent that the perspiration dampened his buckskin suit.

When sworn in and the Clerk was taking down the names of the members, he asked Davis the usual questions of name, etc. When he asked him his occupation, Davis stopped short and was as mum as a statue. The Clerk asked him if he was a farmer. "No," said Davis. "A merchant?"" "No."" "A trader?" "No." "What the -- are you, then ?" said the Clerk. "Ahunter, by dad!"

Davis, it is said, soon tired of the flumer- ies of law-making, and one evening just as the House adjourned he rose and said, "I move Black Bill adjourns," and thereupon he shouldered his trusty rifle and returned to his admiring constituents. He thus quit public life, and his national usefulness was cut short.

In the General Assembly of 1828-30, the counties of Wayne, Wabash and Edwards formed a Senatorial district, and the member was Enoch Beach, and in the Lower House again was Rigdon B. Slocumb. In the As- sembly of 1830-32, Beach was still Senator, and Alexander Clark was the Representative from Wayne.

In the Assembly of 1832-34, the counties of Wayne, Wabash and Edwards composed a Senatorial district, and Henry I. Mills was the Senator, and Alexander Clark was again the Representative.

In the Assembly of 1834-36, Mills was Senator and Benjamin A. Clark was the Rep- resentative from Wayne.

In 1836-38, Mills still Senator, and Daniel Turney was the Representative.

In 1838-40, Mills was still the Senator, and Jeffrey Robinson was the Representative.

In the Assembly of 1840-42, Rigdon B. Slocumb was the State Senator from the old district of Wayne, Edwards and Wabash, and Daniel Turney was the Representative.

Edward West was elected Representative from Wayne to the House of Representatives 1842-44.

The General Assembly, 1844-46, Charles H. Constant was State Senator and Joseph Campbell Representative.

In the Assembly of 1846-48, Charles H. Constable was Senator, and Rigdon B. Slo- camb Representative.

In 1848-50, John A. Campbell was the Representative.

In Assembly of 1852-54, Alexander Camp- bell was the Representative.

Isaac R. Warmoth was Assistant Enrolling and Engrossing Clerk in the Assembly of 1854-56.

Charles P. Burns was the Representative from Wayne in 1856-58.

Rigdon S. Barnhill was Postmaster to the Senate in the Assembly of 1858-60. R. T. Forth was the Representative.

In the Twenty-second General Assembly. 1861, Nathan Crews was Representative and William H. Robinson was Second Assistant Clerk.

In the Twenty-third Assembly, 1863-64, James M. Herd was the Representative.

In 1866-68, Robert P. Hanna was the Rep. resentative in the Legislature.

In the Twenty-sixth General Assembly. 1868-70, Dr. J. J. R. Turney was Senator from this district.

David W. Barkley was a member of the House of Representatives in the Twenty- eighth General Assembly.

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.

Robert P. Hanna was State Senator in the Thirtieth General Assembly, 1876-78, and also in the Assembly of 1878-80.

Judge Edwin Beecher's commission as Judge of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit bears date June 25, 1855.

At the election, November 2, ISSO, the vote for State Senator in this district, as returned officially to the Secretary of State, was as follows:

COUNTIES.

J. R. TANNER,

REPUBLICAN.

K. 8. SHIRLEY,

DEMOCRAT.

I. F. PEACE.

Clay ..

1,685

1,580

Wayne ..

2,086

2,167

156

Richland

1,637

1,731

Edwards

1,184

576

Wabash ..

93%

1,141

Total

7,550

7.198

231

Thomas P. Fletcher, Alexander Clark and G. W. Faris were the first County Commis- sioners' Court elected in the county. Their first business was to arrange for the platting the town of Fairfield, and their first deed was to Daniel Kinchelo, Lot 24, in the town.

Felix H. and John Barnhill made a deed to the county for the original town of Fair- field.

The first deed recorded in the county bears date the 1st day of March, 1819, and is a deed from Walter Anderson (his mark) and his wife, Chole (Chloe !), to John Anderson, and conveyed the northwest quarter of Sec- tion 13, Town 1 south, Range 9 east. The consideration was $120. This deed is acknowledged before Robert Frazer, Justice of the Peace.

There was no other deed made in the county until the following October, when John Anderson and Susan, his wife, deeded to Samuel Anderson the northwest quarter of Section 13, Town 1 south, Range 9 east; consideration, $600. This deed was acknowl- . on railroads).

edged before John Depew, Justice of the Peace.

