USA > Illinois > Adams County > Quincy > History of the city of Quincy, Illinois > Part 30
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Trade and business of every kind continued more and more flourishing. Abont forty steamboats ran regularly from St. Louis to Quiney, and passing here in the up river trade. During the free navigation period of ten months, which continued into December, with a brief suspension in the spring (an unusual occurrence). there were registered thirteen hundred and fifty steamboat landings. averag- ing about five arrivals each day.
A statement compiled at the close of this year. which is probably correct so far as it goes, but incomplete on account of many omis- sions, rates the annual export trade of the city as amounting to $1.248.011. This professes to embrace all the valnes of prodnet and manu- facture that had been sold and shipped away. Among the leading items therein cited were 3.153 barrels of beef. 6,850 of crackers. 28.923 of four, 20.296 of whisky. 101 carriages, 594 wagons, 5,092 stoves. 4.165 plows. 4,119 hides, 8,039 bales of hay. 116 hogsheads of tallow, 3.600 boxed candles. 430,000 feet lumber. 358,- 000 laths and shingles, $91,000 worth of cast- ings, engines. ete .. 40,866 bushels of wheat, 71.386 of corn and 137.299 of oats. At the same time another, like the above only partial statement of the business employments, reports 3 steam flour and 2 steam saw mills, 2 distiller- ies. 25 steam engines in use. 6 machine shops. 4 foundries. 1 cotton. 1 woolen, 1 wooden ware. 1 flooring factory. 3 sash, 3 carriage. 3 large
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wholesale furniture factories and several smaller ones, 2 extensive wagon and plow l'ac- tories and 7 smaller ones. 2 planing mills, 5 lumber yards. 1 book-bindery, 2 hardware, 6 iron and stove. 3 books and stationery, 4 drug and over 200 retail stores, grocery. dry goods. ete .. 2 banking houses, 18 churches, 2 daily and 3 weekly English and 2 weekly German news- papers. The official valuation of city prop- erty for taxation, real and personal. footed $2.076,360.
The old court house, the second one, built in 1836 on the east side of the square, was en- larged by having an extension attached to the rear, and, by an arrangement between the city and county, the former obtained the use of one of the large lower rooms for a elerk's office and conneil room, which was thus occupied for the following fourteen years.
A charter for a bridge company was pro- enred at the legislative session of 1852-53. the incorporators being the directors of the N. C. R. R. and some other parties connected there- with. The requirements of the charter were that the bridge should be commenced within three and finished within six years. These time conditions were not complied with, but extensions of the charter were obtained and with some changes from the original plan, this enterprise was the origin of the present rail- road bridge, constructed some twelve or thir- teen years later.
With the accession of the democratic party at the national election in 1852 to administra- tive control of the country, there followed the usnad changes among the federal officials. Austin Brooks, editor of the Herald, was made postmaster, supplanting Abraham Jonas, who had held this office during the past four years. Another person, a partner of Mr. Brooks, had been booked for this place, but an ummicky busi- ness contretemps. coming to light, just on the eve of appointment. precluded the use of his name, and the office went to his partner. Also A. (. Marsh. as Register, and Damon Houser, as Receiver of the publie land office, shereeded Henry Asbury and H. V. Sullivan. There was a good deal of local special importance attached to the land office and to these positions. They had been, in earlier years, places of distinction and responsibility, and were at one time largely merative: mainly so from the fees, the stated salary being small. only $400 per annum. Their value had been for some time past steadily shrinking. and their importance also, and the appointees above named were the last to hold the offices, which ended with their term.
