USA > Illinois > Marshall County > Past and present of Marshall and Putnam Counties, Illinois > Part 2
USA > Illinois > Putnam County > Past and present of Marshall and Putnam Counties, Illinois > Part 2
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
He also dispatched Father Hennepin with one companion to explore the Mississippi and he went down the Illinois to its junction and then up the Mississippi to the Wisconsin and going up the Wisconsin to its sources, then going across to Lake Michigan. He later gave us the first detailed history of the wonderful country of the Missis- sippi, taking rather more credit to himself than many think he is entitled to.
Leaving some of the men at Ft. Creve Coeur, LaSalle with Tonti and some of the men retraced their way up the Illinois to the village of the Illinois Indians, a short distance below where Ottawa now stands, and across the river but a short distance above the now well known Starved Rock, and leaving Tonti and a few men to erect a fort on Buffalo Rock to be called Ft. St. Louis, near the Indian village, he alone on foot started for Ft. Frontenac, now Montreal, a journey of over one thousand miles across a country almost unknown and in the early spring, the worst season that could have been selected.
In the meanwhile his usual bad luck was fol- lowing him in his settlements upon the Illinois. No sooner was he and Tonti well away from Ft. Creve Coeur than the men remaining there became discontented and soon they demolished the fort, carried off such of the supplies and furnishing as . they wanted and destroyed the rest. Only two of the men remained faithful to LaSalle, but they were powerless to prevent the destruction; nor did his projects under Tonti escape any better, for the warlike and powerful Iroquois, a tribe from the east, attacked the friendly Illinois and entirely routed and scattered them, seized Tonti and his men and destroyed the buildings in the course of erection.
This occurred in the neighborhood of Starved Rock and gave rise to the legend of Starved Rock
11
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
familiar now to all, which may or may not be true, but one thing is certain, the village was entirely destroyed and the survivors, if there were any, found a refuge and a home with other tribes. LaSalle returned to the Illinois river in August, 1680, looking for his lost friend Tonti. When they arrived at Ft. St. Louis, near Starved Rock, a scene of desolation greeted their eyes; his fort was gone and the Indian village utterly destroyed, but there was no word from Tonti. He descended! the Illinois to its mouth and though his com- panions urged him to go on down the Mississippi he retraced his way up the river and back to the fort on the St. Joseph river without learning a word of the fate of Tonti.
The summer of 1681 was spent by LaSalle in making treaties with several of the smaller tribes of Indians in an offensive and defensive alliance of the French and Indians against the powerful Iroquois and in the latter part of the summer going into Mackinac he found Tonti, who had come in there the day before. They had been separated for fourteen months. He now prepared for another journey down to the mouth of the Mis- sissippi and he and Tonti started again in Decem- ber, 1681, better equipped in men and supplies than in their former voyages, the party consisting of twenty-three white men and thirty-one Indians.
Instead of crossing from St. Joseph they started from the mouth of the Chicago river, built sleds upon which their canoes were loaded, which they dragged on the ice till they reached the site of Ft. Creve Coeur, now Peoria, and there leaving their sledges and repairing their canoes they launched them upon the Illinois, reaching the mouth of the Mississippi April 7th, 1682, where LaSalle took possession of this country, which he called Louisiana, "with all its seas, harbors, ports, bays, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fish- eries, streams and rivers, in the name of the most high, mighty, invincible and victorious prince, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God, King of France and Navarre, 14th of that name and of his heirs and successors of his Crown."
This was the last voyage. through the Illinois river that LaSalle made. His subsequent career, till ·on the 17th day of March, 1687, he was basely assassinated by two of his men, is of intense inter- est but has no further connection with the settle- ment of Illinois.
We have given considerable space to the lives and doings of these great explorers and their com-
panions because their names are so familiar to our ears and they must ever be connected with its history because they were the first white men who saw our fair country, and it is very possible and in fact probable that LaSalle and his comrades, in their various journeyings up and down made vari- ous landings and they may have been and prob- ably were the first white men to set foot in Mar- shall county.
