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 3
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"Railroads from the East to Chicago were going to shorten the time and distance to the old home in Ohio and instead of two tedious weeks around by the river route, it would be only a couple of days or so, and this appealed to Mother French. Finally, Mother had received several hundred dollars from her folks at home and they thought that by selling their forty acres at North Henderson they would be able to purchase a quarter section at Somonauk where land was still low in price. We must remember that migration to the West had followed the river routes and values were still almost at government prices.
"Thus irrespective of the matter of salary their material prospects would be improved and both Father and Mother were self reliant and all his life the matter of salary was of secondary consideration with Father. I think the most he ever received in his life was under four hundred dollars. Also he
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THE PASTORATE OF MR. FRENCH
never received help from the church boards. At Somonauk he was able to purchase a land warrant from a Mexican War veteran for $360 for a piece of prairie of 170 acres.
"Alexander French, of Somonauk, a second cousin, seems to have moved their goods across the country for them, about one hundred and forty miles, for $16.50. This was in the latter part of May, 1849.
"There must have been two wagon loads of such things as they had, together with five passengers and the driver. We can tell almost what they had to move. There was a four- poster bedstead made of cherry wood with holes in the tops of the posts to receive supports for a canopy which was neces- sary in a one-room log cabin; a big cherry bureau, a cherry stand in which Mother kept her love letters before she was married, and on which Father used to write his sermons afterwards. Six substantially made chairs with a rocker, and a child's rocker, painted a bright green with gilt stripes.
"There would be homespun bedding, an honest goose- feather bed in a linen homespun tick, but no stove of any sort. They did not have them, in those days in log cabins. They had "cranes," to hang the kettles on and swing over the fire in a fireplace.
"It must have taken them at least four days to make the trip from North Henderson to Somonauk. It would be across the prairies.
"In the summer the unbroken prairies were not without their charm. This was almost the first of June, a time when the prairies were ablaze with flowers. The summer prairie made a picture in my mind which I can never forget, and which few now living would be able to visualize. It was God's un- tarnished fields of glory which he had planted ages ago, and which it has taken man such a short while to obliterate. Delicate and distinctive odors from these unspoiled plains with their thousands of flowers, every one perfuming the soft breezes.
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In those early days spring came dancing along much sooner than it seems to come now.
"When they arrived at Somonauk there was no house ready to receive them. But ' Uncle George ' Beveridge and 'Aunt ' Ann took them in as if it was a matter of course. It seems to me that in every congregation which I have ever known there is always a couple of kindly, generous minded people who simply abound in good works. No ostentation nor effusive kind- ness, but just an observing mind which slips into the duty as though they had been expecting it to come along and were ready for it. Such people were Mr. and Mrs. George Beveridge.
"George Beveridge lived just across the creek from where Somonauk church now stands. His house was a long structure of perhaps a little more than the usual cabin dimensions because it had been used as an inn or traveler's stopping place. It was crumbling down when I was old enough to observe it, but the old well was still in service, and between sermons on Sabbath I remember that the church folk used to stream down the church green and over the bridge to that well to get a drink whether they were thirsty or not, just a chance for a young man to escort his sweetheart to the old well and give her a drink. That was mostly in the summer and was something which I came to regard as quite essential to a proper church service. I have often wondered how that ceremonial was brought to a close.
"Somonauk church, which practically represents the con- gregational center, is five miles north of the village of Somo- nauk, which is on the C. B. & Q. Railway. The church is just south of Somonauk Creek at that point, and five roads meet in the adjacent space near the church. Father's new farm followed the south side of the creek at an angle to the north- west for perhaps forty rods to what is now Oak Mound Cem- etery, and then branched due west on the half-section line. This angling road always confused my sense of direction in the
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THE PASTORATE OF MR. FRENCH
neighborhood of the church and I cannot be sure to this day which way that old church faced.