The Quiney land district. established in 1831. embraced the entire Military Bounty Tract, and
covered the 5,369,000 acres of public land lying between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, reaching as far north as the latitude of LaSalle and Rock Island. More than one-half of this, about 3,500,000 acres, was by congressional law reserved from general purchase, and specially set aside to be deeded as bonnties to the soldiers in the war of 1812. Patents for these thus re- served lands were issued to the soldiers as early as 1815 and in the four or five following years. The remaining impatented lands were not of- fered for sale until a long time later. a large portion of them being reserved for more than 20 years. The cheapness of these bounty lands which could be bought from the soldier paten- ter : 160 aeres for From $10 or $15 to $30; or the state tax title for a still lower figure, while the government price for land was $2.00 and later $1.25 per acre, and their unsurpassed fertility. with the advantage of a location between and nearly bordered by two great navigable rivers, were tempting offerings to the adventurous emi- grants and to the spreulator, causing a How of settlement towards this section far in advance of that received by any other part of Ilinois; an immigration which continned when the re- mainder of the hitherto government land was thrown open to general entry. With the loca- tion in Quiney of the public land office. there naturally followed the establishment of the pri- vate land agencies, which represented the titles to nearly all the unocenpied land in the bounty tract that had been granted to the soldiers. Hence every one desiring to purchase either publie or private land had to apply personally or otherwise at Quiney, which. of course. thus became the sole land market center for this seetion of the state. Had Rushville, which at that period (1831) was more populons than Quiney. and came near being preferred. or Pe- oria, which was about equally central so far as the location of the lands lay ; had either of these been the point selected for the public land office, one of the strongest factors in the early history of Quiney's prominence and improve- ment would have been lost. Most of the gov- ernment land had now, in 1853. passed into pri- vate ownership, and when, soon after. the gen- eral government donated to the states all the swamp lands, or those subject to overflow, so little was left in this district that it was no longer necessary to maintain the offices here. and they were removed to Springfield.
Another federal office was created about this time. A bill was introduced into Congress in December, to make Quiney a port of entry, which passed during the session. The objeet was to convenience the railroad in its payments on the iron imported from England. Under the
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operation of this law shipment could be made through direct to Quincy and here taken out of store, and the duties paid thereon from time to time in such amounts as the railroad company required. Several other cities on this great "inland sea" (as Mr. Calhoun, to evade his own opposition to internal improvements, termed the upper Mississippi. that were similarly inter- ested in railroad enterprises. were also about this time. made ports of entry, and continued such for a number of years, a good while after the chief reason for their establishment had passed away. The law relating to Quincy went into effect Feb. 2. 1854. and the appointment of surveyor of the port was made soon after.
At the November election, which this being the odd year, was only for county officers, the democrats carried the county by the usual av- erage majority of about 200. electing W. Il. Cather County Judge over Henry Asbury : Geo. W. Leech County Clerk over B. M. Prentiss, and J. H. Luce Treasurer over C. M. Pomeroy. The city election. in April. was a mixed success for both parties. The whigs re-elected John Wood as Mayor over I. M. Pitman by 6 votes, and C. A. Savage to the council from the First ward by 3 majority. F. Wellman and S. Thayer. democrats, were elected in the Second and Third wards, and the general democratic ticket was successful. With the casting vote of the Mayor, the council continued the former whig officials.
A meeting of whigs was held on the 5th of May to consider the project of establishing a German whig newspaper. There were two Ger- man periodicals then published, both of which were democratie. Mr. Wood proposed to pur- chase type, ete .. for such a paper if the party would sustain it for five years. The result was the establishment of the Tribune, which made its appearance on the first of November as an independent German weekly. It did not, how- ever. live out its time. The promised support failed within a year or two and after passing through several changes of ownership and name. it became what is now the Germania. The Herald met with another of its frequent kaleidoscopes and suspended during the sum- mer, resuming abont the first of Angust under the management of Wm. M. Avise & Co.
Railroad matters were progressing success- fully. Much of the grading through Adams county, the heavier sertions excepted, was well advanced toward completion. and before the close of the year the entire roadbed to Gales- burg was under contract. Some changes oc- curred in the management and in the directory. where a eauseless inharmony temporarily oc- enrred that was soon corrected. At the stock-
holders' meeting in April the old directors were re-chosen with two additional members, these were Brooks and Joy, representatives of the northern interests in the road, which eventually obtained its control. W. H. Sidell became chief engineer, succeeding Newell, and continued as such until the final finish of the road to Gales- burg. Later John Wood was made director in place of Pitman, resigned.
