USA > Illinois > Edwards County > History of the English settlement in Edwards County, Illinois : founded in 1817 and 1818, by Morris Birkbeck and George Flower > Part 8
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The next ship with emigrants for the prairies, which sailed from Liverpool in the following month of April, was chartered by myself for the party that came with me. My own immediate family and friends occupied the cabin; my domestic servants, and other emigrants going out to join us, filled the steerage; and my live-stock of cows, hogs, and sheep, of the choicest breeds of England, took up all the spare room on deck. My father and mother, in
IOI
THE EMIGRANTS.
easy circumstances, and aged sixty-three, accompanied me, with my two sisters, young women grown, one brother, William, a young man, the other, Edward, a lad, Miss Fordham, my cousin, going to join her brother in Illinois, with three attached female and one man-servant. The family of these most respectable people had lived with our family for three generations, and a distant removal could not now separate us. These, with myself and my two sons, young boys, were my immediate family party. But going to our settlement in this ship were also Mr. Francis Rotch and brother, friends of Mr. Birkbeck, and Mr. Filder, a gentleman rather advanced in years, a man of consider- able property; Dr. C. Pugsley and wife, and small family, from London; and Mr. Adam Corrie, I think, from the county of Nottingham, were also passengers. Besides these was Mr. John Wood, then a young man, now with gray locks, the father of a large family, a respectable and pros- perous farmer, near Albion, living in a good brick-house, on a fine farm, and surrounded by all rural comfort that a man need desire; also, Mr. John Ingle, and his family, from Cambridgeshire. Mr. Ingle is now living near Evans- ville, and his son, John Ingle, junior, is a prominent pro- fessional man, engaged in all the public business of the city. Mr. David Bennett, and family, Mr. White, and family, carpenter and builder, from London, Captain (baptismal name) Stone, wife, and family, were also of the company. Mr. Stone was steward on my farm in England. He now had the care of my cattle, sheep, and swine. These, and some other names not recollected, made a party of three score and more, bound to our settlement. It was the same
102 ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
ship, the Ann Maria, and the same captain, that brought me over so safely and rapidly in the previous fall. We arrived without accident at New York, after a passage of fifty days, and but one week after the Bristol ship, that sailed a month before us. To remove all these people and their luggage, and the animals that I had brought, to our Settlement, nearly a thousand miles inland, was no small undertaking, at a time when there was neither turnpike nor railroad, and steam-boats few, and in the infancy of their management. Patience, toil, time, and money were all required and all were freely bestowed.
On reaching land, the ship's party was broken up, and smaller parties were formed of people of similar habits and tastes, clubbing together for mutual assistance on the way. Those of small means, proceeded on without loss of time. Those of more means, lingered a little in the cities, and with their new friends, before taking their departure for what was then the Far-West.
Mr. John Wood, Mr. Ingle, Mr. White, and Mr. Bennett formed a party for travel, on their arrival at Pittsburgh, purchased a covered flat-boat, and descended the Ohio River together. Mr. Filder, I think, bought a horse, and rode the whole distance to Vincennes, on the Wabash. The Rotches, brothers, came, I think, with my father's party as far as Cincinnati, from thence on horseback. My father's family spent the first winter in Lexington, Ky., whilst I was preparing their residence in Illinois. In this manner, the various individuals and parties made the best way they could. Some of them were joined by individuals and families of English, that were lingering
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TRAVELING WEST.
