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 44
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During the February following, Mr. Wall went to Danville on horseback to enter some land. He crossed the Sangamon on the ice, but on his return a thaw set in and he re-crossed in a canoe, above the ford, as it was filled with drifted ice, and the water was running rapidly. He led his horse, a fine eream-colored ani- mal, down the bluff, and it swam across with the canoe, but could not climb the bank. It tried to swim down to the ford, and when it turned to come back, all except its head was carried by the current under the ice; but it swam back by great exertions and succeeded in climbing the bank. When the horse escaped from the danger it seemed much gratified, and "held up its tail, as if it were glad to be alive." Mr. Wall kept this horse for twenty- two years.
Mr. Wall has been troubled for the last twenty years with a cancer in his eye, and has tried many remedies for it. It has been, indeed, a great affliction, but the resolution of the old pio- neer has been sufficient even for this. He has tried many differ- ent physicians with different success, but still the disease remains.
Mr. Wall is rather a tall, noble-looking man. His words and
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the tone of his voice show his conscientiousness and his tender feeling. His appearance impresses one with his dignity and his kindness. He feels it to be his duty to make his life as well as his words a reproof to every form of wickedness. He is respected and loved by the people for many miles around, and is affection- ately called " Uncle Elias Wall."
JOHN PRICE.
John Price was born January 23, 1802, in Mecklenburg Coun- ty, North Carolina. His father was an American, and his mother was born in Ireland. In 1804 his father's family moved to Mont- gomery County, Kentucky. In 1857 they moved to Warren County, same State, then to Williamson County, Tennessee, where they stayed a little more than three years, and then moved back to Warren County. John Price received very little education. He was obliged to go a long distance for what he obtained. He trudged three miles every day to school while in Tennessee. The war of 1812 occurred while he was in Tennessee. During this uncertain and exciting contest the neighborhood where he lived was once badly scared by a report that Indians were coming. and the militia turned out, and everyone commeneed running bullets ; but the alarm was false.
In September, 1821, when Mr. Price was only nineteen years of age, he married Matilda B. Rives. She was related to the his- torical Rives family of Virginia. But she had something better than honored lineage; she was a smart woman and possessed of good judgment, and now, after more than half a century of wed- ded life, she is as smart as ever, and better than a fortune to Mr. Price.
As soon as he was married, Mr. Price went to work to sup- port his wife. He sawed lumber with a whip-saw, and after that worked at building flatboats. As the vards where he was em- ployed were some distance from his home, in the winter time he started to work on Monday morning and did not return home until Saturday night. Sometimes he would return every night, and when he did so he was obliged to go two and a half or three miles to work and be there by sunrise and return home after sunset. He worked at sawing lumber and building flat-boats for seven years. As a matter of course he succeeded, for a man of such energy
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must be sure of that in the end. In 1830 he came to Illinois on a visit, traveling in a covered wagon and camping ont. He was then offered a claim of one hundred and sixty acres of land and a log cabin, near Bloomington, by Rev. Mr. Latta, for forty dol- lars, but refused it and entered land near where he now lives. In 1831 he again came west with his wife for a visit. He started from Bloomington to return. At that time he had heard nothing of the Black Hawk war ; but when he arrived at Springfield men were volunteering to go. News travels slowly in an early settled country. In 1834 he came still again, entered land near where he now lives, remained fifteen months and then went to Ken- tucky for his father. He returned in the fall of 1836 to the place where he now lives, near the little station of Downs, on the In- dianapolis, Bloomington & Western Railway. A part of his land is timber and part in prairie. The settlers were always anxious to get land adjoining timber, and now they are almost always to be found settled near the edges of groves. They had no idea that the prairie would be valuable except that part near the tin- ber : but Mr. Price says that by the year 1836 he began to see that the prairie might be worth something after all. His first land was entered at Vandalia and the remainder at Danville. He has owned altogether six hundred and eighty aeres, and never paid more than $1.25 per acre for any of it.
When he came to the west he sent to Kentucky for apple seed and cultivated a nursery and an orchard, and supplied all his neighbors with trees.
