The History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois, Part 68

Author:
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 848

USA > Illinois > Mason County > The History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois > Part 68
USA > Illinois > Menard County > The History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois > Part 68

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

623

HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.

When it was over, the ground was covered several inches in depth with hail- stones, many of which were nearly as large as a man's fist. It made a terrible havoc among stock, cattle and hogs being killed by scores. Even trees bore the appearance of having been run through a huge threshing machine. The more timid thought the last day had arrived, that the world was about to be blotted out amid the confusion and thunders of Sinai, and, therefore, fell to praying. (It may be that this saved it.) It passed, however, without any loss of human life, so far as we could learn, notwithstanding much stock was killed.

Mrs. Blakely says, in those days of early privations, there was no money in the country-nothing to sell to bring money, and nowhere to sell it if they had ever so much superfluous produce, except, now and then, a chance to sell something to movers. They went to Springfield to buy their clothing and groceries, when they had anything to buy with. There was a little store in Havana, but it sold goods beyond their reach. As an instance, it sold coffee at " two bits " a pound, and in Springfield it could be bought for " a bit." And yet people, she says, were just as happy then, apparently more so, than at the present day, and far more sociable. "Neighbor " had something of the broad meaning given to it by the Savior of the world eighteen hundred years ago.

Kilbourne has borne the reputation of having been the most quiet, peace- able and order-loving community in this whole section of country. Within the last decade or so, however, it has retrograded somewhat in this respect. Quite a severe blow to its good name occurred in the assassination of a man named Hughes, last October a year ago, just outside the limits of Kilbourne village. Hughes was a perfect desperado, his death a public benefit to the country and richly merited by him, yet no less a stain to those who administered it. He had made threats to the effect that he would kill three men of the neighbor- hood before quitting it .* A day or two before that set for his removal from the town, he was found with twenty-two shot in him, and any one of seventeen of them, we were informed, would have proved fatal. It may be that the perpe- trators of the deed are known, or could be pretty closely guessed at, but, from the character of the murdered man, no one felt disposed to even try to ferret out the assassin or assassins, or to make an effort to bring them to justice. We were told that, during the four years that he lived in the neighborhood, he had fifty-four rows, and it is altogether probable that the people felt a relief when they knew that he was dead.

VILLAGE OF KILBOURNE.

Kilbourne was laid out in 1870 by John B. Gum, the proprietor of the land, on portions of Sections 28 and 29. It is on the Springfield & North- Western Railroad, quite an energetic little place, and contains about one hun- dred and fifty inhabitants. The first store in the village was opened by William . Oakford, soon after it was laid out. A saloon had been kept by "old Billy

* He was intending to move away on the Sunday after the occurrence above related.

624

HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.

Martin " before Oakford opened the store, but he kept nothing but " bad whisky." Calvin Atterberry bought out Oakford, and, about the same time, Dr. Field opened a store. A post office was established in 1873, with Edward Bigelow as Postmaster. C. L. Newell is the present Postmaster. The school- house was moved into the village after it was laid out-probably about 1873-74. It is also used for church purposes, there being no church edifice in the village. The Baptists and Methodists have societies here. Rev. Mr. Low is the Meth- odist Pastor, and Rev. Mr. Curry is Pastor of the Baptists. A Sunday school is also held in the schoolhouse, of which S. M. Rollins is Superintendent. There is no school going on at the present writing, but we believe the teach- ers for the coming session are engaged. The school employs two teachers, there being over one hundred children in the district who are entitled to school privileges. The business of the place sums up about as follows : Three general stores, one drug store, one family grocery, two blacksmith-shops, shoe-shops, two practicing physicians (Drs. Root and Eldridge), etc., etc. An excellent grain elevator was built in 1873 by Low & Foster and McFadden. At present, it is owned by Low & Foster, of Havana. It is well equipped, having patent grain-dumps, and is operated by steam. Low & Foster and McFadden & Co. handle grain extensively at this point.

Kilbourne has quite a handsome, well-kept little cemetery. The first burial within its ghostly precincts was Jennie Holmes, a girl about thirteen years old. Most of the early settlers, however, continued to bury their dead in what is known as Pratt's Graveyard, some distance from the village. It is a large burying-ground, and was laid out in the early days of the settlement of the country, and contains the remains of many of the pioneers who have gone to their last rest.

