USA > Illinois > Ogle County > The history of Ogle County, Illinois, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc., a biographical directory of its citizens, war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion, general and local statistics history of the Northwest, history of Illinois etc > Part 22
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At that time there were fifteen counties in the territory, which had been organized in the following chronological order: St. Clair, 1790; Ran- dolph, 1795; Madison, 1812; Gallatin, 1812; Johnson, 1812; Edwards, 1814; White, 1816; Monroe, 1816; Pope, 1816; Jackson, 1816; Crawford, 1817; Bond, 1817; Union, 1818; Washington, 1818; Franklin, 1818.
The old constitution bears the signatures of the following members: Jesse B. Thomas, President of the Convention and Representative from the County of St. Clair.
Jolin Messinger, James Lemen, Jr., St. Clair County; George Fisher, Elias Kent Kane, Randolph County; B. Stephenson, Joseph Borough, Abraham Prickett, Madison County; Michael Jones, Leonard White, Adolphus Frederick Hubbard, Gallatin County; Hezekiah West, William M'Fatridge, Johnson County; Seth Gard, Levi Compton, Edwards Connty; Willis Hargrave, William McHenry, White County; Caldwell Carns, Enoch Moore, Monroe County; Samuel Omelveny, Hamlet Ferguson, Pope Connty; Conrad Will, James Hall, Jr., Jackson County; Joseph Kitchell, Ed. N. Cullom, Crawford County; Thomas Kirkpatrick, Samuel G. Morse, Bond County; William Echols, John Whitaker, Union County; Andrew Bankson, Washington County; Isham Harrison, Thomas Roberts, Frank- lin County.
William C. Greenup was secretary of the convention.
Section two of article two of the constitution provided as follows: "The first election for senators and representatives shall commence on the third Thursday of September next, and continue for that and the two succeeding days; and the next election shall be held on the first Monday in August, one thousand eight hundred and twenty, and forever after elections shall be held once in two years, on the first Monday in Angust, in each and every county, at such places therein as may be provided by law."
Under the new constitution, elections are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Section eighteen of the same article provided that " the General Assem- bly of this state shall not allow the following officers of government greater or smaller annual salaries than as follows, until the year one thou- sand eight hundred and twenty-four: the governor, one thousand dollars; and the secretary of state, six hundred dollars."
Section two of article three: "The first election for governor shall commence on the third Thursday of September next, and continue for that and the two succeeding days; and the next election shall be held on the first Monday of August, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one. And forever after, elections for governor shall be held once in four years, on the first Monday of August."
Section three of the same article: "The first governor shall hold his office until the first Monday of December, in the year of our Lord, one
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thousand eight hundred and twenty-two, and until another governor shall be elected and qualified to office: and forever after, the governor shall hold his office for the term of four years, and until another governor shall be elected and qualified; but he shall not be eligible for more than four years in any term of eight years," etc.
Pursuant to section two of article two of the constitution, the first election for governor, lieutenant governor. secretary of state, senators, rep- resentatives, ete., commeneed on the third Thursday of September, 1818, and continued for two days thereafter.
The poll books of the several voting places in the fifteen organized counties that made up the State of Illinois at that time, would be interest- ing now if it were possible to seeure them. But very few, if any, of the voters at that election are spared to the present. Almost sixty years have been engulfed in the vortex of time since the first state officers were elected, and since then the people of the commonwealth have participated in no less than three wars-the Black Hawk War of 1832; the Mexican War, and the great American Rebellion -- the bloody and prolonged conflict between freedom and slavery, 1861 -- '5.
In these sixty years this state has given the parent government one of the most successful warrior-chieftains, known to history, and two presi- dents-Lincoln, freedom's martyr, and U. S. Grant, the honored guest of the erowned heads and titled courts of the European world. But we digress.
