USA > Illinois > McLean County > The good old times in McLean County, Illinois : containing two hundred and sixty-one sketches of old settlers, a complete historical sketch of the Black Hawk war and descriptions of all matters of interest relating to McLean County > Part 19
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they are fond of display and love jewelry and trinkets, which they wear in their ears and sometimes in their noses. The In- dians sometimes cultivated the ground and raised what they called squaw corn. This they buried in the ground when they went hunting in the fall, and sometimes did not dig it up until the following spring. They ground their corn by putting it into the hollow of a log and beating it with a pestle, as the settlers were obliged to do during the winter of the deep snow.
The early settlers were generous and hospitable. The "latch- string was always out." They kept no loeks on their doors, a simple wooden latch was used, but only for the purpose of keep- ing out the wind and storm. They were more sociable than people now, and were always anxious to help their neighbors. There was not so much hunting after money then, for they had little money to hunt after. A word was as good as a bond, and they had no promissory notes, no bills, no banks, no newspapers and very little news. A letter from Tennessee was four or five weeks on the road, and postage was twenty-five cents.
Mr. Hinshaw went to school during the winter of the deep snow and spent his Saturdays in gathering corn and pounding it in a mortar. He thinks children learned more in those early days in a given length of time than they do at present, for then the teacher made them fear the rod.
Mr. Hinshaw has done his share of hunting, especially after wolves, which were a common pest. He has hunted them to- wards a pole put up in some central locality, when all the settlers would turn out from various parts of the country.
Mr. Hinshaw has had his experience, too, with fires on the prairie. He remembers one hard experience when he was going to mill with oxen and was overtaken by a fire. He tried to drive his oxen through it, but they refused to face the flames and turned and ran away in spite of all his efforts. At last he saw a place where a part of the fire had gone faster than the rest, leaving a gap in the road. Into this gap he rushed with his oxen and got through.
The year 1844 was the wet season. During that year he drove a herd of cattle from here to Milwaukee, Wiscon- sin. He swam ereeks and rivers of all kinds and sizes. He was delayed at the Kankakee and was fifteen days in crossing it. He
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frequently drove his cattle in the river, but when they struck the swift current they turned for the shore from which they started, and came back. But at last he found a tall ox, which touched bottom, and went across, and the rest followed. Mr. Hinshaw has had a varied experience with stock. About three years ago he went to Kansas and invested in Texas cattle with rather bad fortune. He had one hundred and thirty head of cattle in the fall, and only fifty-three of them were left in the spring. The remainder died.
Mr. Hinshaw has lived in Bloomington for about ten years, but he has owned a farm ever since he was twenty-five years of age. He now lives at Sulphur Springs, in the outskirts of Bloomington, on the Chicago & Alton Railroad.
Mr. Hinshaw was married July 1, 1848, to Polly Maria Toli- ver, daughter of James Toliver. He has had ten children, of whom four are now living. As to personal appearance he is tall and portly. When he was twenty-seven years of age he had a severe sickness, was ill for a long time with the typhoid fever, and since then he has been very stout in appearance. He has a large head and a large brain; has small sparkling eyes, and a pleasant, genial countenance ; he is full of fun and appreciates a joke. IIe has a firm, resolute character, combined with a mild and pleasant disposition. He is always ready to meet his friends with real English cheer, and indeed he appears a "fine old Eng- lish gentleman, one of the olden time."
His children living are : Ida May, born January 1, 1857.
Ezra, born July 11, 1862. Toby, born April 16, 1865. Rollo, born August 21, 1867. They are all living at home.
DR. WILLIAM LINDLEY.
William Lindley, son of John Lindley, was born November 16, 1803, in Christian County, Kentucky. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed to learn the boot and shoe trade and worked at this until 1827. On the 26th of July, 1822, William Lindley married Unity Warren in Christian County, Kentucky. She was then only fifteen years of age.
