USA > Illinois > Coles County > The History of Coles County, Illinois map of Coles County; history of Illinois history of Northwest Constitution of the United States, miscellaneous matters, &c., &c > Part 42
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FARMINGTON.
This village, the only one in the township, is situated on Section 16. It was laid out April 25, 1852, by Thomas Lytle, a surveyor, for John J. Adams. owner of the land on which it is situated. A post office had existed for some time before this in this community, known as Campbell Post Office, as it was started by Frank Campbell, the first Postmaster here. The office at Farming- ton is yet known by that name. The village received its name from Mrs. Adams, who named it for Farmington, Tenn. There being one post office of that name in the State, when the village started, the Post Office Department refused to change the office name to correspond, hence it is yet known as Camp- bell's Post Office. Soon after the village was platted, Leander Burlingame built a house and store and opened a stock of goods. About the same time, Dr. Halbrooks and Samuel A. Reel erected a store and began business. Which of these two stores was first is hard to determine. It is probable they were erected at the same time and opened within a few days of each other. The post office was soon after moved into the village, a blacksmith named G. F. Biddle came. and the life of the village assumed tangibility. The next year the residents in this community, desirous of better educational advantages, erected a very . good and substantial brick schoolhouse, intending it for seminary purposes. It was named Farmington Seminary, and, for a time, a very creditable school was maintained here. It also served as a place of public worship for the Meth- odists, who were numerous in this part of the township. It answered the double purpose of school and church until 1857, when the Presbyterians erected. with the aid of the Methodists, a neat frame house of worship in the western
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part of town, and public religious services were thereafter held there. The advent of the free schools brought a better system of education, and the Seminary was abandoned, the building turned over to the school authorities of the town- ship, and common school held therein. After the village grew so that the building became too small, it was sold, changed into a store, and the present two-roomed house erected.
The foregoing narrative shows the earliest attempts to found a church in the village : As early as 1835, the Methodist ministers were in this part of the county, organizing classes and laying the foundations for churches. Rev. McKee was one of the earliest remembered. Rev. Ryan, another early circuit- rider, organized a class of ten or twelve members in Goose-Nest Prairie, at George Rogers' house, not long after the settlement was made. They used each other's cabins at first, then the log schoolhouses, next the brick seminary, then the Presbyterian Church they assisted in building, which they occupied until they completed their own house of worship in 1866. It is a comfortable, neat frame church and accommodates a good congregation. The history of the Presbyterian Church in the village need not be repeated here, as it is sufficiently given in the sketch of the churches in the township history. The Pastor of both charges-practically one congregation-resides in the village, preaching alternately in each church.
The village is yet small, containing, perhaps, one hundred inhabitants. The flouring-mill of Adams & Freeman, erected in 1866, by Harris & Crow, does a very fair business. It has only a local trade ; but it is constant and self-sup- porting. They can readily find a market for all they can grind above the wants of their customers.
The post office, Larna, is kept by Mr. George B. Balch, who aided the rail- road in this section, and who makes a stopping-place at his house for the trains. It is a very convenient place for the neighborhood, and should be maintained, and a depot erected. Another stopping-place is made a few miles north, on the farm of Mr. Miller, from whom the place takes its name. No depot, office or platform is made here, however.
We have now given in outline the history of Pleasant Grove Township. Its details would fill a volume. There would, however, be much repetition, which we have found difficult to avoid, and which we trust we have accomplished. The biog- raphies of many of her citizens given elsewhere in these pages show much of the history which this volume perpetuates, and in away it only can be perpetuated. Had a similar work been published in the counties wherein we were raised, who would not prize it ?
HUTTON TOWNSHIP.
