USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Princeville > Township histories, Peoria County, Illinois; Princeville, Akron, Millbrook, Jubilee, Hallock, Radnor > Part 7
USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Akron > Township histories, Peoria County, Illinois; Princeville, Akron, Millbrook, Jubilee, Hallock, Radnor > Part 7
USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Millbrook > Township histories, Peoria County, Illinois; Princeville, Akron, Millbrook, Jubilee, Hallock, Radnor > Part 7
USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Jubilee > Township histories, Peoria County, Illinois; Princeville, Akron, Millbrook, Jubilee, Hallock, Radnor > Part 7
USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Hallock > Township histories, Peoria County, Illinois; Princeville, Akron, Millbrook, Jubilee, Hallock, Radnor > Part 7
USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Radnor > Township histories, Peoria County, Illinois; Princeville, Akron, Millbrook, Jubilee, Hallock, Radnor > Part 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
92
TOWNSHIP HISTORIES
maker, of the Congregational Church Missionary So- ciety of Peoria, which resulted in the formation of a Congregational Church composed of twenty-seven members coming from several denominations. Steps were at once taken to secure money to build a new church. The corner-stone was laid Angust 4, 1894, and the church dedicated December 30th of the same year, by Rev. James Tompkins, of Chicago, Rev. Stephen Burdick, of West Hallock, and Rev. Charles E. Marsh, of Lawn Ridge. The church cost $2,800, substantially all paid before dedication. Rev. Charles Marsh was the first pastor. He continued to fill that position until July, 1900, when he resigned, since which time sev- eral ministers have supplied the pulpit, the present one being Rev. R. B. Tolbert, of West Hallock. A good Sunday School and a Christian Endeavor Society as auxiliaries to the church work, are regularly main- tained, both having a good attendance.
The St. Matthew's Catholic Church was commenced in the year 1900 under the supervision of Rev. C. A. Hauser, pastor. With the liberal donation left by the late Matthew McDonald, the church building was erected at a cost of $2,350. There are at present about thirteen families in connection with the church, the membership being about fifty. Rev. C. A. Hauser was succeeded by Rev. C. P. O'Neill, the present pastor. The building committee who superintended the erection of the church were John McDonnell, Michael McDonna . and Thomas Burns.
SCHOOLS
The first school ever taught within the present bounds of the township was located on Lewis Hallock's farm, and was taught during the winters of 1829 and
93
HALLOCK TOWNSHIP
1830, by Lucia Root, daughter of Jeriel Root. The first school house built in the district, stood near Joel Hick's place on Section 32. It was erected in the fall of 1836, and was removed about eight years afterwards to the Hallock farm. In the northern part of the town- ship a little school was taught during the summers of 1839 and 1840, in a log cabin where the house of Isaiah Nurse was afterwards erected. Fiducia Bliss was the teacher. In 1841 the first school house, in what is now School District No. 1, was erected. It was 18 feet square and was built of brick. Sarah Fosdick was among the earliest of the teachers. The present school house in that district was built in 1856, and stands near the southeast corner of the southwest quarter of Section 3. It is well fitted up and can ac- commodate sixty children. In School District No. 5, the first school was taught in an old log cabin, which stood a little south and east from where O. M. Miller's dwelling was afterwards erected, and was used for that purpose about the year 1851. Joseph Gallup was then its teacher. In 1856 the present school house was built. School District No. 6 was originally composed of portions of Peoria, Stark and Marshall Counties, and was reconstructed with its present limits in 1869. It was the last school district to be organized in the township. The first public school was built about. 1857, at a cost of about $800, and, in 1866, to accommodate the growing wants of the district, the present school house was erected at a cost of about $1,400.
In West Hallock District, the structure now occu- pied as a public school was erected in the fall of 1856 as an academy, and was occupied as such for about five years, when the district was formed by a special act of the Legislature. It then fell into the hands of
-
94
TOWNSHIP HISTORIES
the School Trustees, and has since been conducted as a public school.