Long Branch is a summer resort on the banks of - Ruggles' ditch. As a popular watering-place it was not much of a success-except in a very wet season. The summer cottages have been moved away, and it now presents a rather lonely appearance on the wide prairie. It is situated on the Springfield & North-Western Railroad, a few miles from the village of Kilbourne, and was laid out in 1871, by Gatton & Ruggles. At present, it consists of merely a side-track, for shipping grain and stock. A post office was established in ·1872, with N. S. Phillips as Postmaster ; but that, in a few years, was discon- tinued, and nothing now remains but the side-track above referred to. It is, perhaps, needless to say that, in point of interest or popularity, it never equaled its Eastern namesake. It never did.

Cuba was another village of the town of Kilbourne, but doubtless there are few who now remember it. Its existence was merely on paper, and short-lived at that. Indeed, it is indebted to the following circumstance for having any existence at all : During the exciting war between Havana and Bath for the county seat, and while the latter place was the seat of justice, the Havana peo- ple succeeded, by a little adroit wire-pulling at Springfield, in securing the

625

HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.

necessary legislation for bringing the question up, and having it decided by a vote of the people (which they did in 1851), well knowing that when it came to counting noses, they could out-count Bath. The Bath people thought to offset this sharp manueuver by establishing the county seat upon a new spot, and for this purpose bought eighty acres of land of Dr. Mastick, on Section 9, which they figured out to be the geographical center of the county, though what mathematical rules they employed to do so we are unable to discover. This eighty acres of land they surveyed and laid out in lots, with a handsome pub- lic square, streets, alleys, etc., etc. The election came off, the people voted the county seat to Havana, and thus ended the hopes and anticipations of Cuba. The proprietors paid Dr. Mastick $100 to take back the land, and the plat was never admitted to record.

SALT CREEK TOWNSHIP.

BY J. C. WARNOCK, ESQ.

The original survey of this township was made in the fall of 1823, and was designated Township 20 north, Range 6 west of the Third Principal Meridian. It contains thirty-six sections, each a mile square, except the tier of six on the north side, which are fractional, as is usually the case. Section No. 36, in the southeast corner of the township, is divided by Salt Creek, which meanders through the southeast part, cutting off about one-third of the section. The northern part of the township is a high rolling prairie, once marred by numerous basins or ponds, but now almost wholly drained, and in a good state of cultivation. The south and west parts of the township are more broken, and the south part, which includes Salt Creek Bluffs, very much so. Big Grove extends along these bluffs, at an irregular width of from one-fourth of a mile to a mile and a half, at the south side of which the pioneer settlers made their primitive and crude homes. Lease's Grove, in the northwest part of the township, was originally small, containing an area of about 200 acres, which area is now materially contracted by clearing off the timber for cultivation of the land ; and the same means have very materially contractedthe area of Big Grove.

The soil of the township is productive of all cereals and fruits indigenous to the climate, but the principal crop is corn, as in all the eastern part of the county. In the earlier days, winter wheat yielded a sure and abundant har- vest, as it was usually the first crop after the sod was broken. Corn, in those days, required but little cultivation, and, after planting the corn, the pioneer usually occupied most of the time thereafter until harvest, breaking prairie, scattering corn along every third furrow. Corn planted in this way produced a large amount of fodder, and the earlier planting a good yield of corn, but the later planting was generally caught by the autumn frosts, and was not good feed. This was marketed for distilling purposes, and from this fact originated

626

HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.

the term, "sod-corn whisky," which used to be applied to the bad and chemi- cally adulterated grades, as an expression of contempt.

The first entry of land in this township was made August 12, 1829, by Leonard Alkire, of Sugar Grove, and was a tract of 120 acres in the south- west quarter of Section 34, contained in what is now known as the Knox farm, but was not improved by the first purchaser, nor until more than twenty years later. August 17, 1829, William Hagans entered 120 acres, west half of the southwest quarter, Section 33, and southeast quarter of the southeast quarter, Section 32, now known as the Charles L. Montgomery place. Here, near the site of the present brick residence, Hagans built a rude log hut, and, with his family, became the pioneer settler of this township, and of what is now eastern Mason County.