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In the fall of 1827 he moved to Sangamon County, Illinois. There he raised one crop. In the fall of 1828 he came to Bloom- ing Grove in what is now McLean County, Illinois. He settled in the southern edge of the grove and commenced farming. The first divine service he attended here was held at the house of John Hendrix at Blooming Grove. The sermon was preached by James Latta. In November, 1828, he cast his first vote for General Jackson. The voting was then done by word of mouth as they had no tickets. He did his trading at that time in Springfield ; but after Bloomington came into being he bought his store goods there. He worked on his farm using the Carey plow with its iron shear and wooden mould-board. On his first arrival at Blooming Grove he worked for good wages, rather better than people could expect. He worked during twenty days receiving ten bushels of corn per day for his labor. He first entered eighty acres of land and gradually acquired more. Dr. Lindley followed farming until 1862. He then resided for a year in Bloomington. He then sold out his farm and bought another near by and has lived on it ever since. Dr. Lindley has always had a liking for horses, has done a great deal of trading and has studied the diseases to which horses are subject. By this means he has become a very skillful veterinary surgeon. HIe has been very fortunate in his treatment of horses and has acquired a considerable reputation.
Dr. Lindley has had eleven children, but only four are liv- ing. They are : John, a physician, who lives at Clinton, Illi- nois; Stewart Lindley, who lives at Blooming Grove; Lucinda, wife of Walter Smith, who lives in Pike County, Illinois, and Robert, who lives at home.
Dr. Lindley is about six feet in height, weighs about two hundred and ten pounds, has good eyesight, never wears glasses, has a rather heavy head of hair, which was rather light colored in his younger days, but now is turning gray. His beard is sandy. He is a well-formed, muscular man. He has succeeded in acquiring some property, but has lost a good deal of it, as people sometimes do.
HON. JAMES ALLIN.
James Allin was born January 13th, 1788, in North Caro- lina. When he was ten years of age his parents moved to
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Boone County, Kentucky. Young James bore all the hardships of travel manfully, riding over the mountains on horseback and sustaining all the perils of the journey. The family, after re- maining one year in Kentucky, moved across the Ohio River into Dearborn County, Indiana. Here young James lived, and in the year 1817 he did as all active, vigorous young men should do, got married to a kind and affectionate woman. Her name was Catherine Livingston. He has been blessed with seven children, three of whom are now living. Two years after this important event he moved to Edwardsville, Madison County, Illinois, where he remained until 1821, when he removed to Vandalia, which was then the capital of the State. In No- vember, 1829, he came to the present site of Bloomington, and moved his family there in the following spring. Mr. Allin's removal to Bloomington was not the result of accident but of calculation. He saw that a line drawn from the rapids of the Illinois River to Cairo would pass through Blooming Grove. It was also on a direct line from Chicago to Alton and St. Louis. He admired the country for its natural beauty and fertility, and it seemed to him that as the country grew in population and wealth a town situated in Blooming Grove would not fail to have before it a brilliant future. In March, 1830, Mr. Allin built the first house in Bloomington. It was a double log house, one part being used as a dwelling and the other part for a store. In the session of the Legislature of 1830 and '31 Mr. Allin suc- ceeded in getting a bill passed laying off the county of MeLean. When the commissioners came to lay off the new county, Mr. Allin offered twenty-two and a half acres of land for a county seat. The offer was accepted and the county seat was named by him Bloomington. The twenty-two and a half acres given by Mr. Allin are bounded by Front and North and East and West streets. The first court held in Bloomington was at Mr. Allin's dwelling, the log house which stood in the edge of the timber, nearly opposite the present location of the First Presbyterian church.
Mr. Allin was a man of business. He brought to Blooming- ton the first lot of goods and drove his business as a merchant, with great energy. His public spirit and his energy made him very popular, and in 1836 he was elected to the State Senate.
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This election was afterwards repeated, confirming Mr. Allin's influence and popular strength. He died on the fifth of May, 1869.
James Allin was a man of medium stature; in build he was slim ; his hair was light brown; his eyes were gray and pene- trating in expression, but his eyesight was not good during the latter portion of his life, and he was obliged to wear spectacles. His complexion was healthy, but this was a deceptive appear- ance, as he was during his whole life a feeble man, and his health was delicate. He had extraordinary business capacity, and the energy and determination with which he followed out his plans were wonderful. The man's strength of will was once shown when his son William Allin was sick and not expected to live. Mr. Allin said to him : "William, I would not die if I were you, I would not give way." His publie spirit, his qual- ities of heart as well as of head, will make him remembered as long as the city of Bloomington, which he founded, shall stand.
