USA > Illinois > Adams County > Quincy > Quincy and Adams County history and representative men, Vol. I > Part 66
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Both the Methodists and Baptists have church organizations-the latter of comparatively Jate establishment (1890), The Methodists of the locality have been active since 1854, when the Shiloh Church was dedicated: the Richfield Church was established in 1858 and the organization at Plainville was founded in 1976. These societies are now under the pastorate of Rev. George F. MeCumber. The Shiloh membership is 56, the Richfield 46. and the Plainville 118. Emory Elliott was on the work in 1855. For the past thirty years Revs. S. G. Ferree, R. Gregg, J. W. Maddison. A. V. Babb -. C. F. Buker, I. W. Keithley, J. A. Biddle, M. D. Tremaine. A. B. Fry and George C. Bechtel have been the successive pastors, previous to the coming of Mr. MeCumber in 1914. Rev. L. C. Taylor is pastor of the Baptist Church.
The Masons. Odd Fellows and Modern Woodmen of America are organized at Plainville. The Independent Order Odd Fellows' Lodge was originally instituted in August. 1887, as Stone's Prairie Lodge. No. 759. Its successive noble grands have been J. F. Lightle. (. W. Sturtevant, William Hess. S. A. Benson. Gus Hampsmire, Orville Hess, HI. O. Larimore, J. P. Journey and C. W. Sturtevant, serond term.
Plainville was incorporated as a village in 1896, the first president of its board of trustees having been Lawrence Hoskins, with A. ... Crim. clerk. C. W. Sturtevant is now president of the village board and Fay Hoskins, clerk.
CHAPTER XX
OTHER TOWNSHIPS AND VILLAGES
INDUSTRIES AND PRODUCTS OF HONEY CREEK TOWNSHIP-FROGGY PRAIRIE-COATSBURG, QUINCY'S RIVAL-PALOMA AND THE GOOD- INGS-FALL CREEK TOWNSHIP-MARBLEHEAD AND FALL CREEK- LIMA TOWNSHIP AND VILLAGE-LIBERTY- GILMER TOWNSHIP AND FOWLER-THE OLD THOMPSON SETTLEMENT-OLD AND NEW URS.A -VERCELLINE-COLUMBUS-BURTON TOWNSHIP AND ITS VILLAGES -HOUSTON TOWNSHIP-BEVERLY TOWNSHIP AND ITS VILLAGES- ELLINGTON TOWNSHIP AND BLOOMFIELD-MCKEE TOWNSHIP AND KELLERVILLE-RICHFIELD VILLAGE.
The natural features of Honey Creek Township, which is located north of the central part of Adams County, are extremely diversified, and yet all favorable to substantial development and comfortable progress. Honey and Brush Creeks, tributaries of the south branch of Bear Creek, drain and fertilize the country, which is ineluded in the watershed of the Mississippi basin.
INDUSTRIES AND PRODUCTS OF THE TOWNSIHP
Agriculture, horticulture and live stock raising all flourish, dairy- ing being a chief and growing specialty. The specific products upon which the people of the township depend for their substantial pros- perity and future growth are eorn, hogs and eattle. Apples, pears and peaches do well, although on account of the constant fight which fruit growers must wage against inseet enemies, horticulture has not, on the whole, advanced.
Originally, Honey Creek Township consisted of about three-fifths timber and the remainder prairie lands, but since the timber has been stripped away to a large extent for building purposes and to manu- facture such articles as barrels and wagons, there have been no indus- tries which are not dependent upon the annual products of the soil. or the raising of live stock.
