USA > Illinois > The early history of Northern Illinois > Part 5
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Shortly before they reached Kellogg's Grove, there had been a battle between the soldiers sta- tioned there and the Indians; several soldiers had been killed and their bodies were still scat- tered around. Captain Lincoln and his men buried them, and it affected him profoundly. He wrote that he had never seen so grewsome a sight before. The dead bodies with the bloody, scalped heads. But let him tell it as he wrote at the time, where he and his men "rode up a little hill where the red light of the sun at daybreak flooded corpses" : He said it was frightful, "each man with a round spot on the top of his head about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp * * * and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over."
This was Lincoln's closest contact with the In- dians. He led his company on up the trail and over the state line into Wisconsin where his company was mustered out. His time of enlist- ment not having expired, he reenlisted as a pri- vate. But the war was soon over. His horse hav- ing been stolen at White Water, Wisconsin, he and a few of the other boys of New Salem, after they were mustered out, walked down the trail, down through Crane's Grove, with "long, long thoughts" perhaps, but surely not dreaming that after awhile he would come back this way for one of the most momentous experiences of his life.
When the little group reached Peoria, they
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bought a canoe and paddled down the Illinois river to Havana, sold the canoe and tramped home to New Salem. Twice, Abe Lincoln had passed through Crane's Grove.
The Black Hawk war having speedily ended with an Indian slaughter of mostly children, women and old men, and the removal of the re- mainder back across the Mississippi river into Iowa, northern Illinois entered upon a boom period. Naturally the war had focussed the eyes of the nation upon this territory. The soldiers coming from far and wide wrote home, giving glowing accounts of these magnificent forests, and virgin prairies, and people poured into this region from many parts of the south and east.
The years 1835 and 1836 were banner-years, although the next ten or more years followed closely, in the rush of settlers and the founding of villages. To come to this period let us fill in the gap from Black Hawk's surrender in No- vember of 1832.
The first swell of immigration was manifested on the Kellogg and Lewiston trails as multitudes of miners barred for a time by the war streamed back with an ever-increasing number of men or families looking for places to establish new homes. During the year 1835, Fort Clark aban- doned its old name and incorporated as a town named Peoria. And Peoria became more like the hub of a wheel with spokes radiating north- east and northwest as well as north.
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Dixon's Ferry was another busy place. In 1835, Dixon's Ferry was laid out as a town, and from this on, was called Dixon. The following is a quotation from the Encyclopedia Brittanica, under the heading, Dixon, "During the Black Hawk war, Jefferson Davis, Zachary Taylor and Abraham Lincoln were comrades in the old blockhouse or fort that stood near the northern end of the present bridge across the river." Taylor and Davis were officers with the United States troops.
Once on the north side of the river, beyond the blockhouse, the transients now seeking homes beheld beckoning hands from east and west as well as north.
Buffalo Grove was another busy place teem- ing with excitement. John Ankeney, a rival of the Kellogg trail group, was an aggressive, in- fluential man, and did his full share in enticing families to locate in that neighborhood. Captain Oliver W. Kellogg stood like a giant at the Buf- falo Grove crossroads, sending some up the Kel- logg trail, others through Chambers' Grove, while others were persuaded to settle where they were. Oldtown, a thriving village, was the handiwork of this man of vision and faith. It was an offshoot of Buffalo Grove.
Captain Kellogg had much to do with the set- tlemen of a large area surrounding Buffalo Grove, and the southern part of what later was Carroll County. Buffalo Grove grew into Old-
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town which later grew into Polo when the rail- road was built. And to the west, Chambers Grove, Brookville, Eagle Point, Hazelhurst, Mil- ledgeville, felt the impulse of this man. He was the postmaster for many years, ran a store, kept a hotel for a long time, and engaged in other enterprises. When the early Methodist preach- ers reached Oldtown, Kellogg gave them permis- sion to conduct preaching services in the hotel, encouraged the meetings and was a charter member of the Oldtown Methodist Church, which later became the Polo Methodist Church which I served as pastor during the early years of this century.
Let me portray the early church-life of all denominations as I described it concretely in the 1906 Year Book, I prepared for the Polo Metho- dist Church.