The school house in District No. 4 was erected about 1870, and stands on Section 32. It was the first school in that section.
The citizens of Edelstein, feeling the necessity of better school privileges in the village than they would have under existing conditions, the friends of educa- tion, after several unsuccessful attempts, succeeded in 1894 in having establishel the Edelstein School District No. 7, and, in the same year, erected a school house at the cost of $1,000. The Board of Directors then consisted of J. G. Spicer (President), E. E. Kendall and Thomas Burns. Since then James Shane and Mr. A. J. Speers have succeeded Mr. Kendall. At the time of the organization of the district there were only twenty-three children of school age; there are now 89 of whom 53 are in daily attendance at the school.
RADNOR TOWNSHIP BY NAPOLEON DUNLAP
Looking over the past for a period of sixty years we are filled with amazement at the changes that have taken place. Then the deer and wolves were plenty and prairie chickens were common game. Steam power was in its infancy, the telegraph. and the tele- phone were unknown, electricity as a mechanical pow- er had not been dreamed of, and weeks, or even months were consumed in traveling a distance now accom- plished in a few hours or days at the farthest. Of this the early settlers of Radnor, who came mostly from New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and other Eastern States, had a rich experience, many of them coming overland by emigrant wagons, consuming weeks in making the journey.
One of the earliest, if not the first settler in the township, was Erastus Peet, who came in 1834. Ilis little daughter of four years, having become lost, and a fire having swept over the prairie in the night time, she perished in the flames and her body was discovered the next day. Robert Cline came in 1835, from Oswego County, New York, and, after remaining two years at Hale's Mill, settled on Section 35, and two years later on Section 13. He was killed by lightning on April 21, 1849. William Gifford, who came from Barnstable, Massachusetts, in 1836, erected the first frame house, on the south half of Section 28. Moses Harlan settled on Section 22 in the same year. He was County Com- missioner in 1838, and two years in the Legislature, 1838-40. His son, George B. Harlan, settled on Sec-
95
96
TOWNSHIP HISTORIES
tion 2 in 1836. He was a Justice of the Peace for some years and a member of the Board of Supervisors for one or two years, besides holding other local offices. William Knott settled on Section 26 in the same year ; also John L. Wakefield, who came from Butler County, Ohio, to Peoria County in 1834, but settled on Section 18 in Radnor in 1836. Aaron G. Wilkinson and his brother, Abner Russell, Calvin Blake, Charles, Richard and George Wilkins, Anson Bushnell and his brothers, Horace and Alvin, Thomas Shaw, James -- and his brother-in-law, Griffith Dickinson, all came about the year 1837.
About the same time Alva Dunlap came on a pros- pecting tour from Sandy Creek, Oneida County, New York, and, having become satisfied with the place, returned the next season (1838) with his family. Leaving his home on the 11th day of August, with his father and mother, five children and a sister, he, with his brother, the writer, embarked at Sackett's Harbor on a little schooner of about one hundred tons for Chicago. Leaving his mother and sister, with a daugh- · ter residing at Chicago, for another trip, the rest of the party proceeded in wagons, which had been pre- viously engaged, arriving at their destination on the northwest quarter of Section 14 on the 11th day of October, and took up quarters in a frame house, 16x24 feet, which Alva had erected the preceding summer from lumber hauled from Hale's Mill, then recently erected. Their nearest neighbor was an Englishman named John Jackson, a bachelor of about 30 years, with a lad of about 14 years named George Scholes, "keeping batch" on the northeast quar- ter of Section 15. Jackson had arrived in 1837 and had broken part of his land, on which he
L
97
RADNOR TOWNSHIP
raised a crop in 1838. Ira Smith, a native of Hamp- den, Maine, who had been a sea captain, had also come in 1837, and had paid Chloe Case $50 for a claim on the northeast quarter of Section 3, which he entered and afterwards, in 1849, sold to Adam Yates for $3,000. He was a very worthy man, an old-line Abolitionist, and believed in the Golden Rule. He removed to Peoria and went into the lumber trade.