Of course Mr. Price remembers the cold snap in 1836, as all settlers do. He was working a few rods from his house without his coat. The day was warm and the shish was three or four inches deep. In the afternoon a roar in the west gave notice of the approaching wind. It immediately became so cold that by the time he reached the house the frozen slush would nearly bear his weight. He let down his fence to allow his cattle the shelter of some stacked fodder, and they were thereby protected from the storm and were saved, but many of his pigs froze to death.
The settlers were obliged to go long distances to do their trading. Mr. Price has hauled wheat to Chicago with an ox team, and received fifty-five cents per bushel.
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All old settlers have had great difficulty with prairie fires. The grass on the prairie grew enormously high. It was quite often so high that a man on horseback was obliged to hold up his head to see over. In the fall of the year, when this grass became dry, any accident might set it on fire, and then it was a terrible sight indeed. The flames rolled along and gather force as eur- rents of air were drawn in after them. It was impossible to es- cape by running before the fire ; the swiftest horse would be over- taken by it. In 1836, before Mr. Price came west for the last time, he wrote to have some hay cut and put up. Twenty-four acres were ent and stacked, and when Mr. Price came out he was gratified to find his wishes attended to and his stock provided with food for winter. But soon a fire came rolling over the prairie, and Mr. Price went to save his stacks. They had been placed on mowed ground ; nevertheless a little low grass had grown up and, being touched with frost, lay withered and dry. He tried to make a back fire, feeling confident he could whip it out in the low grass around his stacks, but it burned fiercely and he went at it with a brush. This only scattered it the more and his stacks went up in smoke. At one time he had a fire on his farm when he was sick with the agne and his boys were gone from home. His next neighbor tore down a quarter of a mile of division fence to save the rails, but one third of them were burn- ed up, nevertheless. The neighbors came from miles around and put up his fence, for people then were always anxious to help one another. The prairie fires drove everything before them, the deer, wolves, rabbits, horses and cattle. The way to contend against fire is to make a back fire, but great care must be taken lest the back fire does not become as dangerous as the one to be headed off. A little water sprinkled on the grass in a line is sufficient to hold a back fire from doing damage, but after it once gets under headway nothing can check it.
Mr. Price was a great hunter and a fine marksman ; he was to a great extent the leader among the hunters in that locality. During the first four years of his western life he killed twenty- five deer per annum on an average. They were then very nu- merous ; he has seen more than two hundred deer in one day, has counted thirty go out of the timber to the prairie in one flock. A good deer was then worth a dollar. He once killed a very fine oue,
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which, when dressed, weighed one hundred and ninety-tive pounds. and was enabled to sell the hams for a dollar or a dollar and a half. He has had many amusing episodes during his life as a hun- ter. Hle sometimes hunted with a man named Twining, who was very excitable, and missed his mark by over-anxiety. At one time when Twining had, as usual, succeeded in missing his deer, Mr. Price asked him : " Did you kill the deer, Mr. Twin- ing?" " No, I-I elevated too high."
Deer are easily tamed if caught young. When a fawn is caught and handled once it is tamed, and it sometimes displays the most astonishing intelligence ; indeed the deer may be considered the most intelligent of American wild animals, with possibly the sin- gle exception of the beaver. The deer shows the most wonder- ful cunning in its attempts to escape pursuit, and will wade up a stream to throw a dog from the seent. It will walk a long dis- tance and then take a tremendous spring to one side to make the pursuer lose the track and take time to hunt for it. Mr. Price had at one time a tame deer, and a Pennsylvanian, who was tray- eling in his covered wagon, came along with a dog of which he had a very high opinion, and thought it could catch the deer. Mr. Price allowed the man to try it. The dog sprang for the deer and they had a lively race and soon disappeared. " Now," said the Pennsylvanian, " my dog has caught it." In an hour the deer came walking cautiously back and went into one door of the house and out of the other into the brush where it laid down. It seemed to know that the dog would not dare to follow its track through the house. The dog was lost and was not found until nightfall.
