USA > Illinois > DeKalb County > Past and present of DeKalb County, Illinois, Volume I > Part 26
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78
These farmers all coming from Ohio, gave the grove its name. Of those old settlers only one is now living. JJohn Elliott, who lives in Ohio. Rus- sell Crossett was the first person who was buried in Ohio Grove cemetery. In the year 1837 Mr. Henry H. Gandy came to join them, walking all the way from Ohio, to the home of Mr. Elliott in Ohio Grove. On his way into Michigan City, In- diana, he found three dollars and bought him a pair of boots, the first he ever had, and wore them to finish his journey. Liking the country. he sent for his wife. Mrs. Lucinda Gandy, who came here in the fall of 183; with a brother of Mr. Gandy's, driving a four ox team and leading one horse. She is now living at the advanced age of ninety- two years. She is the oldest settler now living in the township of Cortland, and without a doubt. De Kalb county, and her son, Francis M. Gandy. who was born June 27. 1845, is the oldest settler living in the township, who was born here. They built a log house and made their chairs and tables from the trees. This farm, where Mrs. II. Il. Gandy still resides, and the farin of Mrs. George M. Kenyon. are the only farms in the township that has not changed hands.
The carly settlers knew something of the hard- ships of the old times, having to make their rude implements to start farming. The plow was all of wood except a cast iron point : the drags were made of trees, with wooden pointed teeth in them. These. together with a cradle and scythe, were the only implements. Zenos Churchill. one of the pioneers, devoted his time to making the wooden plows. The log houses in Ohio Grove and the
169
PAST AND PRESENT OF DE KALB COUNTY.
one built by the Roberts brothers in 1845, at Lost Grove, were about the only houses in the township at that time. These early settlers had to haul their wheat to Elgin to be made into flour. Their only means of marking the corn ground was by driving an ox, dragging a log chain across the field, later using a single shovel plow, then a corn marker, then our present check rower. H. Il. Gandy hanled the lumber from Chicago to build his first barn, fifty years ago, which is yet in con- stant use.
Those were days of hardship to the pioneer wife, she having to pick the wool and make it into woolen clothes for the family. spinning and weav- ing the flax to make linen cloth, bleaching the rye to make bonnets and hats-indeed, all their clothes were home made, even to their shoes. Mrs. H. H. Gandy, who has lived in this township sixty-one years, well remembers the Indian camp not more than a mile from their home, and she tells that when Mr. Elliott came here in 1835 he often saw the Indian papoose in a box. nailed to a tree, this being their way of burial.
In those days there was no observance of Thanksgiving day and but few Christmas gather- ings, their holiday gatherings being wool picking bees, quilting bees and corn husking bees. If any one was able to hire, the wages were from twenty- five to fifty cents per day. The only difference in money was, they used the silver sixpence and silver shilling. A good cow could be bought for ten dollars. Sixty-three years ago hogs were unknown in this township. Mr. Peter Young owning the first hog, and he did not have corn to fatten it, so he let Mr. George Gandy fatten it on shares. Only a few horses were in the township then. A few of the pioneers brought two or three with them, but used oxen almost entirely for farming.
Dwight Crossett, the school teacher and farmer, took up his abode in Cortland in early days, and as his recollections of forty years of residence are indicative of what has transpired there in the last half century, we give to our readers the pictures as worded from the gallery of his memory. Ile says : I arrived in Cortland township in Octo- ber. 1854, finding it possessed by the Churchills, Cheasbros, Elliotts, Daytons, Springs, Joslyns, Lovells. Kenyons. Meekers, Gandys, Goulds, Reeds, Clarks. Youngs, Palmers, Smiths. McAlpins, Wards. Hopkins, Burrs, Arnolds, Crossetts. Cham-
plins, Dows, Mattesons, Holdridges and others that I do not just call to mind. They were enjoying a veritable boom. They had gone through the long period of hauling their wheat to Chicago, some of them for twenty years or more, and getting home from their marketing with very little money, but now their tribulation was happily ended.
They had a market at their door, the railroad being built to Rochelle, and on account of the Cri- mean war wheat was worth a dollar and a half per bushel, and they could raise good crops of wheat. Land had quadrupled in value during the preced- ing year, money was plenty and good, everybody had dried "applesass" for breakfast, sugar in their tea, and they were the best feeling people on the face of the earth.
