The History of Peoria County, Illinois. Containing a history of the Northwest-history of Illinois-history of the county, its early settlement, growth, development, resources, etc., etc., Part 23

Author: Johnson & co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : Johnson & Company
Number of Pages: 932

USA > Illinois > Peoria County > The History of Peoria County, Illinois. Containing a history of the Northwest-history of Illinois-history of the county, its early settlement, growth, development, resources, etc., etc. > Part 23

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As late as 1847 the convention which revised the constitution, in Article XIV., re- quired the General Assembly at its first session under the amended constitution. to enact such laws as would effectually prohibit free persons of color from coming and settling in the State, and to prevent the owners of slaves from bringing them into the State for the purpose of setting them free. In obedience to this requirement of the constitution, the Legislature passed the act of February 12, 1853, which was nearly as infamous as any of the acts already quoted. It provided that, if any negro or mulatto, bond or free, came into the State and remained ten days, with the evident intention of residing therein. he should be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and for the first offense should be fined fifty dollars, and if the fine was not forthwith paid. he was to be committed to the custody of the sheriff, to be advertised ten days and then sold to any person who would pay the fine and costs for the shortest period, the purchaser being empowered to hold and work the culprit during the time. One case under this act was taken up to the Supreme Court from Hancock county, and decided in 1864. The court held the law to be valid : " That the punishment was not slavery, because the person was only sold for a limited period ; that it was only a species of apprenticeship, and that the State might define offenses and prescribe the punishment and the exercise of such powers could not be inquired into by the court."

The laws herein quoted were known as the " Black Laws," and were continued in all the revisions of the laws from 1819 down to 1865, when, by act of February 7th, they were repealed. For many years previously, however, they had ceased to be enforced and were regarded as a dead letter. - The excuse for retaining them so long was found in the abolition excitement of modern times, which, in a manner, constituted them tests of purty fealty.

INDENTURED AND REGISTERED SERVANTS.

The sixth article of the ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory, adopted July 13, 1757, consecrated the territory to freedom in these words : " There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory. otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The pro- slavery element in the territory sought by every possible means to induce Congress to modify this restriction, but without effect. Failing in this, the friends of slavery next sought to accomplish their purpose through the law-making powers of the Territory, both

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of the first and second grades; and in defiance of the prohibitionary clause in the ordi- nance, a law was adopted entitled " An act concerning the introduction of negroes and mulattoes into this Territory." The act bears date September 17, 1807, and was passed two years before Illinois was set off as an independent territory. We quote :

. SECTION I. It shall and may be lawful for any person, being the owner of any negroes or mulattoes above the age of fifteen years, and owing service and labor as slaves in any of the States or Territories of the United States, or for any citizen of the United States or Territories, purchasing the same, to bring the said negroes or mulattoes into this Territory.

Section two provided that within thirty days after bringing the slaves into the Terri- tory, the owner or master should take them before the clerk of the court and have an in- Venture between the slave and his owner entered on record, specifying the time which the slave was compelled to serve his master, the term generally fixed being ninety-nine years. Section three guarded the property of the master against loss by allowing him, in event of the slave refusing to enter into such agreement or indenture, to have the lawful right, within sixty days, to remove such slave to any State or Territory, where such property could be legally held.

SECTION 5. Any person removing into this Territory, and being the owner of any negro or mulatto under the age of fifteen years, it shall and may be lawful for such person, owner, or possessor, to hold the said negro or mulatto to service or labor, the males until they arrive at the age of thirty-five, and the females until they arrive at the age of thirty-two years.

SEC. 13. The children born in this Territory of a parent of color owing service or labor by indenture, according to the law, shall serve the master or mistress, the males until the age of thirty, and females until the age of twenty- eight years.

Other laws were enacted by which the owner or master might sell his servants ! by an assignment of the indenture, thus tolerating and recognizing the traffic in slaves as well as the institution of slavery.

When Illinois Territory was organized in 1809, the governor and judges, who were the law-making power, adopted the law quoted, and they were re-adopted by the first Territorial Legislature at Kaskaskia. December 13, 1812. This law was clearly at fault with that section of the ordinance already quoted, and was so decided in the case of Phoba vs. Jarret,* in the Supreme Court, in which it was decided that the act of September 17, 1807, regarding the bringing of negroes and mulattoes into the territory, was void as being repugnant to the sixth article of the ordinance of 1787. It was further held, however, that the contracts of indenture under that law were rendered void by the third section of the sixth article of the State Constitution.

