USA > Illinois > Adams County > Quincy > Quincy and Adams County history and representative men, Vol. I > Part 11
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There were less than 100 settlers in the country within a range of thirty miles from Messrs. Wood, Keyes, Rose (with his family), Drou- lard and Doctor Baker. In fact, the census taken during the follow- ing year gave the combined population of Adams and Hancock eoun- ties as only 192.
It is evident that Messrs. Wood, Keyes and Rose comprised, dur- ing the pioneer years preceding county organization and for some time afterward, the local Triumvirate of leadership, and a pause is here taken to set forth their lives somewhat in detail.
GOVERNOR JOHN WOOD
John Wood, who proved to be the largest figure of the three, was the first settler of Quincy, a leader in all constructive movements in the advancement of the town, city and county, and when in his seven- tieth year served as governor of the state. its quartermaster general during the Civil war and commander of a Union brigade at the front. He was a man of unbounded energy, as well as of generosity, and his financial ability enabled him to follow almost to the limit of his de- sires the humane and benevolent bent of his disposition. Governor
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Wood was born in Moravia, Cayuga County, New York, on December 20, 1798, and was the only son of Dr. Daniel and Catherine (Crouse) Wood. His father was an officer in the Revolutionary war, a man of large attainments as a scholar and a linguist, and after the close of the war settled in Cayuga County, where he died in his ninety- third year. In after years, his body was exhumed by his son and deposited in Woodland Cemetery. In November, 1818, the future governor and general, as a young man of twenty, left his New York home with the intention of settling in the South, preferably in Ten- nessee or Alabama. His plan was to first tour the West, and, in line with that intention, he passed the winter of 1819 in Cincinnati, the summer of that year in Shawneetown, Illinois, and the winter of 1820 in Calhoun (then part of Madison) County.
As stated, in March, 1820, with Willard Keyes he located thirty miles southeast of what is now Quincy, and for about two years busied himself in farming and locating parties who desired to buy land in the American Bottoms or adjacent interior country. During the spring of 1821 Mr. Wood first visited the present site of Quincy, and soon afterward purchased a quarter section of land near by, and in the fall of 1822 erected a log cabin-the first building in Quincy, though not within the original town. Major Rose and family resided in this house, for some time, while Mr. Wood was a bachelor.
For several years prior to the election of the first Monday in August, 1824, there was a considerable party in the state which favored the calling of a convention, the avowed object of which should be the changing of its constitution so as to admit slaves. The elec- tion of that date was to decide whether the convention should be called or not. Mr. Wood was greatly interested in the contest, and went up as far as Montibello (now Nanvoo) to rally the voters against the proposed change. He was so successful that he appeared at the Atlas precinet as "boss" of 100 suffragists. Evidently, the full ballot was not cast, but the calling of the convention was lost in that voting precinct by ninety-seven to three; and, as has been secu, "For Con- vention" was buried out of sight throughout the state. Governor Wood was always proud of his work in that line.
Governor Wood led the movement which resulted in the creation of Adams County. In 1827 he temporarily resided at the Galena lead mines, but his permanent home was Quincy from 1822, until his death June 4, 1880, or for a period of fifty-eight years. In 1848, with his two elder sons, he visited California, and remained nearly a year on the Pacific Coast, a witness to the historie rush of emigra- tion to that section of the United States, and twenty years later took an overland trip to the Coast, when he was able to realize that the country was destined to develop into permanent and prodigious riches and not end its promising career of the earlier years with a series of "booms."
It is said that "Moral or physical fear John Wood never had. When on a trip to the Pacific Coast, the steamer on which he and his
FAMOUS EARLY MAYORS OF QUINCY
Top Row, from Left to Right-Ebenezer Moore, 1840-1; Enoch Con- vers, 1842-3-1849; John Wood, 1844-7-1852-3-1856. Lower Row-John Abbe, 1848; Samuel Hohes, 1850-1; James M. Pit- man, 1854-5-1858-1867.