There were six schoolhouses in the township, the same little church near Ohio Grove that now stands, Cortland village being then in embryo, there being a small railroad, freight and office building there, a small, dashboard front store, in which Hod Champlin had a stock of general mer- chandise, with J. II. Rogers, the Sycamore vet- eran merchant, as general manager, and three or four other small buildings.
By the fall of 1856 Cortland had grown to be the best business point between Chicago and Ro- chelle. Two hotels had all they could attend to: there were five warehouses for handling grain, two large lumber yards that sold all the lumber consumed in five or six townships. Sycamore in- cluded. It was in fact a lively business town. The leading firms at that time were Champlin & Wal- rod, grain : Walrod & Boynton, general merchan- dise : Smith & Brown, general merchandise : A. L. Lovell did a very large lumber business ; Tucker, boots and shoes ; Woodly, shoe shop; T. Ricker, shoe making, with wagon and blacksmithing shops. The town also was headquarters for many carpen- ters and masons, Joe Adams, John Harkness, Abe Jlead, Ilarvey Jones, Adam Mather and many other carpenters lived here, while Parke Brothers were the chief masons.
The Ohio Grove church was then, as it has ever been, the central place for a large part of the peo- ple of the township to congregate. They had re- vival meetings there every winter, and it was dur- ing one of these meetings that the modern idea of worship was put forth-at least it is where I first heard it. Several good brothers and sisters had
170
PAST AND PRESENT OF DE KALB COUNTY.
tearfully told their experiences, and the young preachers in embryo had vied with each other in their speeches, when old Unele John L. Cheasbro. the father of all the Cheasbros, arose in his place. Ile was a very large and wonderfully clean man, and was now dressed in a fine new suit of broad- cloth. had just finished a nice new house ; in fact. had jumped in two years from a pinched condition to affluence, and this was his speech: "I prom- ised the Lord a good many years ago that when I got able I'd serve Him." The gist of the remain- der of the speech was, he felt the time had arrived and he stood ready and intended to carry out his part of the contract.
Champlin's Hall, built in the summer of 1856. witnessed many memorable scenes. When it was finished it was dedicated with a dance, and what a company! "Hod," as everyhody called him. was the leading citizen, McCormick's general agent for a large territory, an all-round hustler, political boss, a good promiser, very hospitable, and had lots of friends all over the country, particularly in Sycamore, and they were all at his dedication dance. J. S. and J. C. Waterman, C. O. and J. H. Boynton, General Winters, Dr. Bryan, two or three Ellwoods. ITarm Paine and almost all Syca- more who danced were there. There were enough brains and beauty at that dance to creditably grace the inauguration of the governor of the state. It was no dignified walk around. Gid Wal- vott fiddled and the company danced. The only thing I have seen in thirty years that compared with that dance was Josh Whitcomb's cotillion party in the "Old Homestead."
There was no daily paper then. The Chicago Democrat once a week and the De Kalb County Sentinel comprised the literary ontfit of most houses. but religious discussion was rampant in every shoe shop, store, and on the street. People were long on doctrine in those days and had de- cided opinion- on the question of universal salva- tion and everlasting damnation. The tension finally got so high that an arrangement was made to have an exhaustive discussion of the whole sub- ject in Champlin's Hall by the leading champions of the two sides in this section of the country. The Universalists summoned Elder Sanborn. a Sycamore preacher, to uphold salvation. Eldred Coltrin. a powerful Freewill Baptist preacher from Blackberry, was chosen to refute the arguments of
this adroit and plausible emissary of Satan. The school, which was held in the hall with a daily at- tendance of seventy-five pupils was dismissed, a timekeeper and referee were agreed upon and the champions, each finally idolized by their support- ers, went at it. Hod Champlin, old Uncle John Waterman, old Uncle Phin Joslyn, Nathan Peck and others giving aid and comfort to Sanborn; Deacon A. V. L. Smith, Dave Champlin. John Eaton. Edwin Burr and a score of others standing grim and determined by the heavy Baptist; nor did they lack for an audience. The hall was filled to suffocation morning, afternoon and evening for the larger part of a week, many coming ten or twelve miles, and still these champions kept hurl- ing text and argument, hour and hour about, the audience excited to a high pitch throughont. Both sides won. and it could have been proven at any time twenty-five years after the discussion took place. I doubt if such a discussion was adver- tised for a month now whether it would be at- tended by a score of people.