Mr. Ford in his history of Illinois says, in reference to the constitu- tional convention and its members: " The principal member of it was Elias K. Kane, late a senator in Congress, and now deceased, to whose talents we are mostly indebted for the peculiar features of the constitution. Mr. Kane was born in the State of New York, and was bred to the profession of the law. He removed in early youth to Tennessee, where he rambled about for some time, and finally settled in the ancient village of Kaskaskia, Illinois, about the year 1815, when he was about twenty years of age. His talents were both solid and brilliant. After being appointed secretary of state under the new government, he was elected to the legislature, from which he was elected, and again re-elected to the United States Senate. He died a member of that body in the Antumn of 1835; and in memory of him the County of Kane, on Fox River, was named."
The following is the aet of Congress declaring the admission of the State of Illinois into the Union:
Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, whereas, in pursuance of an act of Congress, passed on the eighteenth day of April, one thousand eight hundred and eighteen, entitled "An act to enable the people of Illinois Territory to form a constitution and state government, and for the admission of such state into the Union, on an equal footing with the original states," the people of said territory did, on the twenty-sixth day of August, in the present year, by a convention called to for that purpose, form for themselves a constitution and state govern- ment, which constitution and state government, so formed, is republican, and in conformity to the principles of the articles of compact between the original states and the people and states in the territory northwest of the River Ohio, passed on the thirteenth day of July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven. Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representa- tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the State of Illinois shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one, of the United States of America, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatever. [Approved, December 3, 1818.]
The act of Congress of the 18th day of April, 1818, referred to in the act just quoted, was based upon the action of the territorial legislature in
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session January, 1818, when a petition for authority to organize as a state was prepared and forwarded to Nathaniel Pope, then territorial delegate in Congress. Mr. Pope lost no time in presenting the petition to Congress, and that body as promptly referred it to the proper committee, and that committee instructed Mr. Pope to prepare a bill in accordance with the prayer of the petition. Mr. Pope complied with the instructions, but the bill as originally drafted did not embrace the present area of Illinois, and when it was reported to Congress certain amendments proposed by Mr. Pope, were reported with it. The ordinance of 1787 provided that not less than three nor more than five states were to be erected out of the territory northwest of the Ohio River. . Three states were to include the whole ter- ritory, and these states were to be bounded on the north by the British possessions, but Congress reserved the right, if it should be found expe- dient, to form two more states out of that part of the territory which lies north of an east and west line drawn through the southern extremity of Lake Michigan.
These important changes in the original bill, says Mr. Ford in his History of Illinois, "were proposed and carried through both Houses of Congress by Mr. Popo on his own responsibility. The Territorial Legisla- ture had not petitioned for them-no one had suggested them, but they met the general approval of the people." The change of the boundary line, however, suggested to Mr. Pope-from the fact that the boundary as defined by the ordinance of 1787, would have left Illinois without a harbor, on Lake Michigan-did not meet the unqualified approval of the people in the northwestern part of the new state. For many years the northern boundary of the state was not definitely known, and the settlers in the northern tier of counties did not know whether they were in Illinois or Michigan Terri- tory. Under the provisions of the ordinance of 1787, Wisconsin at one time laid elaim to a portion of northern Illinois, "including," says Mr. Ford, writing in 1847, " fourteen counties, embracing the richest and most populous part of the state." October 27, 1827, nine years after the admis- sion of the state, Dr. Horatio Newhall, who had then recently arrived at the Fever River Settlement, wrote to his brother as follows: " It is uneer- tain whether I am in the boundary of Illinois or Michigan, but direct your letters to Fever River, Ill., and they will come safely." In October, 1828, a petition was sent to Congress from the people of that part of Illinois lying north of the line established by the ordinance of 1787, and that part of the Territory of Michigan west