Village on the county line ; a history of Hinsdale, Illinois, Part 2

Author: Dugan, Hugh G
Publication date: 1949
Publisher: (n.p.) : Priv. print
Number of Pages: 234


USA > Illinois > DuPage County > Hinsdale > Village on the county line ; a history of Hinsdale, Illinois > Part 2


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).


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The principal village of the Illinois was situated on a large flat tract of land on the north bank of the Illinois River just east of the present town of Utica. It was there Marquette visited and preached among them. It was also there that La Salle arrived in the autumn of 1680 and found the village deserted, the tribe being far away on its annual hunt. This village too was the objective of various parties of maurauding Iroquois from what is now New York state, one of which Tonti, La Salle's faithful lieutenant, and his small party of French attempted in vain to divert, a year or so later.


It was undoubtedly the Iroquois who eventually reduced the Illi- nois to a minor position in the region. They made numerous forays against the Illinois, the Fox, and the Winnebagoes, sometimes in the middle of winter, and their audacity and cunning were always the prelude to torture and inhumanities of various sorts, a kind of war- fare with which the comparatively peaceful tribes of the Midwest were unable to contend. This wearing down of the Illinois did not come suddenly. It took a long time. After Pontiac's war of 1764 came to a close, the remnants of the Illinois tribe were practically extermi- nated by enemy tribes here in the west, on Starved Rock, near Ottawa, and following this episode a few scattered members of the tribe were seen living on the western side of the Mississippi. Thus one of the best of the native groups, intellectually, gave way to superior physical force.


After the Illinois, the Miami temporarily became influential in the Chicago region. The Miami were originally an Algonkian tribe from farther East. They had led the fight against northwestward expansion of the white people following the American Revolution, defeating our Generals Harmar and St. Clair. But they finally gave up the fight after they were badly beaten by Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers, in northwestern Ohio in 1794.


From then on, the Pottawattamie predominated around the foot of Lake Michigan, with the Ottawas and Chippewas as their con-


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LAND, STREAM AND NATIVE


federates. Eventually, by treaty, most of these Chicago area natives were removed beyond the Mississippi, in 1835, and the Indian influ- ence in this neighborhood had vanished.


As far as the vicinity of Hinsdale is concerned, we know little of the part it played in the lives of the Indians. An archeological map of Chicago and vicinity drawn by Mr. Albert F. Scharf forty-nine years ago for the Chicago Historical Society indicates an Indian signal sta- tion on a hill in Proviso Township, in Cook County, a little east of York Road, and 31/2 miles north of Fullersburg. He also shows three Indian camps, one Indian village, a flint chipping station, and a small mound along the banks of Salt Creek. These points are indicated as lying north of the bend in the creek, except for one village located on the north side of Ogden, east of York Road. (See map in front of book.) The evidence on which Mr. Scharf based his conclusions con- cerning the location of these Indian sites is not revealed, but there is no reason for questioning the authenticity of his chart. The Indians were nomads, and their villages were not permanent. It is well estab- lished that the last one in this neighborhood was on ground that is within, or near, the St. Francis Retreat, or Mays Lake property. It was there during the years 1835-40. Also during that same period, a few wigwams and huts were located in the area north of Salt Creek, on both sides of York Road.


Indian relics of the neighborhood have been found mostly in the Salt Creek areas. Arrow heads and other flint implements continue to be uncovered in the vicinity of the creek.


Ogden Avenue and Plainfield Road are believed to have been well worn trails before white people arrived here, so perhaps the na- tives of many tribes passed by the site of Hinsdale. Local tradition im- plies the existence of one or two former Indian trails traversing the Fullersburg and Salt Creek area. The "Black Hawk trail" referred to by old-time residents of Fullersburg, and which formerly could be traced over the hill from which Brush Hill got its name, probably was a part of the old southwest trail. When the trail was developed into a road it was made to go around the hill instead of over it. Indians, however, preferred to mount hills in their travels, in order to obtain a view of the surroundings. They were ever alert and on guard. Mr. T. E. Clark old-time resident of Fullersburg said: "The old Indian trail to the Mississippi River was right in front of my house


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and ran directly across the Mays Lake property. . About the year 1860 some of the Indians from the west used to come on their ponies to visit the graves of their forefathers along the Desplaines River. Old settlers told me of seeing them occasionally."


