USA > Illinois > Illinois in 1818, 2nd ed > Part 7
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Despite the multitude of town-site projects in the state, there were only two places of sufficient size and importance to justify their being termed towns-Kaskaskia, the capital, and Shawnee- town, the port of entry. These were located at the southern ends of the western and eastern settled districts, respectively, and each had an office for the sale of public lands. Edwards- ville, the third land office town, though destined to grow rapidly
"Ford, History of Illinois, 38.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
in the next few years, was a mere village in 1818, while Cahokia, the former rival of Kaskaskia, was declining in population. Each of the fifteen counties, with the exception of Franklin, had a county seat ; but these towns as a rule contained little more than a courthouse, jail, and tavern, and possibly a general store. That they depended for their existence on the county business is evident from the number of them which failed to survive the loss of their position as county seat : Palmyra, Brownsville, Cov- ington, Perryville, and even Kaskaskia, are now to be found only in the records of the past.
The distribution of the people in 1818 can be indicated more fully by a survey of the population, location of settlements, and towns and villages in each of the fifteen counties.
The largest county in Illinois in 1818 was Crawford, which included the whole northeastern part of the state east of the third principal meridian and north of a line cutting across the modern Marion, Clay, Richland, and Lawrence counties eighteen miles above the base line, to the Embarras river and down that stream to the Wabash. In this immense area of over twenty thousand square miles there were living 2,839 people, according to the final report of the census of 1818. The figures do not quite agree, however, with returns on the schedules. For the first census, these show a population of 2,069 of whom 78 were free negroes and 20 servants or slaves. There were 397 families averaging about five members each. For the supple- mentary census the commissioner was able to list 121 additional families with 877 souls. The two schedules together, therefore, show a total population of 2,946. The greater part of the Craw- ford county of 1818 was still Indian land, and the only part in which the land had been surveyed and offered for sale was a strip in the southeast averaging about ten miles in width which extended along the Wabash and the eastern boundary of the state to near the southern boundary of Vermilion county. In this restricted region of about seven hundred square miles lived nearly all of the population, making an average density of about four to the square mile.
Beyond the survey, there was at least one settler in the south-
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EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
east corner of Jasper county, and there may have been others who had pushed into the interior from the east. On the opposite side of the county, in what is now Fayette, a few settlers are said to have been located on the Kaskaskia above the site of Vandalia, but they were too far away to be listed by the census commissioner. Within the surveyed tract settlers had pushed as far north as the present Edgar county, where about a dozen families were established in Hunter and Stratton townships. In Clark county settlement was confined principally to the three eastern townships and was densest in the southeastern parts. Similarly in the modern Crawford, practically all the settlers whose location can be determined were in the three townships along the Wabash with considerable concentration in La Motte,
A WOODEN BEAM PLOW [Original owned by R. I. Barry, Roodhouse]
the middle of the three. The part of Lawrence county which was then included in Crawford was across the Wabash from Vincennes and a considerable number of allotments under old grants were located opposite the town, but there seems to have been no settlement here except such as was connected with the ferry. Some Frenchinen and a few American pioneers estab- lished themselves in the district at the beginning of the century, and after the war of 1812 was over settlers pushed in rapidly so that by 1818 they were scattered over all the townships east of the line of survey. On the site of Russellville in the southeastern part of Lawrence county a little frontier fort had been built at the beginning of the Indian troubles, and in this vicinity settle- ment had progressed most rapidly. A ferry was established at this point in 1818. The county seat and only town of Craw- ford county was Palestine, located a mile and a half from the
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
Wabash, on La Motte's prairie. Settlement began here in 181 I, and as soon as the war was over the town was laid out in antici- pation of the organization of the county in 1816, but this town appears to have been very small until after the establishment of a land office there in 1820.
South of Crawford and, like it, stretching from the Wabash to the third principal meridian, lay Edwards county. With its southern boundary on a line with the southern boundaries of the present Wayne and Edwards, the dimensions of the county were thirty-three miles from north to south and seventy-five on an average from east to west. Its area, therefore, was approxi- mately 2,475 square miles, and within its boundaries were all of the present Wabash, Edwards, and Wayne counties, and parts of Lawrence, Richland, Clay, Marion, and Jefferson. Within this area, according to the census of 1818 as reported to the convention, there were only 2,243 inhabitants, an average of less than one to the square mile. The original schedule made by the census commissioner for Edwards county has not been found, but the secretary of the territory reported on June 17, 1818, that it listed a population of 1,948. This appears to have cov- ered only the eastern part of the county, however, for later in the summer the commissioner for Washington county crossed over into the western part of Edwards, "the detached part," he called it, and listed forty-two additional families containing 298 souls. No supplementary count appears to have been made in the eastern section, although the population there, especially on the English prairie, increased rapidly during the summer months.