of Lake Michigan and comprehending the mining distriet known as the Fever River Lead Mines, praying for the formation of a new territory. A bill had been introduced at the previous session of Congress for the establishment of a new territory north of the State of Illinois, to be called " Huron Territory," upon which report had been made, in part, favorable to the wishes of the petitioners, but they asked for the re-establishment of the line as ordained by Congress in 1787. They declared "that the people inhabiting the territory northwest of the Ohio.had a right to expect that the country lying north of an east and west line passing through the southernmost end of Lake Michigan, to the Mississippi River, and between said lake, the Mississippi and the Canada line, would REMAIN TOGETHER" as a territory and state. They claimed that this was a part of the compaet, unchangeably granted by the people of the original states to the people who should inhabit the "territory northwest of the Ohio." They declared that the change of the chartered limits, when
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Illinois was declared a state, was an open invasion of their rights in a body when they were unrepresented in either territory; that "an unrepresented people, withont their knowledge or consent, have been transferred from one sovereignty to another." They urged that the present "division of the miners by an ideal line, separating into different governments individuals intimately connected in similar pursuits, is embarrassing." They asked for "even-handed justice," and the restoration of their "chartered limits." The Miners' (Galena) Journal, of October 25, 1828, which contains the full text of the petition, says: "We do not fully agree with the memorial- ists in petitioning Congress again to dispose of that tract of country which has once been granted to Illinois; but we think that it would be for the interest of the miners to be erected, together with the adjoining county above, into a separate territory. And we firmly believe, too, that Congress departed from the clear and express terms of their own ordinance passed in the year 1787, when they granted to the State of Illinois nearly a degree and a half of latitude of the CHARTERED LIMITS of this country. Whether Congress will annex this tract to the new territory we much doubt, but we believe the ultimate decision of the United States Court will be, that the northern boundary line of the State of Illinois shall commence at the south- erninost end of Lake Michigan." The petition was unavailing, and the northern line of Illinois remains unchanged, but the agitation of the sub- ject by the people of this region continued. In 1840 the people of the counties north of the ordinance line sent delegates to a convention held at Rockford to take action in relation to the annexation of the tract north of that line to Wisconsin Territory, and it is said the scheme then discussed embraced an effort to make Galena the capital of the territory. Charles S. Hempstead and Frederick Stahl were delegates to the convention from Galena, and James V. Gale, Dr. W. J. Mix, Col. Dauphin Brown, S. M. Hitt and W. W. Fuller were delegates from Ogle. At that convention speeches were made by Messrs. Charles S. Hempstead, Martin P. Sweet, Jason P. Marsh, and others. Resolutions were adopted requesting the senators and representatives in Congress for Illinois to exert their influence in favor of the project. The labors of the convention produced no results, but until the admission of Wisconsin as a state, there was a strong feeling among the people of northwestern Illinois that they rightfully belonged to Wisconsin, and a strong desire to be restored to their chartered limits. Perhaps the heavy debt with which Illinois was burdened at that time may have had some influence in causing the feeling.
Until the admission of the state inco the Union in 1818, all the north- ern and northwestern part of the state was inhabited only by Indians, who claimed this whole region. In 1804, the Sacs and Foxes, then a powerful tribe, by treaty made at St. Louis with Gen. Harrison, then governor of the Territory of Indiana, ceded to the United States all their lands lying east of the Mississippi; but Black Hawk and other chiefs who were not present at St. Louis, refused to be bound by its terms. All the territory north of the line drawn west from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, was in the undisputed possession of the native tribes, when the state was erected, in 1818, except a tract five leagues square on the Mississippi, of which Fever River was about the centre, which by treaty the United States Government liad reserved ostensibly for a military post, but really to control the lead mines. The government had possessed knowledge for many years of the existence of lead mines here, but their loca-
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tion was not known, and it was thought that all would be included within the limits of the reservation. The government designed to own and hold ex- elusive control of these mines.