" Each and every person who has been bound to service by contract or indenture in virtue of the laws of Illinois Territory heretofore existing, and, in conformity to the provisions of the same, without frand or collusion, shall be held to a specific performance of their contracts or indentures ; and such negroes and mulattoes as have registered in conformity with the aforesaid laws, shall serve out the time appointed by said laws; provided, however, that the children hereafter born of such persons, negroes or mulattoes, shall become free, the males at the age of twenty-one years, and the females at the age of eighteen years.

The validity of the indenture and registration act was never raised and tried before the territorial courts, nor until some years after the Territory had been admitted as a State. "The convention, therefore," adds Mr. Stuve, " which enacted the constitution. gave that law the only legal vitality it ever had, but it is presumable they were under the impression that it was valid and had been all the time; and it was only in requirement of the enabling act of Congress that they enacted article VI, section I: 'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall hereafter be introduced in this State.'"

There are, or were, in March, 1878, at least two surviving representatives of the in- dentured and registered servant class still living at Galena -Swanzy Adams and his wife. Adams was taken there by the Johnsons, of Kentucky, about 1825-6, and although sold,

*Breese, Ills. R. 268.

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traded, kidnapped, imprisoned, ete., time and again, has managed to maintain a home at Galena, where he has accumulated a handsome little property. He was nearly ninety years of age when he was first visited by the writer in February, 1878, and for over half a century had made a business of hauling water to citizens who were deprived of other means of a water supply. The woman, now his wife, was taken there a slave girl some years later by other parties. There were others besides these, and some of their de- scendants still live there. But Swanzy Adams and his wife are the last survivors of their class in northern Illinois, and in all probability, the last in the State.

CHAPTER XI.

AMERICAN IMMIGRATION.

A Disease-Stricken Colony - Want of Mills - Increase of Population - Extent of Settlements - Pioneer Women - From New York to Kishwaukee - Clothing From Nettles - Michigan Seas - New Counties - From "Egypt" to Canada.

As already stated, two American settlements were commenced in Illinois in 1780, one near Bellefontaine, in Monroe county, and the other in the American Bottom. An- other American settlement called New Design was commenced in 1782. American settle- ments, however, were slow, as will be shown by the following extracts from Reynolds' Pioneer History and The Western Annals. Reynolds says :

" By an act of Congress, 1791, four hundred acres of land were granted to all heads of families who made improvements in Illinois prior to 1788, except village improvements. These rights were commonly designated as ' head rights.' A list of names of heads of families who settled in Illinois previous to the year 1788, entitling them to these dona- tions, which included, also, non-residents who should return in five years' time to oc- cupy their claims, shows a total number of 244 claimants, 80 of whom were Americans. By allowing the usual number of five souls to the family, we have a population in that year of 1,220. This excluded negroes. Before 1791, under the militia law of the gover- nor and judges, the muster roll gives about 300 men capable of bearing arms, of which number 65 only were Americans.'

A DISEASE-STRICKEN COLONY.

The Annals says : " In 1797 a colony of one hundred and twenty-six persons, the largest which had yet arrived, were most fatally stricken with disease. They were from Virginia, had descended the Ohio in the Spring, and landed at Fort Massac, from which they had made their way across by land to the New Design. This place was in the pres- ent county of Monroe, and was established in 1782. It was located on an elevated and beautiful plateau of ground, barren of timber, which commanded a view of both the Kaskaskia and Mississippi rivers. The season was exceedingly wet, the weather ex- tremely warm, and the roads heavy and muddy. The colonists toiled through the woods and swamps of southern Illinois for twenty-six days to travel a distance of one hundred and thirty-five miles. They were worn down, siek, and almost famished. When they arrived at their destination, they found among the old settlers, long harassed by Indian warfare, but poor accommodations. There was no Inek of hospitality in feeling, but that did not enlarge the cabins, which usually contained but one room. into many of which three or four families were now crowded with their sick and well. Food was insufficient, salt was very searee, and medical aid was almost out of the question. A putrid and

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malignant fever broke out among the new comers, attended by such fatality as to sweep half of them into the grave by the approach of Winter. No such fatal disease was ever before or since known in the country." "The old inhabitants," says another authority, "were not affected. The intelligence of this unwonted mortality produced abroad tlie wrongful impression that Illinois was a sickly country, which tended no little to retard immigration." It is now a well established fact that Illinois is among the healthiest States in the Union.

