USA > Illinois > Lee County > Recollections of the pioneers of Lee County [Illinois] > Part 34
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Mother went east many times after that, and under widely different circumstances, but no story of travel ever interested me as did that one, and my childish ears never tired of hearing it repeated.
It reminds me again of the "sore trials" of the Puritan mothers to be obliged to add that the baby boy of whom my father was so proud died before mother came back to Illinois the next year, and that little Par- thenia was laid in the D'Wolf burying ground the year after-1845. In 1851 dear Aunt Hannah slept beside her, and now father and mother rest there too.
SEPHIE GARDNER SMITH.
More Pioneer Stories.
W E have learned from Mr. Thomas Leake's paper that his father came here in 1840. He was accompanied by William Moody and Isaac Means, two very familiar names to the old settlers of the county. Mr. Leake bought a claim at Temperance Hill, the other men secured work, and life in the new country began. In 1843 his family came, and with them the families of his two cousins, also a sister, Mrs. Willars. The ways of distinguishing the three men (who had the same surname) were varied and worth recording. There was John Leake, Sr., who was also called from his occupation in England "Butcher John"-or known as the man who kept a great many dogs and liked to have their names "h'end with a h'l or a h'o so they could 'ear it well."
John Leake, Jr., was a cousin of "Butcher John" and was called "Mil- ler John," or "John Leake on the 'ill top"-and his neighbors referred with a smile to his plans to add a "h'ell to his 'ouse." Last there was Daniel Leake, a brother of "Miller John," who was at one time one of the wealthiest men in tile township. His wife and "Butcher John's" were sisters, and cousins to their husbands. The three men are dead, and all the wives except Mrs. John Leake, Jr., who now resides in Dixon with her son William. Her other son, John H., and her daughter, Mrs. Wm. Chiverton, also live in Dixon. Her oldest daughter, Mrs. Clara Priestly, lives in lowa, and her youngest, Mrs. Susanna Atkinson, in Polo. Their home claim was on Temperance Hill, adjoining the lot where the schoolhouse now stands, so they have true title to the "'ill top."
The older children went to school at first at the schoolhouse in the little yard now known as the D'Wolf graveyard-in the corner of the old D'Wolf farm, and to Sunday school (with other children from a circuit of many miles) in Mrs. D'Wolf's house, which she and Mrs. Gardner es- tablished.
Mrs. Leake has given us some stories of pioneering days that are well
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worth a place here-illustrating as they do not only the straits in which families were placed, but the ready ingenuity which helped them out.
Her husband's first bargain was to exchange his overcoat for a pair of oxen, "Line and Brin," a fine dress coat for a wagon (made by Mr. Gale, the Lee Center wagonmaker), a plush vest for a stack of hay, and a pock- et-knife for a whip.
During the next winter there was a long icy spell-it was six miles to the nearest timber, and the firewood almost gone. The oxen were not shod and so were powerless to bring the load of wood so much needed. (What boy of today would have thought that oxen needed shoeing as much as horses?) But the father of a family would not be overcome by any such circumstanees. He could not get the oxen shod, so he shod himself by putting nails in his boot soles, harnessed himself to a hand- sled, and walked to Franklin Grove, returning at night with his load of wood.
An aunt of the family, living where Chapman Leake now does, was once alone on the place when a calf stumbled into the open well.
She was greatly puzzled to know what to do, but finally succeeded in getting a rope over its head, which she fastened above to keep it from drowning while she ran to her sister's, Mrs. Willars'. She ran at the top of her speed across the prairie. and reached her sister's completely ex- hausted, and recollecting as she entered the house that she had made a "slip noose" in the rope, she breathlessly added to her hasty story, "You needn't 'urry; Susan, the calf will be 'anged before we'can get there." But Susan was prompt and energetic and she '' 'urried" fast enough to get the calf out safe and sound.
: Daniel Leake lived on the Chicago road, in Nachusa township, and built there the handsome brick house, which was for so many years the largest and handsomest farmhouse on the road. His sons, Chapman, who lives on what was the "Mosley place" in an early day, not far from his father's homestead; Russell, now a resident of Dixon; Jarvis, living on the homestead; and Fred, a merchant in Amboy, comprise his family.
They, too, tell a single story from their many pioneer experiences, for like so many others among the children of the early settlers, they do not recall with distinctness the stories they have heard their parents tell.
