USA > Illinois > Marshall County > Past and present of Marshall and Putnam Counties, Illinois > Part 10
USA > Illinois > Putnam County > Past and present of Marshall and Putnam Counties, Illinois > Part 10
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
Those who live now in Roberts township with the thriving towns, its churches and school houses, its telephones and rural mail delivery, and its neighbors every half mile or less, can not form much idea of what it was to live here in the '30s. At that time there was no store at which anything could be bought, nor was there anything that could be sold to bring any money. Neither were there any neighbors where you could run over and borrow what was needed. The first settlers were
55
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
absolutely alone. There were no mills and their food consisted largely of corn, pounded as fine as they could pound it, mixed with water, often without salt, which was very expensive, and that baked on a board before the fire. This with what wild game, which fortunately was plenty, varied in the summer with a few vegetables, was their diet.
Nor were their homes any better adapted to their wants, a log cabin, generally 14x16, with a roof made of "clapboards" split from a tree. A log was cut about four feet long and then split in sections about five inches wide and then again split to the thickness of about a half-inch. When the cabin was built, after getting up about seven feet, shorter logs were used at the ends forming a gable and the clapboards fastened on, sometimes with wooden pins, for nails were scarce. Rough doors were made but there was no glass for win- dows and consequently no windows. The door was left open for light. Often there was no floor but the earth and the clapboard roof was not al- ways of the tightest and it can be imagined what kind of, a place it was after a rain or snow which, with a driving wind, was generally worse than rain.
Up to 1835 there were no markets in the state for anything but furs, and the skins of wild ani- inals which could be bartered for a few staple groceries and powder and lead, and sometimes a little money, and the only place in this section where that could be done was Hennepin.
Up to the building of the canal there was no market for grain nearer than Chicago and then only for wheat, which brought from twenty-five to thirty cents a bushel.
The experience of Livingston Roberts, one of the earliest and best known settlers in Roberts township, is a case in point. About 1830 Mr. Roberts went to Chicago with a load of oats. His "outfit" was three yoke of oxen, a "prairie schoon- er" wagon, blanket, axe, camp kettle and flint and steel for making fire and gun. The first night he camped on the Vermillion river. He had seen no settlers or other sign of improvement. The next day he reached Ottawa, which at that time con- tained three log cabins, where he camped the sec- ond night. The next day he made Holderman's grove where he found a single settler. The fourth night out he camped by a big spring near the present village of Plattville and the fifth night camped on the banks of the Du Page, and on the
sixth night camped on the Summit. The only signs of civilization were two cabins in the fringe of timber. The next day he drove into Chicago, but the city which today contains over two million inhabitants, seventy-five years ago consisted of two frame dwellings and one store, the barracks, where a company of soldiers were stationed, and a little cluster of huts occupied by a few French and half breeds. He was unable to sell his oats in Chi- cago but found a man a few miles up the north branch and disposed of them to him, taking a greyhound as part pay.
Mr. Roberts followed "teaming," which for sev- eral years was quite a business, between Chicago and the towns that were springing up all over the state, it being about the only way goods could be procured. They would take a load of grain on the up trip and load back with grocerics, such as were in demand at that time, though hundreds of the things now sold in grocery stores were unknown at that time. Salt was one of the most common necessaries at that time. It was heavy and bulky to haul but they had to have it. It cost from $1.00 to $1.25 a barrel in Chicago, but the expensive hauling brought up the cost at its destination to prices ranging from $6.00 to $7.00, and the prices of other things were raised in pro- portion, and it may readily be supposed that the people were not extravagant in buying, as the prices of everything they had to sell were extreme- ly low. Good horses, $30 and $40; cows, $10 and $12; oats and corn, 10 cents a bushel; butter, 5 cents ; eggs, 21/2 in trade, while wild game could not be sold at all. A "saddle" of a large deer- the two hind quarters-was well sold if it brought 50 cents. Because this history of the privations of the early settlers has been sketched in the his- tory of Roberts township it must not be supposed they alone suffered them. They were the common lot of all the earliest settlers and all those who came into this county before 1845 were compelled to put up with them to a greater or less extent.
