USA > Illinois > Whiteside County > History of Whiteside county, Illinois, from its first settlement to the present time, with numerous Biographical and Family Sketches > Part 2
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77
It will be observed that the Geological map accompanying Warner & Beers' map of Illinois does not correspond in the limits assigned to certain strata with the map accompanying Volume VI of the Illinois State Geological Report, nor does the latter exactly correspond with the treatise on the Geology of the County contained in Volume v of the Report. These discrepencies indicate a want of knowledge on the subject not at all creditable to the teachers of White- side. Moreover, we can learn of no extensive collection of the rocks and fossils of the County. We hope some one will make an effort in this direction.
The Niagara in the bluffs of the Mississippi presents itself in a multitude of picturesque forms, forming bold mural cliffs, frowning precipices, massive cyclopean walls, lofty towers, huge pylons, rugged buttresses, grand arches, long stretches of lichen covered, mouldering ruins, and along the Rock River at Sterling, over-hanging cliffs of no great altitude-twenty-five to thirty feet. Frequently some of the strata are much softer than others, and the gradual dis- integration of these soft beds gives the face of the bluff a most fantastic aspect. By the joint action of water and frost some of the joints have been much enlarged, and in one case, we are informed that a considerable sized cave has been formed. In another case a fissure several inches in width has been filled
13
GEOLOGY.
with stalactitie matter. forming a rock, beautifully banded with brown and white and of a delicate structure, forming most elegant cabinet specimens.
Limestone, as far as we know, is formed through the ageney of organized beings, the polyps and the mollusks being the great producers of this material, which although existing in sea water is never deposited in beds from it except through the instrumentality of these insignificant builders, and in the form of eoral or the shells of shell-fish.
Wherever mollusks like the oyster, elam, &e., live and flourish, vast deposits of their shells are accumulated, in time forming strata which seem to be almost exclusively made up of shells, generally of a single species. Where the shells remain on the spot where they were formed they are generally entire, and if the shells have decayed perfect casts, showing the internal structure, remain. In such places corals are seldom found, they preferring a surf-beaten shore to quiet waters. Where the shells have been rolled by the waves, they are more or less broken and sometimes even ground to powder. not a fragment large enough for identification remaining. In these exposed places, where the sea rolls its waves continuously on the unprotected beach, and the temperature never falls below 68 . F., the coral grows most luxuriantly, forming vast reefs which grow upward to a point about half way between low and high water mark. as the polyps can live even when exposed to the rays of the sun for a couple of hours at a time. The corals do not grow thriftily in water over one hundred feet deep, and most reefs are formed in depths much less than this; conse- quently a coral formation cannot be over one hundred feet thick if the water has remained of the same depth during its formation. But such reefs are found over 1,000 feet thick, and we ean conceive of no other method by which they could have been built up except that the sea-bottom must have sunk about as fast as the reef grew upward. Had the subsidence been more rapid the polyps would have been drowned when the depth reached about 100 feet. Had it sunk more slowly they would have built above the waves and been seorched by the sun's rays. Corals also require elear water, mud-laden currents being fatal to these delicate children of the sea. Mollusks of many species, on the con- trary, choose mud-banks as the place of their abode, and flourish in the turbid waters of rivers and estuaries; but some species require clear water and a sandy bottom. while some pass life attached to a roek or piece of wood, or to the shell of another mollusk, but any one species is always found surrounded by the same conditions.
From the foregoing statements it will be seen that we have a key to the physical condition under which a rock was formed. If it abounds in unbroken shells we may conclude that it was formed in still water of no great depth, for mollusks do not flourish at great depths, especially those living gregariously or in groups. We should therefore conclude that the Albany beds were deposited in still water which became turbid, destroyed the crinoids, and furnished the earthy impurities contained in this rock. The upper beds were a great coral reef along whose extended line many species of zoophytes flourished. Among the species represented here Halysites catenulata, Halysites gracilis, Strom- atopora of several species, Zaphrentis of four or more species, Chonophylhun, Chætetes, Ptilodycta, Aulopora and other genera are very abundant, the rock be- ing an aggregation of the remains of these frail architects. The Pentamerus beds, and of these there are two certainly, perhaps three, were deposited in still water, sheltered bays or eoves. In some cases what may be a bed abounding in shells in one place may be a coral reef in another, the coast at one point having been sheltered, at the other exposed, or a river having entered the sea at one place, while the waters were pure and clear at the other. As we examine the splendid
14
HISTORY OF WHITESIDE COUNTY.
