USA > Illinois > Lee County > Recollections of the pioneers of Lee County [Illinois] > Part 29
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When fourteen years old, in the autumn of 1837, I joined this family, having remained until that time in New England. In the winter of 1837-8 the three brothers and sisters used to attend religious services at the log house of a Mr. Bridgman, which stood just across the creek west of the thicket, on the present road from Binghampton to Sublette. We went with the oxen and farm wagon with boards across the box for seats, following the Indian trail through the woods. A Mr. Vincent, a relative of an eastern divine of some eminence having the same name, was our preacher. The next place of worship in the vicinity was a small log school house on the east side of the before mentioned creek, which was not of sufficient size to have received a name, a mile north of Mr. Bridgman, and near the "Widow Varners." I think it was called by her name. In this house Luke Hitchcock sometimes preached soon after he came to Illinois. Rev. Joseph Gardner used to hold service there. At one of his meetings he had for an auditor Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. Curiosity to hear Smith, induced Mr. Gardner to invite him to close the services with prayer, which he did. After the audience was dismissed, Smith said to Mr. Gardner in an apologetic way, "I was never gifted in prayer."
Smith's wife was a sister of Mrs. Wasson, who lived near where Am- boy now is. He came there to visit, and on one occasione was arrested, I presume on some trumped up charge. His brother William, one of the witnesses to the finding of the plates of the Book of Mormon, lived in Palestine Grove, not far from Rocky Ford, and had some followers there. They projected a temple and progressed so far as to lay a corner stone. Smith lived in a very poor way, and seemed much adverse to labor. He went one day and cut some poles from the tops of fallen trees. Going homme he fell from the load and broke his arm. I was sent for, but as I was ten miles away it was some time before I reached him and the plac- ing of it in proper dressings gave him considerable pain. During this he suspended his groans long enough to say: "I was never blessed when I
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MR. C, F. INGALLS.
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MRS. C. F. INGALLS.
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engaged in manual labor. I think I have another work to perform." That he should think a special providence was punishing him for bringing home a load of wood to keep his family from freezing, caused me to smile, notwithstanding my sympathy for him in his suffering.
Our cabin was built of unhewn logs. It had but one room on the ground and one above which Was but two logs high on the sides and but seven feet at the ridgepole. This was reached from the lower room by a ladder. The only implements used in the construction of the cabin were an ax, a froc, auger and a shave. No iron was used in the building and no sawed lumber except for the first floor and one small door through which a man could not walk upright with his hat on. The upper floor was made of rive boards and the roof of the same, held in place by weight-poles. Our furniture consisted of an improvised table, the legs of which crossed like those of a saw-horse, boards being nailed over the top. We had but two chairs. One of these had a splint bottom, and the other, from which this was gone, had been replaced by a board. We made other seats by putting legs in puncheons about four inchs thick and four feet long. These we cushioned by nailing coon skins around them. They had no backs and I need not say they were very uncomfortable.
The chairs had the place of honor, and were reserved for ladies and favored guests. The joists on which the upper floor of the house was laid were made of small trees about six inches through at the butt, and as these were green when put in they allowed the floor to sag very much in the middle of the room. The upper floor, as I have said, was made of rive boards laid two deep on the joists, but not nailed. Sometimes they would become displaced so that a leg of the bedstead would drop through, which was enough to awaken even a tired boy. The roof was proof against rain, but sncw would blow through it plentifully, giving an ampie added covering to the bed in the morning. The house sheltered on an average six persons and we were obliged to lodge travelers, as we were some miles away from any public house.
I remember with much pleasure on one occasion that Owen Lovejoy was snowbound with us two nights and a day, for we lacked all mental stimulus. Our only paper was the Saturday Courier, a weekly, printed in Philadelphia, and only received by regular course of mail when it was about a month old. We had but two books, one the Lady of the Lake, of which I committed a good deal to memory: the other the Bible, which I did not like to read because I did not know how to read it. I have always regretted that I did not improve the opportunity I thien had of becoming more familiar than I am with its merits.
