USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Peoria > Peoria city and county, Illinois; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Vol. I > Part 19
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It was, probably, not until after the treaty of 1783 that some of the inhabitants returned to Le Ville de Maillet, or New Peoria. Jean Baptiste Maillet, as has been said, founded this village about the year 1778. Here a new fort had been built, in which his son, Hypolite, was born, from which the reader may take it that Maillet, who was captain of militia, resided for some time in the fort. He was killed in an affray with one Senegal, in the latter part of the year 1801.
The two donations of land, consisting of four hundred acres each, which had been confirmed under Maillet's claim, were conveyed by Maillet by deed on the 6th day of July, 1801, to Isaac Darneille. The deed was simply signed "Maillet," without the given name. To prove the authenticity of the deed affidavits were made before Antoine Des Champs and Raphael Belongier, justices of the peace of Indiana Territory, on the 17th day of May, 1802. Des Champs later became manager for the American Fur Company in this section.
Isaac Darneille, on the 5th day of October, 1807, executed and delivered a deed to William Russell, of St. Louis, alienating among other tracts of land, those mentioned in the deed conveyed by Maillet. Also "one lot of land and a house at the 'Old Peorias Fort' and a tract of land near said 'Peorias Old Fort,' quantity unknown, purchased of Jean Baptiste Point Sable, assignee of Jean Baptiste Maillet, by deed dated March 13, 1773." This plainly indicates that Pointstable was at Peoria in the year just mentioned. Another description of property located in Peoria was "a house and lot in the town of Peorias and a quantity of land near the same, bought of Theresa Maillet, widow Cattenoir. assignee of Francis Babeanx by contract dated October II, 1778.
PEORIA'S FIRST LAWYER
Isaac Darneille, whose name figures so largely in the initial transfers of prop- erty in the county, was the first lawyer to make his appearance in Peoria. Gov- ernor Reynolds, in his History of Illinois Pioneers, has the following to say of him:
"In the year 1794 the celebrated Isaac Darneille arrived in Cahokia and re- mained in the west for several years. He was the second professed lawyer that emigrated to Illinois, John Rice Jones being the first. He was a classic scholar, and was, in his person, genteel and agreeable ; he possessed the easy and graceful manners of a polished gentleman. He was large and portly, and made it a sine qua non to be extremely neat in his dress and attentive to his personal appear- ance. He studied all the arts and mysteries of gallantry, and thereby made a very deep and rather lasting impression on his female friends. Darneille studied the ladies more than he studied his profession of the law. He was benevolent and kind to all mankind, and particularly to the ladies.
"While Darneille retained his youthful vigor, this life passed off very well ; but when old age crept on him his former pursuits were abandoned, from neces- sity, and he remained an old man, without sincere friends or means of support.
"He taught school in the western part of Kentucky, where he died, rather humble and neglected, in 1830, aged sixty years.
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"If Darneille had abandoned this one failing, the excess of gallantry, he would have enjoyed the character of one of the most honorable and respectable gentlemen in Illinois."
FOUNDER OF DAVENPORT, IOWA, A PEORIAN
It might be well to note here, in passing, that among the prominent inhabitants of New Peoria was one Antoine Le Claire, who had come to the town from Canada. He subsequently, after removing to Jowa Territory, owing to his familiarity with several Indian languages, and of his own people, was educated by the United States government and under its authority acted as interpreter for the government in its dealings with the Indians, prior to and after the Black Hawk war. He was adored by the Sac and Fox tribe of Indians and when they ceded their lands in Iowa to the government, it was provided in the treaty that Le Claire should have a tract of land, consisting of some thousands of acres, and that a certain tract should be set apart and given to Le Claire's wife, Marguerite, the daughter of an Indian chief. Part of this land is now the site of the important city of Davenport, founded by Le Claire and others, chief among whom was Colonel Davenport, a trader on the island of Rock Island, after whom the city was named. Le Claire became the wealthiest man of his time, was a benefactor to his community and died, mourned by that whole section of the country. Le Claire, an important village near Davenport, which he at one time confidently hoped would be the metropolis and scat of government of the county, was named for him.