"Polo Methodism seems to be the foster- mother of all religious work in this vicinity, having an unbroken history stretching back more than seventy years. The work was estab- lished by the Illinois Conference whose juris- diction covered the entire state and all of the territory to the north and west. It was begun when there was no preaching from Rock Island to Galena, and between Rock River and the Mis- sissippi River. It reaches back to a time when the preacher on horseback, with his parsonage and its furnishings in his saddlebags, covered a large stretch of territory, and held services
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in many different places, his circuit extending over several weeks, to the time preceding the coming of the first settler to Freeport, to the time when there were no church-edifices, and the grove or tavern, or house or barn or school- house were used for places of worship; to a time preceding theological schools, and preach- ers received their training (as my father did in medicine) by being sent out as a junior preach- er (or doctor) under the guidance of an experi- enced man.
The first services were held in the tavern of Oliver W. Kellogg which stood in Buffalo Grove in the north end of Oldtown. Mrs. Martin F. Bassett (still an active member of our Polo church) remembers the services held in that tavern. (Mrs. Bassett was another of the open windows through which I looked upon the early Illinois history.) From the tavern in 1836, the services were transferred to the log cabin of a Methodist family named Wilcoxon, and perhaps in the Autumn of that year were again changed, this time to the schoolhouse where they were held uninterruptedly to the completion of the Oldtown church in 1850.
The membership of the church included fam- ilies from such outlying points as Dixon and Pecatonica, and the Buffalo Grove preacher held preaching services in all of these outlying settle- ments. All hail ! to those pioneer men of courage and brawn, of great heart and sturdy brain,
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who laid so grandly the foundations of the church."
It is interesting to note that after a lapse of a century, the village of Oldtown has dropped this name that has no significance, and taken again the name of Buffalo Grove, a change that should be welcomed by every citizen of Illinois.
And Captain Thomas Crane, "a man of two homes," when in his real home in Crane's Grove, was sending would-be settlers on up the Kellogg trail, when over at Cherry Grove, which he was developing, was sending them on up toward Elizabeth or west to Savanna, or having them stay in the Cherry Grove Settlement, and so was sowing the seed for the future building of Mt. Carroll in the forties. But that was not all. When standing by his Crane's Grove Cabin, he was looking toward the east to that tiny village of Chicago, incorporated two years before, with no trail yet available in that direction, beckon- ing to them to come on west, and dreaming of a trail that should connect Chicago and Crane's Grove and run on west through Cherry Grove to Savanna, to Savanna "destined to become the metropolis of northern Illinois."
We must devote our attention now to the other two men of our Northern Illinois Development Company, John Phelps and Samuel M. Hitt. They did not enter into the picture as early as the four others, but they did have a prominent place, and they also illustrate how hundreds of
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villages and towns of northern Illinois came into being.
The name of John Phelps already appears in this paper. He was born in Virginia in 1796. When he was a boy of fourteen, the family moved to Tennessee. When a boy of 16, in the war of 1812, he was fighting against the British in the New Orleans campaign, "enduring ter- rible hardships" as he somewhere says. I have already indicated my belief that he and Tom Crane were buddies in that campaign. Phelps seems to have been an unusually prolific writer for those times, and has left various letters and papers which give much valuable information. He went to La Pointe with Kellogg and Crane during the summer of 1827. Future develop- ments seem to me to indicate that they were planning to work together during the years ahead. While the others went back south, Phelps stayed in La Pointe or Galena as it was now being called, running a store and mining.
During the spring of the year 1829, the three stations were built along the trail by Kellogg, Crane and Chambers. That autumn, John Phelps made a trip south, visiting these men on the way. Probably he went back to his old home. Some time later he returned to Galena, seeming- ly being there through the Black Hawk war.
Then in 1833, he set out on an expedition of great importance. He tells us that he hired a Frenchman as a helper and started from Galena
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in a canoe to get some necessary data for the running of a trail or road from the newborn Chicago, west to connect with the Kellogg trail. Will you underscore this line as you think back to my portrayal of Phelps and Crane standing by Crane's cabin, and dreaming, planning a trail that would run from Crane's Grove to Chicago and follow Crane's trail west to Savanna. The dream was beginning to take form.