At the 1852-53 session of the legislature an aet had been obtained authorizing the city, by a popular vote, to subseribe $100,000 in addi- tion to what had been already given towards the construction of the railroad. The company made application for this, and on the 23rd of June a public meeting was called to consider the matter, at which it was manifest that the general feeling was favorable and earnest for the subscription. The president of the road re- ported in detail its condition and prospects. what had been done and was desired and stated that an additional sum of $160,000 was required to completely grade, bridge and iron the road to Galesburg, and that the plan proposed was for Quincy to furnish $100.000. MeDonough county $25.000 (having already given $50,000). and that the remainder would be made up by private subscription, also then and at a subse- quent meeting the railroad directory pledged itself to take care of the interest on these bonds. The city council promptly ordered an election to be held on the 30th of July for the proposed subscription of $100,000 in eight per cent bonds. The project was carried by a nearer approach to unanimity even than at the election over the first subscription two years before. Then the vote stood 1.074 to 19. Now there were 1,133 votes cost for and but 4 against. MeDonough county followed suit in August by a vote of 1.145 in favor of the $25 .- 000 subscription with 285 opposed. There was also $30,300 raised by personal subscription. this about completing the amount called for. This was the second of the five subscriptions. amounting to $1,100,000, which have mainly made the foundation of the present city debt. the amount above named having been increased greatly by the funding of long delinquent inter- est. Whatever may be said or thought now, then, or at any time as to the need or propriety of incurring these great debts. Quiney has for them its own sole responsibility to bear, for it is a patent fact that each and all of these meas- ures were eagerly adopted. not only with no shadow of dissent. but with an ahost feverish enthusiasm of unanimity. To the $1.100,000 cited above as the sum of Quiney's investments in railroads may be added the city proportion of $220,000 voted by the county to the two
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ADAMS COUNTY.
roads running north and south, which. however, became no part of the liabilities of Quincy, and its burden has insensibly passed out of exist- ence. A special issue of bonds to the amount of $12,000 was made during this year to meet the payment on bonds, about to mature and to take up and fund local indebtedness.
An umisnal amount of expensive and perma- nent publie improvement was done during this year. Maine and Hampshire streets along and eastward from the public square were heavily macadamized, "a deep kneeded want during the muddy months, " was Quiney's veteran punster's comment on the matter. Broadway from Twelfth to the river was put in passable. traveling condition, by having its uniform grade established and the same nearly finished before the close of the year. This comprehen- sive and costly work. involving one of the larg- est expenditures of the kind that the city had as yet made, was the cause of constant war in the council, and among the newspapers through- out the summer and fall, affording plenty of material for outside gossip and discussion, and often for merriment. It was the raciest, most honest contest of which the conneil had up to this time been the theater, not exhibiting the cavortings that sometimes have been shown there in later years, but it was pugnacious and plucky and long. The city fathers were evenly divided on this issue. The two from the north and one from the middle ward ardently urging it. while the two from the south ward and the other middle ward member were equally Hint- like in their opposition. The project was brought forward, passed through the council, because of the absence from the city of one of the south ward aldermen, the contract was let and the grading commenced. When. however, this ah- sentee alderman returned and one of the north- siders happened to be away, the boot changed legs: the order for grading was revoked. and payment on the work done suspended. until by another chance and the absence again of a south alderman and the return of the north member, thus giving back the original majority. the improvement started up again: and so it see-sawed throughout the season. while all the time one newspaper, to make capital against the city administration, and because its special friend didn't get the contract. bitterly do- nonneed the job, and the other paper, to sus- tain the administration and because its special friend had secured the contract, fought for it with equal zeal. It was a furious warfare of words. The editors have gone, the contractors are dead. and two only of the aldermen are living. but the work went on to completion. It was. as before said, a very expensive and troublesome improvement to make, appearing
to many as unnecessary at the time. but was of real, essential importance. This half mile ent to the river had been made by the railroad com- pany twenty years before, and now much was needed to bring it into useful and available condition as a street.
At Twelfth street it lay some ten or twelve feet below the present surface level. to which it was raised again at this time, and to equalize the grade westward required many changes to be made all along the line. some of them quite rostly, but the result in creating the best thor- oughfare, in fact, the only casy graded street from the river up into the city, more than war- ranted the propriety of the expenditure.