Very likely, one or more of the secondary roads of the Salt Creek area was formerly an Indian path, and one of these could have been Spring Road. According to County records, Spring Road was one of the first in this area to be surveyed, and early roads often followed Indian trails. The natives could have needed that route along the creek, the same as the pioneer farmers needed it, as a way of travel between the hinterlands and the main East-West trail. Flowing springs are found along Spring Road, and this further is suggestive of an Indian path.


A pleasant, though rigorous, healthful climate; a rich soil; both flat and rolling ground; forest and prairie; and an altogether favorable location for enjoyable living, the pursuit of industrial progress, and of happiness; that was the setting for Hinsdale's origin, growth, and pros- perity. Only a brief three hundred years ago, amid the heavy quiet that must have enshrouded this rolling countryside, broken only by the raucus call of a crow or the eerie whine of a cougar, this setting was in its primeval state. Eventually the paddle of a white man's canoe made little whirlpools in the still, autumn waters of the Desplaines, and this region began to stir from its long slumber.


CHAPTER II


White Pioneers


OUIS JOLIET and Father Jacques Marquette, after exploring the Mississippi, returned north by way of the Illinois River. At the large village of the Illinois Indians, mentioned previously, the natives told them of a short route by which they could return to Lake Mich- igan. This was in the month of September, 1673.


After paddling up the Illinois to the Desplaines, they ascended the latter stream, traversing the southeast corner of this township, to the mouth of a small creek emptying into the Desplaines at a point about midway between the present towns of Riverside and Summit. Pad- dling eastward up this creek a distance of two miles, they found them- selves on a muddy lake. Pushing on, they crossed the lake to its eastern end, from where the party carried its canoes one and a half miles over a stretch of prairie to another stream, which is now known as the west fork of the south branch of the Chicago River.


The lay of the land which made this portage possible is most unusual and has proved of far-reaching significance to Chicago and to all of its suburbs. For it is there that a slight ridge, the old Tolleston Beach, one of the shore-lines of the ancient Lake Michigan, forms a low continental divide, which was the shortest land barrier to a com- plete water route from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, with all the water courses and their tributaries in between. On one side of this ridge, rainfall flowed to the east; on the other to the west. At times, following the summer rains or the spring freshets, the water levels on both sides of the ridge would meet, enabling the crossing to be made entirely by canoe or batteau. In the drier seasons a portage was required, but at all times, until the railroads came, this was the most direct route between Canada and the Mississippi Valley.


It was largely the importance attached to this avenue of commerce that led the United States Government to build Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the Chicago River in 1804. For many centuries the portage had been used by the natives in their travels and migrations. For over a hundred years it was crossed by Indians and whites in the fur trade, by both individual traders and representatives of large fur


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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE


companies. During and after this time, the agriculturists made use of the route. After the middle of the nineteenth century, better and more direct forms of transportation outmoded the old portage, but its place in history is legibly inscribed as the channel through which Chicago's commerce first began to flow.


Had it not been for this shorter portage, the large center of popu- lation known as Chicago probably would have begun its growth near the longer portage between the St. Joseph and Kankakee Rivers, pos- sibly at Michigan City, and Chicago now would be just another of the small cities along the lake shore, with no suburbs of consequence. Forts Miami and St. Joseph on the St. Joseph River in Michigan, and Fort Dearborn at the mouth of the Chicago River, were all built to guard portages. The portage has been called the "efficient" cause of Chicago.


A part of Portage Creek, which connects the Desplaines with Mud Lake and the portage, is still in its natural state, although in recent years the surface of the land on both sides of it has been altered con- siderably by bull-dozer and power shovel. A section of the creek that is still in its primeval condition can easily be seen by driving east on 47th Street to Harlem Avenue. Turn south on Harlem. A little south of the Santa Fe viaduct, on the west side of the road, there is an en- trance to a small forest preserve. Within this entrance a broad lawn leads south about two hundred yards to Portage Creek. The trees along its banks have never been cut, and probably it now looks much the same as it did to Marquette and Joliet 275 years ago.