Probably the most noted citizen of Peoria in its primitive days was Thomas Forsyth, to whom allusion has heretofore been made. Another pioncer citizen who played a notable part in the affairs of the community was Michael La Croix.
COLONEL GEORGE DAVENPORT
Colonel George Davenport, who was a contemporary of Antoine Le Claire, was a non-commissioned officer in Captain Owen's company of the regular army, and took part in a primitive expedition against the Indians in 1813, organized by General Iloward. ex-governor of the Territory of Missouri. The little army numbered about eight hundred men and marched up the Mississippi bottom to a point above Quincy and thence to the Illinois river about forty miles above Peoria, and then on down the river to that village. From Colonel Davenport, Historian Matson obtained the following account of the proceedings of the expeditionary party at Peoria :
"On arriving at Peoria Lake, the soldiers commenced building a block house for storing the baggage as well as a protection against an attack from the enemy. A well having been dug near the block house to supply it with water, it' became necessary to have a sweep to draw it; consequently, Mr. Davenport, with two companions, went into the woods to get a grapevine for that purpose. Having found one suitable, Davenport climbed the tree to cut it off, and while doing so he discovered a large body of Indians skulking in the timber, going in the direction of the block house. On seeing this war party, Davenport and his companions gave an aların and in all haste fled toward the block house, but finding Indians in that direction turned their course for the gunboats, which were moored in the lake. With all speed the fugitives ran for the boats, closely followed by the Indians, who fired at them many shots, while yelling like demons. The soldiers on the gunboats, thinking only of their own safety, pushed them off from the shore but fortunately one of them grounded on a sand bar, which was the means of saving the life of Davenport and his companions. The fugitives ran into the water waist deep, pushed the grounded boat off, and jumped on board of it, while the Indians fired on them, many of the rifle balls whizzing by their heads and lodg- ing in the sides of the vessel. The boats went off some distance from the shore,
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nevertheless the Indians continued to fire on them, but without effect. A cannon on one of the boats was brought to bear on the savages, but in the excitement of the moment its muzzle was raised above the port hole, and the ball tore off a por- tion of the side of the vessel. The Indians also attacked the block house, which was in an unfinished condition, but met with a warm reception from those within. The cannons on the boats having been brought to bear on the Indians, they fled from the thick timber where they had taken shelter, and the fight ended."
Colonel Davenport, as has been said, was the government's agent at the island of Rock Island, and accumulated a fortune trading among the Indians. He had built a home on the island, where he was enjoying the fruits of a strenuous life, when he was murdered by a band of thieving cutthroats in broad daylight, dur- ing the absence of his family at Rock Island, who were attending a Fourth of July celebration.
In a letter written in 1850, by one of the participants in this expedition, John S. Brickley, to John Lindsay, then a prominent Peoria lawyer, among other things mentioned was the following :
"When the mounted riflemen arrived at Peoria they found the village con- sisting of a great number of huts, all deserted a few days before, and two or three frame houses, one thirty or forty feet long (said to have been built by the French), although they did not appear to have been inclosed or covered. The Indians in their flight had left nothing but some dried pumpkins, corn and beans, which were found in some of the houses, but much more was found wrapped up in skins and hid in the ground, all of which was seized and used by those who found them. Every house in the village was demolished the same day we en- tered and used for fuel during the stay of the army at that place.
"As the army approached Peoria from the northwest and got a first view of its situation from the high land prairies, two or three miles from the lake, looking easterly and southerly, beheld the smooth prairie gradually descending to the town, the lake stretching miles far to the northeast, the gunboats lying quietly at anchor upon the water, the towering forest across the water, and the lovely prairies bounded only by the horizon, there was an involuntary halt-the men all gazed in silence for a moment, and then of a sudden, as if moved by one im- pulse, expressed universal admiration of the beauty and grandeur of the pros- pect spread out before them. At this time there was no road to Peoria except the Indian trail, not a forest tree amiss, not a house within one hundred miles (except the town before described), no plow had ever broken the turf that cov- ered the rich soil beneath. The lake was covered with wild geese, ducks and other water fowls; game such as deer, bear, elk and turkeys everywhere in the thick woods and adjacent prairies. Bees and honey were found in almost every hollow tree, and, notwithstanding express orders to the contrary, the men would and did, on the march, frequently stop and cut down the trees and get large quan- tities of the most delicious honey. While employed in building the fort, many of the men were well supplied with venison, fowls, honey and sometimes with fish caught in the lake. This description fully justifies the Indian name of the place, 'Pimiteoui-The Land of Plenty.'
