USA > Illinois > Kane County > The past and present of Kane County, Illinois : containing a history of the county a directory war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion statistics history of the Northwest etc., etc > Part 31
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Episcopal .- The records of this church date back to 1838, when Rev. A. H. Cornish, one of the missionaries, addressed a congregation containing only eight members, but no pastor was located in the village until 1855, when Rev. J. H. Waterbury settled there, and a stone building was shortly erected, cost- ing $8,000. The present membership is twenty-six. W. J. O'Brian is Rector, in connection with church at Batavia.
Congregational .- This was one of the earliest religious societies in the vil- lage, having received its first start from the ministration of Rev. N. C. Clark, as recorded upon another page. It now contains a large and wealthy membership and a good house of worship.
Unitarian .- The constitution of this society was formed in Geneva, and signed by twenty-two members, in 1842. Rev. Augustus Conant occasionally officiated as pastor. Efforts were immediately made to build a church, and on the 24th of January, 1844, the stone one now occupied was dedicated. Rev. Mr. Conant continued his labors as pastor until - 1857. In 1874, the church building was repaired, and is now well adapted to the purpose for which it was designed. Rev. R. L. Herbert is the present pastor. The membership is about fifty.
The Disciples at one time attained the position of an established organiza- tion in Geneva, but of late years the society has been on the decline, and now numbers only a dozen members.
Free Methodist .- About thirteen years ago, a Free Methodist Church was organized within the corporation, and a small stone building erected, where services were regularly held for several years, but, being encumbered, it was sold, in 1873, to the Swedish Methodist Episcopal Society, and the members allied themselves with the Free Methodist Society at St. Charles.
The Swedish Lutheran Church was established about 1852, in St. Charles, and a building put up a year later. Rev. Erlan Carlson, now pastor in Andover, first officiated to the society, which then contained about fifteen members.
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About 1855, the Church made Geneva its central point. In 1862, Mr. Carl- son was succeeded by Rev. Mr. Sederstam, now in charge of a pastorate in Minnesota, and, in 1867, he was in turn followed by Rev. C. Lendell, now preaching in Chicago. Rev. C. H. Lodergren. the present pastor, followed in 1874. There are now 250 members.
Swedish Methodist Episcopal .- Years ago, traveling preachers of the Swedish Methodist Episcopal denomination occasionally addressed diminutive gatherings of their people in Geneva. A society was formed, with some sixteen members, about 1866, but dwindled away until there were but three members. It revived, however, under the preaching of Rev. Albert Errickson, and now boasts about sixty members, who enjoy regular weekly preaching from a resi- dent pastor, Rev. S. B. Newman.
MANUFACTURES.
In 1850, Eben Danford obtained a patent for the Danford Reaper and Mower, of which he was the inventor, and commenced the manufacture of the machines about 1851, upon the East Side, in partnership with Capt. J. D. Webster; some fifty men were employed; but in 1857 the company failed. Danford & Howell opened a foundry in the vacated buildings in 1862, but dis- solved partnership about four years later. The business was then continued in the same site a number of years by W. H. Howell, who at length erected, at a cost of $18,000, including tools, the buildings which he still occupies upon the West Side. From thirty-five to forty hands are employed. The " Geneva Fluting Iron" (of which W. D. Turner is the inventor), smoothing irons, pumps and various fixtures are manufactured.
The flouring-mills of Geneva form the most important business interest of the village. Three companies are in successful operation-Bennett Brothers & Coe upon the East Side, and John Burton on the West Side, who are employed in merchant work ; James T. Hards on the West Side, engaged in the custom business. Hards and Burton occupy separate parts of the same mill-the one built by Howard Brothers. In 1868, it was repaired by Smith, Hards & Wright, and was used both as a merchant and custom mill. Later, the mer- chant portion, which occupies the north end of the building and contains four sets of stones, was used by Smith & Wright, while Hards confined his business- to the other portion, which contained but two sets. Smith & Wright's portion subsequently passed into the hands of the present proprietors. Half of the brick mill owned by Bennett Brothers & Coe was erected as a paper mill by Alexander & German in about 1846. It then passed into the hands of O. M. Butler, was then owned by C. B. Dodson, and purchased from him by the present owners. An addition of equal size was made of brick on the north side of the original part in 1868, and in its furnishings is considered the best flouring establishment on Fox River. It contains nine sets of stone and a capacity for manufacturing one hundred barrels of flour per day.
