USA > Illinois > DeKalb County > Sandwich > History of the Somonauk United Presbyterian church near Sandwich, De Kalb County, Illinois : with ancestral lines of the early members > Part 2
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10
THE PIONEER
unmarried children, James Hoy, who was twenty-five years of age, Thomas George, twenty-two, John Lourie, eighteen, and their youngest daughter, Agnes, who was but thirteen. An older daughter, Isabel, and her husband, William French, were also of the party. Jennett, the eldest child, who was the wife of James Henry, was left behind, as was also the second son, Andrew, who was destined for the ministry, and was about to enter Jefferson College at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
The · Beveridges chose to make use of the canal and Great Lakes route and so made the journey in seventeen days. By so doing they missed some of the experiences recorded by many a pioneer who traveled by covered wagon.
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Reminiscences of John L. Beveridge
'T HE day we reached Somonauk," writes John L. Beveridge in his reminiscences, "it rained very hard all day- the mud was deep and black. The roof leaked and the house was wet and damp. The new home did not look very inviting. My mother was a brave and proud woman. I found her next morning in the leanto, crying as if her very heart was broken. As she cried, she said she could never live here. She had come from the land where she was born and where she had lived fifty-four years with a life's friendships, to a new land to dwell among strangers, from a comfortable home where she had raised her family, into a poor log house on the frontier of civilization.
" It is no wonder she was homesick, the most distressing ill- ness afflicting the human body and heart."
Three years later she returned to the scenes of her child- hood and former home, to the friends she had known and loved so long, and after a visit of three months, strange to say, she was glad to return to her log house, and she never regretted the change in her life.
" The first summer in Illinois I even longed for the old house," Governor Beveridge continues, " and the associations of my whole life, my playmates and my schoolmates. It seemed as if I never could become reconciled to the change.
" The house, built of rough logs, chinked and daubed with clay, with puncheon floors and shale roof, consisted of five rooms, an attic and a leanto. It stood on the north bank of the creek, the highway between the two.
"The west room was the granary. The next room with a fireplace and a mud and stick chimney and two small windows, was the sitting room, dining room and bedroom of my parents.
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REMINISCENCES OF JOHN L. BEVERIDGE
Through the middle of the house was the entry way, with one door south opening to the road, one door west, into the sitting room, one door north to the backyard, well and leanto, and one door east to the parlor. It had one small window and in this was the cooking stove. The room to the east was the parlor, with an oblong window, two beds hid by curtains which the girls and company occupied, and a ladder leading to a low attic. Up there the men and boys slept, with rain drops in summer and snowflakes in winter enlivening sleep.
" The east room had been used as a bar or public room. The former owner kept a country inn and the necessity of the times compelled my parents to entertain travelers.
" A daily stage ran by the door each way between Chicago and Dixon, a distance of one hundred and ten miles. In winter season two days were required for the trip, the stage stopping overnight at Little Rock, six miles east of Somonauk. * × I have driven two yoke of oxen out on the prairie west to haul the stage stuck in the mud. The stage was run by Frink, Walker, and Sanger.
" Travelers had no other choice but to stop overnight in the log house. They were served with good meals and had good clean beds - lodgings, meals, and horses fed and stabled, all for seventy-five cents."
Mr. and Mrs. William French settled on a tract of land, part timber, part prairie, adjoining the Beveridges on the south and built a house half a mile farther down the creek.
The first settlers sought tracts containing the best high and dry land they could find in the vicinity. The low land was thought valueless at that time, as indeed it was, for immediate tillage. The water stood in many places the year round. In the spring, the water filled the ponds and covered many depres- sions, so the people were of the belief that the low, wet land would never be tillable, but might be utilized to some extent for grazing purposes and from which to cut prairie hay late
13
SOMONAUK CHURCH
in the season. This hay was quite nutritious, but not equal to tame grass later grown. No one yet dreamed of under drain- ing.
Although postage was costly in the early '40s, the stamp for a single sheet of writing-paper costing twenty-five cents, letters were written to friends left behind in Washington County. One or two letters written in reply to Agnes Beveridge by Eleanor Pratt serve to show how great was the interest and curiosity excited in the old home by the experiences of the Beveridges in Somonauk.