"For want of suitable timber and materials within several miles of the place, on the west side of the lake, on account of the country back from the river being prairie, it became necessary to obtain all timber from a fine forest on the east side of the Illinois river at the lower end of the lake and raft it over. The men commenced felling the trees, the most of which were white oak, and for the palisades cut them about eighteen feet long and each log not less than fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter-the timbers for the block houses at the corners of the enclosure were much longer ; the era (area) inclosed for the fort con- tained, according to my recollection, two or three acres. While a portion of the men were cutting, others were employed in hauling and rafting the logs over to the opposite side of the lake, and from there to the site for the building; having no carriages of any description, all the materials were drawn by men Vol. 1-9
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on trucks, by means of large ropes, a distance of from one to two miles. Thus was Fort Clark erected where Peoria now stands, in less than two months, by the Missouri and Illinois volunteers of mounted riflemen, in September and Oc- tober in the year 1813. at a distance of more than one hundred miles from any white settlement, and with no other means than above described."
Colonel Davenport's description of the building of the fort is here added to the above for obvious reasons :
"Preparations having been made to build a fort on the site of the old French town for the purpose of holding possession of the country, timbers were cut on the opposite side of the lake and floated across to build block store houses, and enclose them with palisades. On a high piece of ground near the bank of the lake a fort was built, consisting of stockades made of two rows of split timbers, and the space between them filled with dirt. A ditch surrounded the fort, and at two corners were bastions for mounting cannon. Inside of the stockades was a large block house, two stories high, and on three sides of it were port holes, so the inmates could fire on the enemy in case of an attack. Besides this block house were store houses and quarters for officers and soldiers.
"When the fort was completed and cannons mounted on its ramparts, with flags waving on each bastion, General Howard ordered all the soldiers on duty, forming in double file, fronting the gateway. A speech was made by the com- manding officer, drums beat, soldiers cheered, the cannons fired a salute, and with much enthusiasm the fort was dedicated and named 'Fort Clark' in honor of General George Rogers Clark, the hero of Kaskaskia and Vincennes."
Ballance, in his History of Peoria, gives the dimensions of Fort Clark. He says :
"This fort was about one hundred feet square, with a ditch along each side. It did not stand with a side to the lake, but with a corner towards it. The cor- ner farthest from the lake was on the upper side of Water street, near the inter- section of the upper line of Water and Liberty streets. From there the west line ran diagonally across the intersection of Water and Liberty streets nearly to the corner of the transportation warehouse, at the lower corner of Liberty and Water streets. At this corner was what I suppose military men would call a bastion, that is, there was a projecting corner made in the same manner as the side walls, and so constructed, as I imagine, as to accommodate a small cannon to command the ditches. And the same had, no doubt, been at the opposite cor- ner. but when I came to the country in November, 1831, there was no vestige of it remaining. In fact at that time there was but little to show that there had ever been a fortification there, except some burnt posts along the west side, and a square of some ten or twelve feet at the south corner with a ditch nearly filled upon two sides of it, and on the west side of the square.'
To the above, Judge McCulloch, in his History of Peoria County, takes ex- ceptions to the dimensions of Fort Clark, as given by Mr. Ballance, in the fol- lowing paragraph :
"Chserving, however, that Water street is one hundred feet wide at the point indicated, and that the location of the magazine which must have been within the fort was very close to the base of the smokestack of the electric light plant, some distance below Water street, the conclusion is forced upon us that his esti- mate of its dimensions is erroneous. If the fort was of a square form and con- tained one acre, one side of it would measure 208.7 feet, which would correspond more nearly with the points given by Mr. Ballance than does his own estimates."
