USA > Illinois > Illinois in 1818, 2nd ed > Part 9
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North of St. Clair lay Madison county, with its present south- ern and western boundaries; the west line, however, extended to the northern boundary of the state. All the immense region between this line and the Mississippi river was nominally a part of the county but in only the three southern tiers of townships, about 570 square miles, was land available for purchase before 1819. The schedule of the first census of 1818 lists 717 families in Madison county with 4,516 souls, of whom 34 were free negroes and 77 servants or slaves. This is only three less than the population of St. Clair as reported in June; and including the supplementary census of 847 as compared with 520 for St. Clair, Madison becomes the most populous county in the state. The final report to the convention was 6,303, but this includes 980
"Intelligencer, September 9, 1818.
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EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
reputed residents at the forts in the Indian country. The part of this population residing south of the line of survey may be placed conservatively at 4,500, which would give to that region a density of about 8 to the square mile, slightly more than that of St. Clair county. While settlers were to be found in all parts of these townships, the areas of greatest density were along the Missis- sippi, and southwest of Edwardsville where the so-called Goshen settlement was located. Toward the eastern boundary settlers were less numerous and were located mainly in the vicinity of Silver creek and its branches and along the road to Shawneetown.
Of especial interest are the settlements above the line of survey, for these illustrate the way in which the frontier popu- lation pushed out and squatted on land which was not yet in the market and which in some cases had not yet been cleared of the Indian title. The census schedules indicated that about seventy families were living in this region in the early summer of 1818, but the number was probably doubled before the end of the year. As usual on the extreme frontier, the settlers were to be found principally along the rivers and creeks. Even the military tract between the Mississippi and Illinois had a few inhabitants on the southern point, extending north to about the middle of Calhoun county, though it is doubtful if any of them had secured title to the soil. Major Stephen H. Long, on a trip down the Missis- sippi, "took an excursion" across this peninsula in August, 1817, and reported :92 "There are five settlements at this place, including two immediately upon the Mississippi at Little Cape Gris." This point was about twenty miles up the river from the mouth of the Illinois.
On the eastern side of the Illinois adventurous spirits had pushed as far north as Apple creek in Greene county and also up the tributaries flowing in from the east, Macoupin creek with Phill's creek, its branch, and Otter creek in Jersey county. The census schedule indicated several families on Macoupin and Phill's creeks in the southeastern part of Greene and the north- eastern part of Jersey counties and at least one settler on the
12 Minnesota Historical Collections, 2:82. On the location of Cape au Gris see Wisconsin Historical Collections, 2:209.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
headwaters of Macoupin creek in what is now Macoupin county. There was probably a considerable increase during the summer ; and, if local tradition is reliable, Macoupin county contained ten families when Illinois became a state. Edmund Dana, who visited this region in the late summer of 1818, speaks of finding sixty families in the tract drained by Macoupin, Apple, and Otter creeks "in the sickly months of 1818." In another place, referring to the whole region from Piasa creek, which enters the Missis- sippi near the boundary between Madison and Jersey counties, to and including the Macoupin county, he states that "nearly 120 families had settled here before the lands were surveyed," which would be before the spring of 1819.93 On Wood river, which enters the Mississippi a couple of miles below Alton, the settlements had extended north only a mile or so above the line of survey, and there appear to have been no establishments on the branches of Cahokia creek above this line when the census schedule was compiled. Farther east, however, on Silver creek there were settlers within a mile or two of the present northern boundary of Madison county.
When Governor Edwards issued the proclamation establishing Madison county in 1812, he appointed "the house of Thomas Kirkpatrick to be the seat of justice of said county." Not until 1816 was a town laid out and given the name of Edwardsville. The establishment of a land office there in the same year made it an important place, but its population probably did not exceed two hundred when the census was taken in the early summer of 1818. The eighteen households listed which can definitely be assigned to Edwardsville comprised 166 souls. The composition of this population indicates something of the character of the place and the influence of the land office. There were 74 men, only 71 women and children, including all under twenty-one, 17 servants or slaves, and 4 free negroes. Eight of the slaves belonged to Benjamin Stephenson, register of the land office, and four to Governor Edwards, who had established his resi- dence in the town named for him. At least three of the house-
93Dana, Geographical Sketches, 139-144. For another statement on the set- tlements in this region in 1819, see Babcock, Memoir of Peck, 155.