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HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
Geneva was organized under the general statutes in 1856, later by special charter, and is governed by a President and a board of four Trustees. Capt. C. B. Dodson was the first President.
WAR RECORD -- 1860-65.
An independent cavalry company was organized in the village by Capt. C. B. Dodson, in 1861, and was assigned as a body-guard to General Steel, remaining with him until discharged. William Wilder, now in Honolulu, was First Lieutenant ; John Bundy, afterward. Major, and now editor of the Re- ligo-Philosophical Journal, Second Lieutenant, and Charles Herrington, after- ward killed in the employ of the C., B. & Q. Railroad Company, Orderly Sergeant. Company D, of the Fifty-second Illinois, and Company G, of the One Hundred and Forty-first, were, also, enrolled in the place. In the former, Judge Isaac G. Wilson, now in Chicago, was Colonel ; Nathan Herrington, now of Blackberry, Captain ; Louis H. Everts, First Lieutenant, who returned as Major, and is now principal partner in the firm of L. H. Everts & Co., of Philadelphia, one of the leading publishing companies in the East. In this regiment, Joseph Kessler returned as Lieutenant and C. B. Wells, Commissary.
Company G, of the One Hundred and Forty-first, was enlisted by Captain Charles Herrington. George Gilman, from Blackberry, where he still resides, First Lieutenant ; Chester Steward (deceased), Second Lieutenant.
Aside from these, Hon. J. H. Mayborne-now one of the most eminent members of the Kane County bar-went to the war as Paymaster, with the rank of Major; Thomas Clark as Captain in a colored regiment, and Frank Clark as a Lieutenant. Four of the sons of James Herrington, Nathan, Alfred, Charles and Thaddeus (deceased), served their country through its years of peril, and returned in safety ; and there were many more, who occupied lower ranks, but rendered equally efficient service, to whom their country will forever remain indebted.
THE PRESS.
In 1851, the Wilson Brothers established a small sheet in Geneva called The Advertiser. In about 1867, the name was changed to The Geneva Repub- lican, which passed into the possession of S. L. Taylor in 1870, and was sold to Tyrrell & Archer in the following year. Tyrrell left the company in 1873, when the paper went into the hands of McMaster, Archer & Wheeler, who published it until 1875, when Charles Archer became the sole proprietor and editor. It is a neatly printed folio, 24x36, circulation about 500.
The Chicago &. Northwestern Railroad, already mentioned in the foregoing sketch of the township, has an excellent stone depot in the village, 112 feet in length, and corresponding in its other dimensions.
The population of the village, as nearly as can be estimated from returns examined, is about 1,670.
Daniel Pingree, N. E. PLATO TOWNSHIP.
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HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
ST. CHARLES TOWNSHIP.
Settlements were made in St. Charles Township early in 1834. John M. Laughlin, now residing at Round Grove, just across the boundary line of St. Charles, within the limits of Du Page County, was living in Coles County, Ill., in the Spring of 1834. Setting out from thence to visit his native home in Virginia, he retraced his way through Lawrence County, Indiana, where he found a colony preparing to make a settlement in Northern Illinois. Possessed of an adventurous spirit, and being urged by several of the company to cast his lot with them, and assist in driving their cattle, he complied, and to him we are indebted for a history of the settlement which followed. The party consisted of Elijah Garton and family, comprising wife and six unmarried children ; John WV. Gray and wife, who was a daughter of Garton ; Albert Howard and family of six children, Thomas Steward and four children, and our informant. They were far better prepared than most emigrant parties for life on the prairies, as Garton drove 100 sheep, an equal number of cattle, six pairs of oxen, and eight span of horses, to Round Grove, where they arrived on the 8th of May. Garton settled upon the south side of the timber, in St. Charles, and immediately com- menced a log cabin on the edge of the prairie, which is still remaining in a tol- erable state of preservation-the oldest house in the township. Gray settled in Du Page County, where Laughlin now lives, and Howard on the northwest corner of the grove, on land at present occupied by Mark W. Fletcher. Early in the same Spring, Rice Fay, from the "Bay State," took up his claim and built a little below the site now occupied by the residence of John Keating, at Fayville, but did not settle until the following Fall. His tract lay upon Scott's old trail, which crossed the township from east to west. About the same time, a man named Brigham, a bachelor, settled upon the west of Fay. One of the Trimbles was then living just within the edge of St. Charles, south of the Geneva line.