The next document is a lease and contract, whereby Enoch Wilcox leases on the shares the farms and stock ranch of A. F. Hubbard, of date September 22, 1819.

The next record document is a bill of sale of " a sorrel horse and saddle" for $SO by Henry L. Cross to Thomas Lee.

On November 8, 1859, a vote on the ques- tion of township organization resulted as follows : For township organization, 952; against, 139, as appears by the certificate of the two Justices, J. G. Barkley and W. W. George. J. W. Barnhill, County Clerk at that time, records the report of the Commis- sioners, J. G. Barkley and W. L. Beeson, who designated the township boundaries and their names.

At a regular meeting of the board for the purpose of organizing, June 4, 1860, there was present J. B. Borah, Daniel Wingate, William Holmes, Alexander Campbell, H. D. Taylor, Nathan Crews, William Clark, Na- than Atteberry, Robert T. Forth, William Beeson and Sylvester Ryder, J. W. Barnhill, County Clerk, and H. A Orgon, Sheriff. The board adjourned, and the next day A. S. Hargraves, H. Holtzhanser and Nathan Mer- ritt appeared and took their seats as Super- visors.

Daniel Wingate was elected permanent Chairman, and the very first business that the new board took in hand was to appoint a committee to examine a trust deed and mort. gage executed by the county, which was signed by S. J. R. Wilson and Thomas M. Scott, and to make report of the same. This was the first movement in Wayne County's causes celebres that has waxed warm in all our courts from that day to this with ever- varying fortune (for particulars see chapter

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.

Rigdon B. Slocumb died in Fairfield, April 20, 1874, aged seventy nine years two months and twenty-nine days. He was among the earliest men here, and in the organiza- tion and control of the county affairs, stood second only to Samuel Leech. He was a man of large ability and was esteemed by all the people of the county for ripe judgment and integrity of character. He filled con- tinously almost one or more of the county offices for years, and also represented the county in the Legislature. He was the can- didate in 1828, on the ticket with Gov. Reynolds, for Leintenant Governor, but was defeated by Zadoc Casey, who was a candidate on the Kinney ticket.

This election showed a singular state of polities in the State. The campaign was the longest and one of the most exciting ever held in the State. Reynolds and Kinney were the opposing candidates for Governor. Both were Democrats, as were all the can. didates on each ticket, and, further, they were all Jackson Democrats, but at this day, a similar party division is designated by Stalwarts and Half-Breeds. Kinney and his crowd called themselves out-and-outer Jack- son men, while Reynolds and his crowd went in for kissing the babies, and shaking hands with the women and mildly bragging on Old Hickory. Kinney was a preacher, Baptist, and so was Casey, but Methodist. For years after it was said that Kinney was defeated because he was a preacher, and Casey was elected because he was a preacher.

Samuel Leech. The history of the early official life and the biography of Samuel Leech are much one and the same thing. All the early record books and official papers are in his familiar writing, and in this way he laid the foundations for the young county to build upon. And this is true of all the early county courts. As the presiding officer

of the Probate Court he had to some extent the charge of estates of widows and orphans in the county, and he was here as everywhere else their true and trusted friend. He was among the first merchants in the county, and it was here that he was as successful in lay- ing the foundations for the future commerce of the county as he had been instrumental in its official affairs. In another place we speak of his military life here, and of his unjust treatment from some cause in the part that he played in the Black Hawk war. His name is inseparably connected with all the early history of Wayne County, and they must go into history linked inseparably to- gether. We much regret that we can find no one here who can give us the facts about him before he came here and after he left in 1837. We are told that he resigned his offices in the county to accept the position in the Government Land Office, at Quincy, III., where he acquired wealth, and afterward re- moved to Wisconsin, where he died.

In 1866, the Board of Supervisors of Wayne County, by a vote of the full board, responded to the public demand on the ques- tion of whisky selling, and refused to license any more saloons in the county.