"Father was now about thirty-five years of age and on Sabbath, May 27, 1849, he began the duties of pastor of the congregation which he organized in 1846, preaching two ser- mons as the custom was, the first a lecture from John XVI:8, the afternoon service from Jeremiah VIII, last verse. He adds " Dull " to both services in his notation.
"No doubt it was a warm day in early summer. We may suppose that the little congregation probably met in Mr. Bev- eridge's house, for there was no church building until three years later. Or perhaps it was in the schoolhouse about half a mile east of Mr. Beveridge's house where they met after- wards until the church was built. Some condition contributed to Father French's depression that evening, a very unusual thing for him, for in his notation for that day he wrote, 'I was much cast down in spirit.' If he could have looked forward into the years to see the splendid record which that little congregation was to make, how different would his feelings have been. However, there were no more melancholy reflections recorded in his notes and so we may conclude that his depression passed away to come back no more.
"They did not long remain as guests of Mr. and Mrs. Beveridge. An empty log cabin stood on the north side of that angling road a short distance west of the church before we reach the present cemetery and Father and his little family moved into it. I used as a child to have an unreasoning prej- udice against this old log building, not knowing that it had sheltered our folk for a time. It disappeared long ago and they remained in it no longer than the time it took Father to build a house of his own on his farm two miles to the west. In those days a pastorate was not usually regarded as the temporary affair that it is apt to be now. So Father French proceeded as if he was to remain there permanently. A house had to be built
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on the land he had purchased. The members assisted him in this. Lumber was hauled, much of it from Chicago, sixty miles, during the summer. In the winter a well was dug. During that summer of 1849 he put up prairie hay with the help of members, hiring sometimes George Beveridge's ox team, and sometimes another member's team at fifty cents a day.
"When he moved out of that log house by the creek he moved for the first time in his life into a frame house. For two hundred years and more his ancestors in America, and finally himself, had lived in log houses. He was born in one, reared in another, went to school in a log schoolhouse, was married in a log house and was thirty-six years old before he ever lived in any other sort.
"I suppose that during that summer he would find a way to break up some of that prairie land and plant some sod corn which is often quite good, and so have corn to feed a horse or a team if he became able to get one. Then in the fall of 1850 we find him hauling wheat to Chicago and hauling more lum- ber out - a trip of two days in, and two days out, leaving two days of the week in which to prepare his Sabbath sermon. And I do not often find him repeating his Somonauk sermon at Wheatland, with which he combined his work at Somonauk church.
"The Southwestern Plank Road on Ogden Avenue (out of Chicago) was the main traveled road toward Aurora in those days and I have often wondered whether he pulled his load of lumber up Snake Hill, just west of Downer's Grove, or if he had some other road he used. Some of the long hills on the route must have been pretty tough for the light teams they used to have. Horses used to weigh about ten hundred pounds in those days, but they were all horse, not beef, like some we have today. I mention all these things to show how self reliant and cheerful Father always was.
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THE PASTORATE OF MR. FRENCH
"About this time he organized the Scotch congregation of Wheatland and as he only gave Somonauk half his time he supplied Wheatland the other half, though he did not adhere to that plan regularly. From July, 1849, to July, 1850, we have a record of sixty sermons preached at Wheatland, and it is not a complete record, as it was not until about 1852 that the congregation at Wheatland was able to have a settled pastor.
"As I said before, Father was supposed to give only half his time to Somonauk, and Wheatland received most of the other half, though Ross' Grove, ten miles west of Somonauk, had some of his time. I could relate incidents of these twenty-seven-mile trips to Wheatland if it were not irrelevant, but I will say that they were not pleasure rides always, for he in all his pastoral work seemed to me to be very faithful, often being at the place of worship when the weather was so inclement that only a very few faithful like himself attended the service, and riding home facing a northwest wind with the thermometer more than twenty degrees below zero.
"Mr. French's conveyance was his horse and buggy, unless there was much snow or mud, in which case he rode on horse- back. Seemingly, the pastors of the pioneers feared neither storms nor the all but impassable roads.