Is this not a proof that such a record as this little book will be, is well worth preserving for the children of the future?
One day in the early '40's Mrs. Leake and the children were alone on the place when they saw a great cloud of smoke rolling up from the south- west. There had been a long dry spell, and it. needed but a glance to
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show them that the prairie was on dre, and that they were in the path of the destroyer. What could they do?
We can little imagine their distress or their helplessness. But "Miil- er John" had seen the cloud also, and with his stout nephew, William, was soon hurrying to their rescue.
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The oxen were grazing near the house, the plows were ciose at hand, and they were hastily yoked and set at work. Back and forth they went about the buildings and grain stacks, until the oncoming flames scorched Mr. Leake's hair and beard and the hair of the faithful oxen. Mrs. Leake and the children carried water, and with mops and brooms fought the fire, and wet the grass and stacks inside the furrows, so they were saved, and then Mr. Leake and William hurried off to help someone else, who might be in the same strait.
There is another story of a family in this neighborhood which is truly pathetic.
A mother had died in August, leaving a three-days' babe, and two other children, oniy a little older. They lived in a house with but a single room, where were cookstove, cupboard, tabie, bed and chests of clothing. In the August heat, the funeral must be held the next day; so a man was sent at once to Inlet for the coffin. There was a mistake in the measurement, which was not discovered until the next morning, when a second messenger was started, with the correct dimensions.
A little girl then, who remembers the funeral, telis that the people of the neighborhood gathered for the services early in afternoon, and grew" more and more anxious as the sun went down the western sky and there were no signs of man, team or coffin. But at last, as some were feeling that they must go home for the "chores," the team, hard driven, appeared over the hill, with something red in the wagon. The pitiful truth was that the cabinet maker dared not use the black paint usually put on the rude pine coffins of that day, lest it should not dry in time for the fun- eral. So he painted it with red lead, the only other color he had, which dries very quickly
There was no time to think of the incongruity, no time to make any change, the poor young mother was laid in her red coffin and borne to the grave-yard at Temperance Hill by her friends and neighbors. Yet had she died today she was one who would have been laid to rest in a beauti- ful casket, covered with the choicest flowers; they loved her none the less, the frail body was none the less tenderly handled, but the contrast in resources is a pathetic one.
ONE OF THE LEAKE FAMILY.
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The Township of Nelson.
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Nelson.
T HE town of Nelson, comprising about two-thirds of a six-mile-square township, has not yet become so populous nor so abounding in wealth as to occupy an exalted position among the sisterhood of the family in the household of Lee county, and yet it yields to none in its claims for merit and respectability. Beautiful Rock River forms its northern boundary, and the Chicago & Northwestern railroad runs through from east to west, crossing the river at the western line of town. Nearly midway between Dixon and Sterling lies the unpretentious little village of Nelson, a quiet burg, most of whose male inhabitants earn an honest livelihood in the employment of the railroad company. The large and commodious school house at the station is used for occasional reli- gious service as well as other meetings, and the school is kept in a flour- ishing condition by the employment of first-class teachers. Most of the farming land in the town is of excellent quality, and the prosperity of its farmers is shown by elegant dwelling houses and by large, fine looking barns. Indeed, few towns in Lee county can boast of as beautiful farm buildings as are found in Nelson.
The first settlers, few in number but. resolute and energetic, located in the town during the thirties and forties when Nelson as a corporate town had noexistence further than being an adjunct of Dixon. In 1859, two years after the opening of Nelson station, the town became an in- dividual entity.
Among the pioneer settlers who had roughed it in the township dur- ing the period of its infancy were Chas. F. Hubbard, Lewis Brauer, Na- than Morehouse, Luther Stone, Abner Coggswell and the father of Col. Noble-'I cannot recall his christian name now. The only one at present living of those honored pioneers is Chas. F. Hubbard, who still occupies the farm on which he first located and whose dwelling house is still nestled in the primeval forest.