The town of Fairfield, being the heaviest sufferer in the county, had gallantly opened the campaign in its December election of 1866. The question was plumply submitted to the voters of the town, and the vote re- sulted in the election of George Scott, Isaac Fitzgerald, L. D. Bennett, Edward S. Black, and D. W. Barkley, a straight-out anti- whisky board. This vote was the death blow, as after events proved, to the flow of legalized drunkenness in Wayne County, and from that day to this the principles of tem- perance have gained headway-not that all whisky drinking and intemperance have been abolished-but the public flaunting of a

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.

legalized traffic in the accursed drug has been made to hide itself away from the day- light of public life, and compelled to carry on its devilish arts of robbery behind screened doors and closed window blinds. It is not possible that this has worked any real in- jury to the material interests of the county or to the welfare of the morals of the people. On the contrary, tho writer of those lines. an anti-States prohibitionist in the fullest sonse of the term. yet he willingly bears tes- timony that his observation after several months' temporary residence in the county, that the sobriety and morals of the people are a most eloquent and deserved tribute to those noble men and women who put their shoulders to the wheel and rolled out of the county the infernal monster of legalized tip- pling-houses.

November 28, 1822. John B. Thrasher, of Kentucky, filed an affidavit with John John- ston, J. P .. of Wayne County, in which he made oath that he had a just claim upon two negro women, slaves, who owed service in Kentucky, and had escaped to Illinois, and were secreting about the town of Fairfield. On the day above named, the Justice entered on his docket the following:

STATE OF ILLINOIS, WAYNE COUNTY.

This day came J. B. Thrasher, and exhibited his claim as specified by his foregoing affidavit to two female slaves, and said women being examined be- fore me, and did not produce a certificate of free- dom, they are therefore deemed by the seventh sec- tion of the act entitled " An act respecting free ne- groes, mulattoes, servants and slaves," to be runa- way slaves.

L. J. S. Turney died of pneumonia, at his residence, near Barton. Ill., May 20, 1881, aged sixty-one years.

Mr. Turney was for many years a resident

of Fairfield, and was well known to all the old settlers of the county. He was a very eccentric man, possessed of a more than or- dinary amount of brain, but without that practical good judgment which constitutes a balance-wheel necessary to a successful life. His life was a series of great expectations and bitter disappointments. He was a law- ver, fariner, speculator, politician, statesman, Governor and Secretary of a Territory, rich and poor man in one, and a great financial schemer, and ate more than his share in life of Dead Sea apples.

Speaking of his death in a letter published in the Wayne County Press, T. G. C. Davis, of St. Louis, says:

" I knew the late Leander Jay S. Turney more than thirty years ago. He was my con- stant personal friend during the whole timo of our acquaintance, and my political friend during a large part of it. It rarely happens in the experience of any man that he can name a friend who has stuck to him through all the vicissitudes of war and peace for thirty years, but such a friend was Leander J. S. Turney. Mr. Turney filled various offices in the State of Illinois in the course of his life. He was a good writer and at one timo editor of a Democratic newspaper at Shawneetown. He was a lawyer of good education, and held the office of State's Attor- ney in the Shawneetown district one or two terms; was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in opposition to Hon. S. S. Mar- shall in 1854. He was appointed Secretary of the Territory of Washington, and was for awhile acting Governor thereof in 1861-62."

Mr. Turney was the first born son of the lato Dr. Daniel Turney, of Fairfield, and the brother of J. J. R. Turney, at one time a Senator in the Legislature.

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WARS FOR OUR LIBERTIES-GEORGE WASHINGTON AND HIS WAYNE COUNTY HEROES-SEQUEL TO THE BOLTINGHOUSE MASSACRE AND ITS WAYNE COUNTY AVENGERS-THE RANGERS HERE AND WHO THEY WERE-WINNEBAGO AND BLACK HAWK WAR-FIRST CAMPAIGN A BLOODLESS ONE-MEXICAN WAR AND THE PART THEREIN OF WAYNE COUNTY- COL. LEECH-OUR CIVIL WAR, WHEN ITS REAL HISTORY WILL BE WRITTEN -THE COMPANIES THAT WENT FROM WAYNE COUNTY, AND SOME

ACCOUNT OF THEM-WIIO WERE KILLED AND WOUNDED IN BATTLE-THE ELEVEN COMPANIES FURNISHED BY WAYNE COUNTY-CAPTURE OF JEFF DAVIS, ETC., ETC.

"And all the clouds that lowered upon our house Are in the deep bosom of the ocean buried." -Shakespeare.