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
Nearly a century elapsed after the abortive attempts of LaSalle and Tonti to establish settle- ments along the upper Illinois river, before its waters were again vexed by the paddle of the white man's canoe, even the Kaskaskia Indians, where the good Father Marquette established a mission at their village near Starved Rock, were so har- assed by the fierce tribes of the north and east that they in a few years abandoned the village and going down the Illinois made a new location on the Mississippi, taking the mission with them and the mission formed the nucleus of the first white settlement in Illinois that became permanent, and was known as the village of the "Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin"-the name Mar- quette had given to the mission he founded, and this was really the first permanent white settle- ment in Illinois. It later was known as Kas- kaskia. '
If during the century that followed white men visited this section, there is no account of it, and it was not till what is known in our history as the "French and Indian war," 1755 to 1763, was fought and won by the English that the settle- ment of Illinois can really be said to have begun.
Up to 1760 the country had been under the French government in accordance with LaSalle's discoveries, and what few settlements there was were under French control and the inhabitants were mostly French, but by the treaty of Paris signed the 10th of February, 1760, France ceded to England "all of Lousiana east of the Missis- sippi" with Nova Scotia and Canada and the English established forts at Kaskaskia and other places in what is now the state of Illinois.
In 1778, during the Revolutionary war, Col. George Rogers Clarke who was under a commis- sion from Patrick Henry, then governor of Vir-
12
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
ginia, conceived the idea of breaking the British power on the Mississippi river, whose importance had already begun to attract notice, obtained per- mission from Governor Henry and with only four companies of soldiers set out from Louisville, Ken- tucky, where he was stationed, down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash and marched across the entire state of Illinois to Kaskaskia. The British garrison surrendered without the loss of a man, the fort at Cahokia, not a great distance away, sur- rendered without firing a gun and Illinois became a part of the state of Virginia.
The English, who had settled along the coast in what is now the United States, had not been so restless in exploring and making settlements to the west of them as had been the French at the north, who had become to a great extent familiar with the Canadian country to the north and east of the great lakes, and the Spaniards in the south, who had overrun and conquered the most of South America, Central America and Mexico, and it was over one hundred years after the discoveries of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and the country which is now Illinois before the English residents of the colonies knew anything about it, and it is extremely doubtful if the foot of Eng- lishmen trod the soil of Marshall county, for more than half a century after it had come into their possession, for the settlers along the coast knew absolutely nothing of the rich heritage that had fallen to them.
Through the conquest of Clarke, as mentioned above, all the country from the Atlantic ocean to the Mississippi river was claimed as part of Vir- ginia. In 1783 the state of Virginia ceded to the United States all the land that had come to her by the conquest of Clarke.
The census of 1810 gave the territory of Illinois a population of 12,282. In 1818 the territorial legislature petitioned Congress that Illinois be admitted as a state, the population at that time being 45,000 and in December of that year, 1818, the petition was granted and Illinois was admitted as a state with all the privileges and rights of the older states. Up to this time the capital had been at Kaskaskia, the old French town on the Mississippi river, but the first state legislature transferred the capital to Vandalia in 1819.
Although Illinois was now a full-fledged state in.1820 with a population of 50,000 probably, it was all in the southern part, the entire state north of the Sangamon on both sides of the Illinois river was still an unbroken wilderness.
Fort Clark on the present site of Peoria had been built and a few Indian traders and hunters had settled there, a few miners were in the lead mines around Galena in the extreme northwest corner, and Chicago was a small village of some ten or twelve houses and sixty or seventy inhabi- tants. There was not a white man living at a ferry above Peoria on the Illinois river and in 1821 all the land north of where the Illinois joins the Mississippi to the Kankakee and north of that to the Indiana line was organized into Pike coun- ty, an immense tract of land equal to at least one- half of the present state of Illinois.
In 1815 Congress, wishing to do something for the soldiers of 1812-14, sent out a commission to find, if possible, a large and compact tract of land suitable for cutting up into farms of one hundred and sixty acres each.