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Although the situation of Nelson station is such as does not invite business enterprise at present, yet it may eventually grow and become a sharer in the prosperity of its two ambitious and progressive neighbors, Dixon and Sterling. The Hennepin canal will traverse the whole width of the town along the southern side of Rock River. What effect that is destined to have on the growth of the village remains to be seen. The rolling surface, with ample natural drainage, makes the most desit- able kind of building lots and the convenience of getting the best and purest water at a depth of not more than twenty feet is an advantage de- serving the first consideration in selecting a place for founding a home. "Large streams from little fountains flow," and who shall say that Nelson may not yet merge from obscurity to take its rank among the proud cities of the west?
The first settler at Nelson gives the following account of his experience as a pioneer: "I came to this place from the state of New York in the fall of 1857. The railroad had been built west from Dixon two years previously, and the company was then doing grading and put- ting in switches and sidetracks for the station. There were then few improved farms in the township, though a number of emigrating farmers from Somerset county, Pennsylvania, were settling in the eastern part, with the aid and under the guidance of a robust, energetic and enter- prising leader, Rev. Wm. Uhl. My first project was the purchase of a small school house three miles distant and moving it to the station to be used as a grocery. I stocked this improvised store with an assortment of such articles as farmers most needed, and by dealing also in lumber and coal I was tolerably successful in getting a fair run of trade. At that time many were having fever and ague, and the sale of quinine was one of my sources of income. Mercantile buiness was something in which I had never had experience, and my lack of knowledge of local idioms was sometimes embarrassing. Once I remember a little Irish girl astonished me by coming to my grocery and saying she was sent to get Queen Ann. 'What is it you want?' I asked. 'Queen Ann, sir" 'What do you want to do with Queen Ann?' I inquired. 'My mother has got the fever'n'ager, an' she 'onts some to take, she does" 'Oh! Oh! yes,' said I, beginning to com- prehend, 'You want quinine, do you?' 'Yes, sir, Queen Ann,' replied she. The little lass knew no other name than Queen Ann for the popular an- tidote to intermittent fever,"
At that time prairie wolves were seen in Nelson as often as dogs are seen now. There were then few fences, no graded roads, no covered buggies, no tuneful organs, no luxuries of any kind, and yet, with all their
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hardships and privations, those hardy early settlers seemed happy and contented, cheered by the hope of realizing after a few years' roughing not only competence, but wealth, from the products of the fertile prairie soil.
H. L. H. MCKINSTRY.
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The Township of Palmyra. 1
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Palmyra and the Palmyreans. BY ONE OF THEM.
A N old Latin writer has said that "Many great men lived before Agamemnon, but that all memorial of them had perished for want of a chronicler." As one of the few survivivors of pioneer days in the town of Palmyra, I have been asked to preserve the memory of then by writing my recollections of those days and of those who took part in them. I have done this in the form of a personal narrative, as better suited to give my impressien of that time than any other form; and I preface it with a slight account of the early history of the state of Illi- nois, of which, in. the opinion of the inhabitants, Palmyra forms no in- considerable portion.
By the treaty of Paris, 109 years ago, Great Britain made over to the United States all the north-west territory, comprising the state of Illi- nois and all the upper Mississippi valley. A spiendid domain which twenty years earlier the colonies had assisted the mother country to snatch from France, after tough, bloody wars, in which the colonies gained such knowledge of the military art as served them in good stead when the struggle with Great Britain came. How little trace of France is left in the state which they were the first to colonize. Some few towns and streams still bear the names of those bold explorers and pious mis- sionaries who dared all in the service of God. LaSalle in 1682 planted the first colonies at Cahokia and Kaskaskia. With him was associated Hen- nepin, who gave his name to another Illinois town, and to our hoped for canal. Joliet, a civil engineer and explorer, is remembered by a flourish- ing city and one of the largest state prisons in the United States. The Jesuit father, Marquette, who accompanied Joliet in his voyage of dis- covery down the Mississippi in 1673, founded the mission at Sault Ste. Marie in 1668. His memory is still cherished by all. * Mulsi fortes ante Agmemuomen rexere do-who cherish brave deeds and pious lives.