CHAPTER XIX.
EVANS TOWNSHIP.
Evans township is situated directly east of Roberts and is the northeast township of the county. Its government designation is Town 30 N., R. 1, E. of the 3d P. M.
56
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
It has thirty-six full sections and every acre of it is susceptible of high cultivation and it is in fact one of the best townships in the county. Sandycreek, which flows entirely across the ex- treme northern part of Marshall county, through Roberts and Hopewell townships and empties into the Illinois river opposite Henry, has its begin- ning in the extreme northeastern part of Evans township, in fact in the northeast quarter of section one and flows through about a mile south of the north line of the township, which is also the county line. Consequently the land in the northern part of the township is somewhat roll- ing and was somewhat timbered. It is well drained and exceedingly fertile and was an ideal country to those who early sought for homes in this western country. And we find that when these lands were surveyed by the government in 1834 it was the most thickly settled section in Marshall county.
Up to 1835 the settlers had no legal claim what- ever to the lands they settled upon. They were not surveyed till 1834 and it was not till the next session of congress in 1835 they were put on the market and could be bought. After that they could be "entered" for $1.25 an acre and the "pre-emption" was also passed the same year, which gave an actual settler upon a piece of land a first chance of entry, though if he did not avail himself of it any one could enter it from under him. Even in those early days there were land speculators that were ready to snap up land, espe- cially in the settlements, when they could get a chance, but there was a kind of unwritten law or tacit agreement among the settlers to protect each other in what they considered their rights, and speculators were given to understand it would not be healthy to undertake to jump claims, and while the settlers had been much alarmed there was very little trouble in this section from that source, and all that were able to secured their lands and those that were not able sold their claims to others better supplied with wealth. When the lands were surveyed another trouble arose which promised to create a good deal of fric- tion. It was found that the government lines did not correspond with the lines the settlers had laid out for themselves.
To remedy this they did the very best thing they could do. A public meeting was held Aug- ust 7, 1837, and after a calm discussion of the matter a resolution was adopted "that each settler
should have the land he had selected" and Thomas Judd, Joshua Evans and James Caldwell were appointed a committee to fix upon a method to bring about that result. They reported on August 26 that the original claims should be respected and that each settler should deed the others, the parts that lapped over, and this was accordingly done, and though it caused almost innumerable conveyances, no disputes arose and that is the reason there are some very odd shaped pieces of land in Evans township.
In the spring of 1830 Joshua Evans hired a cabin built on the north side of Sandy, giving a rather valuable mare for it. During that summer came James Reynolds, Thomas Dixon, John S. Hunt, John Darnell, Lemuel Gaylord, John Grif- fith, Stewart Ward and Kirby and Jeremiah Har- tenbower.
The next season, 1831, Justus, Ira, Barton and Abram Jones, Thomas Judd, Mr. Ransberger, Mr. Simpson and Abram Darnell settled in the same neighborhood.
In 1832 the Black Hawk war was on, which stopped immigration for awhile, as the most fear- ful stories of Indian massacres were rife all over the land.
The settlers determined to build a fort to pro- tect themselves and families, and the next day they all met with spades, axes and guns, and in a couple of days had their fort built. They dug a deep trench and, using split logs, made a stockade ten feet high around a patch of ground large enough to hold comfortably over a hundred peo- ple, which was perforated on all sides with loop- holes to shoot through. Inside of this a well was dug, so that they would have plenty of water. Inside of this about twenty families gathered. Fortunately, they were not called upon to defend it and in a few weeks word came that peace was restored and the settlers returned to their homes.
The first election in Marshall county was one held in "Sandy Precinct" on March 30, 1833. The township at that time was under the jurisdic- tion of La Salle county.
The officers to be elected were two justices of the peace and two constables. There were fifteen votes cast, and Justus Jones and Richard Hunt were elected justices, and Barton Jones and George Martin constables.