The Americans who settled at remote distances from the French settlements suf- fered great inconvenience and hardships for the want of mills. The French had their wind mills from an early period, but when they began to dwindle away, the mills went into decay, and for what few other mills there were, the water failed, and the Americans were compelled to have recourse to other means. Tin graters and hominy blocks, the last of which will be fully described hereafter, were made to supply, as far as possible, the absence of mills. These, in turn, were succeeded by hand mills, horse mills and water mills. The last named finally gave way to steam mills, until comparatively but few water mills now remain in use.

INCREASE OF POPULATION.

When Illinois was established as a separate dependency, the population was esti- mated at 9,000. The census of 1810 showed a population of 12,282. When the Territory was admitted as a State, under act of Congress, approved December 3, 1818, the popula- tion had increased to 40,000. The census of 1820 showed an increase of 15,211 in a little more than one year, or a total population of 55,211. The larger part of this popu- lation had come in after the close of the war of 1812, when it was supposed the country was freed from Indian molestation. Between two and three thousand of this population was made up of the descendants of the old French settlers at Prairie du Rocher, Prairie du Pont, Cahokia, Peoria, and Chicago; a great many of them being half and quarter breeds, their paternal ancestors having intermingled and intermarried with the Indian tribes native to the country. The remainder of the population were Americans, and with the exception of a small per centage of Pennsylvanians, nearly the whole of them were from the Southern States - Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Maryland, etc., and the habits, customs, manners, and hospitality peculiar to that people were so indelibly fixed upon the country, that they are retained to this day. Some of these pio- neer people, says Mr. Ford, had been officers and soldiers under General Rogers Clark, who conquered the country from the British in 1778, and they, with others, who followed them, maintained their position in the country during the Indian wars in Ohio and Indi- ana, in the times of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne. This whole people did not number more than 12,000 in 1812. but with the aid of one company of regular soldiers defended themselves and their settlements during the war of 1812, against the then numerous and powerful nations of Kickapoos, Sacs, Foxes, Pottawatomies, and Shawnees, and even made hostile expeditions into the heart of their territories, burning their villages and de- feating and driving them from the country.

When the State was admitted there were fifteen organized counties, of which Bond was the most northern. The settled portions of the country included in these fifteen counties extended a little north of Edwardsville and Alton, south along the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio, east in the direction of Carlyle, in Clinton county, to the Wabash, and down the Wabash and the Ohio to the mouth of the last named river. But within these boundaries there was a very large and unsettled wilderness tract of country between the Kaskaskia river and the Wabash, and between the Kaskaskia and the Ohio -the distance across it being equal to a three days' journey. All the country north of the district covered by these fifteen counties to the British possessions was an almost trackless wilderness whose primitive fastnesses had never been disturbed by the feet or

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voices of white men. But a country so rich in soil and climate, already cleared and waiting to be stirred with the plow and tickled with the hoe, to be made to yield rich returns to industrious tillers, could not long remain in the idle possession of the Indian occupants. The fame of the Illinois prairies spread abroad and people soon began to flock here from almost every State of the Union. The immigration and settle- ment of these rich prairies and fertile river valleys was not so rapid as has been the settlement of Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, because the means of travel were neither so comfortable or rapid. In those days there were no railroads or fast steamboats, and immigrants depended on ox or horse wagons, with their schooner-like boxes, that would carry about as much as an ordinary canal boat. to convey their families and effects from the old States to the new El Dorado. Many of the first settlers of Illinois came the entire distance from New York. Vermont. Pennsylvania. Maryland, or other distant States, by this means of conveyance, never sleeping under roof from the time they left the old homes until they reached Illinois. selected their claims and built their cabins. Hundreds of them had no definite point of destination in view when they turned their backs upon their old homes, but with brave hearts and iron wills they traveled on and on, part of the time with no guide but the pocket compass or the north star, until they found a location that suited them. Then living in brush tents or wagons and cooking by camp fires until rude cabins were built, they commenced the foundations of that prosperity which secured for the country of their choice a crowning place in the union of States. Others of the early first settlers, and notably those of the extreme southern part of the Territory, came by keelboats or flatboats till they reached the mouths of the Illinois water courses that empty into the great rivers - the Ohio and the Mississippi - und then ascended inland until places for homes were found. While it is almost certain a majority of the pioneers to the southern part of the State came by that means of con- veyance. it is a well established fact that the bulk of the first settlers in the central and northern part of the State came by wagon.