on the sea-board, without any specific reference to our Settlement; but seeing the emigration, and having read the publications, joined and went on. I think every accession from the East was English. Not an Ameri- can joined us, excepting one, a Captain Kenyon, of a merchant-vessel formerly trading to India. He came in my boat down the Ohio. He was not a man suited to the Settlement by previous habits. An unavailable member, he did not stay long in the Settlement. I had traveled much before this trip. First, my journey alone, two thousand miles; then with Mr. Birkbeck's party west- ward; and the return with my wife, another one thou- sand miles; but always on horseback, Now I was to enter on a new experience of travel. With a covered traveling-carriage, strongly built but light, and a capital pair of horses, I drove from Philadelphia to Chambersburgh. I had often driven on English roads, but never before on American. The roads were then for the most part in their natural state, pretty good when dry, almost impassable for mud if the weather was wet, and, in both cases, plentifully set with stumps. In many parts of the Alleghany Moun- tains, the road was merely a track made by the wagons from Philadelphia, going up the easiest watercourse on the mountain side, with all the large boulders unbroken, giving us severe bumps, and sudden and dangerous descents. The charge for carriage from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was reduced then to $7 per hundred pounds. With me, in my carriage, I took my two sons and Miss Maria Fordham. My father and mother and sisters, resting longer at Phila- delphia, traveling more deliberately, and proposing to pass
·
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ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
the winter at Lexington, Kentucky, Miss Fordham took a seat in my carriage, to accompany me and my wife to Illinois. The roads were good to Chambersburgh, and I rapidly drove along.
My wife and I were once more together, and with us a little daughter, but a few weeks old. We stayed awhile at Chambersburgh, to make acknowledgment to our newly- found friends there who had been so kind to Mrs. Flower during her long and anxious solitude. Conspicuous among these were Mr. and Mrs. Calhoon. Mr. Calhoon was cashier of the bank, and all our little money matters passed through his hands. To others, unnecessary to name, equally solicitous and watchful in taking every opportunity in doing a kindness, we shall ever bear grati- tude in our hearts.
My carriage was soon filled, my horses were strong, and . we were proceeding onward to a given point, in the pleas- ing hope of meeting again, in the prairies, the friends we had left at Princeton, and of carrying out together the scheme of emigration and settlement that we had begun and thus far carried on to a successful point. The various objects we had in view, for which I was sent to England, were all accomplished with singular success. My voyage across the Atlantic was of unusual speed. The funds for Mr. Birkbeck were safely sent, exceeding somewhat in amount his own expectations. The publications made by book, pamphlet, and newspaper had excited general atten- tion. By a singular coincidence, my father had sold, a few days before my arrival in England, his dwelling and lands in Marden for £23,000, thus giving to himself, my
IO5
A BLACK SHEEP.
mother, brothers, and sisters, an opportunity of returning with me in the spring, which they willingly embraced, to take up their abode in the prairies.
Both ships arrived in America without accident, most of the people had crossed the mountains in health, and many of these, by the time I got to Pittsburgh, were proceeding down the Ohio River to their ultimate destination. Every- thing worked smoothly ; success was attained, but harmony was not.
Who can calculate the extent of mischief spread by an envious temper, a false heart, and a loose tongue. There came over in my ship, as I have before stated, a doctor from London, a man of some skill in his profession, with a pretty wife. They assumed to be fashionable people, and were so, but of that part of fashion which assumes some- thing of its external appearance, without possessing any of its sterling qualities. I had no particular knowledge of him, but wishing to come to our Settlement, and reputed of some skill, I gave him every information and all facili- ties. Having made his neighborhood in England too hot to hold him, he for some time disturbed our Settlement, until he went elsewhere to follow his unhappy instincts. He made a point of coming out in my ship, and, unfortu- nately for the peace of our neighborhood, bought a town- share, and so became a town-proprietor. I note the un- happy propensities of this man as a prominent cause of the troubles which for a time disturbed our Settlement.