June 12, 1834, James C. Hagans entered the forty-acre tract of land now owned in part each, by James P. Montgomery and George. H. Short, and built a hut where the latter's house now stands.

June 15, 1837, John Hagans entered the forty-acre tract where J. P. Mont- gomery now lives, and built a hut near the site of the present residence. A few years later, however, they all sold out to Ephraim Wilcox, and moved away to further Western wilds, and were lost to the knowledge of those who lived after them here. As early as 1830, a family named Slinker, " squatted " on a piece of land up in the grove northwest of the places just referred to, but tradition has but few words of remembrance of them or their habitation, and nothing of their place of migration.

In 1830, Leonard Alkire bought a large lot of land in Sections 33 and 34, and held it, as was termed by the settlers, as "speculator's land," without making any improvements upon it.

In 1830, Robert and William Hughes entered the land now the farm of M. Vanlanningham, which Daniel Clark, Sr., purchased and settled upon in 1835, and where the old gentleman died in 1853, and was buried near the house in which he lived, and which is still there, though the first house he lived in there was a log hut. His three sons are still living; Alfred, in 'Crane Creek Township; Daniel, in Mason City, and William, in Dubuque, Iowa.

In 1833, a man named Lease settled in the northwest part of the township, at a grove which, from his settlement there, took the name of Lease's Grove, which name it still bears. Soon after this, Samuel Blunt, George Wilson and the Moslanders settled there, and formed a little isolated band or neighborhood in and around the beautiful grove, from which improvement, farther and farther out into the prairie on all sides the Third School District in the township was grad- ually formed and extended. In connection with the Wilson family, referred to above, it is proper here to state that his son, Orey, committed suicide by hang- ing himself to the limb of a tree, in 1852, which was the first case of deliberate self-destruction in the township, and the last. The news of the rash act was received by the sparsely settled county with horror, and, for years after, the

627

HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.

scene of the tragedy was a place of dreadful interest, and the belated and soli- tary citizen who passed along the road by it after night did so with light and elastic step, and numerous " hair-raising" stories of suspended ghosts became current in the course of time.

To return to Big Grove. In 1835, Isaac Engle entered the forty-acre tract which is now owned and occupied by W. F. Auxier, and built a log hut on an elevation about forty rods southwest of where the dwelling now stands, as a monument to the site of which primitive landmark a stately locust-tree stood until a few years ago, when that, too, fell a victim to the rapacious ax of the modern inhabitant. This place was purchased, with other tracts adjoining, in 1837, by Edward Sikes, Sr., who, with several other families, came out from Ohio and settled in the grove. A few years later, Mr. Sikes built the sub- stantial frame house which now is on the place, and planted out an orchard of the first grafted fruit-trees ever planted in that vicinity, and which yields its delicious fruit now every year, although the hands that planted them have been in the grave nearly a quarter of a century. In the old log house on this place, the first school in the township was taught, in 1838, by one of the daughters of Mr. Sikes, now Mrs. S. D. Swing, of Mason City, who, soon after, set- tled with her husband as pioneers at Swing's Grove, in Mason City Town- ship.

In 1835, Michael Engle entered an eighty-acre tract, now known as the Hume place, and built a log hut about fifty yards west of K. M. Auxier's house, nothing of which now remains, but the place where the well has been filled in can yet be distinguished. In this well a child of John Carter, who later occupied the house, fell and was drowned, the summer of 1849. In 1837, Kinzey Virgin moved out from Ohio, bought this place with other adjoining tracts, built a hewed-log house where the barn now stands, and set- tled down in his new and rather wild and romantic home. He was a man of considerable enterprise as a stock-raiser and accumulated this world's goods quite rapidly, but was peculiarly unfortunate with his family of children, but one of whom ever lived to reach the years of majority, and that the youngest, and but a babe when he himself died in 1852, six children, and all but the one, having preceded him to the grave, and the wife following two years later. Though a man somewhat reckless in his habits and profane in conversation, he held it a sacred duty to have a funeral sermon preached for every one of his children that died, and what was something remarkable, John L. Turner, the "little Baptist preacher," of Crane Creek, officiated at every one of these occasions, and also at that of the father and mother. . The latter, " Aunt Eliza," was one of Nature's noblewomen. The silent grief and heart- pangs which many circumstances pierced like a dagger her very soul, were buried there and without a word of reproach or complaint, forever. She was universally beloved and honored for her inherent goodness and nobility of nature. The same year, 1837, George T. Virgin settled a quarter of a mile