MORRIS BIRKBECK [From a copy owned by H. W. Fay, De Kalb]
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COTTAGE AT ALBION, BUILT NINETY-FIVE YEARS AGO, OCCUPIED CONTINUOUSLY, AND STILL STANDING [Used by permission of Walter Colyer, Albion]
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EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
holds, and probably four, were taverns at which dwelt over half of the men. The town grew rapidly during the summer; and Edmund Dana, whose name appears in the Edwardsville group in the census schedule, wrote of it the following year as a "flour- ishing town, containing 60 or 70 houses, a court house, jail, public bank, printing office, which issues a weekly newspaper, and a United States land office." The bank and the printing office did not exist in 1818, however. In November, 1819, a traveler described the place as "a small but flourishing little village."9ª
The city of Alton also had its beginnings during the territorial period, these being in the form of some four or five town-site projects. Alton proper was laid out in 1817 by Colonel Easton, a St. Louis speculator; but Reverend Thomas Lippincott found there in December, 1818, only one cabin besides the ferryhouse. About the same time Upper Alton was laid out on the bluff and soon afterward "Alton on the river" or Hunterstown, was platted, all now parts of the city of Alton. Larger than any of these in 1818, however, was Milton, about three miles back from the Mississippi on Wood river. Here were to be found a store, two sawmills, a gristmill, and a distillery. John Mason Peck, who visited Upper Alton in February, 1819, in search of a loca- tion for a boarding school found "between forty and fifty fam- ilies, living in log-cabins, shanties, covered wagons, and camps. Probably not less than twenty families were destitute of houses; but were getting out materials and getting up shelters with indus- try and enterprise." Mason, who was here in December, 1819, was struck by the fact that "within five miles there are five towns, as they are called, but all insignificant and improperly placed. Their names are Milton, Alton, Middle Alton, Lower Alton and Sales." In another place, however, he refers to Milton as "a flourishing little village only one and a half years old." Dana, in his Geographical Sketches (1819) writes of Alton, not specifying which village he meant: "Nearly 100
"History of Madison County (1882), 333; Dana, Geographical Sketches, 143; Mason, Narrative, 63; James, Territorial Records, 26.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
decent houses are already erected. The spirit of enterprise dis- played by the settlers, who are mostly from the eastern states, and the natural advantages attached to the place, point out this town as a stand where small capitals in trade may be profitably vested." Milton he describes as containing "about 50 houses, and although it seems to flourish, it is considered an unhealthy situation. The creek here drives both a grist and saw mill; each of which do great business."95
Filling in the gap of 24 miles between Madison and Craw- ford counties was Bond county, which stretched like a ribbon from six miles south of the modern Bond county northward to the state line. Here also only the three southern tiers of town- ships, an area of 432 square miles, were within the line of survey. The number of families living in the county in the early summer of 1818, according to the census schedule, was 212, and the total population was 1,384, of whom 15 were servants or slaves. No supplementary census appears to have been taken, but the final report to the convention was 1,398. Nearly all these people were living along the southward flowing streams in the southern part of the county. About four-fifths of them appear to have been within the surveyed district, which would make the density of this tract less than three to the square mile. Above the line of survey from forty to fifty families established themselves, mainly on Shoal and Hurricane creeks. Up the former the set- lers had pushed as far north as the vicinity of Hillsboro in Mont- gomery county, and on Hurricane creek there was a group of settlements in what is now Fayette county and another in the southeastern part of Montgomery.
When Bond county was established in 1817, a site "on the Harricane [sic] Fork of the Kaskaskia river, one mile from its junction, and 214 miles from Pope's Bluff" was selected for the seat of justice. This was in the southeastern corner of Fayette county. In October according to the Intelligencer, the county commissioners advertised a sale of lots at the proposed town of Perryville, but there was probably no settlement there at the time, for the sale was to take place "at Hill's Station on Shoal creek."