But leaving the territorial condition of the country of the Illini,* we come directly to the state organization and the several county organizations down to 1827, when the County of Jo Daviess was organized. The first election for governor, lieutenant governor, county officers, ete., was com- meneed on the third Thursday of September, 1818, and continued for that and the two sneeeeding days. Shadrach Bond was elected governor, and com- meneed his term of four years in October, 1818, a few weeks after the elec- tion. "Governor Bond," says Mr. Ford, in his Illinois History, "was a native of Maryland, was bred a farmer, and was a very early settler among the pioneers of the Illinois Territory. He settled on a farm in the Amer- ican bottom, in Monroe County, near Eagle Creek. Ile was several times eleeted to the Territorial Legislature, and once a delegate to represent the territory in Congress. He was also a receiver of public moneys at Kaskas- kia, but was never elected or appointed to any office after his term as gov- ernor. Indeed, of the first seven governors of Illinois, only one has ever held any office since the expiration of their respective terms of service; though I believe they have all, except myself, tried to obtain some other office. Governor Bond was a substantial. farmer-like man, of strong, plain, common sense, with but little pretentions to learning or general informa- tion. He was a well-made, well-set, sturdy gentleman, and what is remark- able at this day, his first message to the legislature contained a strong recom- mendation in favor of the Illinois and Michigan Canal."
Governor Bond died about 1834. Bond County, organized in 1817, was named in his honor.
"Colonel Pierre Manard, a Frenchman, and an old settler in the country, was generally looked to to fill the office of lieutenant governor; but as he had not been naturalized until a year or so before, the convention de- clared in a schedule to the constitution, that any citizen of the United States who had resided in the state for two years, might be eligible to this office."
Ex-Governor (territorial) Edwards and Jesse B. Thomas, were the first United States Senators from Illinois. Elias K. Kane was appointed secre- tary of state; Daniel P. Cook+ was elected the first attorney general; Elijah C. Berry was auditor of public accounts, and John Thomas was the first state treasurer.
"Under the auspices and guidance of these men Illinois was launched on her career of administration as an independent state of the American Union. At this time the whole people numbered only about forty-five thousand souls. Some two thousand of these were the descendants of the old French settlers in the Villages of Kaskaskia, Prairie Du Rocher, Prairie Du Pont, Cahokia, Peoria and Chicago. These people had fields
* Tribe of men.
+ In 1819 Daniel P. Cook was elected to Congress, and re-elected biennially un- til 1826, when he was defeated by Governor Duncan. He rose to a high position in Con- gress, and the last session he was there, he acted as chairman of the important committee of ways and means of the lower house. To his services, at this last session, the people of Illinois are indebted for the donation by Congress of 300,000 acres of land, for the construe- tion of the Illinois and Michigau Canal. For him the County of Cook was appropriately named, as more than half of its great prosperity is owing to his exertions iu Congress in favor of the canal.
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in common for farming, and farmed, built houses, and lived in the style of the peasantry of old France an hundred and fifty (1847) years ago. They had made no improvements in any thing, nor had they adopted any of the improvements made by others. They were the descendants of those French people who had first settled the country more than a hundred and fifty years before under La Salle, Ibberville, and the priests Alvarez, Rasles, Gravier, Pinet, Marest, and others; and such as subsequently joined them from New Orleans and Canada, and they now formed all that remained of the once proud empire whieli Louis XIV., King of France, and the regent Duke of Orleans, had intended to plant in the Illinois country. The orig- inal settlers had many of them intermarried with the native Indians, and some of the descendants of these partook of the wild, roving disposition of the savage, united to the politeness and courtesy of the Frenchman."
The first settlement made by people of the United States was in 1784, when a few families from Virginia founded a small colony or settlement near Bellefontaine, in Monroe County. The next American settlements were made in St. Clair County, two of which were made previous to the beginning of the year 1800.
The first American settlers were chiefly from Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, and some from Maryland, as was Governor Bond and his immediate friends. "Some of them had been officers and soldiers under General Rogers Clark, who conquered the eoun- try from the British in 1778, and they, with others, who followed them, maintained their position in the country during the Indian wars in Ohio and Indiana, in the times of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne." This whole people did not number more than 12,000 in 1812, but with the aid of one company of regular soldiers defended themselves and their settlements during the war of 1821, against the then numerous and powerful nations of Kickapoos, Saes, Foxes, Pottawatomies, and Shawnees, and even made hos- tile expeditions into the heart of their territories, burning their villages and defeating and driving them from the country.