628

HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.

further west on the place now owned and occupied by Kinzey M. Virgin, son of Abram Virgin. George was more of a domestic nature, and employed his time and energies in making home pleasant, not caring so much for stock nor for acquiring all the land joining him. He was a large, corpulent man, of Herculean strength, and, as is usually the case with such persons, sedentary in his habits, enjoying life as he lived and letting the future take care of itself, though not by any means shiftless and improvident. His wife, however, whom . everybody called " Aunt Alcy," was a prodigy of ambition and neatness, and so far as her dominion extended, she "hewed to the line." No sacrifice of personal.com- fort or demand of labor was too great for her to make for the sick and distressed, and of her it may truly be said, she " went about doing good." To accommo- date the people in that vicinity who had to depend almost entirely upon Havana, twenty miles away, for their groceries, Mr. Virgin fitted up a room of his house, about 8x10 feet, and kept a small stock of coffee, sugar and the very few other kitchen necessaries of that day. When the demands of the commu- nity required it, he moved his store into a log house on the side of the bluff, about fifty yards east of the house as it now stands, where he added a general assortment, that is, a general assortment for those days, which was far within the limit of the present day. When this became too small, he built a store- house at the foot of the bluff, southeast of the graveyard, which, after a few years, was moved to the little town of Hiawatha, of which farther on. Mr. Virgin's unfortunate death in January, 1855, occurred as follows: The family had been using a preparation of corrosive sublimate to poison vermin, and kept. it on the mantel with other bottles of medicine and liquids, such as they had fre- quent occasion to use. In the night, Mr. Virgin, having some pain from colic, to. which in a light form he was frequently subject, got up and went to the mantel to take a swallow of camphor, which was always kept in that place. He thought he knew the bottle well enough to select it without a light, as he had often done before, but by some strange fatality, he took a swallow from the bottle of poison instead of the camphor, and, although the mistake was discovered immediately and medical aid secured as soon as possible, the deadly drug resisted all remedies and he died a week after. The widow died of cholera at the old homestead in 1873. They had no children.

The same year, 1837, Rezin Virgin, another of the brothers, entered and improved the place now owned and occupied by Edwin E. Auxier. In the course of a few years, Rezin entered quite a considerable tract of land on the north side of the grove, and, marrying the widow of Ephraim Brooner, one of the early settlers of Mason City Township, improved his lands and settled down out there, in a log house on the south side of a large pond. From here, he moved to a house on his farm about a mile further northeast, where he died in 1872, and his widow a few years later. Rezin was a man of great energy, though physically weak all his life, and one of the most peculiar and eccentric- persons in the whole country, on account of which he was known far and near.

629

HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.

No one that had become even casually acquainted with him could ever forget " Uncle Reze."

Abram Virgin, the other of the four brothers, the same year (1837) settled up in the eastern part of the grove in a log hut, as was the prevailing style of architecture in those days. He engaged in stock-raising and agriculture, and went through the hardships and deprivations common to those times. In 1853, he was afflicted with a mental malady that made it necessary to confine him in the Insane Asylum, at Jacksonville, for awhile. He was soon, however, restored and " clothed in his right mind," and returned home, where he lived and directed the affairs of his farm until he died of the scourge of cholera, which swept through this section in 1873. His wife was also stricken down of the dread disease, but lived a helpless, bedridden invalid until 1877, when she died also. She, " Aunt Betsey," as she was familiarly called, was the friend and helper of the sick, afflicted and distressed. They had a family of several children, five of whom are living in the vicinity of their youthful days.