In early days the wolves were plenty; Mr. Price has stood in his door and counted five or six of them playing around in the field. He succeeded in killing the largest wolf known in that part of the country. It was of the large gray variety, and not one of the little prairie wolves. It was often chased by the hun- ters. but was strong and swift, and would run away from them or elude pursuit. It was so large and powerful that it would carry off grown up hogs from the pen. and it was so audacious that it became a terror to the neighborhood. It began prowling around the house of Mr. Cowden and eating a sheep which had died near by, and he sent for Mr. Price, who came one evening
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to kill it. The night was clear and cold, and he went out occa- sionally to listen, and could hear it howl some distance away. At last he almost gave the matter up, when he discovered the shadow of the wolf on the snow as it was trotting down by the fence close to the house. He went into the house and returned with his gun, and the noise and disturbance caused the wolf to stop, when Mr. Price fired at it about eighty yards distant. The wolf could only move twenty or thirty steps, but when surrounded by men and dogs, nothing could take hold of it. It shut its powerful jaws on everything within reach, and the strongest dog in the neighborhood was obliged to stand back. Another shot killed it. It was so large that, when standing up, a common sized dog could walk under it without touching. For this wolf nearly all the farmers for miles around offered premiums of corn. Jesse Funk offered fifty bushels, and all of the premiums amounted to more than a thousand bushels. Zachariah Blue offered a fine horse for the privilege of collecting the corn, but Mr. Price wonkdt accept nothing. He said that the fun of killing the wolf was a sufficient reward.
It was the custom of the settlers to take a general hunt towards a pole put up in some central place. Mr. Price took part in a general hunt when the pole was put up near Long Point, and the settlers started ont from Buckles' Grove, Randolph's Grove, Long Point and Old Town.
Mr. Price has held some township offices, but beyond this has never troubled himself much with political matters. He was the fourth justice of the peace of Priceville Precinct, and continued to hold that office for twelve years, until the organization of the township of Downs, He was treasurer of the township and of the Kickapoo Union District when it was formed, holding his office for sixteen years in all.
On the thirteenth of September, 1871, Mr. and Mrs. Price celebrated their golden wedding. About one hundred persons were present at dinner, and four of them were guests at the original wedding half a century before. Speeches were made by E. II. Wall. Thomas Twining. Joseph Weaver, Dr. Montgomery and Mrs. Lewis Case. Mr. Wall told the exploits of old settlers, and Mr. Twining enlarged upon the events of the early days. But Dr. Montgomery made the most sensible and truthful speech
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of the occasion. He said that the other speakers had decidedly neglected Mrs. Price in making their remarks, and that he could safely say she made the best coffee of any woman in MeLean County. He also complimented Mr. Price, and said the best job ever done by the latter was when he, as justice of the peace, mar- ried him (Dr. Montgomery). This was a slight mistake. The best job ever done by Mr. Price was, when more than fifty years ago, he married Mrs. Price. Various golden presents were made by many persons. Gold-headed ebony canes, gold spectacles, gold rings, gold coins, ete. One cane bore the inscription : " To John Price by B. R. Price, Sept. 13, 1871," and another, " To Matilda B. Price by P. B. Price, Sept. 13, 1871." When these presents were made, Mr. Price turned to his children and said : " My dear children, you have been very kind to me, and now I make you a present," and he gave each of them a twenty dollar gold coin-a rare thing just now.
Mr. Price has had a family of eight children, four of whom are now living, two sons and two daughters. They are: Mr. P. B. Price, who lives in Downs township: Mr. B. R. Price, who lives in Old Town; Mrs. Polly G. Cowden, who lives at Gillem Station, and Mrs. Naney Weaver, who lives in Miami County, Kansas. Those children which are dead are James William, Sarah Frances, Matilda B. and John Rives Price.
Mr. Price is tall, straight, and somewhat slim. His counte- nance expresses decision of character, good judgment and good feeling. Self command is shown in every movement: he is a man of fine feeling, and a gentleman in the noblest sense of the word. His neighbors think everything of him, and he is, indeed, a splendid American citizens. Mr. and Mrs. Price are both in good health, and a happier, pleasanter or more sociable husband and wife never lived. Time has dealt with them tenderly, and it will be many years before they will be called to pass over the river. They are very religious.
Mr. Price's house was built large and roomy below for the purpose of being used as a church, and divine service was held in it more or less regularly for eight or nine years.
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REV. SYLVESTER PEASLEY.