The township of Hutton forms an important part of the history of Coles County, inasmuch as the first settlement within its present limits by civilized white men was made in this township more than half a century ago. How
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HISTORY OF COLES COUNTY.
many pages have been added to the history of the world in that period of time! Empires, kingdoms, nations and principalities have been blotted out, and the remembrance of their glory has almost faded from the minds of men as the " waves of dark oblivion's sea sweep o'er them," scarcely leaving a trace to tell how, or when, or where they sunk. "Thrones tottering have fallen ; crowns crumbling have disappeared ;" ancient palaces, in whose spacious halls the "mightiest monarchs proudly trod," have been, as it were, swept from the very face of the earth. The storm of war has raged through our own fair land, con- vulsing the Republic from its " center to its circumference," and threatening for a time its total destruction. The tempest roared and howled with terrific force, then passed by, and the olive branch of peace bloomed over the nation fairer than ever. These are but a few of the mighty events that have transpired in the half-century gone by since the first settlement was made here by white people.
Hutton Township lies in the southeast part of Coles County, and is bounded on the south and east by Cumberland and Clark Counties, on the north by Ash- more Township, and on the west by the Embarrass River. It is well drained by the latter stream, and the small water-courses that meander through it. At the time of the early settlement of Hutton, it contained much fine timber-land, though about half of the town, perhaps, is prairie. It is considerably above the size of a Congressional township, embracing within its limits some fifty-four sections of land. No railroads intersect it, but the Indianapolis & St. Louis Railroad passes in a few miles of its north line, and the Vandalia line a little south of it, so that its railroad facilities are not at all restricted.
SETTLEMENT.
As we stated above, the first settlement in the county was made in Hutton Township. In 1824, John Parker and his sons, Benjamin, Daniel, Silas and James Parker, and Samuel Kellogg and his wife, made a settlement here, and composed this first colony of pioneers in Hutton Township. But one of the little band of pilgrims is now alive-the widow of Samuel Kellogg, who lives at present in the city of Charleston. They settled on the Embarrass River, just opposite where the Blakeman Mills now stand. Some of the Parkers afterward settled in Charleston Township, where they are noticed among the early settlers of that section. Most of them moved to Texas years ago, as elsewhere men- tioned, and where two or three members of the family suffered severely by the Indians, two of them, at least, losing their lives .* A daughter of James Par- ker was taken prisoner by the savages, and held for some time in captivity, sub- jected to all kinds of cruelty. She was married to a man named Plummer, who was killed at the fort where the Parkers were living at the time she was capt- ured. During her captivity among the Indians, she gave birth to a child, which the savages killed before her eyes. Her father had a long search for her.
*Since the above was written, we have been informed by Mr. Hutton that John Parker, the old gentleman, and two of his sons, were killed by the Indians in Texas. A mention of the sons being killed is made in the general county history.
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visiting many of the tribes then in Texas before he found her, but finally did find her, and succeeded in obtaining her release. John Parker (High Johnny, his friends called him) was a Baptist preacher, and one of the first in Coles County. He was of the old Predestinarian belief, and many humorous anec- dotes are related at the old gentleman's expense. One or two of his sons were also preachers ; in fact, the Parkers seem to have been a family of preachers, and proclaimed the Word freely to perishing sinners. They ignored the doc- trine, although of divine origin, that "the laborer is worthy of his hire," and would accept no pay for the promulgation of the Gospel, but zealously toiled in the cause of the Master, without money and without price. Taken all in all, they were a remarkable family, and rather above the mediocre in intellect and ability. Daniel Parker, one of the sons, was a preacher, and perhaps the most intelligent one of the name. He represented Crawford County (before their removal to this county) in the Legislature a term or two, and was an able repre- sentative as well as preacher. It is told of him, that, although a minister of the Gospel, he would work all the week on his farm, and then take his gun on Sunday, and kill deer enough to furnish his family in meat until the next Sun- day. When some of the stricter people spoke to him in regard to such a ques- tionable way of serving the Lord, he told them if he ever got able to live with- out having to work so hard, and to have time to kill his meat in the week, he would cheerfully do it, but then it was a case of the boy and the woodchuck. " he had to." Daniel Parker is mentioned, in another page, as preaching the first sermon in Hutton Township, and Benjamin Parker as building the first mill.
