USA > Illinois > Stephenson County > The History of Stephenson County, Illinois : containing biographical sketches war record statistics portraits of early settlers history of the Northwest, history of Illinois, &c. > Part 62
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500
HISTORY OF STEPHENSON COUNTY.
township-those of Thomas Milburn and Reed, who were drowned while attempt- ing to cross the Pecatonica River.
In the spring of 1838, John Walsh came in, as also did John and Thomas Warren, the latter settling northeast of the Grove. Isaac Scott, Samuel Lieb- shitz, Christian Strockey, with his sons Christian, Jr., and Frederick, Chauncey Stebbins and others, all making claims in the eastern side of the township, the new-comers being ignorant of or ignoring the fertile prairies to the west. In 1839, a large number of German emigrants made their advent and began the accretion of that wealth and influence now visible as the result of labor and thriftiness for which this nationality is known.
Among those who became residents of the township in 1839, were Jacob Hoebel, A. Gund, Valentine Stoskopf, Jacob Shoup, Jacob Bartell, D. E. and "Jock" Pattee, with their families and others, including a man named Judkins with his associates, who were added to the colony. Shortly after the Pattees came, Mrs. " Jock " Pattee suicided by hanging, the tragedy occurring on Gallows Hill, in the eastern part of the township.
The first birth, an important event in the history of every township, was that of Jacob Thompson, a son of William and Lucinda Thompson, who came to the surface in the summer of 1838. The first marriage is recorded as having been solemnized two years later, February 11, 1841, Frederick Baker and Miss A. Craine being the contracting parties. Theceremony was performed at the res- idence of Thomas Craine, father of the bride, Squire Fowler officiating. The attendance included a large proportion of settlers in the vicinity, and, after the twain were pronounced one, the guests participated in the festivities of the time, chief of which was dancing, Daniel Wooton, half-brother to Mrs. Baker, fur- nishing the music and calling the sets. Husband and wife still live, residing in the city of Freeport, in the enjoyment of a hale old age, surrounded by a large family of descendants who cheer the decline of their lives, and realize unto them the Biblical injunction to which all dutiful children give heed.
The township thenceforward began to settle up, and numerous accessions having since been made to the roster of its population. The west side of the township, which had theretofore failed to receive its just complement of inhab- itants, has since become thickly settled, and the great resources latent within the territory have been profitably developed. The inhabitants are a prosperous, industrious, and proportionately independent class of people, to whom the Great West is indebted for the cultivated and progressive type of life to be found in that section.
LORAN TOWNSHIP,
one of the westerly of the southern tier of townships, contains 18,273 acres of fertile land under cultivation, and a large section of timber, principally on Yellow Creek, which, with Plumb Branch and Lost Creek, waters the town- ship and furnishes a fine power for miles, of great convenience to the farming community. The timber of the township is located on the north side of Yellow Creek, while south of this stream a greater part of the township is open prairie and an excellent quality of land. This township was originally of greater dimensions than at present, but was shorn of its territorial limits by the action of the Board of Supervisors. At the September term of the board, 1859, the township was subdivided, and the western portion organized into the township of Jefferson.
501
HISTORY OF STEPHENSON COUNTY.
No little difficulty was experienced in procuring facts in connection with the early settlement of the township ; those who came prior to 1840, having long since rendered an account of their stewardship and gone hence, while from those who came in 1840, very little information could be obtained.
The first settlement in the township, however, all agree, was made during the year 1836, by William Kirkpatrick, who was subsequently identified with the company organized to lay out Freeport as the county seat. He was the original white settler in the present limits of Loran Township, establishing himself about Mill Grove, in Section 14. Here he erected a saw-mill, but the date of this evidence of enterprise is in dispute. Some contend that it did not go up until 1838, while others assert that it was in active operation a year earlier. . This latter assumption is possibly correct, for it is averred in Freeport that during that year " houses of frame were erected by the company," of which William Kirkpatrick was an important factor, the material for which was fash- ioned at the mill of that party, located on Yellow Creek. While he was building this mill, it should be observed, Mr. K. had no house wherein to live, and was obliged to accept the rather equivocal accommodations to be found in a wagon- box inverted and thatched to protect its occupant from the rain. Soon after the grist-mill was completed and operated, competing for patronage with Van Valzah's mill at Cedarville. Settlers began to come into Loran slowly, and, while the majority of those who made their advent into this section continued their explorations further west, a limited number entered claims and began to prepare farms.