How long Fort Clark was occupied has not been definitely settled by those who have taken the pains to delve into the matter. Some say it was abandoned in 1815, others, not until 1818. It would appear from Matson's account that the former contention is the correct one, for he has this to say in that relation :
"The gate of the fort having been left open, it became a lair for deer and a roost for wild turkeys. In the fall of 1816 a party of hunters from St. Clair county came to Fort Clark and found about twenty deer in the fort and the
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floors of the block house covered with manure. The hunters cleaned out this building and occupied it as a residence during a stay of ten days while hunting deer and collecting honey in the river timber. Fort Clark stood unmolested until the fall of 1818, when it was burned by the Indians."
There is no doubt that the fort was partially destroyed prior to 1819, but there must have been part of it left standing, for in the year last mentioned, the first American settlers (permanent) arrived here and they speak of it in a way to leave the impression a remnant of the structure remained at that time.
ARRIVAL OF AMERICAN SETTLERS
In the spring of 1819, a party of hardy and venturesome pioneers, composed of Seth and Josiah Fulton, Abner Eads, Virginians; Joseph Hersey, of New York; J. Davis, S. Dougherty and T. Russell, natives of Kentucky, left Shoal Creek, now a part of Clinton county, where they had lived for some little time, found their way to the east bank of the river and, on April 15, 1819, Hersey and Eads, placing their horses in a boat, ferried across the river and landed at Fort Clark. Two days afterward they were joined by their companions. Josiah Fultor often related the following details of the advent of this pioneer band of settlers to Fort Clark :
"We found the walls of two small log cabins, which we supposed to have been built by the soldiers of the garrison stationed there, and at once set to work to cover them over and finish them up for dwelling places. While we were em- ployed at this work we made out to be comfortable in the shelter of our tents and boats. The cabins stood on what is now Water street, and almost directly in front of the Germania Hall building. These cabins were the first American dwelling places at what is now the city of Peoria.
"There were also rails enough, which the soldiers had made, to inclose fifteen acres of ground. The ground was broken up and planted to corn and potatoes. from which a pretty good crop was gathered in the fall. The north line of that first field ran west from the river and not far from Fulton street.
"About the first of June, Eads, Fulton and Dougherty returned to Shoal Creek with their two horses to move Eads' family, consisting of his wife and two children, to their new home. After settling up his affairs in that neighbor- hood Eads loaded his household effects, wife and children on a two-horse wagon and headed across the country in the direction of the beginning of Peoria-the new settlement at Fort Clark. They reached and crossed the Illinois river at the present site of Wesley City, where there was a trading post, and where Indians and Indian canoes were nearly always to be found. Some of the canoes were secured, the household goods were unloaded from the wagon, and with the family transferred to the canoes and carried over to the west side of the river. The wagon was then taken to pieces and carried over in the same manner. The horses and cattle were made to swim across.
"Mrs. Eads was the first American woman to see the site of Peoria."
Captain Jude Warner came into the settlement from St. Louis on the 10th of June, in a boat loaded with provisions and fishing nets. With him were David W. Barnes, James Goff, Isaac De Boise, William Blanchard, Theodore and Charles Sargent. This arrival swelled the number of Americans to fourteen men. Mr. Fulton's recital continues :
"We were about as happy a little circle as has ever lived in Peoria. We were isolated, completely shut out from the rest of mankind, it is true. We heard but little from the outside world, and the outside world heard but little from us. But little was known at that time about the Fort Clark country. There were no roads, nor steamboats, nor mail routes, nor communications of any kind, so that in point of fact we were as much a community by ourselves as if our cabins had been built on an island in the middle of the sea. Our postoffice was St. Louis, and we never got our mail, those of us who got any, only when we went
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there for supplies, and then our letters cost us twenty-five cents, and we couldn't muster that much money every day.