J. J. Hitchcock, with his aged parents, had also settled on the northwest quarter of Section 3 in 1837. In the winter of 1838 he went with Alva Dunlap to Chicago, and assisted him in bringing the remainder of the goods, together with his mother and sister, to the new house.
The country, at that time, was an unbroken prairie, and what houses there were were scattered along the streams and in the edges of the timber. On the larger prairies one conld travel a whole day without seeing a house. The scarcity of timber for fuel, fencing and building purposes was a serious matter with the early settlers, and, if one could get hold of a piece of timber land, he was considered fortunate; and woe to him who having secured one would go off without leaving · some one to guard it, for on his return he would likely find it all stumps. No one thought lumber could be shipped here in sufficient quantities to supply the needs of these vast prairies. Coal had not yet been developed to any considerable extent. Saw mills were erected along the streams, where there was timber and water with sufficient fall to obtain power. But the lumber secured in that way was very unsatisfactory for building purposes. When the Osage Orange was introduced for hedges, it was thought to be a great advance in the matter of fencing; but now, since the
·
98
TOWNSHIP HISTORIĘS
introduction of barbed wire, the Osage Orange is no longer planted and farmers would be glad to be rid of what they have. Jonathan Brassfield took two loads of wheat to Chicago and brought back finishing lum- ber. Several others tried the same experiment, but no one went the second time. When the canal was opened in 1848 it brought great relief to those living within reach of the river. Timber is much more plenti- ful now than it was sixty years ago. Then it was short and scrubby on account of the fires; after that was cut off and the fires kept away from the new growth it became thrifty. Coal became the principal fuel and the inhabitants ceased, in a great measure, the use of wood for either fuel or fencing. But for the last few years many prefer to have the land for farmir. purposes, and are cutting off the timber, selling th wood so cheaply that the people are again using i for fuel.
As the population increased the deer disappeared. but the wolves remained and are not yet entirely ex- tinct, an occasional one venturing out from its hiding place. As corn fields increased the prairie chickens also increased, for a time into large flocks, and became very destructive to the corn, which, according to the custom of the country, was left in the field over winter; but when the prairies had become settled up and their nesting places invaded, they began to decrease in numbers until now they are nearly extinct. The rattle- snake was a common pest in breaking up the native sod, and was often encountered by the plowman. They were not considered dangerous, as they made their presence known by their rattle and were easily dis- posed of. Cattle instinctively avoided them, but were sometimes bitten by them, which caused severe swell-
.
99
RADNOR TOWNSHIP
ings, but seldom, if ever, death. They disappeared when the land became cultivated.
After the opening of the canal, pine lumber in quan- tities began to make its appearance, the coal banks began to supply fuel and the people began to lose their fear of settling upon the broad prairies. The big prairie team, with four or five yoke of oxen and the huge breaking plow, rapidly turned over the native sod; houses rapidly sprang up in all directions and a wave of prosperity seemed to have struck the country. The light steel plow introduced by Tobey & Anderson, of Peoria, took the place of the wooden moldboard and heavy cast-iron plow brought from the East. The reaper took the place of back-breaking cradle; the Brown corn-planter did away with planting by hand ; the thresher, with its simple cylinder throwing straw, chaff and grain out together, displaced the flail and the tramping-floor, only to be displaced in its turn by the separator, which also took the place of the Nurse or Proctor fanning-mill formerly in use; the single shovel-plow, doing duty with one horse traveling first upon one side of the row and back on the other, was superseded by the two-horse riding or walking culti- vators. The complete outfit for husking corn was one team, two men and a boy taking five rows, the team, and wagon treading down the middle one, which was the boy's share to pick up.