PIONEER WOMEN.

As much credit as may be awarded to the pioneer fathers and husbands for their bravery and courage in looking fate square in the face when they set out from their early homes to find and found new homes and fortunes in the country of the Illinois, there is an equal share of honor due to the pioneer mothers and wives. It is but the truth to write that, had the settlement and development of the Western States depended upon men alone, the progress of improvement and spread of civilization would have been much slower. Taking a last look at the surroundings of their girlhoods' homes, and bid- ding friends farewell, many of them forever, they climbed into wagons already loaded. and stowing away their little ones as comfortably as circumstances would permit, they turned their backs upon all that was dear to their early youth, and with their faces to the west, made journeys of thousands of miles. Many of them in addition to caring for children and preparing meals by camp fires on the way side, drove a team the entire distance. Few men would have undertaken so arduous a task. Mrs. Towner, one of the pioneer inothers of Boone county, and the first white woman to prepare a meal in that county, came there a weak, frail wife and mother of several small children. They made the entire trip from New York around through Canada, down through Michigan to Chicago, in a wngon fitted for the trip. From Chicago to the present site of Belvidere. Mrs. Towner took charge of their two-horse-wagon and children, and left her husband to the care of an ox team and supplies they purchased there. The last day of the journey, the 31st day of July, 1835, she took the course for the site of the new home her hus- band had previously selected, and boldly struck out for the country of the Kishwaukee. Part of the time she followed the trail made by General Scott's army from Chicago to join the campaign against the Black Hawk Indians in 1832, and part of the time she

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drove where no team had ever been driven before. About midnight of the last day of July she reached the bank of the Kishwaukee, where she stopped, unhitched, unharnessed and turned the horses out to graze, built a camp fire and prepared the evening repast, by which time her husband came up. The next morning, when Aurora unbarred the gates of light and kissed the cheek of day, her eyes beheld what the eyes of no white woman had ever beheld before-the transparent, softly murmuring water of the gently flowing Kishwaukee river, the Illinois tributary of the beautiful Rock river, the pride of two States.

Coming down through Michigan and along the lake shore, Mrs. Towner gathered several wooden pails full of what she called sandberries (whortleberries), and when they reached Chicago she bought some earthern jars, washed the berries and turned them into the jars, covered them with molasses, and sealed them up. From that time to Septem- ber, 1877, when she was visited by the writer. her larder had never been without pre- served fruits, either wild or domestic.

Another instance of the enterprise and determination of the pioncer mothers of Illinois was related at a gathering of the Old Folks at Belvidere in September, 1877. An Indiana family named Payne settled on the Fox and Du Page rivers in 1833. They had several chil- dren of school age in 1835, when the first school in the neighborhood was to commence, but like Flora McFlimsey, the children had nothing to wear, and the parents had nothing wherewith to buy them suitable raiment to attend school. The husband racked his brain for ways and means to no purpose, and gave up in despair. But the wife and mother was equal to the emergency. She had set her heart on sending her children to school. and to school they must go ; for

" When a woman says she will, she will, you may depend on't ;

And when she says she won't, she won't, and that's the end on't."

So Mrs. Payne set to work to accomplish her object, and clothe her children for school. The bottom land along the Fox and Du Page rivers furnished the raw material, and her industry and skill the means to utilize it. She went to the river bottom, and with her own hands mowed down a sufficient supply of nettles to supply her purpose. These she spread out and rotted in the same manner that flax is rotted. Then with her own hands she broke them, scutched them, hackeled them, spun the fibrous part into thread on an old-fashioned spinning-wheel, wove the thread into cloth, and cut and made the cloth into clothes for the little ones, and had them ready for school on the opening day. What husband and father would have done as much ?

Not, forsooth, for want of will, But for lack of "pluck " and skill."