Summer passed, and early Autumn found several other squatters and per- manent settlers in different parts of the township. Foremost of these arrivals was that of Friend Marks and family, from the State of New York, who squatted on the farm now owned by George Plummer, and built at the north- east corner of the grove. Then followed William Arnold, from Indiana, who, with wife and children, located not far from the present site of John C. Wil- son's stone house, where he laid claim to about four hundred acres ; and Alex- ander Laughlin, from the same State, who took up the tract now owned by Moses Colton. Walter Wilson and family, from Glasgow, Scotland, founp their way to the Western wilds in the same year, and, stopping a few days at Jacksonville, whither his son and son-in-law Thomas Wilson and Thomas Barlan had wandered in 1833, they then proceeded together to St. Charles Township, where they arrived early in September, and settled on the place since known as
G
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HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
the Ponsonby farm, on Section 19. Marks had at that time completed the body of a large house at Plummer's Grove, but it was still roofless ; while Arnold's family were living in their wagon, on the West Side, near the site now occupied by the residence of William McWilliams ; and Alexander Laughlin had but just arrived.
Wild was the life they led then. Not a road, or even cow path, crossed St. Charles, and, with the exception of the one in the northern part of the town- ship, no very clearly marked trails. Just before the arrival of the Wilson family, John C. and Thomas had been sent ahead to spy out the land, and, in company with a gentleman of color, who bore the appellation of Harry, they crossed the river at Payne's, and, following up until they came to a little brook flowing into a creek, took up their claim. While they were exploring the land, Harry wandered away up the river and became lost in the woods. Night came on, and he was unable to retrace his steps. Picking his way in the darkness and through the mazes of the forest, he suddenly observed a light ahead of him, and a few moments later, came to a halt near a camp of Pottawatomies. The warriors, wrapped in their blankets, lay dozing around their camp fires in lazy abandonment, while the hard working, abused and greasy looking squaws waited upon them, bringing sticks to replenish the embers, or now and then throwing a fresh morsel of dog flesh or a plump rat or gopher into the boiling kettle, while snarling curs contested for the refuse morsels, It was a romantic scene, as the curling smoke arose in serpentine windings and mingled with the dark leaves of the oak or the maple foliage gilded by the early frost. And Harry crept nearer, until the crackling of a stick brought the watchful dogs with angry yelps to his heels. "Ugh!" grunted the warriors, and with one single motion stood before him. Questions were asked and answered satisfac- torily, and the terrified African was invited to partake of their hospitality. All night he lay among them, scarcely daring to stir, for whenever he turned upon his hard bed or moved hand or foot a bark from the dogs was immediately responded to by a grunt from some suspicious warrior, and the attention of the whole company was immediately fixed upon him. Never, he used to affirm, after his return, did he pass so restless a night. Sleep left his eyelids, and upon the earliest break of day he arose and followed the river and creek back to the Wilson claim.
Charles B. Gray, now on the southeast' corner of Section 23, who came to the township in May, 1835, states that he has seen a column of Indians march- ing in single file, according to their usual custom, which extended from the corner near the residence of William Matteson eastward to Round Grove. They were always treated with wholesome respect by the settlers, and never com- mitted more serious depredations than by occasionally stealing corn and pump- kins. They were not addicted to anything akin to modesty, however, and one of the company which Mr. Gray mentions left his column, and approaching the point where he stood observing them, requested a donation of watermelons, and
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as this festive fruit was not to be obtained, contented himself with confiseating the cucumbers in the vicinity.
Indian camps were located upon the present site of the city of St. Charles, and our informant states that he has seen 200 warriors, squaws and papooses where the elink of the hammer and anvil and the hum of the mills are now heard. And other native vagrants were not less numerous throughout the township.