Vol. 1-7
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wife were traveling from San Franeiseo to a port in Southern Cali- fornia ran upon a rock and was wrecked. The captain, an experi- enced and capable officer, sustained the discipline of the ship, so difficult on such occasions to maintain, and was aided by the eom- manding bearing of Governor Wood. When the boats were pre- pared, and the women and children placed in them, the captain, standing by the gangway, said : 'Now, Governor Wood, you take your place.' The answer was: 'Send these young folks first. I'm seventy years old. Save the young.' "
Throughout all the succeeding years after his first settlement, Gov- ernor Wood was almost constantly kept in public position. He was one of the volunteers in the Black Hawk War of 1832, but in that regard he was no exception to every other able-bodied man in Adams County. He was one of the early town trustees; was often a member of the city council; served as mayor in 1844-48, 1852-54 and 1856; in 1850 was elected to the State Senate; in 1856 was chosen lieutenant governor and, on the death of Governor Bissell in 1859, succeeded to the gubernatorial ehair. Governor Yates, a man of the same rugged character, had the greatest admiration for the Old Roman, and in February, 1861, selected him as one of the five delegates from Illi- nois to the Peace Convention which convened in Washington; and, after war broke upon the county, selected him as quartermaster gen- eral of the state. The governor performed the duties of the latter position with remarkable energy and ability, during the earlier period of the war, and in June, 1864, left Quincy for Memphis, Tennessee, at the head of the One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Illinois Infantry (a 100-days regiment). In the following month he was assigned to the command of the Third Brigade, engaged in picket duty on the Hernando road. His regiment was attacked by the enemy, while he was on a siek bed, but he took command, rallied his brigade and the onset was repulsed.
A friend said of Governor Wood: "His liberality and benefac- tions were boundless. His publie generosity is proverbially known, but no count can be made of the private open-handedness that ran through his fifty years of affluence. On his town, his city, feeling it almost his own, his interest and pride forever rested. His nature was bold and frank. He had no disguises, no dissimulations, no fears. 'What his heart forges, that his tongue must utter, and, being armed, he even does forget there's such a thing as death,' could never be applied to one better than to him. Singularly susceptible to physical suffering, the lightest pain being to him an acute agony, his spirit nevertheless was intrepidity itself. This led him in his matured age and position, which might well have excused him therefrom, to yearn with patriotic ardor, for personal participation in the late and sec- tional strife when the Nation's life was threatened."
Governor Wood's first wife was Miss Ann M. Streeter, daughter of Joshua Streeter, formerly of Washington County, New York. The wedding occurred at Quiney January 25, 1826. Mrs. Wood died
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October 8, 1863, leaving as surviving offspring : Mrs. An E. Tillson, who married Col. John Tillson, and died in Omaha, Nebraska, March 25, 1905; Daniel C. Wood, who had married Miss Mary J. Abbernethy ; John Wood, Jr., whose wife was Miss Josephine Skinner ; and Joshua S. Wood, whose wife was Miss Annie Bradley. Governor Wood's second marriage occurred at Quincy June 6, 1865, the lady being Mrs. Mary A. Holmes, widow of Joseph T. Holmes. Mrs. Wood was born in Glousterbury, Connecticut, March 5, 1806, and died at Quincy. January 20, 1887, nearly seven years after the death of her beloved and distinguished husband.
WILLARD KEYES
Willard Keyes, long Mr. Wood's co-worker in local and county enterprises and always his warm friend, was six years older than the Governor. He was a Vermont man, born in Windham County, October 28, 1792. Originally, the family was from Massachusetts. The boy worked on the homestead farm, attended district school when he could, mastered the trade of a wool dyer, and as a young man taught school for several winters before, at the age of twenty-five, he decided to see what the West was like. He writes in his diary that "On the second of June. A. D., 1817, being impelled by curiosity and a desire to see other places than those in the vicinity of my native town, I, Willard Keyes, started from Newfane, Vermont, intending to travel into the western parts of the United States." Traveling by various means through Canada and by the northern lakes, he reached Prairie du Chien on the 30th of August, 1817. There he remained in teaching, milling and other pursuits, until the spring of 1819, when, with one companion, he started on a raft for St. Louis, floating by the site of Quincy, May 10, 1819. "In March, 1820," the diary continues. "John Wood and myself formed a partnership to go on the frontiers and commence farming together ; accordingly prepared ourselves with pro- visions, farming utensils, ete .. as well as our slender means would per- mit-two small yoke of steers, a young eow and a small, though promising lot of swine-our whole amount of property did not probably exceed $250. Paid $50 and $60 per yoke for small four-year old steers, $10 for small heifer, 614 cents per pound for fresh pork, 75 cents per bushel for corn, $8 per barrel for flour, $4 per bushel for salt, and other things in proportion."
