USA > Illinois > Carroll County > The history of Carroll county, Illinois, containing a history of the county-its cities, towns, etc., a biographical directory war record statistics, portraits of early settlers and prominent men history of the Northwest Illinois miscellaneous matters, etc > Part 21
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The Niagara limestone abounds in fossils. The most common and characteristic is the beautiful Pentamerus oblongus, or " petrified hickory nut " of the miners. But the old Niagara seas were particularly the homes of the coral builders, and these minute animals swarmed in countless myri- ads everywhere, leaving their fossil monuments. Among the most charac- teristic are the Favosites favosu, F. Niugerensis, Stromatopora concen- trica, Halysites calenulatus, and many other species and genera, contain- ing, doubtless, new and undescribed corals.
This brings us through the Illinois rocks as developed in this county. Sometimes traces of the Trenton proper are found in the southern part, but they hardly deserve a place in the surface geology of Carroll County. The rocks of all three of these formations possess value as building stone. The Galena ranks first and the Cincinnati group last in economic value.
The Quaternary System .- Alluvium. The Mississippi bottom, from Savanna to the south line of the county. in width averaging nearly five miles, is composed of this recent river deposit. The same deposit also exists north of Savanna on the Mississippi, and along some of the small streams in the interior. Some of it is a rich, deep black and rather wet soil, much of it consists of sandy deposits, while a portion forms our very best agricultural lands. The loess or bluff formation does not exist to a great extent in Carroll County, unless the soil and sub-soil of our productive prairies belongs to this deposit. Some of our bluffs, as, for instance, where Johnson Creek breaks through to the Mississippi bottom, are composed of the loess clays. The drift formation is also manifest in our county, to a considerable extent, although some seem to argue that it is undetected in the Galena lead basin. Deposits of drift in our county can be found resting immediately on the Galena rocks. All our little streams almost have cut down into deposits of boulders and gravel beds.
The following section, made in a well in the town of Mount Carroll, might be taken as a fair type of the superficial deposit resting upon our rocks, beginning at the top and measuring downwards:
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HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.
Black prairie mold .. feet.
Yellow, fine-grained clay
13
Common blue clay_ 2
Reddish clay and gravel 15
Tough blue clay
3
"
Coarse, stratified gravel bed
11
Pure yellow sand bed
5
Black mucky clay
53 feet.
Another well, some three miles distant, passed through a second soil some fifteen feet below the surface, and immediately thereafter a deposit of timber or wood, two or three feet in thickness, many of the pieces having tenacity enough to hold together for months after exposure to the atmos- phere. This well is on the farm of Felix O'Neal, and at the time of its opening was considered an object of mueh interest.
We can not leave this part of our subject without again adverting to the boulders. For us they have a peculiar charm and interest. These " nigger heads," "hard heads," or lost rocks, abound in many places where the streams and rains have carried the soils away. Oftentimes they are asso- ciated with gravel beds of the transported drift. Among them have been found several nuggets of copper, one of which was found lodged in a crev- ice of one of our Galena quarries. Some of these boulders are striated and furrowed by the glacier or the iceberg. Quartz, feldspar, granite, gneiss hornblende, porphyry syenite, and various combinations of these and other minerals make up these travelled rocks. Would that we could have the true history of one of these lost rocks-real old cosmopolitans in a primal world. What a wonderful interest would cling around its wanderings from the time when it left its home among the Plutonic rocks of Lake Superior until some iceberg dropped it into its present bed, through gently-moving cur- rents towards the southwest ! Ocean streams rolled these uncouth stones for ages at the bottom of the " vasty deep." Frozen into glaciers, they have been pushed along their snail-like pace. Adhering to icebergs and ice fields and ice floes, they floated hither and thither through Northern seas, until the ice dissolved in its genial warmth. Could we know their true history, the masquerade of the elements, the lost history of the world, would be made as plain as a well-conned lesson. The associated pieces of water-worn copper are "finger boards," telling from whence they both came, and the direction of the ocean currents which deposited our drift.
HISTORICAL RESUME.