Many of us bound for Illinois met at Pittsburgh. Some were ruffled in temper. All seemed to be more or less disturbed by the roughness of the journey passed, and in
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ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
anticipation of the new experiences on the river to come. A week was often lost at Pittsburgh in fitting up boats or chaffering for horses. Some were buying flat-boats, some purchased skiffs, fitted with an awning, for one or two persons; some determined to take it on horseback; but most of them went down the river. Here my brother William joined me, and gave me great assistance on the voyage and the first two months in Illinois. I purchased a keel-boat and a flat-boat, and lashed them together, the former for my family, the latter for my horses; car- riage fastened on the top of the flat; four English farm- laborers for oarsmen. With difficulty, I procured a pilot, who engaged to go a hundred and fifty miles with me down the river. But he left me just before coming to a difficult part of the river, called Dead Man's Shoal. There was no other resource, I had to take the steering-oar, and was soon aground. With much labor and difficulty we got off, poling and shoving up to our knees in the river, trying to get the boat off. With a "Pittsburgh Naviga- tor" (a book with a map of the river, in which all the islands, shoals, and dangerous places are laid down,) in one hand, and the steering-oar in the other, I took my station at the helm. With my total inexperience, I found my new position both anxious and laborious. The labor and exposure I did not mind, but the constant watching and state of doubt was trying. I got on pretty well, going along by day and tying up at night. But it was not all smooth sailing. I got into one dangerous scrape, and out of it, too, as luck would have it. It was this: The "Navigator" had described a certain island of great length
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1
DOWN THE OHIO RIVER. IO7
close to the north shore, with a narrow and dangerous channel of rapid water, as especially dangerous, and to be avoided by every craft descending the river. I had been long looking for this island, and presently it came in sight. I was approaching it in the middle of the river, a very considerable distance off. I was not suffi- ciently aware of the distance a sand-bar extended from a point of an island. When about to steer for the Ken- tucky shore, my boats grounded. In pushing off, we were swung round into the current leading into the very channel we were warned to avoid. I felt, as we approached the danger, as a man may be supposed to feel when he finds himself and craft drawing into the waters of Niagara. I was, for a short time, uncertain, weak, and helpless, through sheer fright. Our two boats, lashed together, entered the dark channel, overhung by trees. The water was running at a rapid rate, and the channel was full of black and dangerous snags. I called to the oarsmen to give way with all their might. Seizing the steering- oar myself, which felt in my hands as light as a feather, giving it sudden twists and turns to port and lee, going through the crooked channel with scarce room to pass between the snags, we eventually came out safe. Passing a flat-boat tied up in the stream beyond, I was accosted by the old man, as he sat smoking his pipe on the roof of his boat, "I say, stranger, you must be a mighty favor- ite summers to get through with your two boats from that devil's race-course!"
I have found at other times, as then, if surprised by sudden danger alone, after the first moments of appalling
IOS ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
fear, strength as suddenly comes, and you overcome. I suppose the god that lies dormant in every human breast suddenly awakes and carries him through. At Cincinnati, my crew deserted me, and it was some days before I could muster another. As we were floating along, one warm summer day, my eldest son, Richard, walking on a narrow pathway between the body of the boat and the edge, missed his foothold, and fell into the river. Mr. Hayward, a young gentleman from Oxfordshire, whom we had taken into our boat, heard the splash, and They plunged in; both child and man disappeared. came to the surface, Hayward holding the child by the coat-collar. They were on the lower side of the boat. Hayward, who was a good swimmer, finding the boat press against them, with great presence of mind dived, with the child in his arms, under the boat, and came up on the other side, where I first lifted my son from the water, and then assisted Hayward on board. Very for- tunately, no other injuries were experienced than a fright and a drenching. They were soon made comfortable by a change of clothing.
A few little incidents and we arrived at Shawneetown, a fortnight after Trimmer and Lawrence's party arrived at the same place; and a poor little village it was, of log- cabins and a few light frame-houses. It was occasionally subject to deep inundations from the floods of the Ohio River. The situation of Shawneetown is handsome, com- manding long reaches' of the Ohio River, up and down stream. At that time, it was the only town in Southern Illinois, if we except Carmi, thirty miles north, on the
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NEWS FROM THE SETTLEMENT.
Wabash, the county-seat of White County, then a very small place.
Leaving my boats, I again proceeded by land in my Philadelphia vehicle, with two famous grays. Myself, my wife, my two sons, and Miss Fordham, rode in the carriage, which was filled with articles of the first necessity. My · brother William, rode on horseback. Mr. Fordham, who had come to meet me, was also on horseback. He had remained with Mr. Birkbeck's family during the winter ; making frequent excursions into the prairies, to assist in the preparatory arrangements, as well as more distant journeys to Cincinnati and Louisville, for a variety of arti- cles, with which he loaded a flat-boat and descended the Ohio. From him we learned all the news of the Settle- ment; the arrival of Lawrence and Trimmer's party, and various horsemen who had come overland from Cincinnati. All these were for the time occupants of the hollow-square of log-cabins, afterward facetiously called the "barracks", from its limited space, offering unavoidably but limited accommodations to any, and this was becoming more and more crowded every day. Mr. Birkbeck's family occupied two cabins at some little distance from the general rendez- vous.