FROGGY PRAIRIE
The principal prairie of Honey Creek is called Froggy. The why and wherefore of the name is thus explained by an old settler: "It originated at one of the old-fashioned spelling bees, where a school
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district at the west of the prairie was pitted against the home district. Schoolhouse, a log cabin on the prairie: time, March 25, 1844; at candle lighting, present both schools in full force; wild grass taller than a man ; water, boot-leg deep full of frogs, which made so much noise that the teacher was compelled to pronounce the words at the top of his voice in order to be heard at all. A schoolgirl from the west district called the place Froggy ; and Froggy it has been ever since. "
A squatter named Haven is said to have made the first settlement in the township, fixing his habitation on what is now Hog branch of Honey Creek, section 21, some time previous to 1830. The story is that he found a bee tree on the ereek bottom so laden with honey that he forthwith gave the main stream its name, which was also applied to the township. Within the decade succeeding llaven's arrival came such settlers as Edward Edmondson, Enos Thompson and sons, John Byler. H. B. Baldwin, J. E. Kammerer. Richard Gray. Joseph Pollock, Mrs. Irene Grigsby and Jabez Lovejoy, Daniel Good- ing. the Strneys and the Whites. Dr. Joel Darrah settled in the spring of 1840.
C'OATSBURG, QUINCY'S RIVAL
There are two villages in Honey Creek Township, both on the Chi- eago, Burlington & Quincy line-Coatsburg and Paloma. The former was surveyed and platted by R. P. Coats in January, 1855, and derives its name from him. Coatsburg witnessed a somewhat steady growth for about twenty years and reached a point in its development when it had a substantial support for the county seat ; but the contest of 1875 laid its ambitions low in that regard, and it is now, and has been for some years, in a state of decline. It has a local newspaper, the Community Enterprise, edited by R. C. Stokes, and a branch of the State Street Bank of Quiney, organized in October, 1909. D. L. MeNeal is its eashier. The bank building was erected in 1914.
There are half a dozen general and special stores in the village. It is in the center of quite a large German Lutheran community, the church at Coatsburg having been founded in July, 1862. Its first pastor was Rev. A. Fismer, and Rev. A. H. Zeilenger, the present incumbent. has been in charge since 1908. The society has a mem- bership of about 150. with a strong Sunday School and several flour- ishing auxiliaries. The Methodists have no settled pastor, being served by Rev. C. R. Underwood, of Columbus, and the Disciples of Christ are in charge of Rev. L. C. Manek of Quincy. As to the lodges of the neighborhood, only one is strong -- that which represents the Modern Woodmen.
PALOMA AND THE GOODINGS
Paloma was laid out by Daniel W. Gooding about 1862. He was an honest, thrifty Maine man, and when he came to Quincy from Ohio
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in 1837 there was only one brick building in the county seat. Mr. Gooding afterward moved to Honey Creek Township and bought a large tract of land, a portion of which he developed into a fine farm and homestead. As stated, he laid ont Paloma on his property, which also included more than half a section adjoining it to the north. It was in that locality that Edward J. Gooding, the youngest child of Daniel, was born sixty-two years ago, and, for some years, he has been living comfortably in the village, as the oldest continuous resi- dent of the township.
Z. Morton, who died in 1917, had settled about sixty years before on the farm, one mile north of Paloma, which had been his lifelong residence. His six sons have all followed in the footsteps of their father.
In 1848 William Booth located his homestead one and a half miles south of the present site of Paloma, and died abont fourteen years ago. His six children continued to reside in the old neighborhood and are now among the oldest settlers of the township.
Paloma has become the center of quite an extensive trade in live stock, grain and hay. On account of the large quantities of cucumbers which are raised in the neighborhood and pickled there, it has often been dubbed Pickle Station or Pickleville.
The Paloma Exchange Bank, which is a branch of the People's Bank of Camp Point, was opened in 1909. M. W. Callahan is its presi- dent and H. G. Henry cashier.
The Paloma Lumber Company handles a full line of building materials under the management of J. E. Lohr. The large live stock shippers are represented by Willis Cook and C. C. Lawless, and the dealers in hay and grain by J. E. Lohr and J. H. Lummis. The latter have done business in those lines for the past eighteen years.
As to her public utilities, it may be said that Paloma organized an electric light company in 1916, and put in a plant with storage. The water for domestic consumption is drawn from sanitary wells.