Monday, April 8, 1839, the county seat was established at an election ordered and held for that purpose. At the same election and under the same special law, the people voted for a full board of county officers. At that time polities did not cut much of a figure in the selection of candi- dates, although it is reasonable to suppose that the election was full of interest to the settlers, as from that day they were to be recognized in the management of the affairs of the state as a separate and independent county, and entitled to all the rights and privileges of the other and older counties. For judicial purposes, the county was made to form a part of the sixth district, of which Dan Stone, of Galena, was the presiding judge. Courts were to be held twice a year at such times as the judge should des-
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HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.
ignate, and the early records show that Judge Stone appointed these terms for May and September. The county officers elected were:
County Commissioners, Samples M. Journey, Garner Moffett, and Luther H. Bowen; County Clerk, William B. Goss; Sheriff, Hezekiah Francis; Probate Justice of the Peace, John C. Owings; Coroner, Mason C. Taylor; Recorder, Royal Cooper; Surveyor, Levi Warner.
On the 13th day of April, five days after their election, two of the county commissioners. Samples M. Journey and Luther H. Bowen, met and organized as a county commissioners' court. The first entry made on their journal of proceedings was the oath of office administered to William B. Goss as county clerk, which is in these words, to-wit:
" State of Illinois, Carroll County .- I, the undersigned, being duly elected clerk of the county commissioners' court for said county, do hereby swear that I will support the con- stitution of the United States, and of this state, and that I will fulfil the duties of my office as clerk of said court truly and faithfully to the best of my knowledge and ability ; so help me God.
"Subscribed and sworn before me this 13th day of April, 1839, at Savanna.
BENJ. CHURCH, J.P. [Seal.] "
The next entry was the oath of office administered to each of the two commissioners, and in the same words, except that " county commissioners" is substituted for "county clerk." The oath of office was administered by the same justice, Beniamin Church.
The court then proceeded to business, and
" Ordered, That Elijah Bellows and Alva Daines be appointed assessors for Carroll County, for the year 1839.
" Ordered, That Norman D. French be appointed for collector for the above county, for the year 1839.
" Ordered, That there shall be four days' road work required of each man, if nec- essary."
This was the style of their orders. There was no waste or unnecessary use of words. "Short, quick and sharp" was their method-a rule of action that characterized Luther H. Bowen, the guiding and controling spirit of the board, in all his business transactions, and each order was signed by the commissioners, as they were written by the clerk. At this session the commissioners divided the county into ten road districts and appointed a supervisor for each district, etc. Having thus started the county machinery, the commissioners adjourned until the 3d day of June following.
At this session the first business appearing of record was the appoint- ment of C. Grant and Jno. Ankeny, of Elkhorn Grove, and Herman Downing, of the Preston Settlement, to review the road from "Stoney Creek to the county line in the direction to Buffalo Grove, touching Elkhorn Grove," which appears to be the first road viewed in the county. There is no record of any petition having been presented "praying" for the estab- lishment of this road, and hence there is a probability that the road was petitioned for before Carroll County was set off from Jo Daviess, or that the commissioners ordered it without petition.
Two petitions follow this order-one for a road leading from "Savanna in said county to Knox mill on Elk Horn creek, and also a road diverging from the first named road at or near Johnson Creek to the county line, in a direction to Harrisburgh on Rock River." The viewers appointed for these roads were Vance L. Davidson, A. L. Knox and Thomas Francis.
The second petition "prayed " for the location of a road " from Savanna via Bowen's ferry to the south line of the county in the direction of Fulton
236
HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.
City, and that a road diverge from said road on or about two miles from Savanna and intersect the road leading from the Savanna Mill to Prophets- town, near the farm now occupied by Elijah Stearns." The viewers appointed for this road were Elijah Stearns, Asa Patrick and Andrew Dodds.
At this session of the Board of County Commissioners the regulation and formation of election precincts claimed attention, and it was "ordered that the Cherry Grove Precinct include all of Cherry Grove, the inhabitants within the limits of range 5, 6 and 7 in township 25, and that Garner Mof- fitt, G. W. Harris and John C. Owings be appointed judges of elections and the elections be held at the house of John C. Owings.
" Ordered. That the inhabitants within the limits of townships twenty-three and twenty- four, east of the center of range four and west of Little Rock River or creek, be recognized as the Preston Precinct, and that Samuel Preston, Heman Downing and Daniel Cristian be the judges of elections, and that the elections be held at the house of Samuel Preston."
Ordered, That the inhabitants of all that part of Carroll County laying west of the middle of range 4, in townships 23 and 24, and all west of range 5 in township 25, be in- cluded in the Savanna Precinct, and that N. D. French, Vance L. Davidson, and John A. Wakefield be appointed judges of elections, the election to be held at Wm. L. B. Jinks' tav- ern, in Savanna.