At this place in old Pike County, Mr. Keyes remained until the spring of 1824, when he moved to Quiney and built the second cabin of the place-16 by 16 feet in size-which was afterward used as the first court room. At the formation of the county in 1825 he was chosen one of the county commissioners, and acted earnestly and usefully for the interests of the infant settlement for many years. He was one of the members of the first Church Association formed at Quincy in 1830. of which he remained a deaeon for forty-two years. Mr. Keyes died on February 7, 1872, having been twico married-first to Miss Laura
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Harkness, December 22, 1825, and her death occurred May 8, 1832, and secondly to Miss Mary C. Folsom, who died in November, 1864.
JEREMIAH ROSE
Maj. Jeremiah Rose was a New York man, born in the same year as his friend Mr. Keyes. He was reared upon his father's eastern farm, and it is said was noted for his feats of agility and strength in which he excelled all his young companions. In 1815 he married Miss Margaret Brown, daughter of Maj. Daniel Brown, of his native town and county, and in the fall of 1821 he moved to Atlas, Pike County, with his wife and young daughter. In the following year he formed a partnership with John Wood to build a log cabin on the site of a portion of the present site of Quincy ; but before he could commence work he became ill and hired a man to take his place and assist Mr. Wood. In the spring of 1823 he moved into it and boarded Mr. Wood, the Rose family representing the first woman and the first child to reside in Quincy. The latter afterward married George W. Brown.
Mr. Rose resided in the log cabin thus built until 1826, when he sold out to Mr. Wood and bought a farm just north of Quincy, upon which he resided for ten years. When the Adams County Militia was organized he was elected its major, which gave him the title by which lie was generally known. In 1833 lie united with the First Congrega- tional Church of Quincy in which he was always a leader while resid- ing in the city. In 1836 he moved to Henderson County, residing there on his farm for fourteen years. In 1850, however, he returned to Quincy, where he died nine years later at the age of sixty-seven. Al- though quite retiring, Major Rose was a man of strong and positive character, being especially active and locally prominent as an Aboli- tionist and supporter of all Christian missions. His was not as broad a character as that of Governor Wood, but none of the early settlers stood as a better example of the true, industrious, unobstrusive and ever faithful Christian.
ASA TYRER
Late in the year 1836 occurred the deaths of the first two perma- nent settlers of Adams County-Daniel Lisle and Justus Perigo.
Asa Tyrer, the first coroner of Adams County, was a native of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, born October 17, 1788. He first visited the Illinois country in 1818, that he might locate a quarter section of land in the Military Bounty Tract, which he had purchased from a soldier of the War of 1812 for the sum of $300. At the time of his visit there were no steamboats, or other public conveyances, to be used in reaching Illinois. He provided himself with knapsack and provisions, with flint, steel and punk, and, after wearisome days of travel, reached St. Louis. There he crossed the Mississippi River and started northward for his intended home, afoot and alone. Reaching
PIONEER FRYING PAN.
BED WARMING PAN AND TIN LANTERN.
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( Courtesy of S. P. Orth.)
OLD-TIME HOUSEIIOLD UTENSILS.
FOOT WARMER.
PIONEER IMPLEMENTS USED BY THE OLD SETTLERS
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the Illinois River, he met a man who had camped on the bank, and who was on his way to some point about 150 miles above, journeying in a skiff which contained as cargo, a barrel of whisky. Mr. Tyrer spent the night with them all, and the next morning was rowed aeross the river, thanking his good luck as he resumed his journey up the Mississippi Valley. After several days travel he reached the beautiful bluffs upon which Quincy now stands, having consulted various maps and ascertained that the land which he owned and was endeavoring to loeate was situated in that locality. As the Government surveyors had but recently traced the lines of the lands in that area, Mr. Tyrer found no difficulty in definitely locating his tract, and on the following day started on his return to St. Louis. Near one of the Government lines he had discovered Watson's spring, afterward quite famous, and, on both trips to the Quiney bluffs and back to St. Louis, he saw and heard of numerous bands of Indians, herds of deer and abundance of all sorts of wild game.
In the year 1822 Mr. Tyrer returned to his land on the Bluffs and built a log cabin on his traet, which was located about two miles southeast of where the courthouse in Quincy now stands. Two years afterward the entire family settled upon it. They came up the river in skiff's, two being lashed together, which served as a foundation for a platform. The structure as a whole constituted a house boat, which safely, if slowly, transported the Tyrer family to the landing at the bluffs. When he first located, or soon afterward, Mr. Tyrer set up a blacksmith shop and a corn grinder, or mill, on his place, which for a long time thereafter were the only institutions of the kind in Adams County. In 1825, at the organization of the county government, he became its first coroner, and served in that office for two terms. He resided near Quincy for a number of years and then, during the lead- mining excitement, lived for a time at Galena. But he always held his land at his original location, and some years before his death on August 6, 1873, returned to the homestead in the Quincy neighbor- hood, where he passed the remainder of his life.