The commission, after some considerable search in the new states, reported they had found a suit- able tract that would answer the description, situ- and surveyors were accordingly sent out to lay out the land. Beginning at the place where the Illinois empties into the Mississippi, they ran due north one hundred and sixty-nine miles to a line drawn from the Great Bend in the Illinois below Peru, west to the Mississippi, a distance of about ninety miles. In the tract they laid off two hun- dred and seven full townships and sixty-one frac- tional ones or 5,360,000 acres. These were appor- tioned out to the soldiers by warrants, calling for a particular quarter section of one hundred and sixty acres, and were all choice farming lands.
This grant was later made into three great . ated between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, states, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. After the Revolutionary war white settlers began to come into Illinois, though the most of them coming from Virginia settled in the southern part, and by the year 1800 Illinois had a population of be- twcen three thousand and three thousand five hun- dred and it was thought best by the general gov- ernment to pass a territorial act, and on the 7th of May, 1800, an act was passed creating Indiana territory which comprised all the land between the present State of Ohio and the Mississippi river. February 9, 1809, the act creating Illi- nois territory was passed and Ninian Edwards was The country, however, was wild and unbroken, most of the old soldiers to whom the warrants were appointed territorial governor.
13
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
issued had homes in the east and were loth to pull up and move into the unknown country, and .a traffie in the land warrants after a few years, sprung up, and as the glowing accounts of the beauty of the land, the fertility of the soil and the ease with which it could be worked began to filter through the eastern settlements, men came out to look, they found the half had not been told, they went back for their families, their neighbors heard their stories and they too pulled up and settle- ments sprang up everywhere, but invariably near the timber patches and water courses.
Owing to the cheapness of the land in the mili- tary tract, warrants could be purchased for much less than government price, a one hundred and sixty-acre warrant selling for about $90, while the government priee was $1.25 per acre, settlements sprang up faster in the tract than in most other places, though often transfers were made so loosely that many after living upon their farm for years found their titles imperfect ; also thousands of farms, as the country became more settled, were sold for taxes with the titles still in the name of the original soldier owner. Men made it a busi- ness tô trace up the heirs of the original owners and purchase the claim and when they could not settle satisfactorily to themselves, bring suit against the settler who had been living in peace on his land, maybe for years. As a matter of fact, the gift of this magnificent grant, probably the finest body of land of the size in the world, did those it was given to but little, if any, good, and was the cause of a world of litigation. But this is somewhat of a digression. We have little to do with the military tract in Marshall county, though the western part of the county is a part of it but it was mostly settled under tax titles, the owners of the original warrants being nearly all dead before that part of the tract in our eounty was settled.
The first settlements in this section were made from 1828 to 1830. A man by the name of Thomas Hartzell had established a general trad- ing station or store, trading mostly with the Indians as early as 1817 at the present site of Hennepin, but it was ten years later before the actual settlers began to come in, Capt. William Haws settling near Magnolia in 1826; and by 1835 the country east and southeast of Hennepin, what is now Putnam county east of the river, was fairly well settled and small towns had sprung up
at Hennepin, Florid, Granville, Magnolia and Caledonia.
These settlements were all in what is now Put- nam county and as a full and complete history of Putnam county is to be found under its appro- priate heading, we will confine ourselves to the limits of Marshall county in the future, though the history of the early settlements when it was all Putnam county are so interwoven that it is al- most, if not quite, impossible to separate them, for up to 1839 it was all Putnam county. So that what may be said up to that time must necessarily be Putnam county history.
CHAPTER V.
THE BLACK HAWK WAR.
A history of any country that may be written that leaves out an account of its wars is a good deal like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. In fact most history is four-fifths of it the account of its wars. And even our little county of Marshall, peaceful as it now appears, was at one time shaken to its center by wars and rumors of wars which were to the then scattered inhabitants a very present danger.