The following named settlers were selected as grand and petit jurors for the first term of the Circuit Court, which was expected to convene in Sep- tember of that year:
Grand Jurors .- John Knox, A. Painter, Hiram MeNemur, Daniel Stormer, Thos. I. Shaw, E. W. Todd, Francis Garner, John C. Owings, Geo. Swagert, Nathan Fisk, Samnel Preston, Sr., David Masters, B. Tomlinson, Aaron Pierce. Thos. Roof, John Eddowes, John Barnard, John Laswill, Stephen N. Arnold, Elijah Stearns, Wm. Dyson, Jr., Wmn. Dyson, Sr., and Daniel Cristian-23.
Petit Jurors .- Wm. Ayers, Aaron Bobble, Wm. Jenkins, Israel Jones, John Ister, Sumner Downing, Nelson Swaggert, Irwin Kellogg, Vance L. Davidson, Alonzo Shannan, John Orr, David Ashby, Geo. W. Brice, Wm. Eaton, Levi Newman, John Johnson, Jonathan Cummings, Geo. Christian, P. D. Otis, Elias P. Williams, Royal Cooper, David L. Bowen, Wm. Blundle and John W. Fuller-24.
The term of court for which these jurors were selected was not held, and consequently the prescribed oath was not administered to them. A second selection was equally useless because of informality in the manner of selection, and when the court met, on the first Monday in June, 1840, they were dismissed by Judge Stone, in the words following, as entered of record :
It being made manifest to the court that no legal summons had been issued by the clerk of the County Commissioners' Court to the Sheriff of the County of Carroll, command- ing him to summon the persons selected by said Commissioners' Court, at their April term, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty, as grand and petit jurors, to appear before said Circuit Court on the first day of said term; and, it further appearing that the Sheriff of said county had summoned, without any legal venise or summons, twenty-three persons as grand jurors, and twenty-four persons as petit jurors, to appear on the first day of said term, which said persons were in attendance as grand and petit jurors, not having been summoned according to law, it is ordered that they be discharged from further attendance on said court.
The County Commissioners, at this term of court, also
Ordered, That the sum of seven dollars be granted to Alva Daines for three and one half days' services as assessor, and the sum of seventeen dollars be granted to Elijah Bel- lows for eight and one half days' services as assessor. And that the above be paid out of any moneys in the treasury not otherwise appropriated.
Runeun Macron, SALEM
239
HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.
It was further
Ordered, That Messrs. Smith and Journey should have a license for the term of one year from this date to keep a grocery in Savanna, by paying twenty-five dollars into the county treasury and giving bonds according to law.
This last order concluded the second session of the Commissioners' Court, when they adjourned. Ad interim, County Clerk Goss made the following entry:
In pursuance of the law in regard to the County Commissioners drawing tickets for their term of service, the tickets were presented by the clerk of the said court at their June term, 1839, and Luther H. Bowen drew the ticket which had the word one year written upon it, and S. M. Journey drew the ticket which had the word three years written upon it, and the remaining ticket which had the word two years written upon it was left for Garner Moffit who was absent at the time.
WM. B. Goss, Clerk.
A special term of the court was held on the sixth day of July, when the following claims were audited and ordered to be paid out of the County Treasury :
To Benjamin Church, J.P., for swearing in Clerk and County Commissioners, 75 cents; to Vance L. Davidson, $3.75, for three days' services as road viewer ; to Thomas Fran- cis, $3.75, and to A. L. Knox, $3.75, for same services. Six dollars were allowed to John Eaton and son for three days' services as chainmen in opening a road, etc. Nine dollars were ordered to be paid to L. H. Bowen, for three days' services of himself and team, in assisting to open a road. Eight dollars and seventy-five cents were allowed to Levi Warner for three and a half days' services as road surveyor, and $8 were allowed to W. B. Goss for books and stationery furnished the county up to date.
The next session of the court was held in September. An election had been held on Monday, the 5th day of August, and Wm. B. Goss had been re-elected to the office of County Clerk, and had filed his bond in the penal sum of one thousand dollars, with Vance L. Davidson as his bondsman, for the faithful discharge of the duties of the office. John Eddowes had been chosen at the same election as County Commissioner, to succeed Luther H. Bowen (who, at the first term of the court, in April, had drawn the short- term ticket), and had qualified accordingly.