In 1920-23 Robert Knight and Lucius H. Zench, for the Chicago Historical Society, made a painstaking investigation of the chronicles and maps of various explorers and surveyors, from Marquette on down through the 19th century, in order to locate the exact route of the portage, and various points of historical interest in the vicinity. Their findings were presented in a paper read before the Society in 1923, and are now available in a book entitled The Location of the Chicago Portage Route of the Seventeenth Century.


If any spot in "Chicagoland" can be called the first "community," probably it is Lyons; or at any rate Lyons was born simultaneously with Chicago. For Lyons was situated at "le portage," mentioned in


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early French writings, not as a town or hamlet, but as a way-station, a meeting place, where roads converged. Here was the western end of the portage, and here also the main trails from the southwest came to- gether, continuing on eastward into another well-traveled way to Lake Michigan, known in later pioneer days as the Barry Point Road, running diagonally from Lyons to Fort Dearborn, and now corre- sponding roughly with Ogden Avenue in Chicago. It was at Lyons that taverns and trading posts were later built. Indian chiefs gathered here for their "pow-wows," among themselves and with the traders. We can imagine that this also was a way-station, where travelers met; an exchange point for news from distant places, such as political and military news, and news about the prices of pelts, trapping grounds, and the prevalence of game.


At Lyons a British military force encamped during the American Revolution. In 1779 Charles de Verville, a French Canadian in the English service, recruited a company of whites and Indians at Mackinac for the purpose of harrying the American settlement at Peoria. He camped at Lyons on the way down and possibly on his return.


Origin of the name Lyons is unrecorded. The romantically in- clined might like to connect it with the city in France of the same name, but the early French always referred to the place as "le por- tage." The Chicago Tribune of February 12, 1900 has this to say of the community after white settlement of this area had begun:


"Lyons is the oldest suburb west of Chicago, so old in fact that all its first settlers have long passed to their reward, and with them has gone memory of the identity of the sponsor of the place, if it ever had one. Lyons it was in 1830 when the old Buckhorn Tavern was a noted hostelry on the stage road from Fort Dearborn to Joliet, and Lyons it has persisted in being through all the vicissitudes of time and expansion."


"David and Bernardus Laughton are known to have settled on the site in 1827 or 1828. Elijah Wentworth, who was Chicago's first letter carrier, bringing the mails from Fort Wayne before there was any post office in Chicago, went to Lyons in 1830 and kept, if he did not build, the Buckhorn Tavern."


This tavern was on the Plainfield Road, southeast of Hinsdale. David Laughton had a trading post on the east bank of the Desplaines a little south of the Chicago-Joliet highway bridge, and according to S. S. Fuller, historian of Riverside, his brother, Bernardus, operated


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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE


an inn on the same side of the river within the present boundaries of Riverside. There is some doubt concerning the exact location of these buildings, excepting David Laughton's trading post. A depression in the ground still remains as evidence of its excavation, in the forest preserve south of Lyons. As far as we know, these were the first, and the nearest, buildings to be erected by white men within the vicinity of Hinsdale.


Aside from Lyons, the towns in Cook County, before Du Page was set apart, were Chicago, Naperville, Desplaines, Brush Hill, Warren- ville, Keepataw, and Thornton, according to an early map. The area now known as Du Page County is said to have passed through a series of political alignments; to have been a part, in turn, of St. Clair, Madi- son, Crawford, Clark, Pike, Fulton, Peoria, and Cook Counties, before those counties were reduced in size.


Furthermore, Du Page County and Hinsdale came very close to lying within the state of Wisconsin, instead of Illinois. When Wiscon- sin was formed in 1805 its southern boundary passed westward from the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Organization of the state of Illinois in 1818 brought this boundary line into legal dispute, which finally resulted in its movement farther north. The case of the state of Illinois was based on the circumstance of Chicago serving as a juncture of waterways; the Great Lakes to the north and east, and the Desplaines and Illinois Rivers to the south, and with a new canal in this direction in contemplation. This incident is further reflection of the significance of the old Portage, and of Chicago's importance as a center of trans- portation.


The year 1830 is not so very long ago, and yet it was only then that the land of this area began to be used for farming. Prior to 1830 north- ern Illinois was engaged solely in the fur trade. It was a hunting and trapping ground, with some lead mining done on the side, around Galena, in the northwest corner of the state. The fur trade, from its beginning to its end, was big business. During the period of French occupation it was administered from Quebec, through a system of highly prized outposts, privileges, and concessions, among the most de- sired sources of supply and markets. These were a frequent cause of dispute and intrigue between the Jesuits of France and her empire builders.