They worked their way down the Pecatonica river to Rock river, looking for suitable fording places and sites for mills and then down Rock river to the present site of Rockford, then still a wilderness. Phelps says that he spent some days there, finding a good fording place as a crossing for wagons and stages, and charting the ground for the Savanna-Chicago trail. The first definite step in the history of Rockford was being taken at that time. But he finally decided not to make that his home where he would try to establish a village because it seemed to him that there was not enough timber. Going down the river he came to the present site of Byron and spent several days there prospecting. He found another ford and charted it, but he had the same reaction as before: there was not enough timber in the vicinity. Again he had fashioned the first link in the history of future Byron, but he decided not to make it his dwell- ing-place. Continuing on downstream, they came to the present site of Oregon, and at last
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he had found the ideal place; a good place for fording the river and plenty of forestland.
While in the neighborhood he discovered a tent occupied by a government officer and sur- veyor named Burr, who was a son of Aaron Burr. Burr was a good companion and because of his surveying for the government, had be- come well acquainted with the surrounding ter- ritory. When Phelps told him that he was inter- ested in bringing a road out from Chicago, and wanted a good place to establish a colony in the neighborhood, the surveyor took him out to a spot between the present sites of Oregon and Mt. Morris, and there John Phelps built his cabin, the ruins of which are still to be seen.
For fear that we may not catch up with him again, let me put down with little comment, the things for which John Phelps should receive credit. He was the most prominent figure in colonizing both Mt. Morris and Oregon. He put Rockford on the map, and probably sent the first settler there, a man named Kent. Kent's Creek is still on the Rockford map. Kent came up the river from Dixon in 1834. The routine would be that Dixon sent him to Phelps' Cabin, and Phelps gave him the news about Midway as Rockford was first called. My theory is that Phelps named that ford because it was MID- WAY between Chicago and Galena. There is evidence that Kent came to Midway from Galena. It is easily possible that having talked
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with Dixon and Phelps, he went back to Dixon's Ferry, went up to Galena via the Kellogg Trail and followed Phelps' previous journey down the Pecatonica River in a canoe, to investigate vari- ous sites on both the Pecatonica and Rock rivers that Phelps may have told him about. The next year a man named Sanford, like Kent, came up Rock River. He looked over Phelps' chart of Byron, and went there and looked it over and liked it; went on up to Midway and worked awhile for Kent, then came back the next year, 1835, to put up his buildings at Phelps' second ford.
The present village of Byron is the result of that man's staking his claim there. But there is an interesting thing about the naming of the village. The early settlers voted to call their vil- lage, Bloomingville, and so notified the post- office department. But the postmaster-general refused to approve their name, saying that Illi- nois already had a Bloomingdale and Bloom- ington, and Bloomingville would be "a head- ache" for the postal clerks. Then some admirer of the poet Byron, suggested his name and so he sprang into fame.
Continuing with the achievements of John Phelps, with Tom Crane, he is entitled to the most credit in the establishing of the stage-route east from Crane's Grove to Chicago after he laid out the road from Midway to Dixon where the Kellogg trail was intersected. But almost at the
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same time, the stage line was carried on west from Midway to Crane's Grove where it inter- sected the Kellogg trail, and later on through Cherry Grove to intersect the Lewiston trail and go on to Savanna. More about this later. Those interested will find ample material about this dynamic, versatile, talented man in connec- tion with the history of Oregon and Mt. Morris. His life is prominently woven into the back- ground of those two communities. He lived long, and before he died, chose his own burial place by the side of Rock river, across from the Indian monument, in Riverview Cemetery, Oregon.
Samuel M. Hitt is the final prominent man in our Northern Illinois Development Company. He was born in Kentucky (not Maryland as some histories give it) in 1799. His being born in that state suggests a possible acquaintance with Captain Thomas Crane and perhaps others of the group, and may be a clue to the close rela- tion between Hitt and Crane later on. During Samuel Hitt's boyhood, the family moved back to Ohio, and when he was a man grown, he went back to Washington county, Maryland to visit the numerous Hitt clan, his people, living there. And he probaly met others of the families who moved later because of his influence to the Mt. Morris-Maryland colony.
At the close of the Black Hawk war, Hitt re- turned to the west and came up the Kellogg trail, either to renew his acquaintance with
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Captain Crane or to get acquainted. They went over to Cherry Grove, a little more than ten miles perhaps, and quoting an old Carroll coun- ty history he bought "the holdings of Thomas Crane." That is only partly true as will appear later. But probably he bought the tavern and "abatis," and perhaps a considerable amount of his land. Hitt operated on quite an extensive scale, but Crane evidently kept some of the land, as he "planted" some of his relatives here, and brought other families from Kentucky or south- ern Illinois.