"From 1849 to 1852 were busy but uneventful years. The congregation increased in membership by immigration from Ohio and the East. They were almost uniformly American in character and largely of Scotch descent. There were Bev- eridges, Grahams, Stewarts, McBrides, Boyds, McClellans, McAllisters, Howisons, Kirkpatricks, and others, all of which names are Scottish in origin. Also they were Associate Pres- byterian in their church attachments. This term distinguished them from the Associate Reformed Church. These two Pres- byterian bodies were separated by minor differences which it is not necessary to state, but which seemed to the two denomina- tions as very vital to sound religion.
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"My recollections of this period were of a degree of com- fort which I know Father never before had enjoyed. I know that he liked his parishioners, had gone the two miles to church in his lumber wagon, and in stormy weather he would walk or ride horseback. But now we had a light carry-all, two seated, built buggy fashion, for two horses. For going to town or on pastoral visitation he removed the back seat, and on Friday afternoon in the summer it was a great pleasure to me to go with him to the post office, four miles east - Freeland, it was called -to get our weekly mail. Our ideas have changed since the time when we were contented to get our mail once a week. We received the Presbyterian Witness, the Advent Herald, the Evangelical Repository, a monthly, and perhaps some secular paper, but no magazine or story paper (Father was too strict for fiction) and of course some family correspondence.
"Friday, and particularly Saturday was his 'study day,' when he was not to be disturbed in his room. More days were thus occupied for special occasions.
"We lived on what was often called the 'Chicago-Dixon' road; it was not absolutely a direct road, as we lived south of both cities and even Aurora, but so it was called, and in the '50s the gold seekers and emigrants to the West, with their white covered 'Prairie Schooners' constantly passed that way. There was a bad quarter mile of low ground in front of our farm, and the narrow pike in the spring of the year became almost impassable. Many times I have seen Father French down there with a pole or spade helping some unfortunate out of the depths. Loads of straw dumped in the worst places quickly sank 'without a trace.' * *
"The memories of that period are chiefly connected with the church and the people. The solemn observance of the Sab- bath to my young mind was a difficult problem. It seemed easy and natural to the grown people, but not an unmixed delight
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to me. In the summer when clean clothes and shoes and stock- ings had to be worn, a lesson in the catechism to be recited, and a long sermon to be listened to which I could not com- prehend, religious duties sat pretty heavily on my constitution. It did not take long for shoes, stockings and coat to come off, once we started for home. Church was apparently no place for social enjoyment. All were most decorous and grave even in the church yard, and the devout manner of the good people was manifest from the time they tied their horses until they started for home. Inside the church an air of solemn propriety seemed to permeate the atmosphere. * The very pews seemed to look toward the pulpit with an unwavering reverence. The masterful but earnest dignity of my Father as he rose and said, 'Let us begin the worship of God by singing a part of the - psalm,' was something which put distance between us. I could not be his boy until church was over.
"I walked up to our pew with Mother - our seat was about two-thirds up the left side tier of seats facing the pulpit. I would compose myself in the outside end of our seat, where I could be handy to receive the cooky which Mrs. George Bev- eridge, across the aisle, often had for me, or else some of the little fine rough spiced candy which she would have every now and then.
"The Sabbath at church was almost the only break in the daily life of those uneventful times. The ceremonial of its public service was weighted with solemnity. The measured stately harmony of those old songs of praise as they came from the full congregation of reverent worshipers still echoes through the heart like the majestic tones of the evening winds through the depth of the forest."
During the first years following the organization of the church, services were still held in the home of George Bever- idge. The family, however, was large and the log cabin was small. So not long after the arrival of Mr. French they built
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a larger house, on the same plat of ground some hundred feet to the north. The material was drawn from Chicago by ox teams, with the exception of some of the frame pieces, which they hewed from their own woods. Although the thought was not expressed in words, no small share of their purpose in the new house lay in their desire to provide a more commodious place for public worship. The second story was left in one large room for several years and was always open for religious services - in fact, for all meetings touching moral questions, as long as there was need.