In the summer of 1859 or 1860 a mass meeting was called to assemble in this old hall to give ex- pression to the deep indignation felt by the com- munity over the border ruffian ontrages in Kansas. Dr. Dustin, D. B. James, General Winters. Chaun- cey Ellwood and pretty much every Sycamore ora- tor vied with each other in denunciation, when the chairman called Dave Champlin, a freshly or- dained Freewill Baptist preacher of Cortland. He was a man with a swinging style of gait and ora- tory, he saw his opportunity to discount the Syea- more talent and embraced it; he commenced his speech by saying in the most solemn and impress- ive manner: "Mr. Chairman, I feel that this is a time when every prayin' man oughter pray (then raising his arm above his head and bringing it down with all the emphasis possible), and eve y swearin' man onghter swear." This was a enl- mination that brought down the house in thunder- ous style, and I venture to say was the only thing uttered at the meeting that has gone into history.
One more old hall scene and we will consign the old room that was such an important part of Cortland to a receptacle of trumpery. In the summer of 1861 John Clark, an educated man, born in England. who had been railroad station ageni. and afterward bookkeeper for Champlin & Walrod, the father of Mrs. A. L. Smith, after mak-
171
PAST AND PRESENT OF DE KALB COUNTY.
ing a short speech in favor of unholding the gov- ernment, stepped to the table and signed his name to the volunteer list, the first man in the township to perform the patriotic act. Anson Smith, Smith Courtwright, Theodore Loring, Ransom Burleigh and two or three others soon followed, all going into the Thirteenth Regiment.
In the fall of 1862 ] was sought out by the poli- ticians of the county, made a candidate and elected by the people to the office of superintendent of schools, a. Douglas democrat being considered very nearly as good as a republican. The managers wanted to make a union ticket, and after a great deal of search to find a school master who was a democrat, Hod Champlin happened to think of me, and I was elected solely because I was a dem- ocrat, and I remember of no democrat who has been eligible to county office since. I received the records and papers from my predecessor, Nathan Greenwood, in a shoe box, which I took home and I think installed under the bed, room being scant inside my house. I will frankly say, if that office had been destroyed by fire at any time while in my possession I don't believe the educational standard would have been lowered more than one inch, while if a conflagration should consume the office now, after being elevated so many times, it would be like taking the educational bowels right out of the county.
But when one ridicules the schools of 1862 in De Kalb county they are making a great mistake. They were full of pupils, full of life and energy, taught by manly men and womanly women, capa- ble and having the disposition to do good work. MeGibeny and wife of Paw Paw, Gilbert Hough and Elizabeth Bark of Somonauk, the Dunbar girls of Afton, llieks brothers of Kingston, Ed Safford, J. T. Becker. Mrs. J. T. Becker. Eph- raim Shurtliff, Susan Harrington, Ed and Charles Waite, Isaac Jones. E. L. Mayo, the doctor, John Pratt, the attorney-these were among and a fair sample of the teachers who had charge of the schools at that time.
The most unique and picturesque character in the township was my nearest neighbor, Rudolphus Burr. He came from the state of New York along in the forties, was a man of good academic edu- cation, a very independent thinker, who associ- ated little with his neighbors, thoroughly honest in word and action, and lived mostly on horseback.
Along in the sixties he sent in his bid for carrying the mail from Cortland to Sandwich, three round trips a week ; he got the contract easily, as his bid was very low, and when he got rigged up for his enterprise the turnout was worth seeing. He had a brace of little yew-necked bay horses, an old democrat spring wagon with a home made cover, an overcoat made out of the hide of a brindle steer that had not been tanned, which made a fine contrast to his long white beard; but the mail had to go through storm and blizzard, and if, during the four years of his contract, it failed, it was after a heroic attempt to get through. He used to go to Cortland the night before the trip and get the mail bag, and leave his horses harnessed for an early start the next morning. One morn- ing I heard him calling long before my time of getting up, and on asking him what the matter was he said his horse was in the well. I hurried to his barn and found one of his horses with the harness on in the bottom of the seventeen foot well. The old man could not wait to see the horse out of the well, but harnessed another horse and took the mail, leaving the neighbors to get the horse out if they could. That was the kind of service the good people of Piercevile, Squaw Grove and Freeland Corners got from government contractors then. The old man used to take his dinner with him and always took a bottle of smartwced tea to wash down the lunch, and he thoroughly believed the smartwood tea preserved him. Honest old man ! Just think of a government contractor drinking smartwood tea as a beverage ! One grandson, Wil- bnr P. Raymond, inherited his genius for the mail service, and is a very proficient mail clerk on the Chicago & Northwestern Railway. He is now handling letters on the road between Caledonia and Spring Valley.