OLD PIKE COUNTY VOTES "NO CONVENTION"
It was during the momentous year of 1824 that Adams County appears above the horizon of history. For two years the state had been stirred over the prospect that a new constitution might be adopted recognizing slavery ; but fortunately the measure calling for a conven- tion was defeated. The No Convention, or Free State party, swept the northern and western counties of Illinois at the election in August of 1824. There were but four votes in Quiney, and in what is now Adams County were a score or more. Old Pike County which then extended as far north as the base line six miles above Quiney, was thoroughly canvassed, as was the entire country as far as Rock Island. The voters turned out to a man and on Sunday mornng the day before the election, nearly fifty had gathered at the Bluffs, as the place was
QUINCY AND ADAMS COUNTY 103
then called. They rode to Atlas forty miles south, swimming the creeks which were at high water, and cast their votes on the following day. Of the one hundred votes polled at Atlas, ninety-seven were for "no convention."
THOMAS CARLIN
At this same election, Nicholas Hanson, who had been ejected from the previous Legslature of Illinois was rechosen by a decisive vote, but resigned his seat before his term expired, and returned to New York, his native state. Thomas Carlin (afterward governor) was elected state senator. He held a seat in the upper legislative body for eight years, soon after came to Quincy as receiver of the Land Office, and in 1838 was chosen governor.
COUNTY OF ADAMS CREATED
On the 14th of September, 1824, the month following the election named, and in the midst of the presidential canvass in which figured Jackson, Clay, Crawford and John Quincy Adams, John Wood in- serted the following notice in the Edwardsville Spectator: "A peti- tion will be presented to the General Assembly of the State of Illinois at its next session praying for the establishment of a new county to be formed from the County of Pike and the parts attached, the southern boundary of which shall be between towns three and four, south of the base line." The notice having been published twelve times, as required by law, the General Assembly passed a bill in con- formity with the petition, which was approved by the governor January 18, 1825. The aet read as follows: "Be it enacted, that all that tract of country within the following boundaries, to-wit: beginning at the place where the township line between townships three south and four south touches the Mississippi river, thence east on said line to the range line between ranges four and five west, thence north on said range line to the northeast corner of township two north, range five west, thenee west on said township line to the Mississippi River to the place of beginning, shall constitute a county to be called the county of Adams."
The result of the presidential election in the preceding November had determined the name of the new county. On the day appointed to choose electors for president and vice-president, the settlers living in and around that portion of the "Kingdom of Pike" now called Adams County, determined to hold the election on home ground ; otherwise they would be called upon to make the long trip to Atlas in order to cast their ballots as American citizens. John Wood had come up from that place the day before with a list of the Adams electors. It is said that nobody knew the names of the Clay or Craw- ford electors; but everybody wanted to vote-even some Missourians who had crossed the river for the purpose. So an election precinet
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was organized, with judges and clerks, and the twenty or more votes cast were unanimous for John Quincy Adams. The Adams elector chosen was William Harrison. There was no suggestion of going behind the returns which, on the face of them, indicated an over- whelming sentiment in favor of John Quincy. It was therefore sug- gested to the Legislature, which had already been petitioned to carve ont a new county from Old Pike, that the county to be formed should be named Adams. And Adams it was named.
LOCATING THE SEAT OF JUSTICE
The act of January, 1825, creating Adams County appointed as commissioners to locate its permanent seat of justice, the following : Seymour Kellogg, Morgan County ; Joel Wright, Montgomery County,
A WATER WHEEL OF OLD ADAMS COUNTY
and David Sutton, Pike County. They were directed to meet at the house of Ebenezer Harkness on the first Monday iu April, or within seven days therefrom; and "after taking the oath before a justice of the peace to locate the seat of justice for the future accommoda- tion and convenience of the people, shall proceed to fix the seat of justice, and when fixed it shall be the permanent seat of justice of said county ; and the commissioners shall forthwith make out a copy of their proceedings and file them in the office of the recorder of Pike County; and the said commissioners shall receive the sum of two dollars per day for each day spent by them in the discharge of their duties, and for each day spent in going or returning from the same, to be paid out of the first money paid into the treasury of said county of Adams after its organization."