The new house was evidently much used as a place of meet- ing, for John V. Henry, who came to Somonauk with his parents in 1853, relates that "Grandfather's . . . new house while new as compared to the log cabin, had the appearance to me of having been built several years before, as it was very much weather-beaten, and the porch floor and steps showed signs of much wear."
Not long previous to 1849 a small schoolhouse was built. It stood just north of the trail in the thick woods, a half mile east of the home of George Beveridge. It was built to answer for a "meeting house," as well as for a day school. A rostrum was raised about eight inches across a part of the south end, just the width of the door being taken off at the southwest corner. Part of the carpenter's work-bench was used for the pulpit-stand; two legs stood on the floor, the other two legs, shortened, stood on the rostrum, and a bench was the seat. This bench accommodated the minister on the Sabbath and the reciting classes in the day school. The mischievous little boys were often made to sit under this pulpit-stand for punishment, using the edge of the rostrum for a seat. In the winter term of school young men and women came long distances from the sparsely settled country, even to four and five miles. James H. Beveridge taught here one winter, and Agnes Beveridge was schoolmistress through one summer. Here Lorenzo J.
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George Beveridge House, Built 1851-2 Now Standing
Dedication of Church Tablet, September 5, 1925
THE PASTORATE OF MR. FRENCH
Lamson, afterward one of the members of Lamson Bros. & Co. of the Chicago Board of Trade, went to school with Agnes. Beveridge and the next year attended as her pupil. The grand- father of Dr. Arthur Lord, of Plano, Illinois, who served overseas in the World War as a surgeon, taught in this school in the winter of 1850 and 1851.
This school house was moved across the creek a few years later, to a site south of the road, nearly opposite the William G. Beveridge homestead, on land donated for the purpose by George Beveridge, later owned by a son, Thomas Beveridge, William's father. It was used for a church and a school as- before, until the first meeting house was built on the plot of ground that the present church occupies. A part, however, of the church services were still held in the large upper room of the Beveridge home.
A vivid memory of those early Sabbath services remains with those who attended them, "of pastor French, a tall, reverential looking man, expounding the word of God to his little flock of God-fearing and trusting men and women, leading them to the throne of grace in a confidential, rev- erential voice which impressed us children that God was near for the minister was talking to Him."
The chorister, Daniel Boyd, a young man a trifle under medium height, sat on the platform, too. He would stand to lead the praise service in his slightly quavering voice. All the congregation joined in singing the psalms of David to the sacred old tunes, " Ortonville," " Mere," " Dundee," " Peter- borough," " Colesville," " Bangor," and a few others, long years before authorized by the church officials as appropriate to use when singing praises to God.
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Commerce of the Prairies
M EANWHILE the every-day life of the Somonauk settlers remained difficult and full of hardship. Although the rich prairie lands produced crops almost miraculous in the eyes of men accustomed to the meager yield of the hillside farms of eastern New York, little actual money could be secured because of the difficulty in marketing the wheat.
The trip to Chicago was long and laborious. Thirty to forty bushels of wheat was a good-sized load to haul on the soft trail and through the fords of the unbridged streams, with two yoke of oxen hitched to the wagon. The wagons were crude affairs. A pioneer of the early '40s remembers seeing home-made wagons pass by from the Rock River country on the way to Chicago. The wheels were sawed from trees from two and a half to three feet in diameter. The wheel was at least six inches wide and sawed so as to make a sort of hub with a hole through the center for a wooden axle of the linch- pin type. Frequent stops had to be made to grease these hubs in order to keep the wagon in use.
John L. Beveridge remembered seeing, in his boyhood, set- tlers from the Rock River country and Mendota, then wild prairie, haul their produce, chiefly wheat and pork, to Chicago for market. " I have seen," he records, "sixty teams at night camp on the creek. They would travel one hundred miles or more to market, be absent six days, and the only money out would be one night's lodgings, supper and breakfast, stable and hay for teams - and all for one dollar at the best hotel (in Chicago), the famous Tremont House. They couldn't afford more. Wheat was from thirty-five cents to fifty cents per bushel and dressed pork from $1.50 to $3.00 per hundred weight. After purchasing groceries for the family they had very little change left."