For a number of years the settlers whose names figure so conspicu- ously in the early affairs of the county continued to be prominent charac -.. ters in the public interests. Some of them were repeatedly elected to places of trust, and made faithful, honest servants of the people.
The first county order issued was in favor of James Craig (a captain in the Black Hawk War), for $10.50, in payment for a copy of the law under which the county was organized. Craig was a member of the House of Representatives, from Jo Daviess County, and had introduced the bill and secured its passage.
The first term of the Circuit Court commeneed on the first Monday in May, 1840. The building used as a court house was a frame structure situated on block forty at the upper end of town. It was owned by a rail- road or steamboat engineer, and was untenanted. Besides serving as a court house, it was used as a school house, church, and such other meet- ings as the times and occasions demanded.
When court was called, Leonard Goss presented his appointment from Judge Stone as clerk, together with his official bond in the sum of $2,000 for a faithful discharge of the duties of the office. John Bernard and Aaron Pierce were his bondsmen. After subscribing to the oath of office, he entered upon the discharge of its duties.
Hezekiah Francis filed his commission from Governor Carlin, as sheriff, and also his official bond in the sum of $10,000, with John Bernard, William
14
240
HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.
R. Craig, Aaron Pierce, D. H. Whitney, John Laswell and V. L. Davidson as bondsmen. His bond was approved, the oath of office administered, and he entered upon the discharge of the duties of sheriff.
Mason C. Taylor, coroner elect, also presented his official bond in the sum of $2,000, and took the oath of office. His bondsmen were Milus C. Robinson and John Bernard.
After the dismissal of the grand and petit juries as already stated, the approval of the several bonds, and administering the oath of office to the clerk, sheriff' and coroner, as above noted, the business of the court com- menced.
The old docket shows that twelve cases had been entered for trial. Martin P. Sweet, Judge Drummond (now U. S. Circuit Judge), a Mr. Chase and a Mr. Hoge, were present as attorneys. Judge Drummond had two divorce cases-the first of the kind in the county. They were entitled Jeremiah Humphrey es. Hannah Humphrey, and Dudley C. Humphrey es. Lavina Humphrey. Of the other ten cases, two were slander suits, brought by the same man-Robert Ashby vs. Peter Bashaw and Oliver Bashaw. Both cases were dismissed from the docket without trial.
Among the lawyers who attended the early courts of Carroll County, quite a number attained prominent distinction in the judicial and other departments of public affairs. Among these, in addition to those already mentioned, were E. B. Washburne and Judge Heaton. The name of Wash- burne is as familiar as household words, not only here where he first came into notice as a young lawyer, but from one end of our common country to the other.
For jury rooms in those days, some of the rooms in Pierce's Hotel were brought into requisition, for which the county commissioners usually made an appropriation of fifteen dollars for putting the rooms in order for each term of the court.
Judge Dan Stone was succeeded by Judge Browne, also of Galena, since when the succession has been Wilkinson, Drury, Eustace and Heaton.
The third selection (and the first to serve) for grand and petit juries was as follows:
Grand Jurors .- Alvah Dains, Henry Hunter, John Ankeny, Harry Smith, Tilson Aldrich, Israel Jones, Francis Garner, Joseph Taylor, Edward C. Cochran, John Knox, Samuel Preston, Sr., Joshua Bailey, Col. Beers Tomlinson, Amos Leonard, Elijah Stearns, William Dyson, Sr., James M. French, Royal Jacobs, Vance L. Davidson, Milus C. Robinson, James Kim- ball-21.
Petit Jurors .- Joshua McKillops, Stephen N. Arnold, David L. Bowen, W. L. B. Jenks, M. W. Hollingsworth, Jonathan Cummings, Samuel L. Bayless, John B. Christian, Rezin Everts, Squire Garner, Alfred Newman, Henry Jenkins, John Fuller, Richard Wright, William Blundell, M. B. Pierce, David Ashby, Benjamin Church, David Masters, Garner Moffett, Samuel Toutz, Joseph Hire, Daniel Stormer-23.
Early Resident Attorneys .- " When the first term of the Circuit Court was held," says VOLNEY ARMOUR, Esq., in 'A Glance at the Early History of Carroll County,' "there was but one resident attorney-John A. Wake- feld. John Wilson came about 1841."