The following is taken from the Bloomington Pantagraph of an early date, and relates to an old settlers' dinner where James Allin was present :
" Mr. Allin's health is poor, and he has never recovered from a fall on the ice which severely injured him about three years ago. He walks on crutches, and was assisted up stairs by two men. He was complimented by the speakers as the man whose superior foresight pointed out Bloomington as the site of a fu- ture city, when all around was an uncultivated wilderness. Ac- cording to what Governor Moore and Colonel Gridley said, Mr. Allin, in his younger days, was very much such a man as we oc- casionally hear of now in frontier places.
" He used every honorable endeavor to induce emigrants to locate in this county. If they wished to settle in the new town, Mr. Allin would sell them lots at a low price, if they had money, and would sell them at a lower figure if they had little money, or would give lots outright if they had no money, always stipu- lating that improvements should be made. It was such unre- mitting care and exertions, which, in the course of a few years, gave this settlement a start that made it out of the question for any neighboring town to compete with it, and made it eventu- ally a point to be aimed at by railroads, which have now made
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Bloomington one of the thriftiest and best business places in the State.
" It must have been a proud day to Mr. Allin to meet so many old friends and neighbors, not one of whom bears the slightest grudge against him, and to listen to such eloquent and appreciative tributes to his life-long public spirit. With all his opportunities for building up a large fortune, Mr. Allin's valua- ble lands slipped from his hold in one way and another, to par- ties who could not or would not pay much for their lots, and to parties who afterwards speculated upon the rise of town lots, until when property came to be really valuable he had little left to sell. HIe, however, acquired a comfortable competency, so that his old age is pleasantly passing in the midst of a commu- nity he took such pride in drawing together. A more grasping man would have so hesitated to sell property that settlers would have been driven away, and a less honorable man, if he had made more money, would have had fewer friends in his old age. Bloomington owes a debt to Mr. Allin which it can never re- pay."
WILLIAM H. ALLIN.
William H. Allin was born in 1818, in Indiana. When he was quite small his father removed to Vandalia, Illinois, where he remained until the spring of 1829, when he came to Bloom- ington, Illinois. Mr. Allin was a great favorite with all with whom he was acquainted. He was remarkable for his business talent, and he was pre-eminently remarkable for his honesty.
One of his friends has happily described him thus :
" Possessing naturally a strong and vigorous intellect, with good discriminating powers both as to men and measures, and with a large development of the moral faculties, he seems to have entered upon the active duties of life with the fixed purpose of hewing his way successfully through by an adher- ence to that great cardinal virtue, honesty, which is the only sure basis of ultimate success, and which was undoubtedly the leading trait of his character."
Mr. Allin was remarkable not only for his honesty but for his energy. When he was only ten years of age his father sent him on horseback to Springfield to enter some land. At that
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time the roads were scarce and the bridges were scarcer, and young William was sent across the prairie. It was necessary to do this, as his father had heard that a neighbor of his was try- ing to get the start of him, and enter the same land. Young William made the journey successfully, and entered the land. Just as he was coming out of the land office the rival neighbor met him and asked " how he got there ?" Young William re- plied that he came across the prairie. The gentleman did not feel pleasant at being outwitted by a child ten years of age.
In the year 1850, the Whigs of McLean County nominated Mr. Allin for the office of Circuit Clerk. At their earnest so- licitations he accepted the nomination, as it was impossible for them to agree on any other man, and he was elected. But after one year's service he resigned in favor of his brother, who was deputy.
In the winter of 1838 Mr. Allin married Miss Judith A. Major, and his married life was remarkably happy. He was a kind and faithful husband and a loving father.
Mr. Allin was a man of medium size, slenderly built, healthy complexion, rather light hair, sharp-pointed nose, and dark, pen- etrating eyes. He was very polite in his manners, and a favor- ite with all with whom he had anything to do.
JONATHAN MAXSON.