"Lippincott, "Early Days in Madison County," nos. 2-4; History of Madi- son County (1881), 374-376; Babcock, Memoir of Peck, 154; Mason, Narra- tive. 64, 66; Dana, Geographical Sketches, 142.
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Pope's Bluff was projected at a site on the Kaskaskia a mile or two above the mouth of Hurricane creek and aspired to be the capital of the state. Another paper town was Ripley "situated on Shoal creek, a navigable stream of the Kaskaskia river, and about 33 miles from the great river Mississippi . There is near this town several valuable mills, a grist mill and saw mill, which will do business nearly the whole year." The sale of lots was to take place May 30, 1818. Ripley was also a can- didate for the location of the state capital. None of these places had enough settlers in 1818 to justify its being termed a village. There may have been a log courthouse and a jail and a few houses in Perryville but the establishment of Fayette county in 1821 necessitated the removal of the county seat, and the town faded away.
CHAPTER IV
THE PIONEERS
The first settlers within the limits of the present state of Illinois were Frenchmen, mainly from Can- ada, who, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, established themselves in a number of vil- lages on the American bottom along the Mississippi river. During the French régime these people consisted of two classes, the habitants, igno- rant and improvident, engaged largely in the fur trade as voyageurs, and the gentry, as George Rogers Clark called them, many of whom had come from the better classes in France and Can- BACKWOODSMAN ada, who had acquired considerable [From Hall, Forty Etchings, owned by Illinois State Histor- ical Library] property, either before or after com- ing to Illinois, and who lived lives of refinement despite their wilderness surroundings. The disordered conditions in the Illi- nois country from the time of the British occupation in 1765 until about the close of the century caused nearly all the more enterprising among the French to cross the Mississippi to Span- ish territory. It is doubtful if there were more than fifteen hun- dred people of French descent living in Illinois in 1818 and practically all these belonged to the habitant class. Most of them were natives of the country for there had been very little immi- gration of Frenchmen after 1760. Besides those living in and about the towns of Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher, and Kaskaskia, there were a few on the eastern side of the territory, in what is
(88)
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THE PIONEERS
now Lawrence county, who had crossed over the Wabash from the Vincennes settlement.96
A traveler from Philadelphia, who visited the villages in the American bottom in 1819, described the residents of Cahokia as "half French, half Indian, retaining part of the manners of both." To him the French in general appeared "to be a wretched set of beings. Their great-coats are made out of a blanket, with a cap or hood out of the same piece. Then moccasins and leggins complete the suit. Uncover a Frenchman's head and his friends are immediately alarmed for his health. The pig pens in Penn- sylvania are generally as clean and much better built than the miserable huts occupied by these lazy people. In a state of almost starvation they hold their Gumbo balls twice a week. For nimbleness of foot and lightness of heart the French have never been surpassed." In Prairie du Rocher, the traveler found the houses of "the most antique and mean appearance, built of the barks of trees and puncheons, slabs, etc., often with- out doors. Their windows are without sashes, but small pieces of broken glasses of all shapes pasted ingeniously together with paper serve to admit the light upon a motley family, between white, red and black. Many of those wretched hovels are ready to tumble down on the heads of starving Indians, French and negroes, all mixed together. Negro-French is the common lan- guage of this town. Indeed, unless you can speak some French it is with much difficulty you can find any person who can under- stand you." The writer was given to looking on the dark side of the picture, and in concluding his narrative, he felt it neces- sary to add: "When I have expressed an opinion which appears not to have been liberal, it is intended to apply to the lower class, of whom there is a large majority . . . although some of the French are rich, liberal and gentlemanly men, yet this