. Among those who came in about this time, according to the memory of the proverbial oldest inhabitant now living, was Smith Giddings, John Shoe- maker, who opened a farm in Section 19; Albert Curry, Sylvester Lang- don, who took up a claim on Section 15, and some others, though the num- ber of inhabitants could have been counted, it is said, within a circuit of twenty-five miles without the possession of an unlimited knowledge of mathe- matics. These new settlers had all the difficulties peculiar to new countries to contend with, in defiance of which, however, they have left their mark upon the history of the times, and created from an almost uninhabited and inaccessi- ble wilderness, a domain of cultivation unsurpassed in Stephenson County.
The precedent established by Kirkpatrick and his succeeding colleagues was emulated by the Babb family and others in 1840. This family consisted of Samuel, Solomon, Reuben and Isaac Babh; Mathias Ditzler came in the same year, but reached his claim in advance of the Babb family, and was fol- lowed by his brother Christian Ditzler, who settled here, also, during the year mentioned. George House came in about 1841, John Lamb soon after ; War- ren and Anson Andrews in 1839 or 1840; they erected a mill in Section 3; Horace Post opened a farm near Andrews' mill ; a man named Slocum, Truman Lowell, Moses Grigsby, a man named Pointer, William Barklow and Thomas Foster, both of whom settled in Section 17; Joseph Rush, in the southwest corner of the township; Samuel Shiveley, west of the mill ; John Apgar, east of the mill ; Henry Layer, etc. There were many others who came in, doubt- less, between the date of Kirkpatrick's arrival and that of those who settled in Loran subsequently, but their names and the date of their arrival, not having been preserved, are lost to posterity.
In 1848, settlers began to come more numerously than before that date. The township was generally prairie except Mill Grove and a " thicket" in Section 21, and the opportunities for cultivation, thereby increased, were availed of quite rapidly. The wheat and corn of the inhabitants were mostly ground at
502
HISTORY OF STEPHENSON COUNTY.
Mount Carroll and Cedarville ; the trading, however, was done at Freeport, which was a postal town and contained four stores. The settlers at this time were mostly from New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio-sturdy, industrious, thriving men, who laid the foundation for the prosperity to be witnessed to-day in all sections of the township.
At the time the Illinois Central Railroad was completed to Freeport, Loran Township was behind other townships in the county in its settlement and im- provements. But with the completion of this enterprise came a tide of emigration which was generously distributed over Loran, adding to its popula- tion and developing new sources of wealth. One cause of this alleged failure on the part of settlers to remain permanently in Loran was the unhealthy sur- roundings ; fever and ague prevailed along the streams, while in the interior the inhabitants suffered with fevers of a pronounced and enervating type. As a consequence, until these maladies were to some extent dissipated, and their causes remedied, settlers were indisposed to venture their health and that of their families in this section. In time, though, they became incidents of days long gone, and to-day Loran is as entirely free from measures which produced the effects cited as any township in the county.
The first marriage of which any information could be obtained occurred in the fall of 1840, between Thomas French and Polly Kirkpatrick, and the wife of a man named James is reputed as the first death. But the first birth is not of record, as also the first fete, and many other important events, without which a history of every settlement is incomplete. Inquiry in these connec- tions failed to elicit any testimony bearing on the subject, and to this latter fact is due the failure of their mention.
With regard to the first school taught in the township there is a conflict of opinion, one party maintaining it to have been at Kirkpatrick's as early as 1840, while others insist with much emphasis that it was not established until 1841, when Reuben Babb, William Kirkpatrick and Anson Andrews as Trustees, located a school in Section 2, near Babb's Church, where they employed a teacher by the name of Allison to superintend the education of their children.
No village of importance is to be found in Loran. Yellow Creek, in the northern portion of the township, contains a post office, blacksmith-shop, mill and two or three stores, but, as its importance in the future is contingent upon railroad facilities, the improvement contemplated with the advent of such an enterprise is reserved until the coming of the iron horse.