The Paloma Methodist Episcopal Church, the only local religious body, was originally organized at Richland schoolhouse, one mile south of town, in 1851. Seven years later the headquarters of the organi- zation were transferred to the present site of Paloma, where a house of worship was built and dedicated by Peter Cartwright. The society, now a thriving station, is in charge of Rev. Otis L. Monson.
FALL CREEK TOWNSHIP
This section of the county borders the Mississippi, in the extreme southwest, and is broken by Mill, Fall and Ashton Creeks, which cut through the limestone bluffs bordering the parent river. Fall Creek, from which the township derives its name, meanders through the southern sections of the township from east to west, and is so called from a considerable cascade or waterfall which is a feature of its course in that section of the county. Mill Creek, the largest of the
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streams, ents across the northwest corner of the township, and was so named because of the pioneer sawmill built upon its banks in 1524 by Amos Bancroft, Daniel Moore and Rial Crandall.
MARBLEHEAD AND FALL CREEK
At one time Marblehead, on Mill Creek near the northern town- ship line, gave promise of becoming quite a village. It was laid out in 1-35 by Michael Mast, John Coffman and Stephen Thomas in the center of section 5. Mr. Mast erected a large store and stocked it with general goods, and as the saw and grist mill on Mill Creek did con- siderable business for a number of years, he realized a good trade from its customers, as well as from the settled farmers. As late as 1850 a large steam ferry plied between a point opposite Marblehead and Marion City, Missouri (now extinct), which also attracted emi- grants to the Illinois country and tended to support Mr. Mast's store. But gradually the trade fell away. the coming of the Quincy, Alton & St. Louis Railroad completely changed conditions, and Marblehead has shrunken to a little collection of buildings grouped around the plant of the Marblehead Lime Company. It is a station on the Louis- iana branch of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad.
Fall Creek, also a station on that line and on the stream men- tioned, ships some live stock and farm produce.
LIMAA TOWNSHIP AND VILLAGE
In the northwestern portion of the county is the little village of Lima. in the township by that name two miles east of Lima Lake. It is also about a mile and a half south of the Hancock County line.
The first settlement in the township was made by Joseph Harkness in 1828, and soon afterward he erected a log house about two miles northwest of the present village. The daughter born to Mr. and Mrs.
Harkness was the first native of the township. The Orrs-William. Grayson and Dr. Joseph-were all prominent in the early development of the country, Grayson Orr made the first brick, William operated the first mill, and Dr. Joseph Orr built the first store in town, soon after it was platted in 1833. The Doctor is also said to have named the settlement Lima, in compliment to a Peruvian visitor, who had declared that nowhere outside his home capital had he seen more beautiful women than those whom he had met in this region of Adams County.
Lima is the center of a rich district productive of corn, wheat. oats and fruit. Along the creeks, in the earlier times, it was thickly timbered. It has a number of stores and the State Bank of Lima hears witness to its importance as a center of trade and exchange. It was opened in 1910, and has a capital of $25,000. surplus of $2,500. and average deposits of nearly $150,000. A. B. Leeper is president and E. F. Jacobs cashier.
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LIBERTY
Liberty is a substantial rural village in the southern part of. the county, and this despite the fact that it has, as yet, been without the stimulating effects of railroad communication. It has about a dozen stores, several garages, a coal and wood yard, a feed mill, a bank and a newspaper. The last named, the Liberty Bee, was established in October, 1912, by its present owner and editor, W. A. Robinson. The Farmers' State Bank was organized in 1903. The village sehool- house was erected in 1887. Liberty supports four churches, as fol- lows : The Lutheran, Rev. M. P. Mortensen ; Church of the Brethren, Rev. C. O. Stutsman ; the Catholic (St. Bridget's), Rev. Father Voll- breeht ; and the Presbyterian, now without a pastor. The town is also represented in the lodge world by the Masons, Odd Fellows, Modern Woodmen and Royal Neighbors. The Odd Fellows organized in 1860 and the Masons in 1863. In order to bring the record of its activities strietly up to date, it may be added that S. G. Lawless, a leading and active citizen of Liberty, is chairman of the local exemption board which meets in that place.