Through the center of the county, east and west, ran the base line, north of which none of the land was surveyed and open to purchase, except that in the Vincennes tract along the Wa- bash. Across this unsurveyed region ran the newly laid-out road from Vincennes to St. Louis, and on this road were located a number of tavern keepers at points about twenty miles apart, and also a few other settlers. In the present Richland county, it is doubtful if there were more than two or three families, while in Clay there may have been five or six including three tavern keepers on the road. In Marion county, however,
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EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
a little settlement of ten or a dozen families had sprung up in and around the site of Salem and there were three or four families located about Walnut Hill where the "Goshen Road," from Shawneetown to Carlyle, crossed the trail branching from the Vincennes-St. Louis road. Scattered in the southern part of Marion county were possibly five additional families. In the limits of the present Jefferson county were about fourteen families, most of whom lived along the Goshen road. Included in this number were at least two tavern keepers; there was also the nucleus of a settlement at Mt. Vernon. East of these settle- ments in Marion and Jefferson counties and south of the Vin- cennes road lay a wide stretch of country apparently without any inhabitants.68
Fully two-thirds of the population of the Edwards county of 1818 lived in the triangle between the Wabash and Bon Pas creek, the present Wabash county and the southern part of Lawrence. Settlement was begun in this region as early as 1800 by a number of Frenchmen who came over from Vincennes to locate their allotments on the west side of the river. The first American settlers made their appearance a few years later but there was little advance into the interior until after the war of 1812 was over, and even in 1818 the bulk of the settlers lived within six or eight miles of the Wabash or the Embarras. Be- tween Bon Pas creek and the Little Wabash in the part of the modern Edwards county below the base line was located the famous English settlement. American backwoodsmen began to establish their isolated settlements in this region immediately after the close of the war of 1812, and by the end of 1817 there were perhaps twenty-five families located on the edges of the prairies in the district. Some of these moved away as the Eng- lish came in, but others took their places, and it is probable that there were more American than English families in the region when Illinois became a state. The English settlement, which in October, 1818, numbered about 200, had doubled by August of
68No attempt has been made to include in the footnotes all the material on which this survey of local conditions is based. For further information regarding any particular locality the reader is referred to the bibliography, P. 321 below, and to the lists in Buck, Travel and Description.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
the following year, but there were then about 700 Americans in the region.60 The greater number of the settlers in 1818 lived in the central and southern parts of the modern Edwards county, but there were settlements as far north as the base line with possibly two or three families above the line. In the modern Wayne county lived some twenty or thirty families, mostly in the southeastern part on or near the Little Wabash.
The oldest town in Edwards county, and the county seat, was Palmyra, which had been laid out in 1815. The site selected, a low and swampy spot on a sluggish bend of the Wabash, proved to be unhealthful; and in 1818 the town of Mt. Carmel was started about three miles farther down the river. In Octo- ber of the same year Albion was laid out in the center of the English settlement; and in 1821 it became the county seat, after which Palmyra soon disappeared from the map. It is doubt- ful if any one of these embryo .owns contained a dozen houses at the end of the year 1818.
South of Edwards lay White county, covering the territory included in the present White and Hamilton counties and a strip nine miles wide of the southern part of Jefferson running west to the third principal meridian. Its area was approximately 1,150 square miles and its population, according to the final report of the census of 1818, was 3,832. The density was thus between three and four to the square mile. Before the supple- mentary census was taken the population was reported as 3,539 and the schedule shows 572 families with an average of a little above six to a family. Eleven free people of color and fifty- seven servants or slaves were noted in the schedule. Although all the land in White county, except the usual reservations, was open for entry, only a small proportion of it had been taken up, and settlers were few and far between in the western section. Apparently the only settlement in the area of the present Jeffer- son which was included in White was in the southeastern town- ship, Moore's prairie, where some twenty families had established
"Ogg, Fordham's Personal Narrative, 236; Thwaites, Early Western Trav- els, 10:104; see map in Fearon, Sketches of America, 443, and in Ogg, Ford- ham's Personal Narrative, 113; for Palmyra see Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 10:328.
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EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
themselves. Through Hamilton county, diagonally from north- west to southeast, ran the Goshen road, which was a good draw- ing card for settlers; but it is doubtful if there were a hundred families in the county. The principal settlements appear to have been in the central township in which McLeansboro is now lo- cated and in Knight's prairie, the township directly west; but there were isolated settlements scattered throughout the county.