" Tell me whether you have cherries, plums and straw- berries, black caps or what kind of berries you have? " she asks, in the first letter. Later she exclaims, " How queer it would look to see wagons drawn by oxen! I would think it would be a long time before you would get used to the log houses and horned horses of the West."
Mr. and Mrs. George Beveridge and their children were the first of many pioneers coming to Somonauk from Wash- ington County. Other families, more or less related to them, joined them within a year or two. There seems to have been a certain feeling of consternation and desolation among those left in the older community as they saw house after house occupied by strange residents. As early as March, 1843, young Eleanor Pratt wrote to Agnes Beveridge: "There is more going away. What shall we do? "
These later comers settled on farms scattered over a wide area with the Beveridge log house as a center.
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Somonauk's Pioneer Days
HE pioneers of Somonauk, with a tradition of life in which the church held the foremost place, could not rest long without the religious services for which their souls hungered.
Through the Board of Home Missions of the Associate Presbyterian Church they secured a minister to meet their need. The first service was held in the Beveridge log cabin. The church record says: "In August, 1842, the Rev. James Tem- pleton, visited the few of God's people here, and preached one Sabbath." This is the first recorded religious service of the Presbyterians in the county.
The following autumn a Rev. Mr. Smith preached one Sabbath. In the early winter the Rev. George Vincent preached on two occasions. In 1843 the Rev. R. Pollock was sent by the Home Missions Board and held service three Sabbaths. During his stay he surveyed the field and visited the people in their homes. Later, the Rev. Isaac Law served the little flock for three Sabbaths, and from time to time other ministers came, among them the Rev. Rensselaer W. French.
Sabbath morning families had to be up with the sun to get to church in time. The yoke of oxen was hitched to a lumber wagon, the family loaded in and the driver "gee-hawed" them to church at the rate of two or three miles an hour. The con- dition of the roads, or rather trails, had much to do with the rate of speed. In the spring, or other wet times, the mud was terrific, but this was considered a poor excuse for not going to church. A pioneer describing some of the conditions in the early and middle '40s remarked with enthusiasm, " Why, not a horse came to church - they were all oxen."
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SOMONAUK CHURCH
As frequently as this sturdy people could obtain a minister to supply them with preaching, they did, but these ministerial visits were often at wide intervals. Between times the families would convene at the Beveridge log cabin on the Lord's Day and conduct a Sabbath School and what was termed a " Cot- tage Prayer Meeting." These pioneers had need of all the spiritual help their church afforded, for during the first years life presented almost insurmountable difficulties. On one oc- casion, it is related, the session and a few others had come to- gether for prayer and consultation. It was, perhaps, the time of the most discouraging outlook. Help seemed out of the reach of human ability. While in prayer, some one sobbed, and soon all were weeping. Weeping, not for the reason the Ancients wept by the Rivers of Babylon, who wept in captivity and in punishment because they had despised the true faith and turned to idols; these people wept for God's Zion at Somonauk. As they wept the tears washed away the dust of doubt and fear from their spiritual eyes, and they pressed on with a new courage bound for success. To Mrs. George Beveridge, the community and the little church owed a great debt. She was always optimistic as to the church and its welfare, and it is related of her that she never relaxed for a moment in en- couraging the officers and members to persevere.
There were some dark days. At times tears flowed freely; but some of the time the sun was shining. Clouds came and passed beyond, not forgotten, but accepted; therefore they had the true sunshine of life - resignation to the will of God. Meanwhile they continued with cheerful self-denial to build their two homes - a family home and a church home. Cour- age and faith, coupled with perseverance, were their anvil and the hammer that pounded out success.
The new prairie land, with its beautiful contour, was pos- sessed of most fertile soil and veiled in myriads of beautiful sweet-scented flowers. Yet, in the first years of its settlement,
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SOMONAUK'S PIONEER DAYS
the sanitary conditions were not wholly favorable to the good health of the white man. Especially in the latter half of sum- mer and early autumn, the ponds were stagnant and emitted an unpleasant odor which at that time was thought to cause malaria and fever and ague. Not a few of the settlers were afflicted with ague, a very weakening malady. Others fell victims to typhoid fever, largely due, no doubt, to the drinking- water from the first shallow wells, dug in low places and sup- plied more or less with surface water. The ponds, simmering in the warm sunshine, were incubators for hatching swarms of mosquitoes.