One of the families was named Garner. Fran- cis Garner was Crane's double brother-in-law, for he married Amelia Crane and Crane mar- ried his sister. The Garners (others coming at that time), and the descendants of that first generation, were prominent people in the settle- ment of Carroll county. Some of the Garners still live in the Cherry Grove neighborhood. Garner Moffett, a relative of the Garner's, was another very prominent man in the early his- tory of Carroll county, brought in by Crane.
But Samuel Hitt was a much greater promot- er than Crane. He was engaged in so many dif- ferent enterprises that he brought a man from the east, named Harris, to be his business agent, and to represent him in various Carroll county enterprises. Mt. Carroll was not settled until 1841, but Hitt's name entered into the building of saw-mills, flour-mills, etc., through these in-
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tervening years. Perhaps in 1835, he brought a man from "back home" in Maryland, some years younger than himself, named (Captain) Nath- aniel Swingley, to assist him with the Cherry Grove work and to plan for their big enterprise ahead. The title "Captain" makes us wonder whether he had come earlier and was in the Black Hawk war.
While this promotional work was going on in the Cherry Grove neighborhood where now Mt. Carroll, Lanark, and much later Shannon are situated, Hitt and Swingley were teaming up with John Phelps, entering into a promotional undertaking with him.
You will remember that Phelps had located between the present towns of Oregon and Mt. Morris. As these three men carried on the set- tlement of this territory, Phelps spent most of his time developing Oregon while Samuel Hitt and Swingley, his deputy, devoted their chief attention to Mt. Morris. These two men re- turned to Washington county, Maryland, in 1836, to interest their relatives and friends in this territory. And the next year, 1837, an exo- dus on an extensive scale, took place from that part of Maryland, which culminated in the building of Mt. Morris.
Certain names in that group stand out promi- nently. More of the Hitts came, including the Rev. Thomas Hitt, prominent educator as well as preacher, and father of Robert R. Hitt, later
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distinguished in the political life of our coun- try. Rev. Hitt was one of the leaders in the founding of Mt. Morris Seminary that provided an education for many of the most prominent men of our state.
Dr. Isaac Rice was another prominent name in early Mt. Morris history. I knew him quite well during my years in Mt. Morris College, starting in 1886. He was another of the numer- ous windows through which I looked back on the early Illinois history. Other names include the Wagners, Householders, Marshalls, Fridleys, Sprechers, Sharers, Braytons, all of whom, or their immediate descendants, I knew and have known across the years.
Many other names deserve to be mentioned, but one interested in the early history of this particular region, will find abundant material in "Mt. Morris, Past and Present," published by Harry G. Kable.
This group was known as The Maryland Colony for many years. Its descendants still people that region and are prominent to this day.
While Mt. Morris was growing rapidly, Ore- gon was keeping pace, and on up Rock River, Byron and Rockford were doing likewise. While Samuel Hitt continued his promotional work in the Cherry Grove neighborhood, he was living here in the Mt. Morris region, helping to organ- ize various business enterprises. He must have
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divided his time between the two places. There seems to have been considerable moving back and forth too by Mt. Morris families and those around Cherry Grove and Lanark. Quite a num- ber of families seem to have had representatives in the two regions.
But here is a strange, unusual thing about this related history of these two communities. The Ogle county histories do not seem to have been aware that Hitt was an Illinois man rather than a Maryland man when he came to Mt. Mor- ris ; that Samuel Hitt spent an important chap- ter of his busy life in the Cherry Grove neigh- borhood and that he was a Tennessee man in- stead of a Marylander. If one wrote a biography of Samuel M. Hitt from the Ogle county his- tories he would have had his subject born in Maryland instead of Tennessee, would have had him come directly from Maryland with the colony, instead of going from Cherry Grove to get them. Yet while S. M. Hitt was very active in Mt. Morris affairs, he seems to have done much more for the promotion of Carroll county than of Ogle county.
