USA > Illinois > Woodford County > The Past and present of Woodford County, Illinois : containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c.; a directory of its tax-payers; war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; general and local statistics etc > Part 33
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PROGRESS.
From 1840, to the completion of the Illinois Central Railroad, the country settled but slowly, but after that event a new era seemed to dawn, and the town- ship rapidly filled up, so that in 1855, there were in the township not less than two hundred inhabitants. Schools began to spring up, roads and bridges were built, and a better class of buildings were taking the place of the old log cabins. Lumber and agricultural implements were shipped to within a dozen miles, and fences and houses began to relieve the barren look of the prairie.
SCHOOLS.
As early as 1840, a cabin was built on Section 28, for the purpose of estab -: lishing a school. The first term taught in it was by Wm. Armstrong. Whoever he was or is, for his name is all that is remembered, he is entitled to the honor of being the pioneer educator of the Grove. This continued to be the only school until 1856, when the wants of the township, in this regard, had so in- creased, that a second one was established, on the north side of the timber, on Section 20, and known from that time till now as the Willow Tree School. At · the present time, there are six good schools. The first School Treasurer was Samuel Arnold, who was appointed in 1850. The school section was sold in 1851, for the sum of $3,400. This, with the addition of swamp land funds, constitutes the township school fund. The total amount at present is $3,768.34.
Q. IT. Willand.
CHICAGO FORMERLY OF METAMORA
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HISTORY OF WOODFORD COUNTY.
The estimated value of school property, including township funds and schoo houses, is about $9,000.
There are in all 348 children, of school age, that is, between the ages of six and twenty-one, 290 of whom attended school last year.
The above items have been taken from Mr. C. M. Stephenson's books. Mr. S. is present Treasurer, and has held the office since his appointment in 1869.
RELIGION.
That there is some of this article in the township cannot be doubted, but it is not indicated by church spires, there not being a church building within its limits. However, the people are not without church privileges, as there are churches on all sides. The German Baptist Church, mentioned in Roanoke, being only across the line, accommodates a large community in the western part, while churches at Secor and Benson accommodate those in the northern and southern portions. Religious services have been held in the township almost from the date of its first settling ; but churches, unlike schools, not being con- fined by law to a particular location, have been built outside, while some of their firmest pillars are inhabitants of Greene.
TOWN HOUSE.
This is, in one sense of the word, a "memorial building," as it was erected in the year 1876. It is a neat frame building, erected by a tax levied on the property of the citizens of the township. It is located in the center of the township. It is thirty-two feet in length and twenty-four feet in width. It is used for the purpose of holding meetings of a public character and as a voting place.
ORGANIZATION.
The township was organized April 3, 1855, by the election of the following officers : Supervisor, J. R. Gaston ; Town Clerk, G. S. Woods ; Assessor, O. D. Hanna ; Collector, D. T. Patterson ; Magistrates, Benjamin Sample and Will- iam Harper; Constables, J. F. Stephenson and J. F. Mohr.
The present officers are: Aaron Brubaker, Supervisor; V. Houseworth, Clerk; Bryant Cawley, Assessor; Joseph Tool, Collector; M. B. Hammers and C. L. Pleasants, Magistrates ; Stephen Armstrong, C. II. Tool and James Jeter, Highway Commissioners.
The number of voters at the organization was forty-nine, which has increased to one hundred and ninety. The first assessed valuation of property was $211,531. The assessment last year footed $484,609. The population was then about two hundred. It has at the present date a population of about one thousand.
WAR OF THE REBELLION.
We would not forget that, when the life of the country was in peril, Greene Township offered her sacrifice, and the following brave men laid down their lives that the Union might continue : George Srasbaugh, Henry Trowbridge, Corey
H
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HISTORY OF WOODFORD COUNTY ..
Harvey, Lott Hanna, Lewis Hanna, Ansel Bunting, Andrew Betz, Simon Betz, Francis I. McCord and Edward Fifield.
" Requiem eternam dona eis Domine."
OTHER MATTER.
There being no village in this township, it has not been a natural abiding place for lawyers or doctors. There are no stores, mills or factories, the people supplying themselves with articles produced by these, as well as with law, physic and theology, from the neighboring villages. As hinted in a former part of this article, there was at one time a post office located here. There was, too, a small store, kept by Isaac Hammers and William Crossley ; but, upon the completion of the railroad, the former was abandoned by the Govern- ment. and the latter removed to Panola.