The first reaping machine known in Radnor-and perhaps in the county-was owned by Alva Dunlap, and was built by George Greenwood of Peoria. It was so constructed as to throw the cut grain directly back the width of swath, which had to be bound up before the next swath could be cut. It did clean work and he used it for several years in cutting his own and his
100
TOWNSHIP HISTORIES
neighbor's grain. It was built about the year 1846, only seven years after Cyrus H. McCormick gave the first exhibition of his reaper on the farm of Joseph Smith, in Augusta County, Virginia. The next was a MeCormick-the grain being raked off on one side. This was followed, in a few years, by the self-raker, and in about twenty years by the self-binder. Through these improvements the hard labor of eight men was done away with, and the women of the house- hold were relieved of the labor of boarding a large number of men during the heat of the harvest time. Before that time harvest hands would begin in the South, where the season was earlier, and work their way northward as the grain ripened. These traveling men were thrown out of employment by the self-bind- ing reaper.
About the year 1839 experiments were made by Aaron Bushnell, J. J. Hitchcock and Alva Dunlap in making sod fences, consisting of a ditch two and a half feet wide by the same in depth, and an embank- ment on the side protected by the sods cut from the ditch. But the theory would not hold good in practice, for the cattle, getting into the ditch, would have a fine frolic in tossing the sods out of the place with their horns and so destroying the fence.
One of the serious problems with the farmers was to get their products to market. In the spring of 1841 John Jackson built two flat-boats and loaded them with ear-corn and bacon, for the purpose of coasting along the Mississippi and selling to the planters and negroes. As was customary, they were floated with the current. They had long sweeps or oars to guide them and keep them off the snags. To build them two large trees would be found (generally hack-
101
RADNOR TOWNSHIP
berry), which were hewn flat for the sides, and planks spiked on the bottom, the ends sloped like a scow. The roof, or deck, was made of boards sawed thin enough to bend across the boat, and thus make an arched roof. The crews of these famous boats were John Jackson, Elisha Barker, John Peet, Warren Hale, Wil- liam Harlan and Napoleon Dunlap. The two latter went as far as Natchez, but, concluding they had had enough of the life of boatmen, they begged off and re- turned by steamer, working their way by helping to take on wood at the wood-yards along the way.
The first election in Radnor was held at the house of Alva Dunlap in 1842. It was then Benton Precinct, composed of Radnor and Kickapoo Townships. An elec- tion had previously been held in the woods in Kicka- poo, north of where the village now is. At this elec- tion in Radnor, Smith Dunlap, father of the writer, was elected Justice of the Peace, and continued to serve in that capacity until the adoption of township organization. The first annual town meeting of the Town of Benton (afterward named Radnor) was held at the residence of Jonathan Brassfield. Alva Dunlap was chosen Moderator and Nathaniel T. A. Shaw, Clerk; Jonathan Brassfield was elected Supervisor ; Nathaniel T. A. Shaw, Town Clerk; Lewis Harlan, As- sessor ; Jonathan Brassfield, Griffith Dickinson and William Wilkinson, Commissioners of Highways; Phin- eas R. Wilkinson, Collector; Lorennes Shaw, Overseer of the Poor; George B. Harlan and Smith Dunlap, Justices of the Peace; John M. Hendricks and Phineas R. Wilkinson, Constables. Fifteen dollars were ap- propriated for contingent expenses and fifty dollars for road purposes.
102
TOWNSHIP HISTORIES
The only Post Office in the township before the building of the Rock Island and Peoria Railroad, was kept by Enoch Huggins on Section 35. The mail was carried from Peoria three times a week. This office did not continue long. There was a mail-route from Peoria by way of LaFayette, through Medina and Akron. but most of the people received their mail at Peoria until the building of the railroad. In the first settle- ment of the country the wagon-road took a straight course from Mt. Hawley to Princeville; but, as the prairie became settled, every one would turn the tra- vel around his own land, but was anxious to have it go straight through his neighbor's. An attempt was once made to open up a State Road from Peoria to Rock Island, but the opposition to its going diagonally through the farms was so great it had to be given up.