exposures of the Niagara on sections 5, 8 and 7, in Ustick, we get a very good idea of the changes that passed over this region, and can trace the passage from one condition to another as well as if the change was taking place before our eyes. The material of which the rocks are made up were deposited along the shore, and as the Niagara forms the surface over much of this County, and to the north and west, while to the south-west it is covered by newer beds, we infer that the ocean lay to the south-west, and it may have been both broad and deep. It may have been a vast congeries of islands in part as we now find to be the case over much of the great coral growing zone of the Pacific Ocean; but as far as the strata of Whiteside are concerned, it seems to have been a continuous belt, perhaps a great barrier reef, such as to-day walls in the north eastern coast of the Australian Continent. If the ancient Zoo- phytes were as sensitive as those of the present day they must have required a temperature like that of Southern Florida-a climate in which there was no winter and which knew no lower temperature than 68 º F .; but we are not justified in deciding that this region rejoiced in so genial a climate, for the fossil corals differ in structure from those now living, and they may have been able to endure changes that would at once destroy the Zoophytes of the present day. In the vast quantity of sea-weeds preserved in the beds of Pennington's quarry, and quarries at Sterling, we have the best of evidence that vegetable as well as animal life was well, very well represented in these seas. The chert beds were no doubt, in part at least, the work of sponges; but as far as we know no remains of these organisms have yet been described from these strata, and while we suspect their presence we cannot confidently assert it.
In both Union Grove and Mt. Pleasant there are few fossils except at particular horizons. In both places we find a stratum varying in thickness from eighteen inches to two feet, almost wholly made up of a small shell not over a fourth of an inch long. The shells have generally disappeared and only casts remain, and the rock looks as open as a honey comb and has the appearance of being scarcely strong enough to hold together. It is nevertheless very hard and dense, and is said to make a good lime. Several other shells and a very singular coral occurs at both Mason's and Cochran's quarries, in the former, in the lowest bed worked. The following gives, as far as we have investigated the subject, the names of all the fossils obtained from these strata :
1. Protozoons: Sponges of genus Stromatopara, Stromatopara concentrica.
2. Radiates: Polyps (corals), Favosites niagarense, Halysites catenulata, Chonophyllum niagarense, Zaphrentes bilateralis, and two or three others, Heliolites spinopora, Aulapora, Chætetes, Ptilodycta.
3. Mollusks: (a) Bryozoans; Fenestella-a delicate coral. (b) Brach- iopods-Pentamerus oblongus, two forms, Atrypa nodostriata, Rhynchonella cuneata, Orthis bilobus, Spirifer sulcatus, and probably Spirifer niagarensis. (c) Lamellibranchs-probably Megalomus canadensis, Avicula emacerata. (d) Gasteropods-Platyostoma niagarensis, Maclurea, one species. (e) Pteropods -none known from these beds. (f) Cepholopads-Orthoceros, Ormoceros, Phragmoceras.
4. Articulates-Some trilobites are said to have been found, probably Calymene niagarensis.
Plants-Fucoids in some of the beds, especially at Sterling.
With the Niagara period closes the work of continent building for a long period in Whiteside County. Not until the opening of the carboniferous age does there appear to have been any change of which nature has made an entry in her records. For ages its surface had been dry land. Had it been covered by the waters there would have been some strata deposited to tell the story.
15
GEOLOGY.
But at the beginning of the Carboniferous Period a shallow estuary, bordered by marshes, extended from Mineral Springs, Newton township, northeastwardly to Unionville, and probably eastwardly from thence several miles into Hopkins. In this valley some strata, in all about forty feet thick-irregularly bedded sand- stones varying much in hardness, color and composition, interstratified with beds of quite pure clay were formed. These strata are sometimes len- ticular-thick at a given point and thinning rapidly each way until they are but five or six inches thick, then rapidly thickening up to eighteen or twenty inches again. Some of the strata are however of nearly uniform thickness throughout. The elay beds are thin, but in places six to eight inches thiek.