"Alvord, Cahokia Records, XV-XXI; Alvord, Illinois: the Origins, 9-12, 18. The estimates of the number of French in Illinois are usually exaggerations. One reminiscent writer states that in 1818 they comprised "nearly a fourth part of the inhabitants." Brown, "Early History of Illinois," in Fergus His- torical Series, no. 14:82. Daniel Pope Cook asserted in 1817, however, that they made up only a tenth of the population, which would be between three and four thousand, Intelligencer, November 27, 1817; while Governor Ford estimates them at "some two thousand." History of Illinois, 35.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
memorandum is strictly correct when applied to the general mass."97
Governor Ford, who lived in Monroe county from 1805 on, and who was thus in a position to observe the French inhabitants, has left an excellent picture of these people as he remembered them. "The original settlers had many of them intermarried with the native Indians," he writes, "and some of the descend- ants of these partook of the wild, roving disposition of the savage, united to the politeness and courtesy of the Frenchman. In the year 1818, and for many years before, the crews of keel boats on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were furnished from the Frenchmen of this stock. Many of them spent a great part of their time, in the spring and fall seasons, in paddling their canoes up and down the rivers and lakes in the river bottoms, on hunting excursions, in pursuit of deer, fur, and wild fowl, and generally returned home well loaded with skins, fur, and feathers, which were with them the great staples of trade. Those who stayed at home, contented themselves with cultivating a few acres of Indian corn, in their common fields, for bread, and providing a supply of prairie hay for their cattle and horses. No genuine Frenchman, in those days, ever wore a hat, cap, or coat. The heads of both men and women were covered with Madras cotton handkerchiefs, which were tied around, in the fashion of night-caps. For an upper covering of the body the men wore a blanket garment, called a 'capot,' (pronounced cappo) with a cap to it at the back of the neck, to be drawn over the head for a protection in cold weather, or in warm weather to be thrown back upon the shoulders in the fashion of a cape. Notwithstanding this people had been so long separated by an immense wilderness from civilized society, they still retained all the suavity and politeness of their race. And it is a remarkable fact, that the roughest hunter and boatman amongst them could at any time appear in a ballroom, or other polite and gay assembly, with the carriage and behavior of a well-bred gentle- man. The French women were remarkable for the sprightliness of their conversation and the grace and elegance of their manners.
"7Mason, Narrative, 53-56, 74.
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THE PIONEERS
And the whole population lived lives of alternate toil, pleasure, innocent amusement, and gaity.
"Their horses and cattle, for want of proper care and food for many generations, had degenerated in size, but had acquired addi- tional vigor and toughness ; so that a French pony was a proverb for strength and endurance. These ponies were made to draw, sometimes one alone, sometimes two together, one hitched before the other, to the plough, or to carts made entirely of wood, the bodies of which held about double the contents of the body of a common large wheel-barrow. The oxen were yoked by the horns instead of the neck, and in this mode were made to draw the plough and cart. Nothing like reins were ever used in driv- ing; the whip of the driver, with a handle about two feet, and a lash two yards long, stopped or guided the horse as effectually as the strongest reins.
"The French houses were mostly built of hewn timber, set upright in the ground, or upon plates laid upon a wall, the inter- vals between the upright pieces being filled with stone and mortar. Scarcely any of them were more than one story high, with a porch on one or two sides, and sometimes all around, with low roofs extending with slopes of different steepness from the comb in the centre to the lowest part of the porch. These houses were generally placed in gardens, surrounded by fruit-trees of apples, pears, cherries, and peaches; and in the villages each enclosure for a house and garden occupied a whole block or square, or the greater part of one. Each village had its Catholic church and priest. The church was the great place of gay resort on Sun- days and holidays, and the priest was the adviser and director and companion of all his flock."