Less than seventy-eight years ago Chicago was unheard of-Fort Dearborn and a few trader's cabins were all that were to show forth the
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great city, second now only to New York in the United States. Terri- torial lines between Illinois and Wisconsin had been settled, and the lat- ter state claimed a large part of what is now Cook county-thus cutting off our state from the shores of Lake Michigan. To Judge Nathaniel Pope, father of the late Major Gen. Pope, U. S. A., we in agreat measure owe the possession of this great port on the lake which has given a greater impetus to the prosperity of the state than any other cause. He was one of the commissioners to settle the boundrry line and insisted on having a lake port, giving the very sufficient reason that otherwise Illinois would became to all intents and purposes a slave state, the sympathies of her early settlers and her trade being already entirely with the South. Judge Pope became the first Secretary of State when Illinois was admitted to the Union in 1818, as a free state. In 1823 an effort was made to alter the constitution of the state to admit slavery. The contest was a very bitter one and the free soilers carried the day by a very small majority, electing as governor, Edward Coles, a strong anti-slavery man, though a Virgin- ian and a slave owner, who had brought his slaves to this state and freed them. The English colony in Edwards county threw all their influence and many votes on the side of free soil which contributed greatly to the victory. This was a flourishing colony of English people planted by Mor- ris Birckbeck and George Flower. The latter wrote a very interesting account of it lately published by the Chicago Historical Society. The truth is at that time and for many years after, numbers of negroes were beld virtually as slaves in the southern part of the state where they were employed in the salt works, raising cotton, etc.
Prior to 1834 there was very little attempt at white settlement in this northwestern part of the state; up to 1832 it remained the happy hunt- ing ground of various Indian tribes. Sauks and Foxes, Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes. In that year Black Hawk, one of the chiefs of the Sauks and Foxes, who had never agreed to the treaty by which his tribe had ceded their land on the banks of Rock River to the United States government, against the opposition of the head chief, Keokuk, who was always friendly to the whites, brought his band back across the Missis- sippi to hunt about their old homes. His hand was fired on by some white settlers and this brought on the Black Hawk war in which some lives and much money were expended. It has been computed that every Indian killed in battle cost the government $10,000, in this war; from the number of men employed and the few Indians killed it was fully up to the mark. The war was also memorable from the number of big bugs, *See Ford's History of Illinois.
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if I may be allowed the expression, still in the chrysilis state who were at one time assembled at Dixon's Ferry while taking part in the war, Volunteer Captain Abraham Lincoln, Captain Zack Taylor, U. S. A., Lieutenant Jeff Davis and Lieutenant Anderson of Sumpter fame. Even the Commander in Chief, General Scott, was sent to the seat of war, which was ended at the battle of the Bad Axe, near the Wisconsin river and Black Hawk and The Prophet, who was the real soul of the war gave themselves up and afterward visited the eastern cities where they were exhibited as a farce show.
By 1834 most of the Indians had been removed .to the west of the Mississipyi river and white settlers began to occupy their former homes. All this northwest part of the state was then Joe Daviess county, then up to 1840 we were in Ogle county, with the county seat at Oregon. In that year Lee county was set off, with the county seat at Dixon, and the present court house was. built, S. W. Bowman, of Dixon, being the con- tractor. The county was not then under township organization, there were three county cemmissioners, Nathan Whitney, of Franklin; Jas. P. Dixon, of Dixon; and F. Ingalis, of Inlet Grove; Judge Stone, of Galena, Circuit Judge; Isaac Board.nan, County Cierk; George W. Chase, Circuit . Cierk; Michael Fellows, of Gap Grove, Recorder; John Morse, of Gap Grove, Treasurer; A. Wakelee, Sheriff; Joseph Crawford, County Survey- or. The only survivor of these, the first county officials, is Michael Fel- lows. In the fall of the same year, 1840, the land office was removed from Galena with Colonel Dement and Major Hackelton, receiver and registerer. The titles of these gentlemen were gained in the Black Hawk war, in which they were favorably mentioned. The government lands in this country had not at that time been fully surveyed and were not open for entry till 1842. They were supposed to contain valuable mineral, the Galena lead ore, and had been reserved on that account.
As I have said, in 1845 settlers began to flock into Gap Grove, those from the southwest by way of Peoria, those from the northeast through Chicago, crossing at Dixon, where in 1828 a half breed named Ogee had started a ferry, bought out in 1830 by John Dixon, who had formerly kept a clothing store in Chatham street, New York City. In connection with this account I have written out a list of the settlers in Palmyra up to 1840 inclusive, which embraces almost all of them, tho' some may have escaped me.