Wolves carried off the sheep, howled beneath the cabin windows, and were shot within twenty feet of the doors. Mr. Laughlin states that during the year after their arrival, one of Mr. Garton's cattle died, was dragged forth upon the prairie, and seven wolves successively shot while devouring the carcass. Fifty deer were frequently seen in a single herd, and the same informant states that he shot them upon the Garton farm in numbers too great to present to the skeptical eye of the modern reader. He had brought from the South two mag- nificent grayhounds, which, to use his own expression, "could run down any animal that ever walked ;" and in brilliant colors does he portray the excitement of the chase as witnessed from the old cabin door. Pointing out the deer, bounding leisurely along the prairie, to his canine companions, they would leave him as an arrow let loose from the bow. They seemed to fly, only touch- ing the ground at every tenth or twelfth spring. Soon the deer, becoming alarmed at the approaching messengers of death, quickens his pace, and anon makes his strongest and swiftest bounds, but all in vain. The hounds are upon him, and one of them seizing him by the muzzle, he is flung to the earth, while the other fastens his jaws upon his throat, and he roams the prairies no more. Shortly after the Wilson settlement, but during the same Fall, a colony arrived from New Brunswick, consisting of Mrs. Young, Stephen and Joel Young and his sister Jerusha, D. C. Young, Robert Moody, wife and two children ; Samuel Young, wife and one child, and J. T. Wheeler, having left home in July and
landed in Chicago the 19th of September. The last settled upon a farm upon the West Side, just north of the city, and still resides there. Robert Moody and Samuel Young located within the limits of the present city, and will be mentioned on another page, while Joel Young took up his abode upon the present Park's farm, between St. Charles and Geneva. The company stopped between Naperville and Warrenville, with Gideon Young, who had previously settled there, but who removed in the Spring of 1835 to the farm now owned by A. G. Fowler. John Kittridge, from New Hampshire, was building a house upon the farm now owned by N. C. Joy, in the Fall of Wheeler's arrival, and the latter, with Joel Young, obtained their bread there of Mrs. Kittridge, while Wheeler's house was being put up. They slept on the ground. In the same Fall, T. A. Wheeler, from Vermont, visited the township and took up a claim now owned by heirs of Joseph Switzer, but being injured in assisting James T. Wheeler to build his house, he returned to his eastern home and sent out his brother Richard to hold his claim. He afterward returned, and the brothers
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HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
both lived many years in the township. Richard is now living in Michigan, while his brother's widow resides upon a farm on Section 26, east of the city, owned by her husband previous to his decease. The land upon that side along the timber was generally taken up in 1834. Joseph Pemberton, a bachelor, from Coles County, Illinois, settled early upon the place now owned by Ben- jamin Vinicke and Joseph Crawford; also a bachelor located with one Lee, on a claim which included the present Disbro farm. Nathan Perry took up the land now owned by Mark Dunham during the same year, and built thereon an exceedingly primitive cabin, with neither glass, nails nor boards in the entire structure. The inconveniences incident to the isolated position of the settlers at that time can scarcely be exaggerated. During the Winter of 1834, supplies began to fail the party from Lawrence County, and Garton and Howard drove to La Fayette, on the Wabash, with ox teams, to replenish their store. During the greater part of the distance, the temperature was between twenty and thirty degrees below zero. Much of the prairie which is now arable and contains some of the most valuable land in the country then lay throughout a large part of the year submerged beneath the waves, and when, in the following June, Laughlin made a journey to Chicago with two yoke of oxen, he was obliged to wade the entire level country east of Oak Ridge and swim the Des Plaines River. Wm. Welch, from Michigan, and his son-in-law, Tucker, also James Davis, all found homes on the East Side in 1834. During the year 1835, settlers and land speculators poured into the township in swarms, and by the close of the year 1837, we consider it safe to state that there was not an acre of land worth taking, in St. Charles, unclaimed. To accommodate the herd of immigrants westward and bring custom to his doors, Friend Marks broke a road during rainy days from his house to Herrington's Ford, in 1835. This track was traveled for many years, was probably the first regularly laid road in the township, and led to the first tavern, at Mark's. The unfortunate landlord fell into the hands of land sharks when the Government sale took place, lost his claim, left the township and shortly afterward died. Walter Wilson died in the township some ten years ago. His son, John C., lives on the southwest section, on a farm recently purchased of Hugh Huls, having remained upon the first claim over twenty years, and erected nearly all the Buildings now standing thereon.
Thomas Wilson married the only daughter of Alexander Laughlin, removed with him to Whiteside County, after remaining a short time in St. Charles Township, and is still living, although Mr. Laughlin has been dead several years.
William Arnold sold his claim to Levi Brown, about 1840, and removed to the banks of Rock River, where he died the same year. The honest old pio- neer. Garton, and his wife both rest in the ancient graveyard near the camp ground. But the earliest death in the township was that of Stephen Young, who departed this life May 8, 1835, was buried on the north line of the J. T.