The township is well supplied with schools and churches, the inhabitants are an enterprising class, and Loran compares very favorably with other town- ships in point of industry, wealth and improvements.
JEFFERSON TOWNSHIP.
Comprising the southwest corner of, and one of the smallest townships in, the county, is none the less productive and desirable. The country is rolling, with prairie and timber admirably intermingled, well watered, and inhabited by a population who secure for the estates under their control the highest degree of cultivation possible.
Jefferson was originally a part and parcel of Loran Township, and so remained until September, 1859, when, upon the petition of citizens praying for an independent organization, the Board of Supervisors so ordered, since
503
HISTORY OF STEPHENSON COUNTY.
when it has been going it alone, attended with a success commensurate with the efforts employed in that direction.
As a part and parcel of Loran Township, the settlers who first became identified with that portion of the county are also to be included, without again being mentioned in the brief notice of the township under consideration. Yet those who settled in that portion of Loran now known as Jefferson should be . mentioned fully and in detail, because to their efforts belong the honor of developing the country in the first instance, as also for procuring for Jefferson the capacity to act as an independent sovereign.
The first settler of record who became a part and parcel of Jefferson Township is said to have been Hector C. Haight, who came into the country with his wife and family in 1837 ; entered a claim and built a house on the farm at present owned by Samuel Hays, about four miles from the village of Loran, on the road to Freeport.
During Haight's residence in the country, Joe Smith, the founder of Mor- monism, established himself at Nauvoo, whence he made pilgrimages about the country seeking to proselyte unbelievers. On these forays, he met many church- going people, and so eloquently expressed the doctrines expounded that he not only succeeded in confounding some of the wise men of other sects, but many of the followers of Wesley, Calvin, and the thousand and one orthodox class- leaders who flourished in those days on the frontier.
About the same time that Haight settled in Jefferson, a Mr. Pennington came in and opened a claim just east of John R. Housel's present farm. Soon after, though the emigration to Loran was not for reasons mentioned large, quite a number secured claims in that portion which is now Jefferson, and made the improvements usual in such cases, a cabin and corn-patch. George Lashell located a farm in the hollow where the village of Loran now is, Thompson Smith, Henry Aurand, Jacob Gable, now residing in Kent Township, Charles Fleckinger, who resided on the hill near Loran, and a few others whose names are omitted, because of the fact that the survivors of those days were unable to recall them to mind came in also.
Soon after the railroad to Freeport was built, emigration increased and improvements were substituted for those made while the township was in its infancy. New houses were built, farms opened, roads laid out and facilities for communication with the outside world projected. Mechanics who came with this second influx of settlers found constant and remunerative employment ; farm hands were in special demand, teachers and ministers of the Gospel were welcomed and aided in the establishment of schools and houses of worship. Among those of the former profession, who came to aid in developing the young idea, was a Mr. Bonneman and George Truckenmiller. A schoolhouse of logs was built near Loran Village, and here the sons and daughters of farmers for miles around were instructed in the rudiments of education. The Rev. Messrs. Kiefer and Chester came about the same time and expounded the Gospel in the barn of Samuel Hays. To-day schools and churches are to be seen at all points of the compass, whithersoever the eye may turn, prime factors in the building up and development of all communities which have the cause of right and justice and civilization to contend for.
The first death to occur in the little colony took place about 1844, when the settlers were interested in the welfare of each other, and the sorrows of one affected all. A young man named Louis Kleckner, in the employ of Samuel Hays, was taken down with a type of the malarial fever prevalent in early days, and, notwithstanding the care and attention he received, yielded up the ghost.
504
HISTORY OF STEPHENSON COUNTY.
He was buried in a cemetery in the barrens west of Loran, the second inter- ment made in the present village churchyard. Some time previous, a resident of Jo Daviess County named Tiffany deceased, and his burial in the cemetery mentioned, preceded that of young Kleckner.
In the fall of 1845, Henry Doherty was married to Catharine Flickinger, and this is said to have been the first marriage concluded in the present town- ship of Jefferson. It is believed that the Rev. Mr. Kiefer officiated at the ceremony, but whether there were any " fixins " or rejoicings upon the occasion, the settler who furnished the information is in doubt. Most probably not, however, for the days of prosperity were yet unborn, and it required the most constant and diligent attention to cultivating the soil as a means of livelihood, and weddings were regarded as complete without the attendant concomitants deemed indispensable to-day.