Mary J. Peet, who was burned to death on the prairie, was the first person to die in the township, and Henry Martin the next, on November 10, 1836. John Harlan was the first child born, October, 1836, and died February 1, 1847.
The first school was taught in the summer of 1840, by Miss E. R. Dunlap, in a little frame house built on the northwest quarter of Section 13 in 1837 by a man who committed suicide, and it was never oc- cupied except for schools or other public purposes. Horace Bushnell taught a singing school in it the same summer. The next summer Miss Dunlap taught in another vacant log house on the northwest quarter of Section 13. The first attempt to organize the school system was in December, 1841. Charles Ket- telle, School Commissioner, then surveyed and laid off the School Section (16) into forty-acre lots, and had them appraised and offered for sale. Cyrus W.
1
r
103
RADNOR TOWNSHIP
Pratt bid off three of these lots for $170. He made no payments, but gave a mortgage for the price with interest at twelve per cent. After making two or three payments of interest he failed to make any more and the land reverted. About the same time trustees were appointed and Peter Auten was made the first School Treasurer. At their first meeting, April 4, 1842, they laid off the town into six districts and re- solved that, inasmuch as the money in the treasury was depreciated paper of the State bank, and believ- ing that it would recover its former value, the Treas- urer should loan the same at par with interest at twelve per cent-conditioned that money of the same bank might be received in payment of the loans.
The same winter, or in the early spring, a log school house was built on Section 15, in which Anna McKnight and Sarah D. Sanford taught, and William Gifford in the winter of 1843. The school house was then moved to Section 22, on the wood-lot now owned by George B. Taylor. This was as near the center of the town as the condition of the ground would per- mit. Within a radius of two miles there were ten or twelve large families. They were in the woods or near the edge of the timber. Their cultivated fields were along the Kickapoo bottoms or near the edge of the prairies-the object at that time being to get where they would be sure of having timber. There was much strife in locating the school houses, and they were frequently moved to get them to the most central point. In 1842 there were three school houses built ; the one just mentioned, a small frame on Section 2, and a log one on the northeast quarter of Section 1. The first teacher in the last named was Catharine J. Jamison, who began on May 10, 1842, her school con-
-
104
TOWNSHIP HISTORIES
sisting of seven Blakesleys, five Wakefields, four Cha- pins, three .Van Camps, two Gordons, two Rogerses, one each of Hall, Gilkinson, Hatfield and Slaughter. The Directors who signed her certificate were Parley E. Blakesley and Joseph Chapin. The next term was taught by Deborah I. Woodbury, the same year. In 1843 a man by the name of Elisha Barker taught in a log school house on Section 22, built in 1842. In the winter of 1843-44 William Gifford taught in the same house.
Early in the spring of 1842 a small frame school house was built on the southeast quarter of Section 2 by voluntary labor, of lumber sawed at the mill of Robert Bette's and William Bruzee on the creek in Section 23, a dry place now for a saw-mill. Miss Mar- garet Artman taught there in 1842, her patrons being Ira Smith, J. J. Hitchcock, Anson Bushnell and his sons Alvan and Horace, Samuel and William Secly, William Moore, O. L. Nelson, Ira Hitchcock and Goodell.
At the January (1843) meeting of the Board of Trustees, schedules of the following teachers were approved and the Treasurer ordered to pay them their respective shares of the interest arising from the School, College and Seminary Fund, viz .: District No. 1, Margaret Artman; District No. 2, Catharine J. Jamison and Deborah L. Woodbury; No. 3, Anna Mc- Knight, Sarah D. Sanford and William Gifford, Jr. William Gifford received for three months, $40; Deb- orah L. Woodbury, for two months, $10.50; Catharine J. Jamison, for two months, $10; E. B. Dunlap, for three months, $24. The custom was to "board around."
105
RADNOR TOWNSHIP
The office of Trustee having now become elective, Griffith Dickinson, Horace Bushnell, Joseph Chapin, Jonathan Brassfield and Nelson Bristol were the first to be elected, Trustees before then having been ap- pointed.