The Black Hawk war does not cut much of a figure in the history of the United States, but as it all occurred in this section, and many of the actors were citizens of the county, we think mention of it should be a part of the history of our county.
Unfortunately for the adventurous spirit that drives the white races to seek out new lands and new homes, the lands they have found have always been pre-occupied, and it was necessary to drive the owners from them, which they have generally been able to do by a higher intelligence and better arms.
At the end of what may be called Tecumseh's war, after his defeat at Tippecanoe at the hands of General William Henry Harrison, the lands in the northern part of Illinois were ceded by the In- dians to the United States, and the Indians mi- grated west of the Mississippi. In the neighbor- lood of what is now Rock Island the government in 1815 or 1816 had surveyed a part of the coun- try there as the military tract, and parts of it had been sold and settled upon.
There was in this seetion of country an Indian village and Indian cemetery belonging to the Sac
14
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
Indians, the chief of whom was named Black Hawk, at that time an old man but who had been a famous warrior in his younger days. He was one of the principal aids of the famous Tecumseh and had been chief of the Indian allies of the British in the war of 1812 and was by them made a Brigadier General.
Black Hawk, whose sympathies were with the British and who was prejudiced against the Ameri- cans, did not join in the treaty of peace made at the end of the war of 1812 and 1814, but went up into Canada with his band and nursed his ani- mosity to the Americans. He also repudiated the treaty by which his country, with its beautiful rivers and broad prairies swarming with fish and game had been ceded away from him and sullenly obeyed the order of the government for the removal of his tribe across the Mississippi river.
In 1831 Black Hawk with about three hundred of his tribe, men, women and children, moved across the river and went to his old town. A brigade of troops was called up from St. Louis but before they could come in contact with the Indians they took to their canoes and recrossed to the west side of the river. The soldiers then burned the town, which had been the liome for a long time of six or seven thousand Indians. This ended the campaign for that year.
The next spring, 1832, Black Hawk, who had been nursing his injuries and working among his warriors, again crossed the Mississippi with about five hundred warriors with their women and chil dren with the expectation. that the Kickapoos, Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes would immedi- ately join him. In this, however, he was dis- appointed. Still relying upon getting his little band reinforced Black Hawk with his Indians went up the Rock River country to near its head waters. Here they were attacked by a raw, undis- ciplined body of militia under Major Stillman. The volunteers taking the bits in their teeth and a few of them, seeing what they thoughit was a small band of Indians and without officers or com- mands with hot valiant courage made an attack upon them, but finding more Indians than they had expected, for the whole band was there, fled incontinently and as they were pursued turned their flight into a ront and a panic which com- municated itself to the rest of the men and the campaign was turned into a wild and disorderly retreat which continued until they reached Dixon thirty-five miles distant.
The news of this fiasco soon spread over the entire state and set everybody into a panic, and from the precipitate action of a few drunken men, an Indian scare which would undoubtedly have been effectually squelched in a few days more, kept the inhabitants of the entire state filled with dread and fear of the horrors of an Indian massacre throughout the entire summer and took most of the men away from their farms, some volunteering in the army and some fleeing to the south, many of whom never came back.
After the battle, if it may so be called, at the head of Rock river the Indians broke up into small bands, committing typical Indian depreda- tions.
While there were a considerable number of settlers at this time in the country east of the river there were none on the west side and it was deter- mined to so arrange matters that should the In- dians come this way they might be stopped at the river. Companies of volunteers were raised and ordered to rendezvous on May 20th, at 9 a. m., at Columbia, now Lacon, and at 3 p. m. at Hennepin. All the settlers, with scarcely an exception, re- sponded with such arms as they could muster and were mustered into service as rangers. Colonel John Strawn of Columbia had before been ap- pointed colonel and took command.
Colonel Strawn had an original way of choosing his officers. He simply asked those who wished to be officers to advance ten paces to the front and wheel, and then desired the men to cluster around the men they wanted for officers, and the man who had the largest cluster was appointed.