What of the main business of the people-farm- ing-from 1854 to 1899? From 1854 to toward 1840 the system was raising grain and selling it at the railroad station : prices fell in 1856, a money panie in 1857 made them go still lower: still, on the whole, lots of money came into the hands of the farmers. What became of it? It is safe to say that not five per cent of it is in sight today, for after paying what Mr. Altgeld calls the fixed charges it was mostly spent in pine boards to make the buildings. which were then considered comfort- able, but have since been discarded or turned to
172
PAST AND PRESENT OF DE KALB COUNTY.
interior nses, in board fences long since broken up and decayed. in fruit and ornamental trees and expensive farm machinery, which was not taken care of. Looking back from this date the whole system of farming and homemaking seems to have been one great waste. Cattle and horse- raising, swine growing and dairying, have all had a good share of attention since 1820, till the busi- ness of the township has been for the past fifteen years, and now is, principally dairying and hog raising. the milk largely being made into butter at Delana's l'actories, the balance being shipped to Chicago.
Out of all the years something has evolved. Very small children have grown into teachers, preach- ers, members of congress, railroad managers, prom- inent business men and good citizens, filling places of trust and responsibility in this and other states. The record in this respect has been good. Daniel Boynton, who never went to school anywhere but in Cortland, went to Chicago as an errand boy in the office of a fast freight line, and was general manager of the Wisconsin Central Railway when he died ten years ago. Everybody knows the ca- reer of A. J. Hopkins. He was polished off a very little at a kind of bran bread institution over in Michigan, which may account for his vagaries, but his sterling qualities were absorbed from the soil of Cortland. Will Me Alpin, quite a fellow in his line, a natural mathematician, was born, nour- ished and matured here. Professor 1. N. Talbot of the State University is a sprout of the soil. Carlin Joslyn of Deer Lodge, Montana, a very successful business man, and his brother. a lawyer of Minneapolis : Clarence Burdick. long and popu- lar passenger condnetor on the Alton railroad: Dr. Postle. of Hinckley: Professor Lewis and Lawyer Rogers, of Sycamore ; Lawyer Julius Matteson, of De Kalb, were all born and schooled in Cortland, besides the scores of boys in the commoner walks of life, who are a credit to their town.
A few more facts of interest concerning Cort- land's history before we close. The first log school- house in the township was in the Ohio Grove, with Harry Joslyn as teacher. he receiving about twelve dollars per month and boarding around the dis- trict. Mr. Joslyn is now living in Sycamore.
The first postoffice in the township was estab- lished in the Ohio Grove in the year 1841. Mr. Samuel Spring being postmaster, receiving two
dollars and twenty-two cents that year. In 1847 Homer Roberts became postmaster, receiving seven dollars and eleven cents. In 1849 he received fourteen dollars and fifty-nine cents, and in 1851 seventeen dollars and nine cents. In this same year another postoffice was established, called Lost Grove postoffice, on Luce's corners, with Chauncey Luce as postmaster. receiving twenty dollars and seventeen cents. This postoffice was continued un- til 1855, when Cortland station had its first post- office, paying thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents.
The village settlement was not begun until 1853. when the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad was built through this part of the county. It was then called the Dixon Air Line. Prior to the opening of this road the name of the township was Richland, then Pampas, and in the year 1868 the legislature changed the name of the township from Pampas to correspond with that of the town, namely. to Cortland.
Mr. Marcenus Hall erected the first house, using it as a boarding house. It still remains, being how the Haley and Murphy houses. Mr. Horace Champlin built a warehouse, standing where our feed mill now stands. Business was exceedingly good now that the railroad was built, and there were sixteen grain buyers at one time in Cort- land. Farmers from Belvidere and Shabbona Grove hauled their grain here, thinking this a great advantage, for before this their market place was Chicago. An amusing incident is told by one old farmer, who, coming into Cortland with a load of grain, found that at least forty loads were in line, waiting their turn to unload. He saw one farmer, in haste to unload, pull out from the middle of the line and drive directly to the warehouse. This was all done quietly, and two of the men jumped from the front wagons, and just as quietly turned his horses around. and soon he was at the foot of the line.