The grade also of Maine street from Eighth to Eighteenth streets, then the eastern limit of the city, was established and partial work begun thereon, yet many years passed before the street was brought to anything like its pres- ent handsome appearance. Settlement along it at this time was thin, there being but three houses east of Twelfth, and not many more west to Ninth, and the ground was unequal and broken. One now looking along that broad streteh of smooth bedded street. with its easy. graceful proportion of rise and decline, cannot easily realize that its whole length from Ninth to Sixteenth, was at this period a billowy suc- cession of lean hazel ridges and abrupt ravines, as numerous as the crossing streets and at times ahnost impassable, changed as it now has be- come into the most beautiful thoroughfare of the city, which indeed can scarcely be elsewhere surpassed.
Real estate values continued to advance as they had been steadily doing since 1840. ac- celerated by the active railroad movement and prospects. To the surprise of some. however, this increased rise appeared more in the eastern and central sections, than in the older portion of the city under the hill, where it might be presumed, from the location there of the depot, adding the railroad to the river business, that the value of the ground in that vicinity would be most enhanced. The result was the reverse of this expectation. Some property there changed owners, and at good advanced figures. but the trades made were mostly speculative. and the figures lower than relatively ruled else- where. The lot on the corner of Front and Broadway, which for some years had "gone a-begging" at $20.00 per foot. was now sold for $30.00. but this was somewhat exceptional, and generally the investments in this quarter re- munerated slowly. the truth being that there has always been a larger area of ground and frontage on the river than was needed for the business that required to be specially located there, and this fact holds good as much in later
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days as it always did in earlier times, when only "steamboat business" was transacted un- der the hill.
The promise and stir of the coming railroad stimulated some other latent ideas of enter- prise into activity. There had been for many Years a common "talk." usually just before a city election, of a plank road across the river bottom opposite the city. One frequent candi- date for public honors. periodically used as his political shibboleth, "a town clock, free ferry and Missouri plank road." These of course amounted to nothing after the election, but now with the spirit of enterprise well aroused, and some rivalry excited, the first practical move- ments were made in the direction of the last above named and the most important of the three measures suggested.
Hannibal, seeing that Quiney had an assured eastern and northern railroad connection, while its own was at yet uncertain, had pushed out to good completion its plank and gravel road. reaching through the bottom lands to the Illi- nois bluffs so as to secure and retain all the trade of the southern part of Adams county. With an eye towards meeting this flank move- ment from our little rival city, a Quiney com- pany projected and completed the survey of a line for a plank road to Burton. nine miles southeast of the city ; and what was of like but much greater importance, an elaborate exam- ination and survey with estimates of expense. was made by a skillful engineer. B. B. Went- worth. for about five miles of road, commencing at the ferry landing opposite the city and reaching ahnost by an air line to the north Fabius bridge at the foot of the Missouri bluffs. The estimates were, for a road of this charac- ter. raised above possible overflow. trestled bridges. etc .. $19,246 for a single track with passings, and $21.656 for a double track. What has been expended since this time, thirty-four years ago, in endeavoring to make a road of this character, we do not know, but it is truth beyond question that if the above named amount, taken from what has been given rail- roads, vast as their benefits have been, had been devoted to the opening of these two enterprises. the gain to Quincy would have been very great and the railroads would not have missed it.
The first formal workman's "strike" broke ont this year among the laborers at the briek and lumber yards, who claimed an advance of pay from seventy-five cents to a dollar a day. They all quit work on the 20th of June and paraded the town in procession, preceded by music of drums and fife. This was then a nov- elty and attracted attention, resulting in the yielding of the employers to the demand.