" I am sorry to hear that so many of your Somonauk people are sick," wrote Eleanor Pratt. "I am afraid it is a sickly place." But her sense of justice bids her add, after reciting a list of old neighbors who have died and who are sick, "You see it is as sickly here as with you."
Mr. Miller, who visited the Beveridges in 1844, and who seems to have contracted ague, suffered from the " shakes " long after leaving the West.
The settlers sorely needed the spiritual joys and peace of soul bestowed upon them through the Sabbath service. In every phase of their daily work there were strong barriers to over- come. Even the sod of ages resisted civilization. It took several yoke of oxen to draw a sixteen-inch plow. Five yoke hitched to a plow were needed to turn a twenty-two-inch furrow. But the energy of man was destined to subdue the wilderness.
One man drove the oxen and guided them by the words " gee " and " haw," and by the swing of his long whip-lash. The hands of another man guided the plow, while its keen- edged share cut its way amid the muffled roar of snapping roots as it rolled over the tough surface. Then the sod was left to lie for many months to decompose and become mellow under the rays of the sun, so that the next year it might bear a new type of growth - wheat.
17
SOMONAUK CHURCH
Farmers, weak in equipment, were compelled to unite their forces to secure sufficient power to break their land. The faith- ful oxen cropped the grass for their living, for, in the main, grain for animal food was out of the question until it could be sufficiently grown on the farm, and the stock during the winters subsisted on prairie hay.
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Land Troubles
T HE Somonauk settlers held their land insecurely, having only squatter's rights to their claims. De Kalb County, to- gether with a large tract of land in northern Illinois, in fact all land between the old Indian Boundary lines, had been open to settlers since 1816, but it was not until the close of the Black Hawk War, when the Indians began to move to the west of the Mississippi River, that settlement was practical. Consequently the land had not been surveyed and the govern- ment agents spent four long years in doing the work.
Finally, in 1843, the region about Somonauk was put on the market to be sold at the government price of $1.25 an acre. The settlers, as soon as they could collect the necessary money to buy their claims, hurried to the Land Office in Chi- cago. Many of them went on foot, for walking proved a swifter means of travel than the slow-moving ox team. A few efforts were made to " jump " claims. But the better class of citizens were in the majority and they managed to force the thieves, as they were considered, to relinquish the government patents they had secured to the rightful owner, the settler who already lived on the land. At the same time they also restored the price which they had paid to the " jumpers."
Two cases of this kind were attempted in connection with the purchase of land to the east of Freeland Corners. Mr. J. M. Hummel, although he was but a small boy at the time, well remembers the incidents. In one case the "claim jumper" was advised by the settlers to leave the country for his own personal benefit, which he accordingly did. In the other case a man with grown sons jumped the improved claim of a neigh- bor who had several small children. When a posse of citizens, bent on securing fair play, waited on the " jumper," he bar- ricaded his door and threatened a gun fight. After some parley
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SOMONAUK CHURCH
he changed his mind and sent out a flag of truce with his terms of surrender, which were, that he would give up the patent for the land in question in return for the price he had paid for it and that he would give the neighbor a reasonable time to raise the money; in return, he was not to be run out of the _ country. These terms were accepted and all went well. Mr. Hummel says, " These stirring events of justice were indelibly stamped on my memory and can never be forgotten."
There were a few timber claims whose occupants, being too poor to pay cash, gave them up to friends who were able to " enter " and hold them until the rightful owners were able to pay.
These just and hardy men surely did well to protect each other against the covetous intruder who sought to fill his own purse at the expense of the self-sacrifice and hard labor of the original settlers who were striving to make homes for their families. The purchase of the land drained the country of nearly every dollar and left the people very poor in money with which to buy necessities. But they owned their homes and were glad. Those who went to the frontier to grow up with the country quickly learned to know the realities of hard times. The circulating medium was not adjusted as yet. A good deal of exchanging or trading was done to keep the wolf from the door. At times it seemed an almost impossible task to support a family, a school and a church.
Reviewing the old records of those early days, one will note with interest their liberal contributions to missions in com- parison with their meager incomes. Not only were they desirous that others might have what was nearest and dearest to their own souls, but they " gave until it hurt " to materialize this desire. True to the promise, the Bountiful Giver restored to these pioneers " good measure - pressed down, and running over." Nor is this excellent quality of liberality deficient in their descendants; it continues in the blood.