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Our farm implements were as rude and imperfect as our cabin and its furnishing. Our harrows were made entirely of wood, the plows did not scour, the hoes were heavy and dull, both cradle and scythe had a home- made, straight snath with a single nib. We thrashed our grain by arranging the bundles in a circle on the ground, the heads all leaning the same way, and then driving both oxen and horses against them on the circle, one person constantly tossing up the straw with a fork, while another drove the animals. We sometimes separated thie wheat from the chaff by passing it through the wind. A common expression of ex- cellence then was the "head of the heap." There were no mechanics near. I have tapped my boots from the skirts of a worn out saddle, using last and pegs that we had made. Wheat threshed in this manner was apt to be damp and dirty. I once took a load of it to Meek's mill to be ground. . This was a log building two stories high. It was near the road from Princeton to Dixon that passed by the toll-gate at the head of the Winebago swamp from which Green river takes its rise. Arrived at the mill after a tedious drive of ten miles or more along the south side of Palestine Grove, a considerable part of the way without a road, I found my wheat was too wet to be ground.` I spread it in the sun and stirred it constantly during one bright, hot summer day and then it was ground. The little flour obtained from it was very poor, black and heavy. The wheat was ground in the basement and then carried on a man's shoulders to the bolt on the floor above. I asked Mr. Meek how his mill was doing. He answered with a degree of pride, "You can judge; it just keeps one man packing." Being obliged to remain over night, Mr. Meek entertain- ed me with the most hospitable kindness. Our breakfast consisted of inush and milk, and though he had a number of persons in his family the table ware was limited to two tin cups and spoons. Mr. Meek and I were accorded the place of honor and were served alone at the first table. I once went with a sled to Green's niill, which was situated on Fox river near its mouth, in company with Charles Sabin and Sherman L. Hatch, who still lives in Lee County. I left home on Monday morning. While at the mill a violent rain melted all the snow and left water in the depression of the roadway across the high prairie which came to be a matter of great importance to us. It was warm on Friday morning when we set out for home with our sleds on bare ground, but it soon began to snow. It suddenly became cold and we were enveloped in the most severe blizzard I ever encountered. There was no house on the twenty miles of prairie between Green's mill and Troy Grove, where we designed to spend the night. As the water froze in the road on the high prairie
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the wind kept it clear of snow and we could follow it; but in the sloughs it would soon be obliterated by the drifting snow and we would lose it. When we had crossed such a slough we would leave one of our number with the teams while the other two hunted up and down the slough until the road was found again. Had we lost our way I am sure we all would have perished, for the following night was extremely cold. About three miles from Troy Grove the road crossed the head of the Tomahawk creek. This being filled with snow appeared like an ordinary slough and we drove into it. Soon the wet snow banked up in front of the box on the sled and the horses were unable to draw the load. We unhitched our teams and mounting one of the horses ran them to the shelter of the grove. We spent the night at Mr. Dewey's, and the following morning having provided ourselves with axes returned and chopped our sleds out of the ice in which they had become firmly frozen. We reached home on Saturday at midnight, having spent on the expedition six laborious, dis- agreeable and dangerous days, with results of only a few hundred pounds of poor flour. Not long since I inspected the Pillsbury A. mnill at Minne- apolis. This has a daily capacity of seven thousand barrels of beautiful flour, nearly the entire labor of producing it being performed by auto- matic machinery, and I realized the extent to winich we had been able to substitute other forces for muscular power."
We listened to the conversation of Mr. C. L. Sawyer, who remembers away back in 1835 how he lived in his father's log cabin with nothing but a ground floor, and blankets in lieu of doors and windows. "I took a lit- tle trip from Galena to Inlet, on foot of course," said he. "It was in the winter and when I left Dixon I knew I should have to travel rapidly to keep from freezing. So I set out on a run and I kept it up pretty stead- ily for ten miles. I sat down to rest-I can show you the very knoll on the farm owned by Mr. Chamberlain-but in a very few minutes I felt sleepy. Rousing myself, for I realized my danger, I started on; but I couldn't run any more, it was difficult to even walk to the first house, and that belonged to Stearn and Reynolds on the farm owned by Mr. Ullrich, Sr. There 1 remained a few hours, suffering intensely from my exertions. I walked on to Inlet that night and mother was glad to see me. Mother was always glad to see us boys, and I never shall forget how sad she looked when I left home to make my own living. "Twas the last time I ever saw her, but I have this to remember, she was always the same kind, patient and amiable mother. She died when she was only forty-five years old, leaving a family of twelve children, and she was the first woman buried in the cemetery. The world knows nothing about the
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heroism of such women." Thus the son whose hair had whitened undes the frosts of three-quarters of a century paid loving tribute to the mother whose form was hidden by the prairie sods more than fifty years ago.