Unlike the American settlers, most of whom lived on isolated farms, the French lived close together in their village commu- nities, where they could enjoy the society of their fellows and the privileges of their religion. Despite the abundance of land, the common field system of agriculture had been transplanted from France, and outside each village was to be found the commons of woodland and pasture for the whole village and the common field with its long narrow strips of arable land allotted to the
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
individual inhabitants of the village. Originally the conduct of agricultural operations had been regulated by village assemblies, held usually on Sundays before the door of the church and presided over by a syndic elected by the inhabitants. By 1818, however, the influx of Americans in some of the villages and the purchase by them of allotments had introduced an element of confusion, and legislative enactments were necessary to adjust the system to the changed conditions.98
Forming as they did so small a proportion of the population, it is not to be expected that the French would play any considerable part in the political and economic development of Illinois. The conflict between the two elements, French and American, for the control of the Illinois country had ended a generation before 1818; and the unprogressive French, who remained in the American bot- tom after that contest was over, understood little of American ideals and took practically no part in the successive territorial governments.99 Only one French name is to be found in the lists of officeholders during this period, that of Pierre Menard; and he was a recent arrival from Canada. Although their influence upon the development of the state was so slight that it may be disregarded, the French continued to form for many years a picturesque element in the population of Illinois.100
The American occupation of Illinois may be said to have begun with the advent of traders and land speculators from the eastern colonies during the British régime, 1765 to 1778. The occupa- tion of the French villages by George Rogers Clark and his troops during the revolution introduced a new element, for a number of Virginians became permanent settlers in the country. It was only very slowly that emigrants drifted in from the east during the last decade of the eighteenth century; and while there was a decided increase in population from 1800 to 1810, 2,458 to 12,282, the outbreak of Indian hostilities in 1811, fol-
"Brown, "Early History of Illinois," in Fergus Historical Series, no. 14: 83; Thorpe, Constitutions, 2:981-982; Laws of 1819, p. 122; American State Papers, Public Lands, 3:432; Ford, History of Illinois, 36-37.
"Alvord, Cahokia Records, introduction; Dunn, Indiana, 270.
100For a description of the French villages and their inhabitants in 1836, see Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 27:19-12I.
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THE PIONEERS
lowed by the war of 1812, almost completely checked emigra- tion to the whole northwestern frontier. With the advent of peace in 1815 and the opening of the land sales in 1814 and 1816, immigration received a great impetus, and Illinois expe- rienced her first real "boom." By this time the choice loca- tions in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky had either been filled by settlers or bought up by speculators, and consequently Illinois and Missouri became a veritable promised land for emigrants. From a population of approximately 15,000 in 1815 Illinois had by midsummer of 1818 increased to a population of about 35,000, and by the end of the year she had almost if not quite 40,000. The Illinois of 1818 was, then, a very new community. Less than half the inhabitants had lived there three years, and not quite a third had been in the region as long as ten years. For only four years had it been possible to purchase government land in the territory and for only two years had such land been available to newcomers outside the Shawneetown district.101
Who were these people who flocked to southern Illinois in such numbers in the last years of the territorial period? Where did they come from and what manner of people were they? Why did they leave their former homes and why did they select Illinois for their new home? To none of these questions can simple definite answers be given, but some evidence can be brought to bear upon them. From the schedules of the census of 1818, supplemented by poll lists, petitions, and other reliable records, it has been possible to compile a list of the names of 6,020 people resident in Illinois in the year 1818, nearly all of whom were heads of families.102 From county histories and all other available sources, information about the birthplace or former residence of 716, or nearly twelve per cent of those thus listed, has been secured. Generalization based upon so small a proportion cannot be altogether reliable, but it is believed that the figures throw some light on the antecedents of the people who were living in Illinois in the year in which it became a state.
101Boggess, Settlement of Illinois, chs. 3, 4. On the land sales see above, p. 49-54.
102It is expected that this list with such data as is available about the in- dividuals will be published shortly by the Illinois State Historical Library.
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ILLINOIS IN 1818
Combining data as to nativity with that for earliest known residence when birthplace is unknown, it appears that 273 or thirty-eight per cent of those of known antecedents came from the southern states, Virginia being credited with 94, North Caro- lina with 84, South Carolina with 40, Georgia with 29, and Maryland with 26. Almost the same number, 267, or thirty- seven per cent, were from the western states. One hundred and fifty, or over half of them came from Kentucky; this is a
FLAX AND SPINNING WHEELS [Originals owned by W. O. Converse, Springfield]
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