The first free school in Illinois was taught by one of these pioneer women - Lydia Lawrence, the mother of L. M. Lawrence, the present Probate Judge of Boone county. In 1838 there were a number of children in the Lawrence neighborhood, in what is now Bonus township, in that county, that Mrs. Lawrence thought ought to be learning some- thing instead of spending all the day idle. So she announced that if their parents would send them to her place she would spend a certain number of hours each day in teaching their young ideas how to shoot. The shade of a wide-spreading tree that stood in the door-yard of the Lawrence cabin was improvised as a school-house. The children came on the appointed day and school commenced. Blocks or pieces of wood were used as seats by the children, while the teacher, knitting in hand, occupied an old splint-bottom rocking-chair. As the shade of the tree moved with the sun, the school-house moved. Thus ran the first free school ever taught in Illinois, or at least in that part of the State. A good many of the first young men and young women of that township, in Boone county, learned their a-b-c's and a-b abs fiom good old mother Lawrence beneath the shade of that old tree. Both the teacher and the tree were cut down long since -the one by the scythe of the great reaper, and the other by the woodman's ax.

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The Harkers came to Peoria county in 1829. They left the old home in the town of Sterling, Cayuga county, New York, on the 19th day of September of that year, when Seba Il. Ilarker, now of the city of Peoria, was just two weeks old, and who was car- ried the entire distance on a pillow. From Buffalo to Cleveland, Mrs. Harker and the younger members of the family came by lake vessel. From Cleveland the entire family came by wagon. When coming down through Michigan they encountered heavy rains and swollen streams. At one place they had to unload their goods and pack them aeross a stream that was spread to the width of a small sea. Trees had been felled across the main channel for a footway, but to reach them they were forced to wade through sixty rods of water that, most of the distance, came above their knees. Nothing daunted by the wide expanse of water, Mrs. Harker plunged in, baby Seba, pillow and all. and waded through, accomplishing what few strong, muscular men, with a baby in their arms, would have attempted. Most men would have shrunk from the undertaking, and waited for the flood to subside ; but not so with Mrs. Harker. She braved the flood and risked the life of herself and youngest born to reach and help establish a home in Illinois. Of such stuff were the pioneer wives and mothers to the " Prairie State." Elaborately carved and costly shafts of granite and marble may be designed to perpetuate the memory of fallen warrior chieftains, wise statesmen and publicists, but none of them deserve richer honors than the brave women who came to endure the dangers and hardships of pioneer life and uphold the standard of civilization in the wilds of Illinois.

NEW COUNTIES.

Of the fifteen counties when Illinois was admitted as a State, the last three in the order of organization were Union. Washington and Franklin. They were organized in 1818. Immigration increased and settlements extended, as already shown. gradually from the south northward. The American immigrants, true to the restless nature and ad- venturous spirit of their race, kept pushing on and on until they had passed the lines of set- tlements heretofore described, and were scattered here and there all through the southern half of the Territory. These settlements were often at remote distances from each other and were generally confined to the timber along the water courses; for, as strange as it may seem to many people of the present, it is nevertheless a fact, that the first farms were made in the timber. It was believed by many of the pioneer settlers that the prairies were useless except for pasture, and that it would be impossible to live on them. that the soil in the timber was stronger, more productive, and that it would last longer than the soil of the prairies, even if they were susceptible of cultivation, As late as 1830 to '38 the timber districts were preferred, and the men who began to make farms on the prairie land were considered wild and visionary. But it was not long until opinions changed. While the settlers among the timber were toiling and delving, wasting their strength and vigor to subdne the forest around their cabins, the prairie farmers were rais- ing good erops and building better houses. In some instances men came to Illinois and paid twelve dollars an acre for farms that had been commenced in the timber, when farms that nature made on the prairies near by were lying vacant and could be purchased from the government at one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. But the minds of men have undergone a complete change in this regard and the prairies of the Western States are now the chosen sites for homes and farms. It has been demonstrated that it is cheaper to raise timber for domestic purposes than it is to clear it away, and that prairie forms are more productive and the soil much more lasting than timbered ones.

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The History of Peoria County, Illinois. Containing a history of the Northwest-history of Illinois-history of the county, its early settlement, growth, development, resources, etc., etc., Part 23

Author: Johnson & co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Chicago : Johnson & Company Number of Pages: 932

Author: Johnson & co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : Johnson & Company
Number of Pages: 932