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WHITE PIONEERS


When the British influence spread westward, starting about 1760, the Hudson Bay Company, the Northwest Fur Company and the Mackinac Fur Company, all English controlled, for a brief span of years took many pelts from our neighboring woods and ravines. Then came John Jacob Astor with his American Fur Company. Astor was instrumental in obtaining the passage of an act through Congress which prohibited foreigners from engaging in the fur trade within the United States, and this gave him a virtual monopoly. It is no figment of the imagination to say that many a beaver, otter, and bear, trapped along Salt and Flagg Creeks went toward the purchase of Astor real estate in New York City. The transition from furs to farming was not an abrupt one. Gurdon Hubbard, the well remembered pioneer trader and Chicago business man, was hauling pelts to his warehouse on the Chicago River when Du Page became a county in 1839, and for several years thereafter.


Here, as in other parts of America, exploration and trade preceded settlement. The early French crossed the southeast corner of Du Page County many times in their journeys to and from the Chicago Portage, as did hundreds and thousands of traders who followed them, through the Portage, and over the early trails now known as Ogden Avenue, the Plainfield Road, and the old Joliet Road. Even La Salle, in his notes, mentions a few traders and voyageurs he met in the Illinois country who had preceded him to this region, men who passed through, perhaps many times but left no record of their journeys.


Among these adventurous commercial travelers, but a man who came long after La Salle, was one Du Pazhe now spelled and pro- nounced "Du Page," a trapper and trader who set up his establishment at the forks of the two branches of the river that bears his name, a few miles south of Naperville, just over the present Will County line. We know little of Du Page other than the facts of his having been here, and of the county having been named for the river near which he settled. He is said to have been an agent of the American Fur Company, giving cutlery, gunpowder, trinkets, and cloth to the natives in trade for bear, deer, beaver, and other pelts which were carried to Mackinac or St. Louis for European destinations. Du Page's post, in 1800 consisted of a number of buildings surrounded by a stockade, around which gath-


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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE


ered the Kickapoo, the Pottawattamie, and the Fox, ready to make their trades. Du Page, as most of the traders, was influential with the Indians and they did not resent his presence.


With the homesteader, the agricultural settler, it was a different story. Thirty years were to pass before the first venturesome farmers began to erect their cabins along the Du Page, the Desplaines, and on Salt and Flagg Creeks. A massacre occurred at Fort Dearborn in 1812 and the Indians remained hostile toward permanent settlers. A hand- ful of prisoners who had survived the Fort Dearborn fight had been brought out to Indian villages along the Fox. English and French trappers, the "Sauganash," and the Couriers du bois, were still free to come and go, as they always had been, but the homesteader was not wanted, and he was slow to arrive. Around Fort Dearborn a hamlet began taking shape, and mention has been made of the accommoda- tions for travelers at Lyons and along the trail to Ottawa. West of Lyons and throughout what is now Du Page County, there was no inhabitant of whom there is a record until the year 1829.


In that year Bailey Hobson, looking for a new home, came to the Du Page River district from North Carolina, on horse-back. He chose a plot of land along the southern reaches of the Du Page River, and a year or two later brought his family there. In 1831 Joseph Naper came from Ohio by boat through the Great Lakes. Where the city now bear- ing his name has grown, he built a cabin and a trading house. His brother John followed soon after. Hawley, Blodgett, King, Strong, Murray, Butterfield, Stewart, Landon, Sweet, Rogers, and Paine are among the names of those who arrived in this neighborhood within weeks or months after Bailey Hobson, and who formed the first com- munity of settlers within the present boundaries of Du Page County. This was known as Naper's settlement, but it was a part of the County of Cook, and it soon fell within the political designation of "Scott's General Precinct, Flagg Creek District, Cook County, Illinois." *


Mrs. John H. Kinzie, wife of the well known trader of early Chi- cago, in her book Wau-Bun, meaning "the early day," has left a picture of this countryside as it was in the winter of 1830. She and a small party were just completing a journey from Detroit through the lakes to


* Some local historians, and the pioneer map in the front of the book, indicate Lisle as being the "oldest town" in Du Page County. This is because most of the first arrivals built their cabins within what is now Lisle Township. In the early 1830's, however, that area was con- sidered as being a part of Naper's settlement.