On the 30th of April, 1825, Messrs. Kellogg and Dutton, two of the commissioners, came to the Town Site, as Quincy was then called,
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prepared to locate the county seat. Their original plan was to place it at the geographical center of the county, and they engaged Mr. Keyes as a guide to assist them in carrying out that intention. It may be that their guide had his own Town Site in mind as a most likely county seat; at all events, he led the locating commissioners a merry chase through the bogs and quagmires of Mill Creek, and at nightfall they were glad to find shelter and solid footing on the erest of the bluffs. On the following morning, withont another suggestion as to the geographieal eenter of Adams County, they led a procession eom- posed of all the able-bodied inhabitants of the Bluffs to the locality now known as Washington Park and, halting near its present eastern entranee, drove a stake into the ground, and officially annonneed that the northwest quarter of section 2, town 2. south of range 9, west of the 4th principal meridian, was the seat of justice of Adams County.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS COMPLETELY IMMORTALIZED
Mr. Kellogg had previously remarked that the people of his county had called its seat Jacksonville, in honor of the defeated democratic candidate, and the suggestion had been made by some of the Bluffs delegation that as their new county had already been named to commemorate the honored Adams family, the president- elect be donbly and specifically honored by conferring Quiney on the county seat just created. When the stake was therefore set by the loeating commissioners at Washington Park, it was formally driven to mark the site of the Town of Quiney. At the time the county seat was thus selected and named, the Quineyites present were Wil- lard Keyes, Jeremiah Rose and John Dronlard; John Wood. the other real fourth of the population, was absent on a business trip to St. Louis.
Still another step was taken to give complete honor to John Quiney Adams in the founding of the county and its seat of justice ; and it is an interesting item of early history with which few of the present generation are familiar. Its nature was voiced quite recently to the writer by a bright, inquisitive young lady, who said : "I understand Why Adams and Quiney, but why shouldn't the John come in?" Well, it did come into the nomenelature of Adams County, but has long sinee been ent ont. The more's the pity! The other limb in the name of John Qniney Adams was bestowed in this wise: The county being named Adams and the new town Quincy, to complete the full name of the distinguished statesman who was then president of the Public Square now called Washington Park was called John's Square, or John's Prairie. It was thus christened when the stake was driven, though the early plats of the city omitted the name John's Square. Judge Snow, who afterward made the first town plat, was not present when the stake was fixed designating the county seat, but President Adams' message delivered March 4, 1825, arrived in Quiney the very day when that important event occurred, and is said to have
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aroused such enthusiasm that nothing would do but that the very center of the seat of justice should have the name of John bestowed upon it. Thus is answered the question of any other Quincyites who may fear that the good founders of Adams County and its seat of justice did not give the learned and popular John Quincy Adams all that was coming to him.
Thus the foundation has been laid upon which to erect the fabric known as the County Government, with its various attachments and auxiliaries.
CHAPTER VI
COUNTY GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
THE COUNTY'S CREATIVE ACT-FIRST COURT AND ITS SEAL-COUNTY SEAT SITE ENTERED-QUINCY ORDERED PLATTED-FIRST SALE OF QUINCY LOTS-FIRST LOG COURTHOUSE-BURIAL GROUND RE- SERVED-FIRST TEACHER AND FIRST PREACHER-PROVIDING FOR JUDGE SNOW'S EXPANSION-WOODLAND CEMETERY-A. F. HUB- BARD'S CLAIM TO FAME-THE GHOST WALKS AGAIN-COURTHOUSE OF 1838-75-DANGERS OF CHRONIC OFFICE HOLDING-A JAIL THOUGHT EXPEDIENT AND NECESSARY-ORIGINAL ELECTION PRE- CINCTS-COLUMBUS FIGHTS FOR THE COUNTY SEAT-MARQUETTE AND HIGHLAND COUNTIES-JUDICIAL REFORM AND SLAVERY-TOWN- SITIP ORGANIZATION ADOPTED-FIRST BOARD OF SUPERVISORS- THIE TWENTY POLLING PRECINCTS-OFFICIAL ACCOMMODATIONS EXTENDED-FIRE FORCES BUILDING OF NEW COURTHOUSE-COATS- BURG SUBSIDES-JEFFERSON SQUARE SELECTED AS SITE-STEPS IN BUILDING OF PRESENT COURTHOUSE-REPRESENTATIVES OF THE COUNTY-COUNTY OFFICERS, 1825-69-THE DECADE, 1870-79- COVERING 1882-1918 - LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVES - RURAL LANDS AND CITY PROPERTIES-POPULATION. 1890, 1900, 1910- ADAMS COUNTY HOME.
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