At least three-fourths of the inhabitants of the White county of 1818 lived within the territory of the modern White county, and here the region of densest settlement was along the Wabash, on both sides of the Little Wabash, and between the two streams. In the southwestern part of the county there was a considerable
0
HANDMADE OX-YOKE [Original owned by R. I. Barry, Roodhouse]
number of settlers, but the northwestern townships were prac- tically unoccupied. On the Little Wabash near the center of the modern White county was located the county seat, Carmi, the second largest town on the eastern side of the territory. According to George Flower it was "a very small place" in 1818, and the statement is doubtless correct, for three years before there had been nothing but a mill on the site. The town was laid out in 1816 and in the same year a store was started and a ferry established. The sale of lots was advertised for July 15, 1816; and in December the county officials were advertising for bids for the construction of a two-story brick courthouse, 30 by 36 feet in size. By 1818 two doctors had located in Carmi and a traveler who passed through the town the next year reported that it "conducts rather lively trade in wares."70
"Flower, English Settlement, 109; Intelligencer, June 12, December 4, 1816; Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1903, p. 150.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
The oldest county on the east side of the state is Gallatin, established by executive proclamation in 1812. By 1818, through the formation of other counties, it had been reduced to an area of about eight hundred square miles including the present Gal- latin and Saline counties and the northeastern half of Hardin. The schedule of the first census of 1818 for Gallatin county lists 541 families with a total of 3,440 souls including 83 free negroes and 218 servants or slaves, the largest number of each of these classes to be found in any of the counties. The additional census, taken during June and July, added 511 to the roll, of whom 8 were free negroes and 81 servants or slaves. These were grouped in 75 families. According to the schedules, therefore, the total was 3,951, while the total reported to the convention was 3,849. Inasmuch as this latter figure is larger by 694 than the population reported for Gallatin county, with the same area, by the United States census of 1820, it becomes apparent that the census of 1818 is not reliable. From a study of the sched- ules it is evident that many who were passing through to locate elsewhere in the state or even in Missouri were counted; and the permanent population in the fall of 1818 was probably less than three thousand.
A most important factor in the development of Gallatin county was the salt works on Saline creek and the government reservation which surrounded them. A rectangle, ten by thir- teen miles in the center of the county, together with an irregular strip of land extending from the southeastern corner of the rectangle along the creek to its mouth, had been set aside by the United States government for the support of the salt works. No land could be sold in the reservation, but it is not to be inferred that there was no settlement there. The operation of the salt works gave employment to a considerable number, in- cluding probably a majority of the slaves in the county. These were, of course, entitled to reside on the reservation, and there they formed a little settlement which later became the town of Equality. There were others living on the reservation, how- ever, who had no connection with the salt works but who refused to be deterred by the impossibility of purchasing the land. As
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EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
early as 1816 the manager of the saline complained to the general land office that "the intruders on this tract increase, and experience convinces me that their improvements must be destroyed before they will leave it. In fact, if one set leaves it, another comes on it immediately, and they no longer pay any attention to a threat from me."71 Had the land covered by the reservation been open to entry, the settlements upon it would undoubtedly have been much more extensive, for it was located near the land office, and through it ran the road from Shawnee- town to Kaskaskia. In December, 1816, a number of inhabitants of the county in a petition to congress complained that "there has been none but temporary nor is there encouragement for buildings and improvements, within the reservation for a public House for the accommodation of Travellers, and persons who have to resort to that place on business." They pointed out that "the road is much travelled and from the great emigration to the westward must increase every year" and requested that the tavern keeper might be allowed to enter a quarter section of land which he would improve "with permanent and convenient buildings. [sic] Grass Lotts &º so as to make it a public conven- ience."" "12 Congress rejected the petition, however, and when the state was admitted to the union the reservation was turned over to it intact.
In what is now Saline county, outside the reservation, there were probably not more than ninety families, a considerable pro- portion of whom, to judge from the land entries, lived along the road to Kaskaskia. There were scattered establishments in various parts of the county, as well as in the part of Hardin then included, and in the northwestern and southwestern parts of the modern Gallatin. There was some concentration of settlement in the vicinity of the ferry over the Little Wabash in the north- eastern part of the county-the beginnings of New Haven: but certainly a half, and probably two-thirds of the permanent popu- lation of Gallatin county lived in the region between the Ohio
71 American State Papers, Public Lands, 3:273.
"Petition, December 10, 1816, in House Files.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
river and the reservation and within a radius of six or eight miles of Shawneetown.