Enquiring of the health and condition of everybody, he he said they were generally well, but Mr. Birkbeck he thought had somewhat changed. He looked older, was rather testy, and occasionally gave short answers, and said some other things that rather surprised me. Mr. Fordham also told me that he had built two cabins on my land. Near to one he had dug a well. In this cabin he had
IIO ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
placed a French-Canadian family, from Cattinet, that there might be some human beings on the place. The other he had built a-quarter of a mile off on a more beautiful site, a situation which he thought I should like as my perma- nent residence. After hearing all this, I decided to drive to the last-described cabin. After a drive of sixty miles in two days, we were at the prairies. I entered the prairie at the same spot from which we had first seen it; now with quite different feelings and other cares. On entering the prairie, my large horses were covered with the tall prairie- grass, and laboriously dragged the heavy-laden vehicle. The cabin built for me was well sheltered by wood from the north and east, with an arm of the prairie lying south in a gently-descending slope for a-quarter of a mile, it was as pretty a situation as could be desired. The cabin could not boast of many comforts. With a clap-board roof, held on by weight-poles, and a rough puncheon floor, it had neither door nor window. Two door-ways were cut out, and the rough logs were scutched down inside. All the chips and ends of logs left by the backwoods builders lay strewed upon the floor We were now face to face with the privations and difficulties of a first settlement in the wilderness. But greater than all other inconveniences was the want of water. There was no water nearer than the cabin in which the French family lived, a-quarter of a mile off.
It is impossible for any one living in old countries, where the common conveniences of life have been accumu- lating for centuries and ages, to understand the situation of an individual or small family when first alighting in
III
THE FIRST EXPERIENCE.
the prairies without even that indirect aid from art and cultivation common to all in a civilized community.
The poorest man in an old country things nothing of a road or a path, or a drink of water from a well. He is the owner or occupier of some sort of a house, maybe a small cottage, but even he can shut his door against a storm, and crouch in safety before a small fire, made in a fireplace, perhaps enjoying the luxuries of a three-legged stool and a small deal-table, some shed outside to tie up a horse or cow. Not so here. A rough roof and a rough floor we had, and that was all. In three days the Frenchman, Jean Mummonie, brought us a turkey, for which we paid him a quarter-dollar, but there were two days to live before the turkey came. The floor was cleared, and a fire kindled in a hole where a hearth was to be. One of us had a-half-mile trip for the water. Then for the first time we knew the blessing of an iron teakettle. Our first meal on the floor from such provisions as the carriage afforded, crackers, cheese, and tea without milk, drank alternately from one or two tin cups. Some sitting, some kneeling, some stretched at length, resting on an elbow, ancient fashion. This may be called beginning at the beginning. Romantic certainly. Picturesque to be sure. The gypsies in England, in their snug tents, sheltered by pleasant haw- thorn hedges, camp-kettles teeming with savory hare, par- tridge, and trout, raised at other folks' expense, we were far before or behind them, as the case may be viewed. But then I was in my own house, on my own land, in a free and independent Republic, might cast my vote into any hollow tree for coon or 'possum to be president of the
112 ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
United States. All this is very sustaining to a patriotic heart just from Europe, from the terribly-oppressing kings, dukes, priests that we hear so much about. But for this, how could we have stood it? The second day was only a little more embarrassing than the first. Our horses, untied from the carriage-wheels, had to be led to grass, or grass cut for them by our pocket-knives. The second night came; what, nobody from the Settlement only two miles off; what did this mean ?