ROADS.
Not until comparatively a late date was much attention paid to the build- ing of roads : but after the township organization act went into effect, and each township was. dependent on itself for its highways, the inhabitants of this township went to work right earnestly ; and year after year has seen some im- provements in that direction, until at this writing nearly one hundred miles of graded road is the result of a vast amount of labor.
THIE ROANOKE FIRE INSURANCE.
This institution was organized April 2, 1875. This is an association of farmers in this and other townships of Woodford County, for the protection of farmers' property against fire. It is a mutual company, without charter or capital, and relies entirely on the honor of the members for the payment of assessments, in case of the destruction, by fire, of any of the buildings of the insured.
The membership fee is fifty cents, and the policy fee twenty-five cents. There is also charged, on taking out the policy, ten cents on the hundred dol- lars, for two-thirds of the cash value of the property. There are six Directors of the Association, one of whom, C. W. Stephenson, is Treasurer and Secretary.
There have been, to date, one hundred and ninety-five policies issued, rep- resenting property to the amount of two hundred thousand dollars. It is claimed that this Association saves the township two thousand dollars per year.
RETROSPECTIVE.
Though the growth of this township has not been so rapid, numerically and financially, as some others, yet it will be seen, by a casual observer, that its growth has been solid. The population is mainly made up of thrifty, industri- ous and honest Virginians and natives of adjoining States, who came to this country, not for political or other ambitious designs, but to procure for them- selves and children comfortable homes. As a result of their zeal and industry, we find here a township dotted all over with elegant houses and barns, and well cultivated fields ; and prosperity and thrift are everywhere visible.
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351
HISTORY OF WOODFORD COUNTY.
CAZENOVIA TOWNSHIP.
Cazenovia lies in the northern tier of townships of Woodford County, and is bounded on the west by Partridge, south by Metamora, east by Linn and north by Marshall County. About two-thirds of the township is prairie land, while the remainder is pretty well supplied with timber of an excellent quality. The prairie is among the finest farming lands of the county, and is of a generally level surface, but the timbered land, especially along Richland Creek, which has its source in the township and flows westward through Partridge into the Illi- nois River, is broken and uneven, sometimes rising almost into bluffs. It is known as Township 28 north, Range 2 west, and in 1877 had an assessed val- uation of taxable property, personal and real, of $601,372.00.
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.
Many of the early settlers of Cazenovia were from Pennsylvania, the old Keystone of the American Union, although the very first settlement of which we have any definite information, was made by a man named Hubbard, and his son-in-law, who came from Virginia, and made a settlement on what is now known as the Dodd's place, near Low Point village. Hubbard and his son-in-law built a cabin here in the Spring of 1832, which is supposed to have been the first in the township. This was the commencement of the Low Point settle- ment, and attained its name from being a kind of point, or grove of timber, several feet lower than the general level of the surrounding prairic. From this date on to 1835, there were added to the settlement the Buckinghams, the Mundells. the Joneses and the Hammerses, who all came from the same section of Pennsylvania. Isaac Buckingham and his son Morgan Buckingham came in the Summer of 1832, and settled first at Lacon, then called Columbia, where they remained but a short time, when they removed to this township, and perma- nently settled a little south of the present village of Washburn, and not far from Low Point. Judge Wm. E. Buckingham, now living within half a mile of the village of Washburn, was originally from the Pennsylvania settlement, but had resided in Ohio several years previous to his settlement in Cazenovia Township. This old family trace their lineage back in an unbroken line to Thomas Buck- ingham, the Puritan preacher, who came to America in the Mayflower, and through him direct to the Dukes of Buckingham. We make the following extract from their genealogical record published some years ago, and a copy of which is in possession of Judge W. E. Buckingham : " Thomas Buckingham, the Puritan settler and ancestor of all the American Buckinghams, was one of the congregation to which Eaton and Hopkins, the London merchants, and two ministers, Davenports and Prudden, belonged. They sailed from London on the 26th of June, 1637, and settled originally in Connecticut." Judge Bucking- ham is a nephew of Isaac Buckingham, and came to the town several years
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HISTORY OF WOODFORD COUNTY.
later, and is the only one of the old stock now living. Isaae Buckingham entered a great deal of land on the prairie in the vicinity of the Low Point set- tlement, and it was told by Jesse Dale, that James Boys an old settler of Metamora Township, inquired one day, soon after his arrival in the country, if that land was entered, glancing across the prairie. He was informed that it had been entered by Isaac Buekingham. "Well," said Boys, " he is a - fool to enter such land as that." "The next time I saw him," said Dale, " he had married the --- fool's daughter."