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WHITE PIONEERS


Wisconsin; down the Fox River to a point south of Aurora, and from there across country to Chicago by horse-back. Here, let Mrs. Kinzie tell of this last lap of her trip:


"A long reach of prairie extended from Piche's to the Du Page, between two forks of which, Mr. Dogherty, our new acquaintance, told us we should find the dwelling of a Mr. Hawley, who would give us a comfortable dinner.


"The weather was intensely cold; the wind, sweeping over the wide prairie, with nothing to break its force chilled our very hearts. I beat my feet against the saddle to restore the circulation when they became benumbed with the cold -. Not a house nor a wigwam, not even a clump of trees as a shelter, offered itself for many a weary mile. At length we reached the west fork of the Du Page. It was frozen, but not sufficiently to bear the horses. Our only recourse was to cut a way for them through the ice. (The Du Page ordinarily is a shallow stream but its depth varies considerably.) It was a work of time, for the ice had frozen to several inches thickness during the last bitter night. Plante went first with an ax, and cut as far as he could reach, then mounted one of * the hardy little ponies, and with some difficulty broke the ice before him until he had opened a passage to the opposite shore.


"How the poor animals shivered as they were reined in among the floating ice! And we, who sat waiting in the piercing wind were not much better off. Probably Brunet was of the same opinion: for with his usual perversity he plunged in immediately after Plante, and stood shaking and quaking behind him, every now and then looking around him as much as to say, 'I've got ahead of you this time.' We were all across at last, and spurred on our horses, until we reached Hawleys, a large commodious dwelling, near the east fork of the river.


"The good woman welcomed us kindly, and soon made us warm and com- fortable. We felt as if we were in a civilized land once more. She proceeded immediately to prepare dinner for us; and we watched her with eager eyes, as she took down a huge ham from the rafters, out of which she cut innumerable slices, then broke a dozen or more of fine fresh eggs into a pan, in readiness for frying-then mixed a johnnie cake, and placed it against a board in front of the fire to bake. It seemed to me that even with the aid of this fine bright fire, the dinner took an unconscionable time to cook; but cooked it was, at last, and truly might the good woman stare at the travellers' appetites we had brought with us. She did not know what short commons we had been on for the last two days.


"We found, upon inquiry, that we could, by pushing on, reach Lawton's place on the Aux Plaines (Desplaines) that night. We should then be within twelve miles of Chicago. Of course we made no unnecessary delay, but set off as soon after dinner as possible.


"It was almost dark when we reached Lawton's. The Aux Plaines was frozen, and the house was on the other side. By loud shouting we brought out a man from the building, and he succeeded in cutting the ice, and bringing a canoe over to us; but not until it had become difficult to distinguish objects in the darkness.


"A very comfortable house was Lawton's, after we did reach it-carpeted, and with a warm stove-in fact, quite in civilized style. Mr. Weeks, the man


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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE


who brought us across, was the major-domo, during the temporary absence of Mr. Lawton.


"Mrs. Lawton was a young woman, and not ill-looking. She complained bitterly of the lowliness of her condition, and having been 'brought out there into the woods; which was a thing she had not expected when she came from the east.' We did not ask her with what expectations she had come to a wild unsettled country; but we tried to comfort her with the assurance that things would grow better in a few years.


"We could hardly realize, on rising the following morning, that only twelve miles of prairie intervened between us and Chicago le Desire, as I could not but name it."


The house in which the party stopped for dinner was the home of Pierce Hawley, one of the earliest arrivals in this area. It must have been located near the east branch of the Du Page River, on the west bank, and roughly east by north of Oswego. "Lawton's" place, on the Desplaines, where the party spent the night, was the tavern of Bern- ardus Laughton, trader and innkeeper, who, with his brother David, was mentioned previously. They had formerly conducted a trading post at Hardscrabble, the pioneer name of a district near the forks of the south branch of the Chicago River. It is probable that the furnish- ings of the establishment in which the Kinzie party spent the night, including "carpets and a warm stove" were unusual for the frontier of that period.




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