When the state was admitted in 1818, the settlements extended a little north of Edwardsville and Alton; south along the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio; east in the direction of Carlysle (in Clinton County), to the Wabash, and down the Wabash and the Ohio, to the mouth of the last named river. But within these boundaries there was a very large and unsettled wilderness tract of country between the Kaskaskia River and the Wabash, and between the Kaskaskia and the Ohio-the distance across it being equal to a three days' journey.
Such was the extent of the settlement in Illinois when the territory was clothed with state honors. As before stated, there were but fifteen organized counties represented in the constitutional convention-St. Clair, Randolph, Madison, Gallatin, Johnson, Edwards, White, Monroe, Pope, Jackson, Crawford, Bond, Union, Washington and Franklin. Union, Wash- ington and Franklin were the youngest, all of them being organized in 1818.
Pike County was erected January 31, 1821, and included all the ter- ritory west and north of the Illinois River, and its south fork, now the Kan- kakee River. At the first election after the organization, only thirty-five votes were polled. This was the first county organization under state authority that embraced the territory of which Ogle is a part, and out of which more than fifty counties have been organized. A Gazetteer of Illi-
OREGON
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nois and Wisconsin, published about 1822, says that the county "ineluded a part of the lands appropriated by Congress for the payment or military bounties. The lands constituting that tract, are ineluded within a penin- sula of the Illinois and the Mississippi, and extend on the meridian line (4th) passing through the mouth of the Illinois, one hundred and sixty-two miles north. Pike County will no doubt be divided into several counties; some of which will become very wealthy and important. It is probable that the seetion about Fort Clark (now Peoria) will be the most thiekly settled. On the Mississippi River, above Rock River, lead ore is found in abundance. Pike County contains between 700 and 800 inhabitants. It is attached to the first judicial eirenit, sends one member to the House of Representa- tives and, with Green, one to the Senate. The county seat is Colesgrove, a post town. It was laid out in 1821, and is situated in township 11, south, in range 2, west of the fourth principal meridian; very little improvement has yet been made in this place or the vicinity. The situation is high and healthy, and it bids fair to become a place of some importance." This is all that is known of the Town of Colesgrove, the county seat of all this region in 1821.
Fulton County was organized from Pike. with the county seat at Lew- iston, January 28, 1823, and included all the territory north of the base line, and west of the fourth principal meridian, which had been in Pike.
Peoria County, with Fort Clark (now the City of Peoria), as the county seat, was organized from Fulton, January 13, 1825.
In 1826 the County Commissioners of Peoria County established a voting precinct of Fever River, now Galena, which they called Fever River Precinet. At an election held on the 7th day of August, 1826, this precinct polled 202 votes. Messrs. Nehemiah Bates, Jesse W. Shull and Andrew Clamo were Judges, or inspectors of election. Before entering upon the discharge of their duties they were sworn by John L. Bogardus, a Justice of the Peace. This was the first election ever held in the northwestern part of Illinois, including the territory now embraced in Ogle County. Of the 202 names on that old poll book, not one is recognized as representing any of the early settlers of Ogle County, from which we infer that white men had not yet attempted an abiding place within the limits of the connty whose history we are writing.
There is a tax-list of 1826 on file at Peoria, containing 204 names of men in the Fever River Settlement; but the deputy collcetor who under- took to collect the taxes reported that they openly defied him and refused to pay a eent. Evidently there were "tax-fighters" in those days as well as in the present.
Jo Daviess County was organized from Peoria, February 17, 1827, and was bounded as follows: Beginning on the Mississippi River at the north- western corner of the state, thence down the Mississippi, to the north line of the Military Traet, thenee east to the Illinois River, thence north to the northern boundary of the state, thence west to the place of beginning. Galena was named as the county seat. The north line of the Military Tract commenced on the Mississippi River, not far from Keithsburg, in Mercer County, and running east, reached the Illinois River not far from Hennepin, in Putnam County, and inelnded an area equal to 240 townships of six miles square, of thirty-six seetions each, covering 8,640 square miles, and embracing 5,529,600 acres.
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