Sylvester Peasley was born in Grayson County, Virginia, Au- gust, 31, 1823. His father's name was Isaac Peasley, and his mother's name, before her marriage, was Rachel Holsey. His father was of Scotch descent. His great grandfather came from l'aisley, in Scotland, and this was the family name, but the spell- ing was changed to Peasley. This great grandfather Paisley was a general in the Revolutionary war, and served with distinction in the Continental army. Sylvester Peasley's grandfather, John Peasley, was also a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and fought in seven general engagements. IIe was at the battle of Guilford Court House, and his home was near the battle-ground. When the battle opened, Mrs. Peasley, Sylvester's grandmother, was told by some British officers to go into her house and wrap some beds around her to protect her from being shot. They milked her cows, but honestly paid for the milk. Those who know any- thing of army life will consider the latter a very extraordinary circumstance.
In the fall of 1834, Mr. Isaac Peasley's family came to MeLean County, Illinois, and arrived November 3. On their journey they saw in Kentucky many drovers taking large droves of swine to the south. He saw thousands of turkeys driven on foot to Louis- ville, where they were shipped on steamboats down the river. When the family arrived in MeLean County, they had a hard time to find a house to live in through the winter, but finally ob- tained a cabin of Jesse Funk. It was built of logs, with a chim- ney of sticks on the outside. This chimney was built of sticks with elay between them, and was plastered on the inside with soft clay. The fire-place was built of clay pressed against a rack of puncheons; the hearth was of pounded elay, and the mantle- piece was made of clay and sticks. They used a goods-box for a table and goods-boxes or three-legged stools for chairs. The doors were made of clapboards split and shaved with a drawing- knife. The floors were made of puncheons, which had been first split and then hewed with a broad-axe. The cradle was made of shaved elapboards ; but sometimes the baby was rocked in the sugar trough, which was hewed out of a trunk of a tree. The pioneer bedstead has been so often described that anything further is superfluous here.
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The Peasley family lived for two years as renters in Jesse Funk's cabin, and then built one of their own.
Mr. Peasley obtained a prairie team of four yoke of oxen which drew a plow with a shear of cold-hammered iron, which cut a furrow two feet wide. The wooden mould-board was from four to six feet long. This laid down the sod much better than any modern plow. Mr. Peasley could plow twenty acres before going to the shop to sharpen the shear. The routine of the day was to rise at daybreak and hunt the oxen which had been turned out the night previous to graze. This was the greatest hardship, as the dew was on the high grass, and whoever walked through it be- came soaking wet to the waist. After breakfast, began the work of ploughing. At noon the oxen were allowed to graze for two hours, and at night they were turned loose until morning. The snakes were sometimes very thick, and they continually retreated from the furrow as the sod was turned over, and collected together in the unplowed center. When the latter part of the patch was plowed the snakes became so thick that the grass would fairly wriggle with them. The rattlesnakes were very thick. Mr. Peasley has killed fifteen in one day. The oxen were sometimes bitten by rattlesnakes, and were made lame for sometime. Mr. Peasley never knew an ox to die of snakebite. The oxen dreaded the rattlesnakes, and when the rattle sounded the oxen sprang up faster than they ever would because of the whip. The danger of the rattlesnake's bite depends much on the season of the year. They are most dangerous in August, for then the poison is most virulent. Mr. Peasley's brother was bitten by rattlesnakes three times in one season, and still feels the effect in August.
Mr. Peasley lived with his father in a log cabin on the prairie during the winter of 1836 and '37. He speaks of the sudden change of the weather in December of that winter, so often de- scribed in this volume, and says that the sun rose on the follow- ing morning accompanied by two sundogs, which glistened on the ice-bound prairie. and the country was like some picture of the polar regions. The longest winter known among the early settlers was the one of 1842 and '43. Winter weather com- menced on the tenth of November, and did not break up until between the tenth and twentieth of April. No ploughing could be done in April. Nevertheless, the settlers raised fine crops of wheat sowed in May, and good erops of corn planted in June.
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Sylvester Peasley speaks warmly of the social feeling which existed among the early settlers, and how glad they were to see every new comer. When meeting was held in the neighborhood everyone attended. The Methodists were the first in the field, then the Cumberland Presbyterians, then the Baptists and then the Christians. At a camp-meeting the whole country had a re- union, and families frequently went fifteen miles to meeting with their ox-teams. In warm weather preaching was held in the open air.