The first birth could not be ascertained, not even from those who usually make merry upon occurrences of this character, hence the historian is denied the pleasure of perpetuating the name of the distinguished offspring who first made liis bow before an admiring constituency in Jefferson Township.
Jefferson contains one village, with a population of about eighty souls. In 1854, George Lashell, occupying a farm in the hollow, near Jo Daviess County, conceived the idea of laying out a town and attracting population by the sale of lots at a price within the means of the least ambitious. He accordingly pro- cured the services of the County Surveyor and laid off and platted the village of Loran. The town originally contained five blocks of twelve lots each, but, finding a limited sale for his realty, he subsequently vacated a portion of the property, reserving for village purposes only so much as equaled the limited demand then made.
The town occupies but one street (High), contains one store, a blacksmith- shop, two churches and a stone schoolhouse.
The Methodist Church was built in 1875, and cost $1,600. It is 30x40, of frame, with a capacity of seating of about 150 worshipers. The congrega- tion, which numbers about seventy-five communicants from the surrounding country, belongs to the Yellow Creek Conference. Services are held twice a month, at which the Rev. J. B. Smith officiates.
The Evangelical Church is also of frame, 30x44, with an attendance similar in point of numbers, and services on every other Sabbath. The Rev. Mr. Fair, of Shannon, Carroll County, is the minister at present in charge.
The schoolhouse, which, as stated, is of stone, is located on the main street of the village, employs the services of one teacher and enjoys an average daily attendance of about thirty pupils.
Near the village is a Lutheran Church, in which services are held at inter- vals by transient ministers.
ERIN TOWNSHIP.
Originally one of the largest townships in the county, Erin is now one of the smallest, owing to a division of its territory by order of the Board of Super- visors, which assigned its west half to Kent Township, at a meeting convened March 17, 1856, reducing its dimensions so as to comprehend but half the usual township limits. The division of the township caused intense feeling on the part of residents within the original survey, as they were not only deprived of the superior wood and water advantages previously enjoyed, but subjected to other inconveniences and hardships.
505
HISTORY OF STEPHENSON COUNTY.
Notwithstanding this alleged inequity, Erin township is one of the more prosperous in the county, inhabited by a class of people notably efficient, in- dustrious and enterprising and liberal in every undertaking calculated to pro- mote the general welfare.
The surface of the ground is rolling, and a smaller proportion of prairie exists than in other towns. The openings are of an excellent quality of land, and peculiarly adapted to the growth of wheat, large quantities of which are raised during the year. The timber is not heavy, and the labor of clearing very trifling. A large number of springs are to be found in the town, also a limited number of stone quarries, furnishing material for building purposes.
A portion of the town was settled by a colony of Irish farmers at an early day, hence the name; many of the descendants of these pioneers still live in a settlement known as " Dublin," and furnish abundant evidence of the success that attends industry and attention to the business of life.
The first settlers of Erin Township are those who, also identified with the settlement of that portion of Erin afterward apportioned to Kent, are men- tioned in connection with the history of that township. They include O. W. Kellogg, James Timms, Jesse Willet and others. Among those who settled in the section reserved to Erin proper when the division already cited was made, and that among the first, were Bartholomew Boyle and Michael Murphey, the former on the present site of St. Mary's Catholic Church, and the latter one mile distant therefrom. Valorus Thomas is said to have come in 1837, and settled on the line between Harlem and Erin. James Fowler John Fiddler, John B. Kauffman, Peter Vansickle, George W. Babbitt, Jonas and Palmer Pickard, Lewis Grigsby, F. Rosenstiel and others came between that date and 1840, and settled in the township ; Ebenezer Mullinix and - Helm in 1837, and located near the line in Harlem; Reuben Tower came in 1840, as also did William Schermerhorn, John Lloyd, Frederick Gossmann and John Ham- mond, and many others came about that time and began farming in the terri- tory now included in Erin Township; Nathan Ferry, Amos Davis (who settled at Scioto Mills in 1837), E. H. Woodbridge and many more came into the township at a later date, and have since been identified with its rise and progress.