"THE most men are never too busy to stop in the midst of the most exciting work to look at a dog fight on the street. An emi- nent President of the United States, it is said, indulged much in cock fighting, and would at any time brave wind or weather, and stake his last dollar on the result of the bloody chicken discussion. The Spaniards' great national holiday is a bull fight. Cock fights, bull fights, dog fights and fist fights among men are only branches and relics of the earliest tribal wars, when little com- munities killed and enslaved each other, purely for the love of fighting, the excite- ment of spilling blood, and the exquisite joy and glee that marks the savage breast in look- ing upon the horrid tortures that kill the poor victim. Among the Indians with whom our forefathers contended in the deadly struggle for their new homes, it is said that when these savages had captured a white man, they were rejoiced to take him alive and un- hurt in order that they might keep him for a gala day of all their people-especially the squaws and children-to enjoy the rare sight

of seeing them tortured to death. So keenly was this sport relished that they woukl cun- ningly extend the torture to the verge of death, and as often as they could would restore the victim, and when revived, com- mence again the horrid sport. Many of our pioneer fathers saved their lives by escaping while the Indians slept, as he was thus being transported to the Indian village for a glori- ous holiday of murder. The savage instinct is to gloat at torture and the cruelest death, and the relics of this barbarism are now to be found in the purlieus of the highest civ- ilizations yet formed. Among our fore- fathers in the West, it was grown and flour. ished in the shape of drunken frolies and election and muster day fist fights. The neighborhood and county bullies then were there in pristine glory. They were heroes, who received the adulations and warm applause of a community that had the seeds of this bloody savagery in their breasts. The bully was nearly always a craven cow- ard when brought face to face with genuine courage, but he fought for glory, and in his way was as much a hero as was ever Napoleon or Alexander. And to-day the self same ele- ment among men who worship the memories

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.

of great war fighters is much of the same leaven that warmed the souls of those stupid people who paid their disgusting homage to the bullet-headed country plug.ugly. In the Northwest, it was the blood-tubs, who bit and gouged and fought like wild beasts, that pre- vailed and was the admiration of the hour. In the South, it was the cold-blooded mur- derer and duelist that flourished unmolested, and here the vendetta sent its victims to their bloody graves. A better civilization has rooted out much of all this barbarism of the world. yet the cow-boy remains, and aesthetic Boston is the proud possessor of the champion prize fighter of the world-Sullivan, Wendell Phillips and baked beans! And yet who shall say that Boston is not still the "hub " from which radiates all the world's intelligence, education and æstbeticism ? The great man in Boston is the human beast who fights like a bull dog. He can draw a bigger house and make more money in a single evening exhi- bition of his fists ihan could the greatest in- tellectual man that ever lived, was he now alive to open an opposition show to Sullivan, and pit brains against the gigantic brute.

It is a common, yet a grievous mistake, that all men who fight are either brave men or patriots, and in either case, if they fall in battle, are worthy of the tenderest admiration of posterity. As a rule. this estimate is wrong. The history of mankind is full of wars, about all cruel, bloody and infamous, too. When Gen. Washington and his com- patriots drew their swords and threw away the scabbards, they engaged in a war holy in its purposes, and sacred to the dearest rights of all mankind. True, it was a war with the mother country, and the victory was with the rebels, and yet the glories and advantages flowing out from that struggle redounded as much to the permanent welfare of England as to the United States.

It was a struggle for human rights-to re. pel invasion, and it was clothed with those attributes that alone are a justification for war under any circumstances. In the his- tory of mankind we know of no one thing that was a greater blessing to the human race than this war and its results. It freed America from the tyrant, but it freed not only England, too, but the whole world has felt its glorious effects, and let it be hoped that they may go on forever. The true les- sons of the American Revolution have not yet been taught the rising generations. The facts and dates and names, together with the usual Fourth of July spread-eagleism is all that we present to our school children's eyes and minds, when we tell them the great story of that immortal era, and we leave them with no proper comprehension of the causes and the effects-effects that will con- tinue the immeasurable boon to all mankind forever. The glorious freedom from a be- sotted tyrant to the little speck of the globe that constitues the United States, was but as the grain of sand upon the sea-shore, as to the enduring effects and benefits to the whole human race that came from the war of the Revolution. Look at your neighbor, Can- ada, and behold she, although she did not join the colonies in the rebellion, and is to this day a British dependent, yet she is prac- tically as free, and as blessed in her freedom, as we are. When we remember the vast pos- sessions of the British Empire, so eloquently described by Webster, when he said of it: "Whose military drum beat, starting with the morning sun and keeping step with the stars, encircles the globe in one continuous strain of martial music," and when we re- member that this great empire -the greatest upon which the sun has ever shown-has since that eloquent description of Webster's added many millions of people to its vast

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History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois, Part 8

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

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