In the same paper Mr. Armour says: "I wonder what our present race of hotel keepers would say to legislation such as the following, passed March 5, 1844, by Beers Tomlinson, Henry Smith and John C. Owings, county
241
HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.
commissioners, to-wit: 'Ordered, that the following be the tavern rates in the County of Carroll up to March, 1845: Each person, per meal, not exceeding 25 cents; horse to hay and grain per day, 50 cents; lodging, one person, 123 cents; all kinds of liquor, per drink, 61 cents.'"
REMOVAL OF THE COUNTY SEAT -. MOUNT CARROLL.
As settlements increased and spread out to different parts of the county, the question of removing the county seat from Savanna to a more con- venient or central location began to be discussed, and finally took definite shape. The removal was hastened, perhaps, by the neglect or inability of the Savanna interests to comply with the provisions of Section 3 of the law under which the county was organized. These provisions were to the effect that the town of Savanna should "donate to said new county, for the purpose of erecting public buildings, a sufficient number of lots, in the town of Savanna, for the accommodation of the necessary public buildings, and three thousand five hundred dollars in cash, payable in three equal instalments, say in six, twelve and eighteen months from the time the loca- tion of said county seat is established." At the September term, 1840. of the County Commissioners Court, Porter Sargent, Esq., was appointed agent " to confer with the proprietors of the town of Savanna on the sub- ject of the money donated by them for the purpose of erecting buildings for the county, and in conjunction with them to devise means for assessing the town property and making out a pro rata list and collecting the obli- gations or money accordingly, and return the same to the County Court by their next meeting in December, or sooner, the obligation, if taken, to be made payable in instalments, as called for by the commission." In Decem- ber there was no meeting of the court, and consequently no report made by Mr. Sargent. Nor do we find any report, whatever, in regard to this mat- ter, although the record of the Commissioners' Court has been carefully examined. But, on Monday, the 6th of December, 1841, at a regular ses- sion of the court, a special session of the court was ordered to be held on the first Monday in February, 1842, to receive proposals for building a jail. At that special session Messrs. L. H. Bowen and Vance L. Davidson were appointed a committee to confer with the property owners of the town of Savanna "to see what measures they would take in regard to the donation required by law of the proprietors of said town," etc. No proposals appear to have been received for building the jail, and the court adjourned until the next term in course. On the second day of the March term, 1842, the following entry was made: "On the report of L. H. Bowen and Vance L. Davidson * it is hereby ordered that Beers Tomlinson and Norman D. French be appointed a committee to contract with the proprietors of the town of Savanna for a building for the use of the county, to be used as a court house and offices for county officers, to be donated as a part of the bonus," etc.
Several orders of this kind were entered, but they seem to have been without avail. No decided and decisive steps were taken, further than to get out some timber for a kind of block jail, but it was never used for the purpose for which it was intended.
Some time in 1836, Paul D. Otis, a driver, and Granville Mathews, superintendent of the Winter's stage line from Peoria, via Dixon's Ferry and Cherry Grove, to Galena, made a claim of the lands covering the mill site and lands at Mount Carroll. In 1837, Daniel Christian, Nathaniel
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HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.
Swingley, Samuel L. Hitt and George Swaggert formed themselves into a mill company, and bought the Otis and Mathews claim, for which they paid $1,400, but did not enter upon its improvement. In 1841, Nathaniel Hal- derman and David Emmert entered into an arrangement to build a mill somewhere in the county, and for a time had their attention called to the site now occupied by the mills of Messrs. Wood & Kitchen, on Plum River, then known as the Bowen mill site. Negotiations, however, were not com- pleted, and they purchased the interest of Daniel Christian, Nathaniel Swingley, Samuel L. Hitt and George Swaggert in and to the Mt. Carroll property, for which they were to pay $3,000. The original company had dissolved its partnership arrangement some time prior to this, and had made a division of the property. The new company was known by the firm name of Emmert, Halderman & Co., and soon after the purchase of the property was completed, they commenced operations-making excavations for the mill foundations, starting the dam, etc., etc. In the Spring of 1842, their enterprise was well under way and the centre of attraction to new comers. The removal of the county seat to a more central location was a general theme of conversation and interest among the settlers, and by reason of its nearness to the geographical centre of the county, the new mill came to be regarded as the legitimate and only rival of Savanna. And it is not un- reasonable to suppose that the managers of the new enterprise availed them- selves of every possible opportunity to keep the advantages of their site for county seat honors before the people.
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