Another family of Parkers, and not related to those above mentioned, set- tled in this township in the winter of 1825-26, on what is called Parker Prairie, and from them the prairie received its name. George Parker and his sons, Samuel, Daniel, Jeptha and William Parker composed this settlement. They were originally from Butler County, Ohio, and removed to Crawford County, Ill., in 1817, locating south of Palestine, where they remained until their settlement in this town, on Parker Prairie. Samuel Parker went back to Crawford County and died there, some of them died here, and Daniel and Jeptha are still living in the township, prominent farmers. George Parker is said to have entered the first land in Coles County.
John Hutton, one of the esteemed citizens of this township, has, probably, been acquainted with Coles County longer than any man now living. There are older residents of the county than he, but none who knew it so early. He assisted the Parkers in moving to this township, in 1824, and spent several days in bee-hunting in the heavy-timbered sections. Says that he was on the ground where Charleston now stands during that trip, and that there is not . another man living that can truthfully make the same statement-a fact that is, perhaps, undisputed. While here at that time, he heard the first sermon preached in the present territory of Coles County. It was in a small log
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cabin, and though every man, woman and child in the county were present, the house, he says, was by no means crowded. Daniel Parker preached the sermon, and, at its close, old " Father High Johnny " made the quaint remark quoted in another page : "Brethren, we have wandered far into the wilderness, but even here death will find us."
When Mr. Hutton started back home (he then lived in Crawford County), he took a straight course through the forests and across the prairies to save dis- tance, as around the trail was much further. He had an ox-team, with which he had hauled a load of " plunder " for the Parkers to their new home, and trav- eled very slowly ; consequently, was several days making the trip. When night came, he would tie up his cattle, and "camp till morning." One night, a panther "squalled and screamed " around his lonely camp for an hour or two, frightening his oxen considerably, and himself somewhat ; but, as he kept up a bright fire, it finally retired without making an attack. Notwithstanding he traveled through the unbroken country, where no trail had been marked, he made the trip in safety, and without the least bewilderment. So well-skilled were the pioneers in woodcraft, that they read signs in the forest like a printed book, and the very bark of the trees was to them the points of the compass.
Mr. Hutton is a native of Montgomery County, Ky., and came to Illinois, with his parents, when quite young, and settled in Crawford County, in 1816, where he remained until 1834, when he removed to Hutton Township, where he has since lived. His mother came here with him, his father having died in Crawford County. He was a soldier in the Black Hawk war, from the latter- named county, and went out in the company commanded by Capt. Alexander Huston, long a resident of Palestine. He was one of the few "pale-faces " who crossed the Mississippi after the Indians in that memorable campaign. He has always been a prominent and enterprising man in his neighborhood ; was one of the Commissioners to lay off the county into townships, and was the first Supervisor of Hutton Township, an office he held three terms in succession, and from him the town received its name. He was a great fox-hunter, in his day, and many are the stories he can tell of his exciting chases after Reynard. He kept a pack of hounds for the purpose, and a fox-chase was his most enjoy- able pastime. Though in his seventy-ninth year, Mr. Hutton has an excellent memory, and is enjoying fine health for his advanced age. To his vivid recol- lection we are indebted for many particulars that, but for him, would ere now have been lost.