Isaac Buckingham died in 1836-7, and his was one of the first deaths to ocenr in the township. Indeed, the Buckinghams seemed to have been a short- lived raee, none of the old set surviving much beyond 50, and few reaching that half-way station. We were shown the little log cabin-quite a pretentious dwelling in its day-in which Morgan Buckingham died. It is on the place where G. W. Newell now lives, and is a mile or two west of Low Point village. Mr. Buckingham was among the first Justices of the Peace in Woodford County, an energetie man and a leading eitizen of the neighborhood.
Jesse Dale, mentioned in other chapters of this work, seems to have been a kind of migratory character, who was not satisfied long in one place. We find him in the Spring Bay settlement among the first ; a few years later in the set- tlement at Partridge Point, or Metamora, as it was afterward called, and in the Low Point Settlement with the very earliest. Some of the survivors of this settlement are of opinion that Dale built the first eabin in Cazenovia Township; but from other and more definite information, we are inclined to aceredit the building of the first house to Hubbard, as already noted.
The Mundells, three brothers named Abner, Simeon and Samuel, came in 1835. Abner came early in the season and the other two about six months later. As stated, they were from Pennsylvania, and entered land in the vieinity of the Low Point settlement. Abner Mundell lived for many years in this township, but in 1861 removed into Metamora Township, where he at present resides, a prosperous farmer and much respected eitizen. He was in Chicago four years before he removed to the State, and related to us that they were then building the first briek house ever ereeted in the Garden City. It was down by the river, a little west of the barracks, and near Hubbard's old trading post. Simeon Mundell went to California in the Spring of 1849, during the gold fever of that period, where he remained until April, 1852. While in California, he staid some time with a couple who kept an eating house, and, leaving a thousand dollars in gold dust with them, one day, for safe keeping, they suddenly decamped while he was absent, and, through some trifling oversight on their part, carried off his gold dust-probably by mistake. Suffice it, he never heard of them or his luere afterward. More fortunate than thousands of others who went to California to seek their fortunes on its gold-washed shores, notwith- standing the loss above narrated, he succeeded in accumulating considerable gold, with which he returned to Illinois, intending to go back to the Golden
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HISTORY OF WOODFORD COUNTY.
State in the Fall ; but a younger brother, who had gone to California with him, and whom he had left there in charge of their affairs, had become disgusted with the place, sold out and came home before he had completed his arrangements to go back. His brother lives now in Texas, and Simeon still remains on his old homestead, in Cazenovia Township. Samuel Mundell lives upon the site of his original settlement. When the Mundells came to the settlement, they found the Buckinghams, Jesse Hammers, James Owen, Thomas Jones and Isaac Black, and perhaps a few others, settled around the grove of timber called Low Point.
Jesse Hammers, another old Pennsylvanian, settled in this township in 1835, and within half a mile of the present village of Cazenovia, where he still resides. His first cabin is still standing, though it has long since given place to his ele- gant frame residence, and has been torn down and removed on to a neighbor- ing farm. It was built of large logs, twenty feet long, and was a substantial building. Mr. Hammers bought some of his land, entered some, and also received some from his father-in-law, Isaac Buckingham. He was the first President of the Woodford County Agricultural Society, an office he held for several years. He took an active interest in getting the present railroad through the township, and was Vice President of the first association formed for the old Tonica & Petersburg Road, so much talked of years ago, and when at one time they commenced to grade it, the President being absent. it devolved on Mr. Hammers, as Vice President, to throw the first shovel of dirt, which he did with all due solemnity.