On the third day after my arrival, I took my horse and rode over to Mr. Birkbeck's cabin .. When almost in the act of dismounting, I saw him rise from his seat, from under the shade of an oak that stood opposite to his cabin door. He passed before my horse's head into the cabin, pale, haggard, and agitated. With eyes cast down, and shaking his head, he said: "No, we can not meet, I can not see you." Sitting on my horse, and looking at him in wonder, I said: "We must meet, our property is undivided, business is urgent, heavy payments are to be provided for freight and charges." But what! "Stop, stop," said he, "let a third person arrange all." "So be it," said I, and rode on. These were the last words that ever passed' between us. When we take a cold, we are troubled to know how it happened, and think if we had taken an umbrella, or put on a great-coat, or changed our shoes, or done something we had not done, we should not have got it. So it is in our moral diseases. We can not help looking back to see how they came. Was it both of us leaving him at Princeton alone with his family on the frontier? We did not consider, perhaps, sufficiently
II3
WHAT CAUSED THE DIFFERENCE.
at the time that the absence of both myself and wife would leave a dreary, void, and lonely winter for our aged friend. We, in the vigor of our years and affection for each others, perhaps, overlooked this, and, possibly, he might feel somewhat aggrieved on that account in the solitary winter he had to pass, for a father with his chil- dren only is in some sort a solitary being. He might feel that he was deserted, and a thought may have crossed his mind that we might never return. I think he felt . something of this sort from an expression in a letter to an intimate friend in England, where he said: "You will see Mr. George Flower, who intends to return in the spring, but we all know when time and distance intervene, they are great barriers to the execution of our intentions." I was struck with the sentence when I saw it, but the friend had no such doubt, for he put into my hands a considera- ble sum of money, to be especially invested. Then again, instead of riding on with some feeling of injury at my reception, had I dismounted and insisted on an explana- tion, things might have been different. But all this is only saying if things were different to what they are, they would not be as they are. From that eternal chain ever lengthening, but never ending, the effect of today, the cause of tomorrow, what mortal power can change the smallest link? This is no place for metaphysical dis- quisitions, but a relation of events as they occurred.
Here let me pause in the narrative, to do justice to ourselves in our after unfortunate and unpleasant situation. We never quarrelled or descended to altercation, never spoke ill of each other, and never, as I believe, attempted 8
114 ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN EDWARDS COUNTY.
to do each other any injury. We were silent ever after, as if we ignored each other's existence. The line of demar- cation between our lands was about three miles long. Ever after, I worked on one side, he on the other. When strangers visited the Settlement, they called on each of us. I say this in contradiction to the extraordinary false- hoods promulgated at the time. Regret and sorrow were, no doubt, the prevailing feelings in each breast .*
But we were now parted forever, and in that situation were, with all our caution, very much at the mercy of go-betweens and tale-bearers, ever to be found on an errand of mischief. There had arrived before me in Wan- borough, a man of parts and education. He had made calculations, before leaving the old country, to settle at the prairies, and there form his domestic relations. In this he was disappointed, and bore no friendly feeling to me in consequence.
The void which our silence left was more than filled up by our intermeddling neighbors, and Mr. Birkbeck's annoyance, from indiscreet partizanship, was much greater
* It would be useless at this remote period to inquire into the causes that led to the severance of the friendly relations between these founders of the English Settlement in Edwards County. It was undoubtedly a great misfor- tune to the Colony at that time, because both of the men had strong friends, who formed themselves into Birkbeck and Flower parties, and which, no doubt, impeded the growth and prosperity of the Colony. While the friends of both of these men were much excited, and although they were estranged from each other, they never entered into any unseemly personal wrangle, and each pursued the even tenor of his way. Had it not been for the sad accident by which Mr. Birkbeck lost his life, there would probably have been a reconciliation between them. It was understood that Mr. Birkbeck's visit to New Harmony, at that time, was for the purpose of seeking the intervention of his friend, Robert Owen, to bring about a renewal of their friendly inter- course.
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DROWNING OF MORRIS BIRKBECK.
than mine. The wildest reports, mostly ridiculous and some scandalous, were carried from one to the other, and were so often repeated, as to obtain some credence with those that invented and circulated them; and some indi- viduals were so indiscreet as to write, to their distant friends, these fabulous accounts. This brought to Mr. Birkbeck letters, asking explanations of the strange things they had heard. From this annoyance he could scarcely free himself by silence or reply. It has been said that none but fools intermeddle with other people's dissentions. If judged by that rule, we had many non compus in our Settlement at that time.
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