The military fever, which had been gradually dying out since the close of the Mexican and Mormon wars, broke out afresh this year with the organization of the Quincy Bhies, made up in part from the members of former like asso- ciations, under the captaincy of B. M. Prentiss, which soon became a somewhat noted and cred- itable company. German company, the Rifles or Yagers, was at this time the only or- ganization of this character in the city, and it went out of existence soon after. The for- mation of the Blues brought out several other companies within the near following years. These were the "Quiney Artillery." under Cap- tain Austin Brooks. of the Herald, a dapper little "cadet company, composed of the boys from Root's High School, and commanded by Captain Martin Holmes, and the "City Gnards," under Captain E. W. Godfrey, who as a captain in the 18th Missouri Infantry, was killed at the battle of Shiloh in 1862. Quincy thus had for several years four military organ- izations, but all of them disbanded before 1861, except the City Guards, which being then still in prosperous condition, became the nu- cleus from which was formed the two compa- nies which volunteered in the spring of 1861 to do duty in the war of the rebellion. Prior to this period, 1843. there had been at different times four military associations in the city, the first being the "Grays" in 1838-9, next the "Riflemen" in 1843, and shortly after the "Montgomery Guards." an Irish company, and the Germany company of Captain Delabar be- fore mentioned. The "Riffemen" and " Mont- gomery Guards" enlisted in the Mexican war.
CHAPTER XXXII.
1854.
ICE PACKING BECOMES A BUSINESS. WIDTH OF THE RIVER 3.960 FEET. THEATRE STARTED. AMATEUR ACTORS. HIGH SCHOOL. NEBRASKA BILL. POLITICAL CHANGES. DATUM FOR STREET GRADES FIXED. MOULTON'S ADDI- TION. SWAMP LANDS SOLD. GAS COMPANY STARTED. FIRST LOCOMOTIVE BROUGHT TO QUINCY. A HOT SUMMER. DISTILLERY
BURNED. QUINCY CADETS.
The winter of 1853-54 was generally pleas- ant, not marked by anyextreme degree of tem- perature. although the snowfall was unusually large. The staple business of the season kept up with former years. abont 22,000 hogs being packed, which was a fair average prodnet. A new branch of business began about this time. rather light at first. but one that has since rap- idly increased and grown to a place among the leading industries of the city. This was iee packing, heretofore altogether a private affair. which now, however, commenced as a regular
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ADAMS COUNTY.
business. The first ice houses for packing, preserving and selling throughout the city. were built this year, on a small scale compared with what it has since become, but fully up to the wants of the place at the time. 1. Clevo- land, and soon after J. Cole, were the pioneers in this line, packing not a great deal, but enough for local distribution during the fol- lowing summer. The river on the 23rd of Feb- rnary, at a very high stage of water, with flooded banks, unfettered itself from winter thraldom, and thenee on throughout the she- feeding winter, 1854-1855. remained entirely free from ice. Navigation was easy and lasted long by reason of this early opening, and the nearly full continuance of the spring rise as Iate as the middle of November. Alt through the summer the river was high. Twenty-one feet above low water mark was the gange given of the highest water, and this unusual altitude long sustained gave a greater average volume of flow through the season than had been often before known.
A question much mooted then, and perhaps sinee, as to what is the exact width of the Mississippi at this point, was referred to some of the railroad engineers, who settled it by a careful measurement made over the ice in February, which had never been thus done be- fore. Starting from low water mark, at the foot of Vermont street, and running on an exact east and west parallel to a point abont 200 feet south of the ferry landing on the Mis- souri shore gave a distance of 3,960 feet. al- most an even three-quarters of a mile. Since this measurement was made, on account of en- croachments from the east side of the river by the extension of the publie landing, and per- haps some changes in the banks on the opposite shore, the above figures may have slightly varied.
A special session of the legislature having been called by the Governor to meet on the 9th of February, an election was ordered to be held on the 6th of this month to fill vacancies made by the resignation of John Wood, senator from the Adams and Pike district, and of A. M. Pitman and John C. Moses, representatives from Adams and Brown. The democrats in convention nominated for senator Solomon Parsons of Pike, and for representatives Wmn. HI. Benneson and Hiram Boyle of Adams, while the whigs brought ont John McCoy of Adams for the senatorship. and J. W. Singleton of Brown and John C. Cox of Adams as their can- didates for the lower house. The election re- sulted in the snecess of Parsons. Singleton and Boyle. There was a light vote cast, and the result was effected by local influences and the politie indifference felt by the whigs in regard
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