Most of these early settlers were hard working men of the farmer class with small means, who were glad to exchange the worn-out farms of New England for the fertile prairies of the west. Thus, again, there were
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some who, impelled by the spirit of adventure and unrest which keep so many Americans frontiersmen all their lives, came, tarried with us for a while and moved on to pastures new.
But there was a colony of a different class which settled along Rock River between Palmyra and Grand Detour. These came from the city of New York and were led to seek a western home in the following man- ner: Two young men, Messrs. William Graham and Chas. Hubbard, left New York in the spring of 1837 on a hunting expedition, and stopped for a time near Dixon; having been joined on the way by Mr. John Carr, formerly of the British navy. Carr subsequently went to Hong Kong, China, founded a flourishing newspaper, "The Houg Kong Gazette and Friend of China," mnade a fortune and returned to his native Scotland to spend it-the only instance of any of these early New York colonists attaining to prosperity. Mr. Graham was so charmned with this beauti- ful country that he induced his father, Captain Graham, to bring his family out here. Their coming induced others of their friends, so that quite a numerous settlement was formed, all having considerable means for a new country, which they were not long in getting rid of in a wilder- ness when all the comforts and conveniences of life which seemed indis- pensable to them could only be procured at a very greatly enhanced price, if at all. They came looking for an Arcadia, the Blest, in these flower- bedecked prairies, and found privation, poverty, sorrow, sickness and death. Their illusions were short lived, shorter and more tragic than those of the Boston literati who tried to establish Arcadian simplicity at Brook Farm. Shakespeare says, "All the world is a stage, the men and women merely players." To the young it was a comedy of errors which they rather enjoyed playing, raising and cooking their own food, spinning, weaving, knitting their own raiment, and even the very priva- tions they endured but enhanced the pleasures of a wild, free life, rid- ing, fishing, boating, dancing, plenty of society, books and music. But to the older members of the community it was a most serious tragedy from which they saw no escape save by leaving the place as soon as possible. All who could get away did so, leaving the remainder to settle down to the new order of things as best they could.
Of this colony my father's family formed a part. It consisted of father, mother and seven children. Three servants, a carpenter, a far- mer and his family, J. C. Lingham, a former partner in business, and Alex Campbell, a nephew, were also of the party.
My cousin Alex Campbell and myself were the pioneers of the party. We reached Dixon's ferry, as it was then called, on the 9th of August,
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1839, and our first object was to find my father's partner, who had ar- rived a little in advance of us and was to see to the purchase of land and the removal of the family to the west. We found him the guest of Capt. Hugh Graham, a retired ship master of New York and who had come to the country the preceding year and bought a squatter's title to some seven hundred acres of land from John Dixon. He had a large family of highly educated daughters and sons, and with the boundless hospitality of the day we also became his guests, but it required all the elasticity of a frontier house to contain his family of ten, with five servants and six guests.
As the most important member of the New York colony a short notice of Captain Graham will not be amiss. A native of Belfast, Ireland, he was at one time an officer in the British navy, but left that service for that of the American merchant marine and for many years commanded the finest vessel of the Black Ball line of American packets. Many were the adventures by flood and field which he had gone through. In 1798, being then mate of an East Indiaman, he was shipwrecked near the island of Ascension, at that time the loneliest spot on the globe. A raft was formed and provisioned for most of the passengers and part of the crew, which was never heard of again; the long boat with fourteen and the captain and his gig with four succeeded, after being buffeted two days and a night, in reaching this uninhabited island. The captain of the ship had refused to leave it and with his son, who would not leave his father, went down with her. On the island were a Newfoundland dog and some goats which had probably escaped from some wreck. These were too wild to be approached, but there were great quantities of sea birds so tame they could be readily killed with a stick. On these, with oc- casionally fish, turtles and their eggs, the party subsisted. After a time they made an attempt to leave the island; the ship carpenter broke up the gig and with this material and some driftwood made outriggers to the long boat, which they thought would thus float the whole company, with sufficient water and provisions, for which they laid in a stock of salted birds; but on coming to the beach to embark they found the boat gone and four of their number missing. They must have reached the mainland safely, for Captain Graham met one of the party many years afterwards and did not kill him as he had promised himself the pleasure of doing. The others thus deserted lived a year longer on the island, till they were taken off by Sir Thomas Williams in the Endymion frigate of the British navy, who had stopped there to catch turtles. In after years
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