"Shall I tell you how I was cured of an attack of pleurisy without either physician or pills? I had taken a sudden cold which settled in my side. I knew by the hard pain that something must be done, and of course that something was to bleed me. I had a neighbor that had pel- formed this operation successfully for others, so I walked down to see him; he lived three-quarters of a mile away, but that's nothing when you want help hard. Luckily he was at home and I told him what I wanted, 'All right,' said he, 'Grasp the broomstick and hold it out at arm's length.' Then he bound my arm tightly above the elbow and gave me a bowl to hold under my arm. The incision was made and there I stood holding broom stick and bowl until a faintness nigh unto death crept over me and I called for water. Enough! pain gone, cure performed, and I go home a weaker but a weller man." Mr. Sawyer married Miss Nancy Shumway of Pennsylvania in 1842 and they commenced housekeeping on the last land sold by the government in this township, the deed being signed by James K. Polk, president. On this farm they have lived fifty years-long enough to celebrate their golden wedding, which they did in a most hospitabie and enjoyable manner .. But the desire to be with their children has induced them to sell the farm and remove to Iowa. Two brothers who came at an early day are still on their farms in Lee Center township. Mr. Joseph Sawyer, the father, was the first postmaster in Inlet, under President Jackson. It took 25 cents to get a letter from Pennsylvania then, but the government would trust you until the letter arrived at its destination. We heard from a lady whose friends were many and living in the eastern states that they were not always able to pay the 25 cents due when the letter arrived, and the postmaster would trust them until the postage bill would amount to several dollars, then it would take the price of a calf to pay the bill.
A tavern built of logs and kept by Benjamin Whittaker stood where Mr. Cephas Clapp lived. Mr. Whittaker was a Virginian and built the house now occupied by Mr. Ullrich. Here the old stage coach halted in its tedious journeys between Chicago and Galena.
An old settler's daughter tells us that when her mother first came here, in 1839, Whittaker's "sign" at his tavern was three bottles hung aloft between two poles before his door.
Of the perils of the trip from one part of the country to another in those early days, we can have no more graphic picture than the following
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sketch from the pen of Mrs. S. W. Phelps, long known and loved among the people of Lee Center and vicinity as the wife of the pastor of the Congregational church in that place:
"My earliest reminiscences of Lee county, Illinois, clustering closely about Dixon, date back to 1832. Then a child of eight years, I was the junior member of a traveling party of five, en route from New York City to Galena, Ill., Rev. Aratus Kent, who was returning to the "northwest," lris missionary field, with his bride (my aunt), Miss Pierce, a teacher, and Mr. E. E. Hall, a young student in course of preparation for the ministry. The route was via Hudson River to Albany, thence across New York state by Erie Canal to Buffalo, onward by stage to Wheeling, Va., down the Ohio River and up the Mississippi by steamboat, and with- out detentions required a full month's time.
We had left New York in September, but having been long delayed by cholera among us in Cincinnati, again in St. Louis by other illness, we were unable to leave that city till after the close of navigation on the upper Mississippi, beginning the overland trip of more than 400 miles by stage. Arriving at Springfield, Ill., it was found to the dismay of the older travelers that the mail stage would travel no farther north ward before spring After days of search for a good team for sale my uncle bought a stout pair of horses, an emigrant wagon, buffalo robes, and provided with a compass, a large sack of crackers and some dried beef, the best provision for emergencies of hunger which the town afforded, we set forth, soon to leave the "settlements" behind and to pass through a wilderness country made still more desolate by the "Black Hawk war."
Stopping places became more infrequent, till for the later days of the dreary way they were forty miles apart, the blackened ruins of cabins now and then marking the deserted "claims." Roads (more prop- erly called "trails" by the inhabitants) long unused and either overgrown by prairie grass or burned over by autumnal fires, were difficult to follow.