In 1843 townships 29 and 30, lying directly east of the third principal meridian, now Evans and Bennington, took a vote as to whether they
57
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
should be attached to Marshall county. They had never been a part of Putnam county, as Marshall was, and by unanimous vote decided to do so, the principal reason being they were so far from the county seat, then as now, Ottawa. It might be the want of companionship had something to do with it, for while there were respectable settlements in Roberts and Belle Plain townships on the west, there was not a single settler in the two town- ships on the east. One of the wants severely felt in a new settlement is the want of lumber. As we have already said, the roofs were covered with clapboards ; the floors, where there were any, were made of puncheons. Puncheons were made by splitting a log into halves and then with an ax hewing them as· straight and smooth as possible. They were laid into a floor by laying down poles and with the ax chipping till they would lay as flat and even as it might be. Some inade fairly good, smooth floors of them, others not so good. Much of the furniture was also made by the carly pioneers with ax and auger, which, with a froe, an instrument used for riving clapboards, generally comprised the "kit" of tools. Sometimes a man was lucky enough to own a hand saw and a draw- ing knife, and men would go five and six miles and sometimes farther to borrow them.
We have said a good deal of the furniture was made with the ax and auger; for instance, a man wanted a bedstead, he would take his auger and bore into the logs of the side of his house, one at the head and one at the foot of the bed, the height he wanted the bed, then cut two poles, one the length of the width of the bed and one for the length he wanted; cut a stick for a leg, boring holes the right height to receive his poles and then all he had to do was to drive his poles into the leg and insert the other ends into the holes in the log and the bedstead was finished. Sticks and brush could be laid over it, or a bed cord, if he was fortunate enough to have one, could be put on. It was crude and rough, no doubt, but the sleep got on it was as sound and sweet as on the most expensive of modern bedsteads. For chairs and tables a piece of puncheon, with legs driven in, would serve, while a buttery could be made by inserting a few pins in the logs and put- ting up a few clapboards for shelves. It is an old saying "that necessity is the mother of invention," and the circumstances in which the pioneers found themselves sharpened their wits.
· The distress for the want of lumber continued
till 1838, when Joshua Evans put up a sawmill on Sandy, near where the Methodist church now stands, and the same year John S. Hunt put up one farther down the creek. John Evans, a very ingenious man, had put up a turning lathe, from which he furnished table and chair legs, etc., and he also made splint bottomed chairs that were serviceable and lasting.
While the northern part of Evans township is quite rolling and somewhat heavily timbered, the southern part is a beautiful prairie, an insignifi- cant creek or run traverses its western part and numerous draws, or what were sloughs in the early days, are found there, but the land mostly may be said to be smooth prairie. The large prairies were considered in the early days as little better than swamps, and it must be said that in a wet time they were pretty muddy and it was hard work for a team to draw an empty wagon through them; for that reason they were shunned by the early settlers, who made their homes where the land was more rolling and where they were handy to timber, and it was not till 1845 that any one was bold enough to build out on the open prairie. In that year a man by the name of Alexander built out a mile or more from the timber line and it was several years before he had any ncar neighbors. Mr. Alexander brought with him a herd of thoroughbred short horn cat- tle, the first introduction of this excellent breed of cattle for which Marshall county has become so famous in the past few years. But the lands that were supposed to be almost worthless proved to be superior to all others. Other settlers rapidly came in and systems of drainage were established. Hundreds of dollars were spent for tile drains, and now the most valuable lands to be found any- where are in what was the once despised prairie.
Evans township is traversed by two railroads ; the Illinois Central extends the most of the way along its eastern border and the Chicago & Alton through the center of the southern half. At the crossing of the two roads is situated Wenona, now one of the most flourishing towns or rather cities in the county.