The first village in the township was established by the Mormons in 1830, about a mile and a half southeast of the present site of Lib- erty. It was called Montgomery. A postoffice was established at Liberty in 1834, and in 1850 it was platted by Paris T. Judy.
LIBERTY HIGH SCHOOL
In 1852, the first Liberty Schoolhouse was built on the site where Pond Brothers general store is located. The building was a one- story building, built of briek manufactured on the C. A. Wagner farm one-half mile south of the village. W. H. Odell was the first teacher.
After fourteen years of service, the brick school building was too small for the rapidly increasing population of the Village of Liberty. Ambrose Dudley deeded to the school trustees the block on the north side of Dudley Street, so long as it should be used for school pur- poses. P. H. Mereer planted the shade trees on the play ground and around the block. The second school house was built in the summer of 1866.
In 1885 the patrons again saw the needs of a large school building and purchased the one-half block where the present high school stands. The building was ereeted during the summer of 1887.
The first brick schoolhouse has been razed and the second building was sold to O. H. Collins and is now used as a warehouse by the Pond Brothers general store.
For many years the school taught only the rudiments of the country school, but it has had a gradual growth. For a few years only one year's high school work was taught. Another year's work was added and it finally became a recognized two-year high school.
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Its currienhnn now has a three-year course and the school is classed as a recognized three-year high school. The work done and the cur- rieulum have been approved by the state superintendent of public instruction.
The following is a partial list of men who have attended Liberty High School and become prominent : P. Il. Mercer, representative in Congress from Nebraska: John C. Broady, circuit judge of the Eighth Judicial Distriet; W. E. Mereer, physician and captain in the service of the United States during the World war; Ray Mercer. also physician and captain in the military service during the late war; Floyd Mercer, Christian minister and prominent banker in Cal- ifornia; Rolland Wagner, prominent lawyer at Quiney, representa- tive in the General Assembly, 1916-18, and recently elected for another term; R. E. Balzer, prominent druggist in Dakota; L. L. Boyer, present county superintendent of highways of Adams County : Dr. Albert Boren, now living in Tacoma, Washington ; Nellie Foster. prominent in musical world. and Charles E. Boren, a prominent banker in Alton, Illinois.
The teachers of the school in 1918 were: S. Fred Hall, principal : Arivilla Flick, eighth grade and assistant in the high school: Mabel Sims, fifth, sixth and seventh grades, and Zepha Welton, primary.
Since its establishment the Liberty School has had fifty-seven teachers. The first teacher was W. II. Odell: the last principal of the school, serving when this history was written, was Fred Hall, a grandson of one of the former teachers.
The Board of Directors for 1918, and the body to whom Liberty owes more to the advancement of her school than any other, was: W. A. Robinson, president. George Diehl, clerk, and Steven G. Lawless. The Board has fought manfully for a better and more up- to-date school, and it is its endeavor to realize a complete four-year high school.
GILMER TOWNSHIP AND FOWLER
Gilmer, one of the central townships of the county, was named in honor of Dr. Thornton Gilmer, an early and promir ent settler. It was organized in 1850. The first settlements were in the southern part of the township as early as 1829.
The little hamlet of Fowler is on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, which passes through the northwest corner of the township. The eighty acres on which it is platted, on the southwest quarter of section 6. was purchased from Doetor Gihner by Edward Fowler, of Mendon, Illinois. The Village of Fowler was laid out in August, 1856. by Henry Brenner, Father of Dr. Theodore Brenner of Quiney, and his son. Edward, was the first child born in the village. The Evangelical Lutheran St. Paul's Church was organized in September, 1862, and built a small house of worship in the cast part of the village. The German Methodists and the United Brethren afterward organized and
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erected meeting houses, the former in 1868. Fowler has now a few stores, a good village sehool, and other evidenees of a modest rural life.