Late in the arternoon of Dec. 13th our wagou halted before a little cabin known as "Daddy Joe's." "Daddy Joe" had espied us from afar, and awaited our approach leaning upon the rail fence, smoking a cob pipe, his rotund figure topped off by a well ventilated straw hat. His son, yet a lad, occupied a post of observation upon a "top rail," his head also sheltered front the wintry winds by a similar structure.
"Winnebago Inlet," known to "early settlers" as a "slough of des- pond," lay between us and "Dixon's Ferry," our haven of rest for the coming night, and my uncle asked directions to a safe crossing from
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"Daddy Joe." His advice given between long puffs of his pipe was that we should go no farther that "evening." He kindly offered shelter, food and his son as guide in the morning, as he was sure we could not "make the ford" before dark. His assertion that the "old ford" was impassable and that the "trail" to the new was "too blind to folks after night" was assuring, but anxious to push on, my uncle urged the tired horses to a lively pace. The result proved "Daddy Joe" the wiser man. The winter dusk came on all too early, the "old trail" too easily mistaken for the new, and in the uncertain twilight the horses plunged down the steep, slippery. bank into the black abyss of the "old ford." The poor beasts floundered breast deep in the icy mush, till just beyond midstream they
could go no further. £ The wagon settled to its bed and the three femi- mine occupants climbed upon the trunks in the rear end, there to perch for several hours. By desperate struggles an occasional jerk brought us a few inches forward, after each one the wagon again settling into the miry bed. Thus after several hours of exhausting effort the two men were able to leap to the shore from the backs of the horses, bye and bye to land the stronger horse and with his help to pull out his fellow, now hardly able to stand alone. Then, one by one, we were helped along the tongue of the wagon to "terra firma." My aunt, exhausted by fatigue and fright, was lifted to the back of the better horse with a buffalo robe as saddle, her husband leading the horse. Mr. Hull followed coaxing along the other, Miss Pierce and myself bringing up the rear. We started by the light of the now risen moon along the trail in "Indian file" for a walk of three miles to "Dixon's Ferry"
I recall distinctly the feelings with which I trudged on in the deep silence of midnight under the glistening stars over the boundless prairie."
The weary march ended at last, twinkling lights greeted our eager eyes and as we quickened our pace the moonbeams revealed a most pic- turesque, though somewhat startling scene. White tents gleamed and in every direction smouldering campfires showed dusky, blanketed forms crouching or lying prone around them while a few white men in army uniform bearing lanterns moved about with alert step and keen eye. We halted at once, the ladies greatly alarmed, but the watchers had noted approaching hoof beats and hurried to reassure us, explaining that several thousand Indians were there encamped, for the final settle- ment of annuities and other matters included in their recent treaty with the government.
A moment later we were made welcome to the warmth and comfort
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of her neat cabin by Mrs. Dixon, who hastened to make ready a hot, rel- ishing supper, a royal feast to our famishing appetites.
Our kind hostess gave up her own soft bed by the cheerful hearth fire to the ladies, tucking me snugly away at the foot to a dreamless sleep, finding a resting place somewhere among her many guests for my uncle and Mr. Hall.
In the gray of the earliest dawn Mr. Dixon and his stalwart sous started out with oxen, chains. and poles to rescue the abandoned "prairie schooner" from the "Inlet Slough," returning with it in triumphal pro- cession a few hours later. Meanwhile, some one had taken me out into the "great tent" among the warrior chiefs, adorned with paint and feathers and earrings, and gorgeous in all the new toggery obtained from the agents. As we passed around the circle, a painted chief caught mne up in his arms, seated me on his knee, admired and patted my red cheeks, calling out "brave squaw, brave squaw.". because I did not turn pale and run away in fear.