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Somonauk United Presbyterian Church
Patten Mausoleum, Oak Mound Cemetery
Entrance to Oak Mound Cemetery, Somonauk
LAND TROUBLES
Privation, overwork and the ravages of fever claimed some of the early settlers and it was necessary to select a burial-place for the Somonauk community. A tract was chosen on the bank of the Somonauk, covered with oak trees, and now known as Oak Mound Cemetery. The first recorded burial, that of Edwin Burchim, took place in 1842; that of Rhoda Fay, who was born in 1773, in 1844. But Oak Mound had been used as a burial-place in still earlier times. When digging to erect the fence which now encloses the cemetery, the bones of a tall white man were found, which are believed to be those of a soldier who had died while on duty during the Black Hawk War. Other unmarked graves have been found recently which point to the use of Oak Mound Cemetery as a place of burial some years before the Beveridges came to Somonauk. Although it had been in use for several years, it was not until May 3, 1847, that Oak Mound was made the recognized cemetery of Somonauk, at which time it was surveyed and platted.
21
Church Records
D URING the four years which ensued after the first Sabbath service at the home of the Beveridges the congregation had been only a mission under the guidance of the Home Missions Board of the Associate Church, later the United Presbyterians. Now the community found itself sufficiently strong and self- reliant to organize a separate church.
It was on March 18, 1846, that twenty men and women, probably the entire adult population of the settlement, for no one would absent himself from so important an occasion, as- sembled in the parlor of the house of Mr. and Mrs. George Beveridge. In consequence, the little log cabin by the ford on Somonauk Creek was actually the first church building of the Somonauk United Presbyterian Church.
The Session Book records that: " The associate congregation of Somonauk was organized by the Rev. R. W. French on the 18th day of March, 1846, in the house of Mr. George Bever- idge, Messrs. D. M. Dobbin and William Patten were elected ruling elders. At the same time and place a call was made out by the Associate congregation of Somonauk for one-half the time of the Rev. R. H. Pollock in connection with the Associate congregation, Granville, Putnam Co., Illinois. The following named persons on presentation of their certificates and in view of satisfactory testimony where no certificate was presented, were organized as members and allowed to vote in the election of ruling elders and choice of a minister to fill the blanks in the call then made out, viz. (1) Dr. John Shank- land, (2) Mrs. Howison, (3) Mrs. Telford, (4) John Walker, (5) Jonathan French, (6) Ann French, (7) Sarah French, (8) William Patten, (9) Elizabeth Patten, (10) Nancy Walker, (11) George Beveridge, (12) Ann Beveridge,
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Rev. Rensselaer W. French, First Pastor, 1849-1859
CHURCH RECORDS
(13) Isabel French, (14) Mary Patten, (15) James Walker, (16) Isabel Robertson, (17) William Robertson, (18) Mary Dobbin, (19) Alexander French, (20) David Miller Dobbin, were after examination with a view to their admission as mem- bers of the church allowed to vote in the election of Elders and in the choice of a member to fill the blank in the call." The original record probably was written on odd sheets of paper of which there may not have been a plentiful supply in the frontier settlement. Some years later, in 1857, the session authorized Elder Elijah Stewart to purchase a book and copy the minutes into it. Elijah Stewart was at that date clerk of the Session and his copy of the original record has been the basis of the Story of Somonauk Church. It is probable that a few mistakes were made in copying dates, which would ac- count for its occasional lack of harmony with the calendar.
This list of Charter Members might be called the official record of the families who had come at this date from Wash- ington County to settle in Somonauk. In addition to Mr. and Mrs. George Beveridge and their daughter Isabel, the wife of William French, were Jonathan and Ann Edgar French, parents of William French, and their other children, Sarah and Mary Jane, who was the wife of David Miller Dobbin, one of the first two elders, and another son, Alexander French.
William Patten came in 1843. His wife and his mother, with his brothers Robert and Alexander and his sister Martha, came to join him in 1844.
David Miller Dobbin, the elder, whose wife was Mary Jane French, was a cousin of Ann Dobbin Telford. Another charter member was Margaret Brown Howison, who was the wife of George Howison. Their children, William, Alex- ander, Robert, James and Eliza, wife of Alexander White, joined the church at a later date. James Walker and his son John, with his wife, Nancy Walls, are found upon the list, as also were William Robertson and his wife, Isabel Wil- liamson.