A year or two later, Abner Baxter, John Young, Ira Halstead and Ira Patterson settled down in the southwest part of the township. Mr. Young died in 1848, and his widow in 1862. Of their children, William became an extensive land-owner and stock-dealer, and made valuable improvements on his farm, on the north side of the grove from the paternal homestead, where he died in 1865, leaving a widow (now the wife of J. H. Lemley) and several chil- dren, the oldest of whom, of the boys, Thorstein, now being married, occupies the home place.

Ira Halstead was a blacksmith and a Methodist minister, and about twenty- five years ago, moved to Wisconsin, where he still lived when last heard from. Ira Patterson was a Justice of the Peace, a school-teacher, and went to Oregon about 1850, and was appointed Territorial Governor there a few years after- ward. He is one celebrity of the pioneer days of this township that it is well to rescue from the ever-increasing obscurity of tradition. The place where he lived was a hewed-log house at the foot of the bluff below the mouth of Salt Creek, later known as the Will Henry Hoyt place.

On the place next adjoining this on the east, the Armstrong family settled in 1854, too late a date for a pioneer special mention, but historical from the fact that " Uncle Jackey " and " Aunt Hannah," as they were familiarly called, furnished a home to Abraham Lincoln when he was a young man, and it was by the light of their fire Lincoln stored his mind with much of its fund of gen- eral information, in the reading of such books as he could obtain; but this occurred in Menard County, and will appear in its proper place in the history of that county. But the gratitude of Mr. Lincoln continued with this family as long as he lived, and was manifested in various ways, even after he became President of the United States.

In 1857, William (Duff), who now occupies the old homestead, was indicted by the grand jury of this county as one of the parties to a murder committed

630

HISTORY OF MASON COUNTY.

at a camp-meeting held in the grove near George Lampe's place, of which hereafter, and Lincoln, then a prominent lawyer in Springfield, voluntarily defended and cleared him, without fee and as a token of gratitude to the old mother, who had then become a widow by the death of her husband, about a year before.

In 1841, John Swaar settled on a forty-acre lot, the northwest quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 35, in Salt Creek bottom, from whom "Swaar Ford," on the creek south of that place, took its name. A few years later, he moved to a forty-acre purchase which ;he entered, on the north side of the grove, where he built a log hut on the site of the beautiful and spacious farm residence he and his family now occupy. By industry and frugality this family has acquired an extensive body of land, and deal largely in stock. Mr. and Mrs. Swaar are now the only living representatives of the pioneers of this early day that have lived in the township continuously from that day to this, and with the exception of the Clark brothers, and, perhaps, a very few others, none of whom are now residents of the township, they are the only representatives of adult age of that time, living. John Auxier, and his brother Eli, who came out with the party from Ohio in 1837, married, several years later, and settled on the north side of the grove; John, on the place now composing part of D. W. Riner's body of land, and Eli on a forty-acre tract north of it (which is now owned by George Swaar), where he died in 1848. His widow is still living, but in feeble health, with her son, Rev. E. E. Auxier, down near Salt Creek. John Auxier, to accommodate his propensity for feeding stock and enlarge his landed possessions, bought a large body of land at the east end of the grove and built a log house on top of a high bluff, a quarter of a mile south of where the M. E. Church now stands, where he died in 1857. His widow and children now have all removed to a farther western country.

As a pioneer of the prairie, John Y. Lane settled west of where Mason City now stands, in 1851, building a hut of poles, prairie grass and canvas, where he and his family spent their first winter and summer in this township. He was then well advanced in age, but was a Tennessean, who fought under Old Hickory Jackson in the war of 1812, and was inured to hardships from his youth. He was somewhat impetuous and visionary, and when the first line of the Tonica & Petersburg Railroad was surveyed near his place, in 1856, he and William Young prepared to lay out a town, and Mr. Lane built a large frame house which he designed for a hotel, and which he was unable to finish. That house now stands northwest of the West Side Schoolhouse in Mason City, and was moved there in 1872, by Jeremiah Skinner.

About 1847, John L. Chase, who lived in the southwest part of the town- ship, and was a very efficient business man, was appointed Postmaster, by which the post office was removed from Walker's Grove, but still retained the name of Walker's Grove Post Office. Here all the eastern part of the county received and sent out mail, which was carried on horseback, once a week, to

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

The History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois, Part 68

Author: Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co. Number of Pages: 848

Author:
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 848