When the Illinois Central railroad was laid out in 1852, the place where Wenona stands was se- lected as a station. It was then in the midst of an immense prairie, with not a settler or house within miles of it. The first house was a shanty for the accommodation of the workmen and was built in 1852. The next year the road was com-
58
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
pleted from La Salle and a depot and freight house was built, also a fair sized dwelling house for the agent and a postoffice established, and the station agent, G. W. Goodell was appointed post- master. A store was started and a few persons built there.
In May, 1855, the town was laid off and at that time there were nine houses and about fifty in- habitants. For a few years it did not grow much. It was not at that time a very inviting place. Situated in a treeless plain, the ground low and in a wet time the roads and streets almost impassable, it did not hold out many inducements for persons to come there.
But as the railroad brought settlers to take up the neighboring farms the town began to fill up and it became a shipping point for all the country round.
In 1857 a village government was organized and a system of improvements was begun, and from 1859, when the town was incorporated, it grew rapidly ; stores were built and stocks brought in, shops were established, and a fine trade began to grow up with the surrounding country, which was rapidly filled up.
A great change has come over Wenona from the bare, treeless place it was in its early days. It is now one of the handsomest towns in the county. It is laid out with regularity on both sides of the railroad, the principal part of the city being west of it. As the railroad runs at a small angle, about fifteen degrees west of north, the streets are laid to correspond with it, the north and south streets running parallel to the railroad and the east and west streets crossing at right angles. Tile drains have been put in, that have, to a great extent, overcome the mud they had to contend with in the beginning.
The treeless condition of earlier years has also passed away and no city in the county can boast of more shade trees or finer ones than Wenona. As you approach it, it has the appearance of being set in a forest. Much of the transformation of Wenona from a treeless prairie town to a city of beautiful shade trees is due to the æsthetic tastes and indomitable energy of the Hon. John O. Dent, a son of one of the earliest settlers on Sandy, and who had, before the town was thought of, entered the land adjoining the town, if he did not enter the land the town stands on. Almost from the very starting of the town Mr. Dent saw the need of shade trees, and procuring bushels of the seeds of
the deciduous trees that grow in this section, the principal ones being maple, hackberry, elm, box elder, buckeye and locust, he started a nursery. After Mr. Dent got his trees to growing he labored hard and long with the inhabitants to set them out. He charged a nominal price for them, but where a man would not take them otherwise, he gave them, and he also donated them to churches and other public places and superintended the set- ting of them out.
In 1871 a company was organized in which Mr. Dent was one of the principal advisers and pro- moters to start the movement for a fair. A meet- ing was called April 22, 1871, at which the fol- lowing resolution was unanimously adopted : "Resolved, That the Evans Farmers' Club will heartily co-operate with the people of Wenona and surrounding townships to aid in getting up a Union Township Fair, to be held in Wenona the fall of 1871."
Several practical men of Wenona, John O. Dent being one, outlined the following plan, which was carried out and placed the Wenona Union Fair upon a permanent basis and made it a splendid success.
The society was to issue shares of twenty-five dollars each, no man to hold more thon one share, and each one to obligate himself to pay in such amount as might be needed. The society was to purchase fifty acres of land, near Wenona, fence it and make the necessary improvements.
A constitution embodying these features was adopted and the necessary officers elected. A subscription list showed two hundred and twenty names and five thousand five hundred dollars collected, sufficient at that time to buy the neces- sary land and make the necessary improvements. The fifty-five acres were bought and a good fence and substantial buildings erected, also a fine racing track made during the summer, and October 3d to 6th, inclusive, was set for the coming fair. A pros- pectus and a premium list with twenty thousand dollars in prizes were sent out and the fair was a huge success. Nor did it, by any means, stop there. Grand fairs, both in the number of ex- hibits and attendance, were held year after year for many years, but the promoters, men who had been instrumental in getting it up and maintain- ing it, dropping off, interest dwindled down, it ceased to pay, and the lands have been sold and no fairs had been held there for many years till 1901, when Evans grange concluded to hold a fair, and
59
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
have had one annually since, but they hardly came up to the old Wenona Union Fairs.