THE OLD THOMPSON SETTLEMENT
There are also a number of other points in the county, some of which have almost faded away and several quite disappeared from the face of the earth, but of which a record should be made as of items in past history.
The Thompson settlement in IIoney Creek and Mendon townships was famous in the '30s, as Enos, its patriareh and the eldest of the three brothers who gave their names to it was widely known through- out western Illinois as an indefatigable worker for Methodism. Their descendants were prolific and kept the name alive long after the set- tlement had been blotted out.
OLD AND NEW URS.A
Old Ursa was also established as a postoffice on section 25, in Ursa Township, David Campbell having built a mill there for the grinding of wheat and eorn. That was about 1830. Although it became a settlement of some pretensions, it was never organized as a village, that distinction remaining for New Ursa, or plain Ursa, founded in 1875 less than a mile north. With the coming of the railroad (the Chicago. Burlington & Quiney) there was a wholesale exodus to the new town.
MERCELLINE
In 1842 the Village of Mereelline was laid out by S. M. Jenkins, three miles north of Ursa, on section 31. Additions were afterward made to the original plat, but the place never attained substantial growth.
COLUMBUS
The small cluster of buildings, partly in Columbus and partly in Gilmer Township, very near the geographical eenter of Adams County, is a relic of blighted hopes-not exactly of departed greatness, but of political and corporate ambitions nipped in the bud. The exact eenter of the county was the settlement of Gilmer, a mile west of Columbus, but as the former was in the Military Tract, and the east- ern owners of its site could not be reached for purposes of purehase, the advocates of fixing the county seat in the geographieal eenter of the county compromised on Columbus as being the nearest they could come to it, under the cireumstanees.
While the county seat contest was in doubt, from 1841 to 1848, Columbus grew quite steadily and became quite a village. It had a
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newspaper, the Columbus Advocate, edited by E. Ferry, a lawyer and an carnest supporter of the town in all its pretensions and ambitions ; a number of stores and wagon factories were established ; a wool card- ing machine was placed in operation, and several churches flourished. In the northern part of the township a steam grist and saw mill was built and operated. At one time it was owned by the Mormons, who thought so well of the country that they contemplated starting a town in that locality. A rather sweeping fire in 1847 and the final loss of the county seat contest in the following year dealt Columbus a blow from which it never recovered. At the present time the settlement comprises two stores and a few other buildings. The Methodist Church, the pastor of which is Rev. C. R. Underwood, was organized in the early '40s. The Disciples of Christ were the first to erect a house of worship at Columbus, in 1836. From an early day there have been lodges of Masons and Odd Fellows in the neighborhood.
BURTON TOWNSHIP AND ITS VILLAGES
Burton Township is in the second tier both from the west and the south. Although the villages of Burton and Newton were located in the '30s, when the Chicago, Burlington & Quiney was built through the southern part of the county, it coolly passed south of them.
Burton was platted by Elijah M. King in 1836, on the southwest quarter of section 7. Paris T. Judy kept the first store. The village school was established about 1847. The Free Will Baptists organized the first church at Burton.
At Newtown, the Presbyterians founded a church soon after the village was laid out, in 1839. Rev. Thomas Cole was its first minister.
HOUSTON TOWNSHIP
Neither has Houston Township been fortunate in the planting of villages within its limits. In 1839 Henry A. Cyrus and Levi T. Ben- ton laid out a town on the southwest quarter of section 34 and named it in honor of Sam Houston of Texas. But the town was a complete failure except that it gave the township a good name when it was organized in April, 1849.
The first school in the township was held at Glenwood, on Section 16, and the first church was built at York Neck, section 33.
BEVERLY TOWNSHIP AND ITS VILLAGES
Beverly Township, the southeasternmost corner of the county, comprises two settlements or rural communities, both of which were at one time postoffices. Beverly postoffice was established in 1837. with John B. Robertson as postmaster. He held the office for a period of forty years. The first schoolhouse was erceted in I>37, and a few years afterward was destroyed by a tornado. In 1856 the Village
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of Beverly was laid out on section 21 by a company composed of Mr. Robertson, William Raymond, Charles W. Billington, Samuel Rey- nolds and Arehibald Williams.