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COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES
John V. Henry relates, "I remember of Grandfather (George Beveridge) telling of taking a load of wheat to Chicago, starting Monday morning with a neighbor. They could not go alone for fear of being 'stalled ' and needing assistance. Arriving home on Saturday afternoon, after paying his week's expenses, he brought home a broom, a one-half bushel measure, one scoop shovel and two gallons of New Orleans molasses - the net proceeds of one load of wheat." On another trip he returned with a barrel of salt. On the Galena stage road it was not unusual to see a farmer returning after hauling wheat to the lead mines with a small lump of lead in the bottom of his wagon representing the entire pro- ceeds of the long haul.
These incidents were the common experiences of the large majority of the first settlers. A few families were better sit- uated, while others were in even harder circumstances. All depended on how well they were able to equip themselves for their difficult task. The move to the West, however, was the best business stroke these men and women could have made with their small capital. This is emphatically true of all who " stuck " to the land. After a decade or two of poverty and its hardships they were repaid for their trials in a near market, a growing wealth, comfortable homes, self-made independence, and ease for declining years.
Of the young men who drifted in from year to year, some entered a piece of land, some took up a trade; for instance, that of a carpenter, for whose work there was an immediate demand, as the first thing the new immigrant must have was shelter. Not a few of these young men married pioneers' daughters, who made the best of helpmeets.
As an illustration, the children of Robert Graham often heard him relate what decided him, or rather forced him, to seek a home in the new West. He was born and raised on a farm in Washington County, New York, and was one of
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eleven children. Not owning land, he thought he could do better than to farm among the rocks, so he learned the cooper's trade, a good business at that time. Making some money, he moved in 1837 with his young family to Ohio, bought a house and an acre of land in a village near the present city of Columbus, built a shop and went to work.
He did well for some years, until the introduction of machinery monopolized the business. Though he worked night and day, trying to cope with water and steam power, the little shop run by man power alone had to close.
" What shall I do now? " he asked himself. So one day he rather timidly asked his wife if she were willing to go to Illinois and take up government land. She promptly replied that she was. The same autumn, 1849, he bargained with the government for a quarter section in what was organized three years later as Victor Township, De Kalb County, his choice of the prairie lying about three miles southwest from the George Beveridge home. In the spring of 1850 the Grahams arrived at the Somonauk settlement, after a fourteen-day trip in a covered wagon. The parents at once united with the Somonauk church. Next day they began improving their new farm. The wiry sod had to be broken up and a small house built. Mr. Graham's money was exhausted before the house was completed, but the undaunted family moved in and in the years following finished the house as they could. The wintry blasts sifted in, sometimes breezily, but, thanks to a kind Providence, the inmates kept strong and healthy.
About the year 1848 Alexander R. Patten and James H. Beveridge, both prominent among the younger members of Somonauk church, became proprietors of the general store. It stood at the intersection of the Chicago-Galena highway and the road running north from Ottawa to Wisconsin, and the location became known as Somonauk Corners. It was a mile and a half to the east of Somonauk church. The name of
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COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES
the post office was changed to Freeland Corners in 1853 when the C. B. & Q. Railroad established a station called Somonauk, five miles south.
This store must have been a great convenience, especially to the women of the community, to whom the shops of Chicago were plainly inaccessible. Here eggs and other produce might be exchanged for commodities. The proprietor of the general store was usually the postmaster, and Alexander Patten was no exception to the rule. The general store formed still another social center for the community. Here the farmers gathered to receive their infrequent mail, and local matters were dis- cussed as well as affairs of state and nation. Public opinion was nowhere more influenced than in these gatherings at the gen- eral store. In the course of a year or more Alexander Patten became the sole proprietor. In 1851 he brought his bride, Agnes Beveridge, to the crossroads store and here his two oldest sons, James and George, were born.
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