Mr. Peasley was a Democrat until the formation of the Re- publican party, when he joined the latter because of his opposi- tion to slavery. The political excitement of that period is well remembered, and when the Republican and Democratic parties first fairly tried their strength in 1856, the excitement was intense. Mr. Peasley remembers a practical joke played upon the sup- porters of Buchanan by the friends of Fremont. The Demo- crats had raised a hickory pole, and on it was a pair of buck's horns ; but some Republicans came and secretly bored the pole at the bottom until it fell, and then stole the buck's horns.
Mr. Peasley was elected one of the first Supervisors under the township organization, which was effected in 1858.
Mr. Peasley has endured the privations to which the carly set- tlers were subjected. He has made the usual trips to Chicago, has been out twenty-six days in succession exposed to the coldest of winter weather, has waded the Kankakee River when his clothes were frozen as soon as he came out, and he has slept on the ground in wet weather by cutting brush and laying it down to protect him from the mud. He has given away the better por- tion of his life to itinerant work when the salary was little or nothing, and has attended to five churches. He never had the advantages of an education, and the information he possesses has been gained in a great measure by study near a fire at night. He is a very humorous man, and loves his joke. His eyes sparkle when he tells some funny anecdote, and he enjoys it over again as well as at first. He is generous, kind and hospitable, and wishes to live in peace with all men. He is very conscientious, but does not wish to be a fanatic in anything. He has been an ardent worker in Sabbath-school enterprises and still takes great interest in the cause. He is six feet and one inch in height;
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his appearance and manner suggest the old settler, and he takes comfort in sitting by the old fashioned fire-place.
Mr. Peasley, November 3, 1842, married Miss Mary Stillman, who died October 2, 1863. He had six children born by this marriage, of whom five are living. He married, April 6, 1864, Mrs. Susan Crosby, and by this marriage had one child which died when very young. Mr. Peasley's children are :
Granville Peasley, born October 14, 1845, lives in Kendall County, Illinois.
Rachel Susan, born October 29, 1848, wife of Eli Barton, lives in Downs township.
Isaac Peasley, born October 24, 1851, and John Peasley, born July 16, 1854, live at home.
Bissell Peasley (named after Governor Bissell) born January 19, 1857, died in infancy.
Esther Corneliette Peasley, born October 13, 1859, lives at home.
Sarah Elvira Peasley, daughter by Mr. Peasley's second mar- riage, was born July 25, 1866, and died November 8, 1869.
ALEXANDER PORTER CRAIG.
Alexander P. Craig was born June 30, 1817, in the territory of Illinois, in what is at present White County. His father was of Scotch descent, and his mother of Irish. They were both born and reared in Abbeyville District, South Carolina. Mrs. Craig died in 1853, and her husband died the following year. The Craig family moved from Illinois to Alabama in about the year 1822. No very important event occurred there. Porter Craig there received his early education, which was somewhat limited. In the fall of 1830 the family went to Graves County, Kentucky, where they remained four years. In the fall of 1834 they came to Illinois and settled in Old Town timber, MeLean County, a ittle south of the present dividing line between Downs and Old Town, near the present residence of A. P. Craig. There they opened a farm. Mr. Craig has done his share of hunting and has chased wolves, deer and turkeys, but had no dangerous adventure. In 1836 the family moved to about three miles north of Leroy, but in the spring of 1840 returned near his present re- sidence. He made his home for three or four years on the
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farm of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Weaver. In 1864 he built a house on land adjoining this place and has lived there ever since.
He has had his experience with fires on the prairie. In the fall of 1834 he and his father fixed a log heap on which was piled some stone to be burnt into lime. Soon a fire came sweeping over the prairie and burnt up the log heap, leaving the lime in good condition. The fires in that section of county nearly always came up from Salt Creek or Randolph Grove.
Mr. Craig is about five feet and ten inches in height and rather slim. His whiskers are gray, and his hair is turning white. His eyes are gray. He is pretty firm and decided in his manner. Hle possesses the confidence of his neighbors and is perfectly straightforward in his dealings.
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