Lying on the sandstone is a thin bed of curious appearance, dark buff in color, irregular in thickness, and quite hard. It seems to be formed of thin layers alternately dark yellowish brown and light gray, is from two to five inches thick, the upper surface very uneven and the body of the rock full of cavities and what seem to be cracks. It contains many angular fragments of sandstone and some small gravel. The surface of the sandstone below it is generally comparatively smooth, and the fragments found in it are of the same material as the beds on which it lies. Evidently at some time the upper beds of the sandstone have been carried away by some foree which tore them up and ground much of them to sand and small pebbles. We are of the opinion that this stratum is increasing in thickness at the present time and is of narrow extent. It is an argillaceous limestone. These sandstones were probably formed in a marshy tract which received the drainage of the surround- ing country. At times there seems to have been very little vegetation growing in this region, and we judge the sands formed banks which the wind drifted, as some of the ripple marking is much more like that produced by the action of the wind than that of water. These rocks are rich in fossils, but wholly of plants; no trace of animals being found except the burrows of a worm; but of plants many species occur. Most of the specimens are poorly preserved, but some very fine ones have been obtained at Burr's quarry. They consist of 1st, Sigillaria-huge trees-seventy feet long and two feet in diameter, of at least four species, perhaps more; 2nd, Lepidodendra-also great trees as large as the preceding, and also of two or more species; 3rd, Calamites-great rushes-three or four inches in diameter and ten to twelve feet high; 4th, in the clays are found what appear to be coarse grasses, probably Cordaites, and also the fruit of some plant resembling Cardioearpus; a few fragments of ferns have been found in the clay well preserved, but they are very uncommon. There are no shells or other remains of animals as far as known to the writer. Some of the strata contain numerous cavities filled with a soft, bluish, tenacious clay. They form bands in the rock, being confined to certain strata and to a particular part of them. They vary much in size, but are very generally of an almond shape and quite regular in outline. There are also nodules of a hard, red sandstone almost always filled with a fine white sand.
The fossils are most abundant in the upper stratum, and as they are very generally quite imperfect, we believe them to have been transported to this spot from some other locality. Those found below do not seem to have been defaced by rubbing against rocks or each other, and probably grew near the place where they are now found. This formation was without doubt, at one time, much more extensive than it now is, and we presume contained thin seams of coal, as fragments of coal are found in the elays above, as well as con- siderable masses of sandstone, which evidently came from this deposit; while much of the clay is of a black color, having a very decided bituminous look, and we believe obtained this tinge from the coal contained in the strata, which
16
HISTORY OF WHITESIDE COUNTY.
were at some time in the past destroyed. We presume that the subearbonifer- ous strata once extended much farther north, at least into Carroll County if not farther. During the coal age we know from the evidence afforded by other localities that the sea and land both swarmed with life. Corals, mollusks, fishes and air breathing reptiles certainly existed, and some insects and spiders have left proof of their presence. There were no birds, no mammals. The life of the land was in its prominent forms wholly vegetable. The forests must have been quite as dense as the tangled jungles of the Sunderbunds of the Ganges, or the banks of the Amazon and Rio Negro. A warm, moist climate must have prevailed, and polar and tropical regions could have differed but little in temperature. But it must be borne in mind that we only infer this to have been the case, and that New Zealand in Lat. 35° to 50° south is the paradise of tree ferns which more nearly resemble the plants of the coal age than any others now living. Hence a mean temperature of 50 º F. and perhaps even lower, may have been sufficient to give being to the giant forests of the car- boniferous age.