In earlier times, before the railroad became part of the township as an agency for its success and appreciation in the value of property, both real and personal, the experience of settlers elsewhere was duplicated in Erin. Their flour was ground at Andrews' mill, on Yellow Creek, etc., and their prod- ucts sold and supplies procured at Chicago, Galena and other points accessible only after long drives and a constant repetition of annoyances ; and, as was not unfrequently the case, the load, hauled to market over roads that to-day would be condemned, and through weather that would place an embargo on the movements of the least cautious, would be sold for a sum insufficient to meet the demands of necessaries for home consumption. When the sales of land by the Government were begun, settlers came in more rapidly, and of a character that encouraged those already in possession. They were composed of horny- handed sons of toil, by whom the forests have been hewn down, the prairies broken up and transformed into fertile fields, and the wealth of the soil devel- oped and increased, until to-day the West is not only the garden and the gran- ary, but the treasury of the nation. When the railroad was surveyed, an addi- tional impetus was given to immigration hitherward, greatly augmented when this connecting link between the West and East was finally cemented in 1854.
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HISTORY OF STEPHENSON COUNTY.
Since that event, the population of Erin Township has only been measured by its capacity to afford accommodation for the number who have annually endeavored to become citizens within its limits. The acres devoted to farming are under the control of husbandmen ripe in knowledge and experience, and pro. duce a yearly return entirely in harmony with the labor that has been employed in, and science directed toward, their cultivation ; and statistics establish the fact that in no township in the county have greater profits been derived from the same area of territory appropriated to agricultural purposes.
In all respects, indeed, Erin Township has been blessed. Its schools are conducted by an efficient and intelligent class of instructors, the increase in the country's wealth enabling the people to properly reimburse such valuable serv- ices ; the opportunities for attending public worship are superior to those of many other sections, and the features of excellence visible in cultivated communities, are reproduced by the inhabitants, who have kept pace in science, morality and religion with the almost unexampled progress made in matters of a pecuniary character.
DUBLIN SETTLEMENT.
This settlement embraces about four miles square of territory, partly in Kent and partly in Erin Township, from Willet's Grove to Callan's Corner, and is settled largely by Irish farmers, who came from the immediate vicinity of Dublin, on the Liffey.
The first settlers have already been mentioned, viz., Bartholomew Doyle and Michael Murphey, who made their several claims during the years 1839 and 1840, and became the neighbors of James Timms, Jesse Willet, John Hart, and the pioneers generally who had preceded their arrival in the country.
Doyle, who remained on his claim sufficiently long to enable him to complete a limited improvement and donate three acres thereof for the site of St. Mary's Church, sold out his domain to Robert Franey, and moved west about half a mile, where he again began the opening and improvement of a farm. Soon after these adventurous travelers from the Green Sod had made claims and established the beginning of a life in the West, free from the trammels and dis- couragements encountered at home, they were followed hither by brothers and kin from the land of their birth, through whose labors and intelligence the little spot of land known as Dublin has been made a veritable Paradise.
They began to come in quite numerously about 1842, and thence to 1850, scarcely a week passed that the arrival of an additional toiler from over the sea was not noted. ' Among these were Andrew and George Cavanaugh, Andrew Farrell, who settled on land now owned by C. H. Hughes; Dennis Maher, on land in Section 29, now owned by Daniel Brown; the family of a man named Burns, who, with his son, was drowned at Dixon, by the breaking of a bridge across Rock River. His widow and family, unappalled by this calamity, which greeted her arrival to the confines of a new home, pressed on, and was warmly welcomed to the new settlement by her sympathetic country-folk. Others came also, including John McNamara, Patrick Brown, etc., until the settlement became established, having a church and school of their own, and many other auxiliaries to comfort, happiness and independence. Indulging a spirit of that fellow-feel- ing which is said to make the whole world kin, that encouragement to the industrious and deserving poor which lightens the burden and illuminates the pathway, the Irish settlers of Dublin to-day, numbering about fifty families, cultivating an average of not less than 8,000 acres of land, living in harmony, one with the other, faithful to the duties daily imposed, charitable to all, present
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