All preparations for a fresh start were soon completed, and we made haste to leave Lee County soil-at least so much of it as we were not com- pelled to carry away upon our belongings. But "getting away" proved no easy matter. The horses had not been consulted. Once at the river's brink our troubles began anew. The ferry was a "rope ferry,"the boat a "flat boat" "poled" across the swift flowing river. The quivering horses, terrified at sight of the water, refused to enter the boat. After long and vain urging they finally made a wild plunge forward which sent the boat spinning from the shore as they sprang upon the boat, dragging the fore wheels of the wagon with them, the hind wheels dropping into the river, almost tossing us into the icy stream. Instantly Mr. Hall was in the shallow water with his "shoulder to the wheel," and somehow, between the efforts of men and horses the whole wagon was got on board. After a halt upon the shore for advice and thanks to our friends; and a chang- ing of the soaked garments for dry ones by the chilled men, their dripping raiment fluttering from various points of the wagon cover, our long ride to the "lead mines" was again resumed.
Upon the foregoing experience my ouly claim of being an "early set- tler" of Lee County must be based-the transient settlement being con- fined to the few hours spent between the banks of the "Winnebago Inlet."
Twenty years later this pioneer journey came vividly to my thoughts while we waited in Dixon for the wagon from Lee Center, which conveyed us to the welcoming people who soon became "our people," whose welfare
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became the warp into which so many years of our own lives were inter- woven, whose sorrows we carried in our hearts, and in whose gladness we were glad-our affections taking root so deeply among them that the pain of transplanting still lingers with an abiding ache in two hearts now grown more familiar with the minor key in life's experiences, than with the major music of its joys."
There is a story that in those early days four families came here from the east with the few worldly effects which could be stowed in their wagons; but there was no home, nothing like home, except the blue sky and the genial sunshine. The mountains were only pictured in memory, and the little fields, outlined by straggling, irregular stumps, over which vines ran rampant all the sunumer, seemed far away. The prairies were so wide and the windsswept over them unchecked by either rocks or hills. It was all so strange, so new, that the wonder remains to this day why they did not all turn around and go back to their native homes. But the story goes that two families, never having taken their wagon covers off, retraced their steps. The other two remained and went to work with a will; cut and hewed logs and reared their cabins with the energy which characterized the true pioneer. A member of one of these families, Mr. Ralph Ford, relates how he hired out to work on a farm, the first year receiving $7 per month. The next year he was paid $9 and the next $11, showing steady progression.
Mr. Ford tells of a trip he made to Chicago, which in those days con- sisted of thirty-three frame shanties, standing in the water. He with two other men drove in some hogs, the round trip occupying sixteen days. As corn was plenty and cost only 6 cents per bushel, they fed generously, drove slowly, and at the end of their trip marketed their hogs for 1} cents per pound. In the spring of '40 Mr. Ford drove a pair of oxen to Chicago. The wagon was loaded with wheat. Many showers and a hot sun caused the wheat to sprout on the way. The grain depot consisted of a floating wharf, or corduroy bridge anchored to the shore, where boats loaded and unloaded their cargo. It cost the man who owned the wheat 20 cents per bushel to get it to Chicago, and he then had to sell it as damaged wheat to a starch factory down the river.
Mr. F. took his turn at driving the old stage coach. A cumbrous vehicle it was, weighing 3300 pounds, and when weighted down with prairie mud and passengers, probably amounted to several pounds more. Four large horses were driven before the coach, from Chicago to Galena, and the passengers paid five cents per mile and had to carry a rail half the time, at that, to pry the stage out of the sloughs it had to pass.
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Starting from the tavern in Lee Center at noon, the driver must occupy his position until 12 o'clock at night; then the next man took it for twelve hours.
Many romantic episodes occurred in the lives of these old settlers, and if we felt at liberty to repeat the stories which we have heard from their lips, it would lend both humor and pathos to these pages. We were de- sirous of finding who were the parties in the first matrimonial alliance. Mr. Volney Bliss furnished us with the desired information.
In the year 1836, a Mr. Albert Static and Miss Elmira Carpenter were married by Daniel M. Dewey, justice of the peace. "Speaking of wed- dings," said one of the old settlers, "reminds me of one I attended in those early days. The squire performed the ceremony standing in the open door of the house belonging to the groom. A good many of us had gathered around the door with old tin pans, horns and guns and as soon as the squire stopped talking, we began to deal out music (?) to the newly married couple. Oh, the horrid din! 'Twas the first charivari I ever attended and almost the last. I believe there were two or three more in the neighborhood after that."
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