Returning to Buffalo Grove for a moment, during the passing years it was spreading over to the west to form Elkhorn Grove, Milledge- ville and several intervening hamlets. The southern part of Carroll county was quite defi- nitely settled from Buffalo Grove in Ogle coun- ty, and the northern part of the county, as Mt.
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Carroll, Lanark, etc., from the Cherry Grove settlement. Savanna did not seem to add much to the settling of the county. Its influence was not helped any by the struggle that developed over the selection of a county seat.
Savanna had the advantage of age, the three first settlers having come there from the lead- mine region in 1828. But there did not seem to be any push from that direction, to settle the territory to the west. Its interest seemed con- fined to the river-travel.
On the other hand, Crane very definitely helped and Kellogg and Chambers also helped in the settling of this territory from the east.
Mt. Carroll had a late beginning (not until 1841) but it grew quite rapidly. Cherry Grove and S. M. Hitt had much to do with this settle- ment.
When the choosing of a town for the county seat for the newly-organized Carroll county took place, Savanna sought the prize, but its being on the edge of the county and its past in- difference worked against it. The settlements that sprang out of Cherry Grove and Buffalo Grove teamed up to outvote the Savanna group, and Mt. Carroll was chosen.
But this fanning-out process was typical of what was happening all over northern Illinois. Families were building homes, attracting other families, a village grew, and sent its shoots per- haps in various directions. And so during the
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late thirties and the forties, community life took possession of this part of the state.
Freeport got away to a late start, William Baker just getting in under the wire in 1835. But from the earliest years it grew very rapidly.
In 1835, the Frink and Walker Stage Com- pany made real the dream and plan of Phelps and Crane by running a route west from Chi- cago to the Rock river ford at Midway, marked by Phelps previously. Then the route continued on west to join the Kellogg trail at Crane's cabin in Crane's Grove. From Midway (Rockford) to this point, there were stations at Winnebago, 12-mile Grove, that slipped from the high ground in later years to become Pecatonica in the river-bottom, and Hunt's tavern, a land- mark that stood for many years until the old stone house was destroyed by fire a few years ago; and then on to Crane's tavern where it crossed the Kellogg trail, and from there fol- lowed Crane's trail through Cherry Grove and on to Savanna.
A line of stages came up from Peoria to Dixon, and there fanned out into several branches. The newest line ran up Rock river to Midway and into Chicago. Other lines came up to Buffalo Grove to go on to Galena over both the Kellogg and Lewiston trails. And the Chicago- Rockford line branched at Rockford to run down the river to Dixon and on west to Savan- na. If a Chicago passenger wished to go to
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Galena, he came out on the Chicago-Savanna line to Crane's Grove and there transferred to the Dixon-Galena line.
List of roads laid out by The Northern Illinois Development Company
The Kellogg Trail-Year 1825 Fort Clark to La Pointe (Peoria to Galena)
Crane's Trail-Year 1831
Crane's Grove via Cherry Grove to Savanna intersecting Lewiston Trail at Cherry Grove
Chambers' Trail-Year 1831
Buffalo Grove to Cherry Grove meeting Lewiston Trail and Crane's Trail at Cherry Grove *
Phelps' Trail-Year 1834-5
Midway to Dixon's Ferry connecting with The Kellogg Trail at Dixon's Ferry
*
The Crane-Phelps' Trail-Year 1834-5 Crane's Grove to Fort Dearborn
The Savanna-Fort Dearborn Trail-Year 1834-5
from Savanna, connecting with Lewiston Trail, and Chambers' Trail at Cherry Grove; with The Kellogg Trail at Crane's Grove; and Phelps' Trail at Midway
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A few years later, the Chicago-Galena Road followed the Savanna-Fort Dearborn Trail from Chicago almost to Freeport. From this point it went through Freeport, and on in a westerly direction, to pick up The Lewiston Trail, somewhere in the neighborhood of Elizabeth. This road does not belong to the above list.
During the early thirties following the Black- hawk war, the settlement of northern Illinois assumed wider proportions.
In 1833, the village of Chicago was incor- porated, and travel from the east by water to the Illinois lake-ports, became a more important factor. Would-be settlers were crowding north all along the line running east and west through Peoria. From points like Bloomington and Ot- tawa, they were moving toward old Fort Dear- born, not for war but for peace. But the group of roads we are considering, continued to be the distributing-lines for most of the settlers.
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