No true coal measures exist in Whiteside County, and all searches for this mineral will, we are sure, prove in vain. The search for petroleum will probably also prove a failure, and those who imagine that because these sub- stances are found in other places they must also oceur here, will be disap- pointed in the search. The mere fact that rocks exist does not prove that they are coal-bearing. There are certain strata to which certain minerals are almost exclusively confined, and it is the maddest folly to look for these substances outside the limits assigned them by nature. Hence in an economical point of view the study of geology becomes of vast importance, and has not only a theoreti- cal but a pecuniary value.
Overlying the surface of the county is a deposit of clays, gravel and sand. varying much in thickness-from five to fifty feet. They are often unstratified, contain fragments of strange rocks, such as are found here only in rounded and smoothed masses mixed with these materials, and always bearing evidence of having been worn and almost polished by the attrition of other substances. The sands and gravels indicate currents of water. for sand can be borne along only by moving waters, and the coarser the material to be transported the stronger must the current be. The clays were deposited in still waters, for only in such are deposits of this kind formed. The great blocks must have been carried along by some means other than the current of a river or the force of waves, and we can conceive of no other agent except ice in the form of a glacier that is capable of producing such results as the records of Nature's archives declare were effected over vast tracts of country. The force producing these results came from the north, for the blocks of stone scattered over the county, and much of the material of the gravel beds came from localities 300 miles north of this; and as we proceed south we find these strange rocks becoming smaller and less numerous, and at last disappearing altogether; while if we travel northward we shall find them becoming more numerous and larger, and we may trace them to the very ledges from which they were torn. A great glacier-an enormous mass of snow and ice-covering the whole northern part of the continent down to this latitude and even farther, seems to be the only agent capable of effecting such vast effects as we witness here. The center of this glacial force we believe to have been at a point not far from west of the southern point of James' Bay in British America, and northeast of Lake Supe- rior, for to this point the lines of travel pursued by the drift converge, the courses being included between S. 40 ° E. and S. 40° W., the former course prevailing in the eastern part of the country, the latter west of New York
17
GEOLOGY.
State. The course varied at different times, and where the glacier left its auto- graph in deeply engraved characters upon the rocks themselves in the shape of a smoothed surface, grooves as straight as a line and perfectly parallel, and numberless fine lines known as scratches or striæe, we find that there is some- times more than one set of them and that they eross each other at a high angle.
Lying well toward the base of this drift deposit is a stratum of leaves, branches, and trunks of trees. On the farm of Dr. L. S. Pennington, of Jordan, we were shown a place on the bank of Elkhorn Creek where a buried forest has been partly exhumed. The trees seem to have been overthrown by some force from the west, and to have been soon after covered with water and buried in a deposit of marl which contains great numbers of fresh water shells. Some of the trunks are eight inches in diameter. Where exposed to the air they do not decay rapidly, although very soft. The grain is as clearly defined as if they were just cut down, and in some cases the bark can yet be discerned. No leaves or fruit have been observed. At several places in the county in digging wells a similar deposit has been passed through. It is sometimes six feet thick, and the leaves so well preserved that their outlines and venation can easily be made out, and the wood is often quite strong. Much of it seems to be derived from cone-bearing species, but the leaves of trees closely related to our decid- nous forest trees also occur. In some cases the wood is much broken, and seems to have been transported a long distance, or to have been floating about for a long time; but it often presents few traces of abrasion and cannot have been carried far from where it grew. This stratum is without doubt derived from the Tertiary forests, and if our beds were only carefully studied additions to our knowledge of fossil botany might be expected. We would suggest to those who read this article that should they have an opportunity to gather up and preserve some of these fragments, they do it and forward specimens to the publisher of this work, at Morrison. In this way their examination and preser- vation may be secured. The material of which these strata are formed was produced by the crushing and grinding action of the glacier as it slid slowly forward over the surface, and the sorting and transporting of sand, gravel and clay was effected by the water which always issues from beneath the icy mass; but the greater part of this task was performed by the torrents that appear to have deluged the land when the ice king resigned his scepter, and his gigantic works melted away before the genial breath of a milder climate.