Kentucky contributed the following early settlers to Hutton Township: The Conleys, the Rennelses, Richard O. Wells, the Beavers, the Branden- burgs, George and John J. Cottingham, the Goodmans, the Evingers, William Stivers, and perhaps others. The Conleys emigrated to Indiana, and lived some time in Lawrence County before coming to Illinois. Joel Conley, the father of all the Conleys, was a North Carolinian, but removed to Kentucky, and from thence to Indiana, and in 1832, to this township. He died on the
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farm where his son, Edmond Conley, now lives. His son, Jack Conley, went to Texas, and William to California, where they died. Edmond, Elijah and Washington Conley still live in Hutton Township, and are among the prosper- ous and energetic men of the community. The Rennelses came from Madison County, and located in what is known as the Rennels Settlement, a mile or two from the little village of Salisbury. James Rennels was the first one to settle in the township, locating on Section 32, in 1832, where he has ever since resided. John Rennels, his father, came to the township in 1837, and settled near by, where he died in 1866, at the ripe old age of eighty-five years. He was a native of the State of Delaware, and emigrated to Kentucky at an early day, when the Indians were extremely hostile, and committing all sorts of depredations in the "dark and bloody ground." William Rennels, another son, moved here at the same time his father came, and settled on the place where he still lives. The Rennels family is a large one, and embraces some of the thrifty farmers of the country. Richard O. Wells was from Bourbon County, and settled in Hutton Township in 1838. He remained here but a few years, when he returned to Kentucky, and resided there until 1853, and moved back to this township and settled where he now lives. F. M. Wells, a son of his, enlisted in Company H, Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers, and died in 1865, on his way home from the war. It is a melancholy reflection. He had served through the war and the banner of peace again waved over the country, but he died before reaching home, where loved ones anxiously awaited his coming. The Beavers are natives of the Old Dominion, but emigrated to Kentucky when it was in a wild state, and the hunting-grounds of hostile Indians. William Beaver came to Illinois in 1827, and settled in the Rich Woods, in the present bounds of Clark County, where he remained until 1830, when he came to this township and entered the land upon which he now lives. For forty-nine years he has been living on the same farm-a lifetime of itself. When he came to this State, the land was owned by the Kickapoo Indians, who were thick in the neighborhood. He remembers when cutting some "bee trees " at Long Point, of seeing the runners sent out by Black Hawk to sum- mon the Indians to the grand powwow, of which the Black Hawk or Sac war was the final result. Mr. Beaver is over eighty years old, is remarkably active, and seemingly good for another decade. Mathias Beaver came from Meade County, and settled in Hutton in 1833, where he still resides, an enter- prising farmer. Albert Beaver was a soldier in the Fifty-fourth Illinois Vol- unteers in the late war, but was discharged on account of ill-health. Solomon Brandenburg, the progenitor of the Brandenburg family, came to this township in 1829, and settled on Section 14, where he died in 1861. He first settled at White Oak Point, on Grand Prairie, but did not remain there'long until he removed to Hutton, as above noted. Among the worthy farmers and citizens of the town. are his sons, James, William, Solomon, Calvin and Charles Bran- denburg. George Cottingham was originally from Maryland, but want to
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Kentucky in the early times. In 1836, he, with his family, removed to Illi- nois and settled in this neighborhood, where he resided until 1859, when he came to Charleston to live with his son. He was a soldier of the Revolution- ary war. and of the war of 1812. In the former he served under Gen. Wash- ington, and professed to have been well acquainted with the Father of his country, and for years made Gen. Washington's shoes and boots. He had a strong desire to live to vote for Stephen A. Douglas, for President in 1860, and claimed to have voted for every President from Washington down. What a history. How many changes he had seen in the country he had fought to free it from British oppression. From the thirteen feeble colonies, he had seen it expand into nearly three times that number, of great and prosperous States. He died soon after the Presidential election of 1860, at the extreme age of one hundred years. John J. Cottingham, his son, came to Hutton Township in 1836, having first settled in Clark County, where he remained but a short time. He removed to the city of Charleston, in 1859, and died there in 1863. There are still many younger members of the family living in the township, and Mrs. Hutton, John Hutton's wife, is a daughter of the elder Cottingham, mentioned above. The Goodman family came from Putnam County, Ind., though originally they were from Kentucky. William Goodman died on the way here, and John and Thomas Goodman settled in the town very early. John Goodman is dead, but Thomas is still living. He is a minister and lives in Charleston. The Evingers were among the early settlers here, and came from the vicinity of Louisville. Of those who were prominent men in the township, were Daniel, Jacob, Henry and Frederick Evinger. There is a large family of them, and they are of the Very best men in the neighborhood. William Stivers came here about 1829-30. He had " run off from Kentucky and left his woman," is the way old friend Beaver put it, and she followed him to this country and took charge of him " whether or no." He was a sleymaker (we do not mean a vehicle on runners, but an "implement " used by our mothers and grandmothers for weaving cloth) and used to manufacture these useful articles, when the pioneer ladies were accustomed to make the cloth wherewith their families were clothed. Forty or fifty years ago, the people in this country (male and female) wore few "store clothes," but were thankful to have sufficient, even of homespun, to keep them warm. As pertinent to the subject, and in illustration of the times of which we write, we give space to a little poem from the bard of Pleasant Grove:
" I have been charmed by the sweet-sounding lute, Oft been entranced by the organ and flute ; These things I heard, but the music I feel Is the far off roar of my mother's wheel, As with midnight lamp by its side she stood, Still spinning the yarn to clothe her dear brood.