At one of the Union fairs, in 1872, the Big Bend Veteran Reunion Association was formed and every year since then there has been a re- union of the old soldiers in some of the nearby towns under its auspices.
But Wenona does not depend upon the farmers' trade, although it is a big one, for her pros- perity. About 1865 some enterprising men pros- pected there for coal and found a fine vein of ex- cellent coal at a convenient depth for working, and a shaft was sunk, at which an average of two hundred men are employed. There is also a zinc smelter near the coal shaft that employs some fifty or sixty men, which has been established about ten years. The pay-roll, as may be supposed, from these two important industries is no insignificant factor in the prosperity of Wenona and make it one of the most flourishing and prosperous towns in the county.
On section 28, of Evans township, is a railroad station on the Chicago & Alton, which has taken the name of Evans station. It is quite a shipping point for grain and stock, and there is also a store and blacksmith shop; there was a post- office, which has been discontinued since the ad- vent of the rural mail delivery. . It did not im- prove, according to the expectations of its found- ers, and remains about as it was in the beginning, a point for shipping and not much else. Its most prominent characteristic is that it is claimed to be the highest point between the Illinois and Wa- bash rivers. Whether this is so or not, it is stated that on a clear day a good pair of eyes can see the towns of Wenona, Minonk, Rutland, Pattons- burg, Varna, Lostant and the spires of the churches at Mt. Palatine.
There are several churches in Evans township, most of them being located in Wenona, though there is a flourishing Methodist society and church at the head of Sandy, established there in the early days, and services were held there and at Wenona, but in 1865 a Methodist church was es- tablished in Wenona, and the two were separated. Both have good congregations and maintain good Sunday schools and each supports its own preacher.
A Presbyterian society was organized by the Presbyterians in 1852, before Wenona was laid out, which they called the Hebron Presbyterian Church of Marshall County. In 1856 the railroad
company donated the society a lot in the town, upon which they erected a very neat church.
There is also a Catholic church, St. Mary's, built about 1866. A very neat and substantial building, comfortably seated and handsomely fur- nished. The society at the time the church was built was quite weak, but of late years there has been many accessions and it now numbers about 400 communicants.
Wenona has a fine graded public school, which employs, besides the principal, seven teachers in the different departments. They have a fine school building, which was partially destroyed by fire a few years ago, but was immediately re- placed by a much better one. In 1858 a building was erected for an academy, one of its laws being, "it shall forever be free from sectarian control." It has been quite flourishing, but as it is located in La Salle county, it hardly forms a part of Marshall county's history, though partly built and sustained by Marshall county people.
There is a very good weekly paper published in Wenona by the name of the Wenona Index. Sev- eral others have started since 1865, when it was started, but did not appear to meet with much success and were discontinued.
CHAPTER XX.
BENNINGTON TOWNSHIP.
This township, the youngest of the Marshall county townships, is geographically described as Town 29 N, R. 1, E. of the 3d P. M. It is situated in the southeast corner of Marshall coun- ty and contains thirty-six full sections of land, and although the youngest of the townships, it is not the least important.
When the Illinois Central railroad was laid in 1852 there was not a permanent settler in the township, it being mostly a nearly level prairie, filled with small depressions which contained water most of the season and were connected by small waterways that were called "sloughs," the land being at that time not considered fit for farming purposes, except for the grazing of cat- tle and for such hay as was needed.
When the railroad was laid off a station was established upon it in La Salle county, just at the line in Bennington township. It originally lay entirely in La Salle county, but later a small addition to it was laid out in Marshall county.
60
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
The settlement of Rutland properly belongs to the history of La Salle county, but as it had much to do with the early settlement of Bennington township a brief mention may be made of it here.
In March, 1855, a company was formed in Rut- land, Vermont, styled the "Vermont Emigration Association." The object was stated to be "for the purpose of settling a section of country in the west, where social, religious and civil privi- leges may be enjoyed." A committee was ap- pointed "to proceed to the west, to select a site for a village in the midst of government lands, where each member may obtain a quarter section or more of land at the minimum price."
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.