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SOMONAUK CHURCH
Dr. John Shankland is the only one of the original members of the church whose later life is not known. It is said that he came to Somonauk from Michigan. With his family he re- turned to Battle Creek, Michigan, and since that time all trace of him has been lost.
Dr. Shankland's brother James preached his trial sermon in the South Argyle church about eighty years ago at this time (1927). Margaret Shankland, who was a correspondent of Elizabeth Pratt Patten's, was married about that time. In the cemetery of the South Argyle church are the graves of Dr. Shankland's parents and of Elizabeth Shankland. The inscrip- tions read:
"John Shankland, born in Sangour, Scotland, in 1774; died April 18, 1821, in his 51st year."
"Jannet, wife of John Shankland, died Dec. 19, 1863, ae. 80 years."
"Elizabeth Shankland, died January 3, 1852."
At the meeting at which the church was organized, March 18, 1846, the Rev. Rensselaer W. French moderated a call for the Rev. R. H. Pollock to give one-half time to the new church in connection with his charge at Granville, Putnam County, Illinois. Subsequently Mr. Pollock gave the church notice he could not accept the call. No further efforts were made to secure a pastor until the next year, when on March 29, 1847, on application by the congregation, the Rev. Mr. French was again sent by the Presbytery to moderate in a call for the Rev. William Osburn. The Sabbath previous, the 28th, Mr. French dispensed the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, assisted by the Rev. William Osburn. At this communion the first members united after the organization of the church. They were: Robert Patten, Alexander R. Patten, Agnes Bev- eridge, and Daniel Boyd, all by profession of faith.
The Rev. Mr. Osburn did not accept the call tendered him but he served the congregation at Somonauk, part time, from
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William Patten, First Elder
David Miller Dobbin, First Elder
CHURCH RECORDS
May, 1847, to April, 1849. Meanwhile, the Rev. R. W. French made several trips from his charge in Mercer County, across the virgin country on horseback to serve the Somonauk people, as directed by the Presbytery.
During the winter of 1848 and 1849 William Patten, having ascertained that Mr. French was about to sever his con- nection with the church in Mercer County, wrote to him to ask if he would consider a call to become the pastor of Somonauk church. Receiving an encouraging response, the membership also acquiescing, Mr. French, in concurrence with the action of the Presbytery, accepted; and with small delay removed to Somonauk.
On the first Sabbath of his pastorate, May 27, 1849, the Lord's Supper was dispensed by the Rev. Mr. French, assisted by the Rev. William Osburn. At this time the following named persons were admitted into the church by certificate: "Joseph Thompson, a ruling elder from the Associate Church in Put- nam, Washington County, New York; James McAllister and his wife, Jane McAllister, and their daughter, Mary McAl- lister, from South Washington, Morrow County, Ohio, and Mrs. N. P. French. Mrs. Jennett Henry, who had come from the East, on a visit to her parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Beveridge, also was admitted to the communion. The fol- lowing named persons were admitted to the privileges of the church by examination and profession: James H. Beveridge, James French and Eliza Howison. Twenty-eight persons joined in this celebration of the sacrament of the Lord's Sup- per. Mr. James Walker was absent on account of sickness."
From the time of the organization of the church, in 1846, to the arrival of the Rev. Mr. French to oversee the flock, three of the charter members had died. These were: Ann Edgar French, and her husband, Jonathan French, and Mary Jane Dobbin, wife of Elder David Miller Dobbin. Dr. John Shankland, who had moved from the community, had been dismissed by letter.
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The Pastorate of Mr. French
AN unpublished sketch of the life of the Reverend Rens- selaer W. French, written by his son Albert C. French, gives a vivid picture of the life at Somonauk at the time of the arrival of the first minister:
"The removal to Somonauk was probably brought about by several considerations. The people at Somonauk were attractive in character, and came from New York State, mostly from the vicinity of Cambridge where his (Dr. French's) grand- father, Jonathan French, had lived and where his father was born. There may have been some Ohio people also at Somonauk, there certainly were at a later period and altogether, Father and Mother French would feel quite at home with the Somo- nauk people.
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