"Mrs. Eads was duly installed as housekeeper, and the rest of the company, except Hersey, who didn't remain long, boarded with her. It was a pretty hard winter on us, but we managed to get through. Bread stuff gave out and we had to fall back on hominy blocks and hominy. It was a coarse kind of food we got this way, but it was a good deal better than none, and served to keep hunger away. Hominy blocks went out of use long ago, and there are thousands of people in Peoria county who never saw one, but they were a blessing to hundreds of the pioneers of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, lowa, and in fact to the first settlers of the entire country, and were the means of keeping many of the pioneers and their little ones from starving to death."
Two of these pioneers, Seth and Josiah Fulton, were attracted by the east side of the river and selected claims on Farm creek in that locality, remaining there until 1834, when they sold out and returned to Peoria county, and both proved themselves good citizens and gained their full meed of respect from their neigh- bors. Seth Fulton, however, lending an ear to the tales then told of the rich lead mines at Galena, removed to that place and remained there for a while. He afterwards removed to Henry county. Josiah Fulton spent the rest of his life in Peoria county and died March 4, 1894, at the age of ninety-four years.
Abner Eads, another one of the first seven, who came to Peoria, bought the northwest quarter of section 17, in what is now Peoria township, on which Lin- coln Park is situated. He also came into possession, by purchase, of valuable coal mines on Kickapoo creek, which was subsequently developed by others. He became a man of importance in the community and served valiantly as captain of a Peoria company which marched under General Stillman in the Black Hawk war. Absorbing the lead mine fever, he removed to Galena about 1833. from which district he served in the legislature two sessions. In 1854 he went to California and having started back for his family, died on the way, with fever. Ile was buried at St. Louis.
Hersey and Dougherty, the latter a reckless Kentuckian, after a residence of some little time, departed for other scenes of activity not known to the writer. Davis first settled on Farm creek and after a while removed to Sangamon county. He then went to Texas, where he died. Russell was here but a short time and then went to St. Louis, and was last heard of as a river man.
Of the Captain Warner party, William Blanchard soon after his arrival re- moved to Woodford county, which was his home until his death, which occurred but a comparatively few years since. Barnes and the two Sargents became prom- inent citizens of Fulton county, and Jacob Wilson, one of the county's first jus- tices of the peace, on the 22d day of March, 1825, officiated in the marriage of William Blanchard with Betsey Donohoe. This was the first marriage ceremony performed in the new county.
John Hamlin, in company with several others, arrived in Peoria in 1821. In March, 1822, he had his personal belongings removed from his former home at Elkhart Grove, then in Madison county, and from that time on he made Peoria his home. In 1823, with William S. Hamilton, who had a contract to supply Fort Howard, now known as Green Bay, with beef cattle, Mr. Hamlin, on ac- count of his knowledge of the Indian character, accompanied the expedition made up by Hamilton, to that place. The journey was made in thirty days. On his return to Peoria. in his capacity as justice of the peace of Fulton county, he performed the first marriage cermony at Fort Dearborn, the parties most in- terested being Dr. Alexander Wolcott and his bride, a daughter of John Kinzie, the first permanent settler of Chicago. This was the first marriage ceremony to take place in the great city of Chicago. John Hamlin, as will be seen further on in this volume, was intimately connected with the early history of this county and became one of its most prominent and influential citizens.
Gurdon S. Hubbard, of the American Fur Company, spent the winter of
JOSIAH FULTON Born in 1800-Died March 4, 1 94
Landed at a place called Fort Clark. now the city of Peoria, on April 15, 1819
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1821-2 along the Illinois river. Reaching Bureau Station, he says, he found Mr. Beebeant in charge, though much enfeebled on account of age. Hubbard also relates that: "After resting a few days and selecting the goods and men to be left at that post ( Bureau), we proceeded on our way, making our next halt at Fort Clark, where we found several families located, among whom were Mr. Fulton, the first settler at that point, who still resides in that county, and a Mr. Bogardus, a brother of General Bogardus, of New York, a highly intelligent gentleman, and his estimable wife. Two miles below, at a point now known as Wesley City, was Mr. Beeson's post, and there we remained about one week, during which time I went almost daily to the fort."
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