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HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
Wheeler farm, and afterward removed to the first burying ground in the city, which stood on the site of the West Side school. The first sermon delivered upon the west side of the township was preached at his funeral by a Congrega- tional clergyman named Perry, a relative of the Perrys upon the East Side, then living upon the Mark Dunham farm. He subsequently preached a num- ber of times at Mr. Wheeler's house. Religious services had previously been initiated at the house of John Kittridge, by the organization of a Bible class, early in the same year. There were not more than seven members at first, but their numbers increased, as time went on, and the services, which originally embraced merely singing, prayer and the study of the Scriptures, were rendered more interesting for those who participated in them by the reading of a sermon every Sunday. The place of worship, too, was frequently changed, as the country filled up, and each family of those who attended was expected to furnish accommodations occasionally.
At that time, the borders of Ferson's Creek were entirely covered by a thick growth of blue beech, and in this wood the Indians were encamped. While the Wheeler family were away at church, one Sunday, a party of these red skins came to the house, and, with their usual modesty, demanded a pipe and tobacco of Mrs. Young, who was, ere this, Mr. Wheeler's mother-in-law by his marriage with her daughther, Jerusha, at Warrenville, on the 15th of the preceding Jan- uary. Mrs. Young answered their importunity by lending them her own pipe, for she was an elderly lady, and addicted to the use of the narcotic weed. The Indians smoked until satisfied, and then walked away without returning it. But the brave old lady was not to be baffled in this manner. Following them and shouting at the top of her voice until they halted, she immediately seized the pipe, which was held in the mouth of one of the astonished warriors, and ordered him to give it up. The cowardly always feel awed by the bravery of the brave, and an Indian is a coward by nature. Therefore, instead of resisting and walking on, or hurling the old lady to the earth, he quietly yielded, and Mrs. Young returned with the precious property, from which the sweet incense arising soon testified to the satisfactory result of the only collision between one of the representatives of the white and Indian races recorded in the annals of St. Charles Township.
In the Fall of 1835, death visited the Garton family, and Alzira, a twin sister of Mrs. C. B. Gray, was laid in the grave-the first in the old burying ground at Round Grove.
In the same year, Rev. N. C. Clark, also Rev. Jesse Walker, a missionary to the Pottawattomies and Kickapoos, preached several times at the house of Elijah Garton, and in January, of the same year, John M. Laughlin married Emily, the daughter of Elijah Garton, at the house of the bride's father. The ceremony was performed by Rev. Mr. Hubbard, Baptist preacher, from War- renville. This was the first marriage in the township. The earliest birth was that of a child of Samuel Young, in the Spring of the same year.
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HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
On the 8th of May, upon the day of Stephen Young's death, Solomon Dundam, from the State of New York, arrived on the place now owned by his son Mark. Mark Fletcher also purchased the farm where he still resides, in the same season, but remained a number of years in Geneva before settling upon it.
The year 1835 was rendered memorable by the arrival of Daniel Marom, the first blacksmith in the township, who built a shop in the timber at Norton's Creek. Also, of Thomas Steward, in the Fall, while Nathan Pierce, whose son, James Pierce, is now a resident of Aurora, was an early settler upon the Hoag place.
In 1836, crowds came, and from that date the history of St. Charles be- comes one of a whole community and no longer of individuals. But there was one who settled in June of that year, upon the farm now owned by his son, who deserves special notice-Rev. D. W. Elmore, a graduate of Union College, a man of splendid education and of opinions far in advance of his age, who pur- chased 100 acres at Fayville, of one Brigham, a bachelor, who had squatted there the previous year and built a log house. The pet object of Mr. Elmore's life was the establishment of an industrial or manual-labor school, in which im- pecunious young men might obtain the means for a liberal education by working certain hours in each day upon a farm connected with the proposed institution. For this purpose, he took up 300 acres of land adjoining the Brigham claim, wrote much and talked more upon the subject, but, to their shame be it said, many of his cotemporaries regarded his philanthropic schemes as the dreams of a visionary, and his hopes were never realized. While working in the field, on the 29th day of July, 1854, a terrific storm arose, lightning struck upon three separate places on his farm, and, one of the bolts having pierced him, he passed forever beyond the disappointments of this world.
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