Jonathan Maxson was born June 11, 1820, on a farm about half a mile from the town of Freeport in Harrison County, Ohio. His ancestors were of Scotch, Irish and French descent. He was one of a family of ten children. His mother, whose maiden name was Sarah Kinsey, was twice married, and he had four brothers, two sisters and four half sisters. Jonathan was in- tended by his father to be a farmer, and while a little lad he learned the duties of that laborious but independent calling. Farmers' boys do not usually pine away for the want of work, and Jonathan could always find plenty to do. His education was not very well attended to, as educational advantages were not to be had where he lived. He went to school only two terms and learned to read and spell. Some time after the death of his father, David Maxson, his mother married a very worthy man named Jesse Hiatt, and moved to Clinton County, Ohio. Short-
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ly after this the family determined to move to Illinois, and in the fall of 1830 started on their journey to Tazewell County, (of which MeLean was then a part), as they had friends and rela- tives there. They went in two wagons, one under charge of Mr. Hiatt and the other driven by Christopher Kinsey, Jona- than's grandfather. They had also five hundred sheep and four milch cows. Their journey of two hundred and fifty miles oc- cupied twenty-one days, because of the difficulty in taking charge of their large flock of sheep. They camped out every night of their journey, except one, and by day they traveled from point to point without any road to guide them. It was necessary every night to guard the sheep from the wolves, but this was easily done as the frightened sheep huddled closely to- gether. The entire expense of the journey was ten dollars spent for food, which was less than a dollar apiece, as the caravan con- sisted of eleven persons. They had a very easy and pleasant journey, with no remarkable adventures. One of the party caught in the White River, with his hands, an eel about four feet long and weighing six pounds. It made a supper for the whole party. Jonathan says this is not a fish story. The party arrived at Stout's Grove on the twenty-first of September, 1830, but after a few days' of rest proceeded to Dillon's Settlement (now in Tazewell County). After spending two or three weeks in taking observations of the country, Mr. Hiatt returned to Stout's Grove and bought a farm of one hundred and sixty acres, (twenty acres under fence) with a log cabin, for four hundred dollars. One half of the farm was prairie and the other half timber. Here the family succeeded very well. Mr. Hiatt followed his trade as a blacksmith, and the boys attended to the farm, and they all did well. Jonathan went to school sometimes during winters, for five years. ITis teacher was Hosea Stout, the nephew of Ephraim Stout, the founder of the settlement at the grove which bears his name. The school was attended by thirty or forty children, who came great distances and boarded with the farmers near by. He also went to school to Richard Rowell, a most excellent teacher from New England.
Jonathan remembers some strange peculiarities concerning Ephraim Stout, the most eccentric man in that part of the coun- try. Ephraim Stout was a great hunter, greater than Nimrod,
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or Esau, or Daniel Boone, indeed the latter had been a com- panion to Ephraim, and many were the stories told by him of their adventures together. When Ephraim was a young man he became married, of course, but no sooner had he done so than he regretted it bitterly. He loved his wife with all the love of a young husband, but he happened to meet with Lewis and Clark, government agents, who were going to explore Oregon Territory, and his marriage prevented him from going with them. Then there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, and he declared he would give five hundred dollars to be unmarried ! (Some persons would give more than that). Mr. Maxson tells a curious story of the old hunter, showing his ingenuity. The hunter, with a party of men, went out searching for bee trees, and they had such luck that they filled their pots and pails and kettles with honey, and there were not enough to hold it all; and it seemed that they must leave a large part of it to be spoiled. But Ephraim's ingenuity never failed him ; he cut down a butternut tree, cut off a section in the shape of a cylinder, split it through the middle, made a trough of each half, hooped them together and had a water-tight barrel which he filled with honey. All this was done with an axe and a jack-knife. That was ingenuity.