The first white settlement in this region is said to have been made in 1800; it is certain that Shawneetown contained a few scattered houses in 1804. Cuming, a traveler who visited the place in 1809 reported : "The town now contains about twenty- four cabins, and is a place of considerable resort on account of the saline salt-works about twelve miles distant, which supply with salt all the settlements within one hundred miles, and I believe even the whole of Upper Louisiana . . There were several trading boats at the landing, and more appearance of business than I had seen on this side Pittsburgh."73 When Gallatin county was established, Shawneetown became the county seat; a jail was erected in 1810 and a courthouse in 1815. Until 1814 the land on which the town was located belonged to the United States but in that year the lots were sold at auction. The bidding appears to have been brisk and the lots sold for good prices. Two years later, however, the bubble had collapsed. The purchasers of lots then drew up a petition to congress which brings out the serious disadvantages of the town as well as the principal cause of its development. The petitioners, having pur- chased lots "at an excessive high price," set forth : "That within a few months after the sales of the said lots, our town was visited by a most destructive epidemic, which nearly depopulated the place; and immediately after in the same winter the whole of the town on the River was inundated, the water being from 10 to 20 feet over the whole of that part of the town . That alarmed and disheartened many persons have ceased to improve, and have abandoned the place, and others have been detered from settling here .- That under these unfortunate combinations the im- provements have languished, and at length appear to have ceased entirely, the lots have depreciated so much in value, that very few of your petitioners can venture to make the remaining three payments into the land office ;. . That at the time the sales of lots in Shawneetown took place, in consequence of the War, salt was commanding a very high price, and the Saline was in
"Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 4:271.
CAHOKIA [From Wild, Valley of the Mississippi (1841), owned by Chicago Historical Society]
KASKASKIA [From Wild, Valley of the Mississippi (1841), owned by Chicago Historical Society]
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EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
extensive operation .- Peace has brought down the price of salt, mismanagement has made the Saline of little comparitive value, and consequently cut off the best branch of the trade which here- tofore has centered at Shawneetown .- That the then promising prospects of our town, drew to the sales of lots a vast number of distant adventurers, which together with an unhappy spirit of- opposition amongst ourselves combined to run up the lots to the astonishing prices for which they were sold; prices far greater than they would now bring if again offered for sale." In view of this doleful situation, the purchasers asked to be relieved from further payments; but congress, needless to say, rejected the petition.74
Besides the salt works, there were two other factors of im- portance in the development of Shawneetown. It was the prin- cipal port of entry for emigrants whose destination was farther north in White and Edwards counties, and also for the even greater numbers bound for western Illinois and Missouri. Closely connected with this was the fact that the land office for the southeastern part of the state was located here. These factors, however, contributed to the transient rather than to the permanent population of the town, which even in 1818 was described by one traveler as "a handful of log cabins." Another visitor pictured it "an inconsiderable place . [containing] several taverns, a bake-house, and a few huts." A more definite writer counted "about 30 houses (log.) The chief occupation of the inhabitants is the salt trade. There is here a 'United States' Land-office,' and a log bank is just established. The chief cashier of this establishment was engaged in cutting logs at the moment of my arrival."75 William Tell Harris, who passed through Shawneetown in September, 1818, on his way from the English settlement to Kentucky, after commenting on the annual floods and the unhealthfulness of the site, noted "considerable business being done here, as it is on the road from the southern States to St. Louis, and the Missouri, and the land-office is here.
"Petition referred December 24, 1816, and committee report, December 30, 1816, in House Files.
75Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 8:291; 13:70; Fearon, Sketches of America, 258.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
The number of waggons, horses, and passengers crossing, and waiting to cross the Ohio, was so great, that a great part of the morning was spent in waiting for my turn; at length I grew impatient, and taking the opportunity of a skiff, turned my back on Illinois, and landed in the State of Kentucky."76 Such was the metropolis of eastern Illinois and the chief town on the Ohio below Louisville in 1818.
Pope county included, besides the present county of that name, the southwestern half of Hardin and the part of Massac east of the western boundary of the modern Pope extending south to the Ohio river. In this territory of about 600 square miles according to the final census figures there lived 2,069 people, an average of a little above three to the square mile. The schedule of the first census totals 1,944, including 64 servants or slaves. There were 322 families with an average of six members. Little informa- tion is available as to the location of these people but it is probable that most of them lived along or near the road leading west from Golconda to Kaskaskia or along the Ohio. Golconda itself, the county seat, consisted of only a handful of houses and a tavern clustered about the ferry near the mouth of Lusk creek. About twenty-five miles farther up the Ohio a promoter had laid out a paper town to which he gave the breezy name of Hurricane, and the sale of lots was advertised for the last Thursday in May, 1818. There is no evidence of any special settlement here; but there may have been a ferry, for the place was announced as on the "great crossway from the southern and western states, to the principal towns upon the Mississippi river."77
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