Thomas Jones, still another Pennsylvanian, and related to the Buckinghams, settled in this town in 1832-3, near the present village of Low Point. They, through their relationship with the Buckingham family, traced their descent back to the same noble source. Isaac Monlton and the Morses settled near Low Point very early, Moulton in 1832-3, and the Morses in 1835. As the latter in a short time removed into Metamora Township, where the survivors of the family still live, their history is given in the chapter devoted to that township. Isaac Moulton first settled in the present town of Worth, but soon came to Cazenovia, where he settled permanently.
Rev. James Owen was born in Fairfax County, Va., in 1801, and removed with his father's family to Kentucky, where they remained three years. They came to Illinois, and settled in Wayne County in the Spring of 1819. They crossed the river, on their trip to this State, at Shawneetown, when there was but one store in that city, and but few other houses. In his trips back and forth, Mr. Owen has crossed the Mississippi at Shawneetown seven times. He remained in Wayne County with his father's family until 1835, when he removed to Wood- ford County, and settled in Cazenovia, near the line between it and Partridge Township. He made a trip to this county the year previous to his removal to visit his brother, who had settled at Walnut Grove in 1829. While he yet lived in Wayne County, he had a horse stolen, and followed the thief over five hundred miles, and finally succeeded in recovering his horse in a distant part of Indiana,
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HISTORY OF WOODFORD COUNTY.
but failed to bag the thief, who, when he found he was getting into close quar- ters, abandoned the nag and made his escape. When Mr. Owen settled on his present place in 1835, on the bluff overlooking one of the branches of Rich- land Creek, there were but a few large trees scattered over the plain, which Kentuckians and Virginians call . barrens." The beautiful young forest sur- rounding him now has grown up since. He brought with him a lot of scions, or roots of apple, peach, pear and cherry trees, in a box of dirt, which he planted in the moist earth near a fine spring of water, and though it was in the month of May they grew and flourished. The next year he planted his young trees in an orchard prepared for the purpose, where he soon had a variety of fruit. This was the first orchard in the township : some of the trees are still standing, and, unlike the barren fig tree, are bringing forth good fruit. Previons to his effort at fruit, there had been nothing of the kind in the neighborhood but wild plums and crab apples. Mr. Owen entered land as he needed it, and could pay for it, and at one time owned several farms, which he let out to ten- ants. But finding that only what he himself superintended was a paying invest- ment, he sold off' all of his superfluous lands, and retained only a sufficiency for the wants of himself and family. His house was the voting place when there were but three precincts and three voting places in the county, and many are the lively times and stirring scenes enacted on the old bluff, when the Partridge and Spring Bay Hills poured out their hardy veomanry and naturalized voters to exercise their rights of franchise at the ballot box. All little neighborhood disputes were settled at this annual assembling of the clans, and with whisky at twenty cents a gallon,* the crowd never lacked for the exhilarating beverage, which generally aided them very materially to cancel their slight differences.
Mr. Owen has been a great hunter in his day, and has probably killed more deer than he has seen years, although he is verging on to his four score. He informed us that in 1848 he killed fifty-two foxes, and that "it was not a very good year either for foxes." He had the first pack of hounds ever introduced into the township, and thus waged a bitter warfare against the whole fox tribe- those arrant foes to young pigs and lambs. He was intimately acquainted with Abraham Lincoln, and, though a life-long Democrat, quite a strong friendship existed between them : and he, to use his own words, " used to have lots of fun with Honest Old Abe." As a relic of the past, Mr. Owen has a bill of the gen- uine old Continental money, dated in 1779, of the denomination of forty dol- lars, and signed by "John Graff" and "J. C. Masoner." It looks as little like the present United States notes as a counterfeit nickel resembles a twenty- dollar gold piece.
James G. Bayne came from Brown County, Ohio, and is a Buckeye of the genuine stamp. Though scarcely ranking as an old settler, according to the common acceptation of the term in Woodford County, he having settled here in
* We have the word of old settlers for the fact, that a good coonskin would, in those primitive days, buy a gallon of liquor.
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HISTORY OF WOODFORD COUNTY.