It was in one room in this warehouse that the first school in the village was kept. with Helen Crossett and Fanny Thrasher as teachers. Soon a log schoolhouse was built near the south cor- poration line. Soon after this a frame one was built on the north side of town, where Mrs. John Woodley's house now stands. That same building is now Mr. T. W. Jordan's general merchandise
113
PAST AND PRESENT OF DE KALB COUNTY.
store. Church services were held in the old log schoolhouse until June, 1864, when our present Methodist church was completed. Our graded school building was built in the year 1868. The log schoolhouse does service now as a barn on what was known as Mr. De Witt Joslyn's farm.
A hotel was built by Mr. Ludwigson and man- aged by the Raymond brothers. A brewery was built. as were also several general merchandise stores, Horace Champlin and James Waterman being the pioneers in this trade in 1854.
When the Sycamore and Cortland road was com- pleted all travel from the northern portions of the county went to the county seat. This was built in 1861. At first it was only a car drawn by horses, but it is now a fine four-mile railroad in good condition. Soon after this a large flouring mill was built by Lovell. Smith & Croof, the town giving a bonus of two thousand dollars. The first justice of the peace was Mr. Amos Brown, now a resident of De Kalb. The first person buried in the Cortland cemetery was Mrs. Cynthia Bates, mother of Mr. William J. Bates, who was one of the early settlers of Cortland, re- siding here over fifty years. Mrs. Gershom Hold- ridge and Mrs. Wayne Holdridge have lived in Cortland over fifty years. At that time not a house was in the township of Pierce.
The record of Cortland in the war for the union is honorable in the extreme, one hundred and thirty-four having enlisted from the township. and sixteen of that number laid down their lives for their country: Ruthven Russell, Alonzo Rus- sell, Robert Close, W. Stark. Charles Plapper, Spafford Deford. John Young, Charles F. Ban- nister, Charles V. Peck. Oliver Wilson, Emory Marshall, George H. Gould, T. D. Packard, W. H. Rose and Morris R. Wilson. The township raised twelve thousand, one hundred and three dollars for war purposes.
The early days of the town were the most pros- perous, for its proximity to Sycamore and De Kalb. the county seat and factory center, impeded its progress, and Cortland today is much the same as it was twenty years ago. The trades are repre- sented by one butcher shop, one creamery receiving seven thousand pounds of milk a day, two black- smith shops. one shoe shop. one barber shop, a feed mill, two general merchandise stores. coal
and lumberyards and three restaurants. Two churches, one Methodist and one of the Latter Day Saints, grace the town. It has a fine public school building of three rooms and for several years W. W. Coultas has been the efficient prin- cipal. The village has encouraging prospects of being a station on the proposed Geneva Lake, Syea- more & Southern Electric railway. It has a popu- lation of four hundred inhabitants.
Cortland's early days were her best days, but no better people lived then than now, and the little town of four hundred inhabitants contains many congenial people, whose quiet and uneventful way of living brings more enjoyment than is the lot of those in more hustling places.
A small stable covered with slough grass. with the tilled fields in all shapes, following the dry ground, looking as though the farmer was trying to draw a map with his plow-this prospect has been transformed into square corn fields flanked with square fields of clover and grass and adorned with substantial houses and barns, the houses lit- erally filled with newspapers and other litera- ture. Instead of discussing universal salvation and everlasting damnation, it's "what shall be done with the Philippine islands?" The change in Cortland township is truly wonderful.
Supervisors from Cortland township: David F. Finley, 1850-52 : Austin Hayden, 1853; David F. Finley. 1854: Horace S. Champlin. 1855-8; Alon- zo L. Lovell. 1859-61 ; P. S. Coolidge. 1862; Jacob R. Crossett, 1863-65: Edwin Gilson, 1866: John Wright, 1867-8: A. V. L. Smith, 1871-2: Dwight Crossett. 1873-4: William Raymond, 1875-70: Dwight Crossett, 1878-81 : Theodore Balis, 1882-9 : Thomas Holland, 1889-1902; Byron Williams, 1902-06 ; John Francisco, 1902.
The village of Cortland was incorporated in 1866. The president of the board of trustees, by virtue of his office, is also a member of the board of supervisors. Those who have served are the following: T. T. Peck, John King. B. MeGough. Jabez Gwinup, John King, Nathan Peck, John T. Woodley. George W. Savery, John T. Woodley, John King, William Bates and Thomas Jordan. This township was first called Richmond. It was changed to Pampas by J. R. Crossett. an early county school commissioner, from the resemblance of its prairies to the pampas of South America.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.