The Village of Kingston (Fairweather postoffice) is of later date. Its natural situation, in the northwestern part of the township, is good.
ELLINGTON TOWNSHIP AND BLOOMFIELD
Bloomfield is the only village worthy of the name in Ellington Township, which contains, of course, a portion of the City of Quiney. Situated ten miles northeast of the county seat, it was platted, about 1837, by Ansel Clarkson, and for some years its future seemed pron- ising. A number of large stores were erected, a wagon factory estab- lished and its prospeets looked upward. But the factory proved a bad venture, and the year 1861 marked a steady decline in the life of Bloomfield. But although the village almost faded away, the town- ship as a whole has been settled by a thrifty and prosperous people, and productive and attractive farms, as well as neat sehoolhouses and churches, bear witness to their comfortable and rounded lives.
MCKEE TOWNSHIP' AND KELLERVILLE
MeKee Township takes its name from the fine creek which passes through it in a southeasterly direction. Its history is also a record of comparative failure in the establishment of eenters or concentrations of population. Bowling Green, on seetion 7, passed away before the '50s, and in 1853 Old Slab Town was rechristened Spring Valley. But the change of name did not save it from ruin, when the Civil war ealled away the proprietor of its earding, grist and saw mill, npon which Spring Valley depended for its life. In 1865 the Town of Magnolia was started, but is said to have been killed by a had whiskey establishment. In 1869 Hickory Corner rose and fell. Then Payton was born and was finally developed into Kellerville, in the northeastern eorner of the township, where it still modestly rests.
RICHFIELD VILLAGE
The Village of Richfield, in the township by that name. about four miles north of the county line. was never incorporated, although platted in 1842. The first store in the place was built by Nahma Tyler abont 1845. Richfield was never a leader-did not, in faet. aspire to be one-among the villages of the county.
There may have been others, but probably none which will be crit- ieally missed by the present-day historian of Adams County.
MELROSE AND CONCORD TOWNSHIPS
Melrose Township, immediately east and sonth of the City of Quiney, is one of the oldest sections of Adams County in point of
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settlement, and although its surface is much broken by Mill Creek and its branches, its soil is rich and highly improved farms are the rule. When AAsa Tyrer brought his family from Louisiana, Illinois, and settled on section 12, in the spring of 1821, there were only two other resident white families in Adams County. He visited the site of Quiney, but passed it over as less promising than the section in which he located two quarter sections on soldier's warrants. David Shaw, Perry Alexander, Abadiah Waddell, Jacob Wagner, Abigail Parsons and Nathaniel Sommers settled in Melrose Township previous to 1830. The first schoolhouse was built on seetion 35 in the summer of 1833, almost coincident with the organization of the first religious society by the Methodists on Little Mill Creek. Melrose Episcopal Church was founded about the same time at the house of Rev. Samuel Griggs, on North Mill Creek, under the ministrations of the cele- brated Peter Cartwright. In 1835 the society built the little log house near Dyer's Spring, now known as Coe's Springs. The German Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1845 and in 1850 erected Zion's Chapel in section 22. Although the township has a preponderance of the German element, many of its carly settlers were from Massachusetts, and quite a colony came from Melrose. In 1849 at a publie meeting held in Nathaniel Pease's house a majority of its citizens voted in favor of giving the township the name of the Massachusetts town. At the first election under the township organi- zation law, held in April, 1850, the following officers were elected : Supervisor. Stephen Safford ; assessor, Cornelius L. Demaree: clerk, Nathaniel Pease ; collector, Jeremiah Parsons: justices of the peace. Gilead Bartholomew and Amos Bancroft ; overseer of the poor, Albert A. Humphrey ; constable, Oliver Waddell.
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