Ephraim Stout was a Quaker, and when he settled in Stout's Grove he thought he would make of it a Quaker settlement. He collected Quakers from far and near and everything seemed "merry as a marriage bell"; but in an evil hour he allowed Squire Robb, who was a Cumberland Presbyterian, to come in to the settlement. Now Squire Robb had married a daughter of a gentleman named McClure, and when the former settled in Stout's Grove the McClure family insisted on settling there too, and they were followed by some one else, and these by still others until that Quaker settlement was swallowed up, and the sonl of poor old Ephraim Stout was racked within him. He was accustomed to live in the wild woods, and did not like to see so many people around him. When he was married he had prom- ised his wife that he would always live in the forest where she could pick her own fire-wood, and when so many people came there and broke up his Quaker settlement, he picked up his gun and all his hunter's accoutrements and started for Iowa Territory and then for Oregon. In 1830 he was an old man, leaning on
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his staff for support, and when he told the stories of his adven- tures with Indians and with all the wild animals of the forest, it certainly seemed that it was time for him to rest from his la- bors and live the remainder of his life in peace ; but there was no peace for him within the bounds of civilization, so he gath- ered together his worldly goods and went out to the still farther West.
Jonathan Maxson never saw any candy until he was eighteen years of age. How terrible this must have been for a boy. People spun and wove their own clothing. A calico dress to wear on Sunday was a piece of unwarrantable extravagance. The family was always quite independent of the market. Their tea was made from roots and herbs, their sugar from maple sap, and they kept twenty swarms of bees for honey. Jonathan Maxson states that during the winter of the deep snow (1830) he and his brother went out into the woods where it did not drift nor blow away and took a careful measurement of the depth of the snow with a stick and found it four feet deep. During the early part of that terrible winter deer were very numerous, but when the deep snow came they were starved and hunted by famished wolves and by settlers with snow-shoes, until they were almost exterminated. Shortly after the snow fell Mr. Jesse Hiatt killed a very large deer, which he was unable to carry home. He buried it in the snow and covered it with his coat to keep the wolves away. But the snow afterwards fell so deep that he was unable to visit the spot for two weeks. At last he put a harness on one of his horses and went to drag it home. On his return with the deer he killed three others and attached them also to his horse. But the load was so hard to drag that he did not return until late at night, when he found the fright- ened neighbors collected at his house, about to start on a search for him. They had collected on horseback with trumpets and horns and various things with which to make unearthly noises, and were no doubt disappointed to find that there was no occa- sion for their fearful shrieks. The remainder of the night was spent in dressing the deer.
Some of their neighbors caught deer alive by putting on snow-shoes and running them down, but towards the latter part of the winter they were so poor and emaciated that they were hardly worth catching.
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Jonathan's stepfather, Jesse Hiatt, kept for a long time a gun which went through the Black Hawk war. The circumstances were these. At the outbreak of the Black Hawk war a man named William Ament resided near what is now the village of Bureau in La Salle County. He was informed by a friendly Indian that some Indians had determined to kill him and his family and burn his house. He at once took his family and what furniture and provision he could carry, to the house of his father-in-law, Jonathan Hodge, who lived in Stout's Grove. After staying there a fortnight Mr. Ament decided to go back and look at his property. His father-in-law went with him, and on the road they took with them about a dozen men. On ar- riving at the house they found everything untouched. They all had a good supper and discussed what seemed to them to be the hoax played by the friendly Indian. The next morning the first man who stepped out of doors was shot. The party grasped their guns, and after reconnoitering found that some Indians, who had been concealed among some hazel bushes, had retreated leaving some blankets and two guns in their haste. The party returned, and when the news reached Stout's Grove a company of volunteers was formed under Captain McClure. The latter borrowed Mr. Jesse Hiatt's gun and carried it through the Black Hawk war, and when that exciting and troublesome campaign was finished, returned the gun to its owner.
When Jonathan Maxson was eighteen years of age his step- father died and upon the former devolved the duty of overseeing the farm. For five years he was the head of the family, but at the end of that time the responsibilities of the farm fell upon the younger brothers, and Jonathan was married and had re- sponsibilities of his own. He married Amanda Curtis, the daughter of Squire Eber Curtis, on the sixteenth of April, 1843. He moved to Bloomington on the first of January, 1844, where he lived on a farm.
Jonathan has been a foreman in a reaper factory for five years; he has been a carpenter, builder, millwright and now has the position of engineer and janitor in the Court House. He has had a family of eight children, two of whom are dead.
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