1846, yet he has always been a prominent character, and foremost in every work of enterprise calculated to promote the interests of his town and county. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1869-70, and the record of that angust body shows that he was no idle "looker on in Venice," but a zealous worker. He was the first Township Clerk, and for twenty years School Treasurer. He states that when Treasurer, away back in the old days of hard money, he used to have a great deal of the funds in silver, and often put it in an old oven and buried it in his garden, "under the raspberry bushes," as a place of safety. A few years ago, he made a canvass for Congress, and while he had, perhaps, as good friends as any man in like circumstances, yet he did not have quite enough of them, and consequently was defeated. He took an active part in getting the railroad through his township, and its final accomplishment is due as much to him as any man who favored the movement. Upon his arrival here, he settled at the present village of Low Point, though just outside of the corporate limits of the village, and where he still resides.
THE FIRST POST OFFICE.
In 1849, a post office was established in the Low Point settlement, which was the first in the township. Wm. Dodds was the first Postmaster, and the office was kept in that neighborhood until the village was laid out, in 1871, when it was removed into the corporation. With many changes in the admin- istration of its affairs, the office has passed into the hands of John E. Dodds, who is at present Postmaster.
The first blacksmith in the township was Morgan Buckingham, Sr., who kept a shop on his place soon after his settlement. He was probably the first Justice of the Peace also, as we have no information of one prior to him in the town. At all events, he was the first after the county was organized.
The first store of which we have any definite record was a little grocery store kept by James Owen, at his own house, at a very early day of the settle- ment of the town. He kept sugar, coffee, molasses and such things as were actual necessities in the neighborhood. Mr. Owen likewise built the first barn in the township, which, like its founder and builder, is showing the effects of age. It was considered an enterprise of such magnitude that he climbed to the "ridge pole "-whatever that was-to take a look at his surroundings, and those present, who had helped him " raise it," called for a speech, and " Uncle Jimmy," from his lofty rostrum, entertained his hearers for some time upon the events of the day. His residence was the first house with a brick chimney. Previously chimneys were built of wood, sticks and mud. His house was of logs, and built in 1835, but since " weather-boarded " with lumber from Jenkins' circular saw-mill, the first of the kind in the township ; was put in operation in 1847, and operated by horse power. His barn was built of material from the same mill. The brick used in his chimney was made by Heddriek Brothers, who burnt a kiln near the north line of the town in 1835, of excellent briek.
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HISTORY OF WOODFORD COUNTY.
BIRTH, DEATH, MARRIAGE.
From the best information to be obtained, James Boys and Miss Jane Buck- ingham, a daughter of Isaac Buckingham, was the first marriage in Cazenovia Township. Their nuptials were celebrated in 1833, and the hymenial knot was tied by Daniel Meek, Justice of the Peace. Since that date, many others have gone and done likewise. Their daughter, Mary, is supposed to have been the first child born in the town. Just when the " fantastic rider of the pale horse " first entered the settlement, or who was his first victim, we do not definitely know. But the several graveyards, with their white tombstones standing here and there like sentinel soldiers, show that he has been here, and that old and young have fallen in his track.
"Our birth is but a starting place ; Life is the running of the race. And death the goal ; There all onr glittering toys are brought- That path alone, of all unsought, Is found of all."
Isaac Buckingham and a man named Key were among the first deaths, and are recorded in 1836-7. Thomas Jones' wife also died about the same time. An old man named Heddrick died also at an early period of the settlement. But after the lapse of so many years, it is difficult to fix the precise dates of these events.
The first road through Cazenovia was the State road from Chicago to Bloomington and Springfield, and was the stage route between those cities. The stage carried the mail, and was the first presentation of Uncle Sam's com- pliments to the settlers here, and was made through the Low Point post office. Parker Morse, Sr., kept a tavern on this road at Low Point, in 1836-7, and was the first in the settlement.
CHURCHES AND SHOOLS.
The first church in Cazenoria Township was built in 1849-50, by the Bap- tists, near where Simeon Mundell now lives. The lumber was sawed by Jen kins' saw-mill already alluded to, and the building has been converted into & barn by Mr. Mundell, since the erection of the elegant church at Cazenovia vil- lage. Rev. James Owen, who was a Baptist, but afterward joined the Chris- tians, preached the first sermon in the township in 1835, and previous to the building of churches, religious services were held at neighbors' residences, and in the school houses. Rev. Mr. Root, who lived across the Illinois River, came over occasionally and preached, about the same time.
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