"Its echoes still float up through the long years, To solace my heart and sweeten my tears ;
N
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HISTORY OF COLES COUNTY.
And as down life's stream my little bark sails, Sweet sounds may often be borne on the gales ; But sweeter by far, on my soul will steal, My childhood's music-my dear mother's wheel."
There are many living in Coles County who will recognize the truth of these simple lines, and doubtless when they read them, memory will roll back over the years that have past, to kindred scenes in their own childhood homes.
John Ashby was a native of North Carolina, but had lived some time in Tennessee before emigrating to Illinois. When he came to this State, lie set- tled in Crawford County, near Palestine, where he remained a few years, and then came to this township about 1828-29. He was a blacksmith, the first of that useful trade in the town ; he died here many years ago. Another old North Carolinian is Jeremiah Cooper. He came to the township in 1837, and is the oldest man now in it, and perhaps the oldest in the county, being in his ninety-fifth year. Nicholas Lemming is eighty-eight years old. He is a native of Pennsylvania, and in early days emigrated to Ohio, then to Indiana, and from thence to Crawford County, Ill., where he remained a short time, and, in 1835, removed to Hutton Township, where he still lives, quite an active man of his age.
Griffin Tipsoward was an early settler in this township, but after a residence of a few years, moved to the neighborhood of Kaskaskia. He was an old sol- dier of the Revolutionary war, and made application for a pension under a law of Congress passed in 1832. On the early records of the County Court we find the following declaration :
STATE OF ILLINOIS, COLES COUNTY,
ss., A. D. 1832.
On the 15th day of October, personally appeared in open court before Isaac Lewis and James S. Martin, County Commissioners for the County of Coles, in the State of Illinois, now sitting, and constituting said County Commissioners' Court, Griffin Tipsoward, a citizen of the United States of America, in the County of Coles and State of Illinois, aged 77 years, who, being first duly sworn according to law, doth on his oath make the following declaration, in order to obtain the benefit of the Act of Congress passed June 7th, 1832: That he entered the service of the United States as a Revolutionary soldier under the following-named officers, and served as herein stated, viz .: In General Rutherford's Brigade, Colonel McKatty's Regiment, Major Horn's Bat- talion and Captain Grimes' Company ; that he entered the service about the 18th of July, 1775, and was discharged by General Washington at the close of the war, which discharge was sunk in the Ohio River. That he was in the engagement at the battle of Eutaw Springs, under General Greene, Col. McKatty, Major Horn and Captain Grimes ; that he was in the battle of King's Mountain, under Col. Shelby ; that he was in the battle of Charleston, under Col. McKatty and Capt. McGwire; that he was in the battle of Cross Creek, under General Gates, Col. McKatty and Capt. McGwire; that he was in the battle of Hawe River, commanded by Genl. Greene, Col. Chamberlain, Major l'eat and Capt. John Galloway. He states that he was here wounded by a musket-shot from the enemy's gun. That he marched first after leaving North Carolina into the State of Virginia ; that he was at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, under General Washington, Col. McKatty and Capt. McGwire. That he lived in the County of Roan and State of North Carolina, when he entered the service ; that he was first drafted for three months ; he then, at the end of the three months, volunteered, and was enlisted during the war. That he was born in the State of Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River, in the year of our Lord 1755; that he
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has no record of his age that he knows of. That he moved to Kentucky the second year after the expiration of the war; that he settled in the neighborhood of Boonesborough, where he resided until he moved to the Territory of Illinois, in which Territory and State he has resided about twenty years. That he now resides in Coles County and State of Illinois ; that he supposes his name will be easily found on the Continental Rolls. He hereby relinquishes all claims what_ ever to a pension or annuity, except the present, and declares that his name is not on the pension-roll of the agency of any State.
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