Four companies were formed, one at Columbia and three at Hennepin, though the Hennepin companies were not mustered in till the next day, May 21, 1832.
The Columbia company consisted of Robert Barnes, captain ; William McNeil, first lieutenant ; John Weer, second lieutenant; eight non-com- missioned officers and thirty-four privates.
Company No. 1 at Hennepin : George B. Willis. captain ; Timothy Perkins, first lieutenant ; Sam- uel Loughlin, second lieutenant ; eight non-com- missioned officers and fifty-two privates.
Company No. 2: William Haws, captain; James Garvin, first lieutenant; William M. Hart, second lieutenant; eight non-commissioned offi- cers and twenty privates.
Company No. 3: William M. Stewart, captain ; Mason Wilson, first lieutenant; Livingston Ro-
15
PAST AND PRESENT OF MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES.
berts, second lieutenant; seven non-commissioned officers and twenty-six privates.
At the same time soldiers were being raised the settlers began building block houses and "forts," three of these were in what is now Marshall coun- ty; the forts were made of logs about twelve feet long set upright close together, in the ground. At the corners square bastions were built, pierced with port holes so that the face of the wall could be enfiladed in case of attack.
One of these was on the farm of Mr. James Dever on the edge of Round Prairie and about six miles southeast of Columbia. It was about one hundred feet from east to west and eighty fect north and south. In it was the cabin of Mr. Dever and several tents were pitched in it for the accom- modation of those who fled there during the alarms.
Two miles south of Magnolia there was a simi- lar fort on the farm of Jesse Roberts, where seven or eight families found protection, and there was another near the head of Sandy Creek. These were all in the present territory of Marshall county, but there were a number on the Ox Bow Prairie, one on the farm of J. W. Willis where twenty-one families, including one hundred chil- dren, were housed at one time.
-
The precautions taken will give some little idea of the state of feeling of the settlers during that summer. There were no Indian attacks in Put- nam county, east of the river, but the tension was such that the least unusual noise like the firing of a gun or the supposed cry of Indians would send all skurrying to the forts. It is very probable however, that the completeness of the defenses deterred the Indians from crossing the river to make an attack. Once or twice they were ob- served scouting around on the east side, but no hostile demonstration was made.
But one man in Putnam county, large as it was at the time, was killed during the war. That was a man by the name of Phillips, who, with several others, went over into what is now Bureau county to look after their cattle.
They remained over night in the cabin of a Mr. Ament and when Mr. Phillips went to go over to his own cabin, but a short distance away, he was shot by the Indians as he stepped out of doors, the others remained in the cabin till help came from Hennepin, when the Indians disappeared.
This was the last trouble the settlers of Put- nam county had with the Indians. The Indians
had committed several depredations and mur- dered quite a number, but retribution was rapidly overtaking them. An army of three thousand two hundred men had been called together and or- ganized and after a number of ineffectual at- tacks upon small parties of the soldiers, in which they were always beaten off with more or less loss, the Indians began to make north till they were finally driven into the hills and brakes on the Wisconsin river in Wisconsin. They had been followed so closely that they could not obtain food and were nearly in a starving condition. They were at last overtaken by a brigade of volunteers and rangers under General James Henry and a most determined engagement took place, the Indians hiding in the tall grass and behind trees till driven out by the bayonet. The fight continued till night when both parties rested. In the morning General Henry advancing to the Wisconsin river, found that the Indians had crossed it and were in the hills between the Wisconsin and Mississippi, and were making for the Mississippi.
The battle at the Wisconsin had been a dear one for the Indians. Sixty-eight of their number lay dead on the field, and twenty-five more were found on the trail leading to the Mississippi who had died of their wounds, while General Henry had lost only one man killed and eight wounded.
The Indians were found just below the mouth of the Bad Axe river making preparation to cross the Mississippi. They were attacked there and were practically annihilated. Black Hawk was afterwards taken prisoner and taken to Washing- ton, but was afterwards permitted to return to his people and was with them when he died October 3, 1840.
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.