A new valuation of the lands was made in 1845, when all the lots except four were valued at $1.25 per acre, two of the others at $1.50, and one each at $1.75 and $2.00. Between that time and May 22, 1847, they were sold at various prices, realizing, in the aggregate, $1,471.10.
No sooner was the free-school law in operation than the Trustees began to act under it. On April 26, 1855, they ordered the Treasurer to levy a tax of ten cents on the hundred dollars for general school pur- poses, and five cents for paying teachers and extending terms of school. The valuation of real estate for 1854 was $141,430, and of personal property $54,592; total, $196,022. This was the first attempt to sustain free schools by taxation.
The Village of Dunlap was laid out on June 12, 1871, on Section 11, by Alva Dunlap. Dr. John Gil- lette erected the first building in 1871. It stands op- posite the railroad depot, and is now owned by B. C. Dunlap. It is a thriving village of three hundred in- habitants and is situated on the Rock Island & Peoria Railroad. It has six stores, two grain elevators, three churches and an Odd Fellows' Hall, and a graded pub- lic school building, erected in 1899 at a cost of $4.000. District No. 4, in which it is situated, has one hundred children of school age, of whom over eighty were in attendance in 1899.
The history of Prospect Presbyterian Church, now located at Dunlap, furnished one of the marked fea-
106
TOWNSHIP HISTORIES
tures, not only of Radnor Township, but of Peoria County. In the year 1848 and 1849, a number of fami- lies from the Pan-Ilandle section of what is now the State of West Virginia, settled in the townships of Akron and Radnor, and at first connected themselves with the church at Princeville; but, owing to the dis- tance of four to nine miles, and the fact that others were following them from their old home in the East, they decided to ask the Presbytery for a separate or- ganization, which request was granted. Rev. Addison Coffee of Peoria, Rev. Robert Breese of Princeville, and Elder Henry Schnebley of Peoria, as a committee of Presbytery, met the congregation on June 8, 1850, in the school house, where they had been accustomed to worship, when the new church was organized with fifteen members, namely: From the Princeville Church, Joseph Yates, Sr., and Mary his wife, John Yates, Sr., and Eleanor his wife, Samuel Keady and Eleanor his wife, Thomas Yates and Mary his wife, John Hervey and Sarah his wife, and Mrs. Margaretta Yates; from the Church of West Alexandria, Pennsyl- vania, David G. Hervey and Jane his wife; and from the Church of West Liberty, Virginia, Adam Yates and Sarah his wife. Their first house of worship was a frame building, 36x48 feet, costing $1,400, erected on a lot containing about seven acres donated by Adam Yates, was dedicated in June, 1854. When the Rock Island & Peoria Railroad was built, and the village of Dunlap was laid out one mile south of the location of the church, the meeting place was removed to the village and a new church edifice erected at a cost of $5,100. The lots on which the church stands are 150 feet square. The old church was torn down and the land on which it stood added to the church
107
RADNOR TOWNSHIP
cemetery and the same is now known as Prospect Cem- etery. In 1867 a parsonage was purchased at a cost of $3,000; but in 1878 it was sold and a new parson- age erected at a cost of $1,700 on lots 100x150 feet adjacent to the village, donated by David G. Hervey. The following are the names and dates of pastorates of those who have served the congregation: Rev. David Hervey (stated supply), 1850-51; Rev. John Turbitt, 1853-55; Rev. Thomas F. Smith (stated sup- ply), 1856-57; Rev. George Cairns, 1858-63; Rev. J. A. E. Simpson (stated supply), 1864-66; Rev. A. S. Gard- ner, 1866-71; Rev. John Winn, 1872-77; Rev. Silas Cooke, 1877-90; Rev. H. V. D. Nevius, D. D. (supply), 1891-92; Rev. Harry Smith, 1893-96; Rev. R. C. Town- send,. 1896 to the present time (1902).
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.