It is easy to theorize with regard to the causes that produced this change that ushered in the glacial age. We know that the distribution of land and water has much to do with climate, that the more broken up the land into islands, the more equable the temperature, whereas great masses of land have an extreme or variable climate-a very cold winter and a hot summer, and that great bodies of land extending far north seem to become vast reservoirs of cold. Hence, it has been conjectured that in the eras when a mild climate seems to have prevailed, the land was broken up into small bodies, much as it is in the region of mild temperature in the South Pacific. Another theory attributes the change to the variability in form of the earth's orbit. It is certain that it oscillates between the circle and an elongated ellipse, this oscillation requiring for a complete revolution about 1,450,000 years. Its effect is to change the relative length of seasons, to bring the earth nearer to the sun at one time than at another, and to cause the time of nearest approach to the sun to occur some- times in summer, sometimes in winter. At present we are about 3,000,000 miles nearer the sun December 21st than June 21st, and our summer is about eight days longer than that of the Southern Hemisphere, giving us a higher summer temperature than is experienced by lands south of the equator. The
[A-2.]
18
HISTORY OF WHITESIDE COUNTY.
more common opinion is that the lands of the north polar regions beeame, about the beginning of the drift period, both more extensive and higher than they were previously or are at present, and that this caused a great change of climate, extending over a great period of time. It will be observed that in the table of periods we have three epochs, the Glacial, the Champlain, and the Terrace. The first of these covers the period in which the glaciers covered the land; the second was the period of the retreat of the glacier and the beginning of a milder climate, and was probably an age of subsidence or sinking down of the land; and the third covers the time in which the present valleys were cut and the rivers began to pursue their present courses. Of course the latter process may have been in progress at one point while the glaciers covered another, and as the melting of so vast a body of ice must from necessity have occupied a long time, the streams were of greater volume for a considerable period than they are at present. As the drift deposits occur everywhere it is unnecessary to enumerate localities, but one place deserves mention: About a mile and a half southeast of Albany village is a considerable tract of low wet land on which is found several large blocks, one of them the largest we know of. If our memory is to be relied on the dimensions are about eighteen feet high, sixteen feet long and twelve feet wide, containing abont 3,000 cubic feet and weighing in the neighborhood of 200 tons. Several bloeks weighing from five to twenty tons lie near this one, and a great many smaller ones are scattered about in the vicinity.
Along some of the streams is a deposit of sandy loam containing the shells of the fresh water molluska now living in the streams. In the great Marais de Ogee Slough flat covering a part of Erie township, and with the Cat-tail Slough bottom part of Newton and Fenton, this deposit is ten to twelve feet in depth. In some places it is now a drifting sand as soon as the sod is broken, as is well shown in the southwest part of Newton and near Erie village. In other places it contains some argillaceous material and is more tenacious, supporting a luxuriant vegetation of peculiar plants. In the west part of Garden Plain is a similar tract where the warring winds have worked wonders, scooping ont great hollows, piling up fantastic hills, raising almost perpendicular walls of sand, and burying trees almost to their topmost twigs. These loams and sands are alluvial for- mations, and were deposited by the streams along whose eourse they are found.
The peculiar clays and loams forming the upper part of the Mississippi bluffs is by some considered to be the equivalent of the loess of the Rhine val- ley. At the time of its deposit the Mississippi could have laid no claim to the name of river. It was rather a long, comparatively narrow lake if the relative level of various points was then the same as at present. The Peat beds of Union Grove township appear to belong to the alluvial period. They occupy a part of the Cat-tail Slongh bottom, are not far from a mile wide by over six miles long and in greatest thickness over twenty feet. There are other deposits in the county, but this is by far the most important.
LIMESTONES.
The composition of true limestone-carbonate of lime-is given by J. D. Dana, Manual of Geology, 2d edition, page 7, as carbonie acid 44. lime 56. But the limestone of the Mississippi Valley differs from this in being not a carbon- ate of lime but a carbonate of lime and magnesia. The lower magnesian of St. Croix, Wisconsin, is made up of carbonate of lime 48.24, carbonate of magnesia 42.43, oxyd of iron, sand and alumina 8.84, moisture 0.40. It is therefore a dolomyte or magnesian limestone. The composition of dolomyte as given by the same authority, page 56, is, carbonate of lime 54.4, carbonate of magnesia
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.