USA > Illinois > DuPage County > Hinsdale > Village on the county line ; a history of Hinsdale, Illinois > Part 5
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Steamboats were introduced on the Great Lakes and the navigable rivers in the 1830's, but aside from these natural water courses Chicago had poor transportation in all directions. The first major attempt toward the betterment of transportation facilities was the Illinois- Michigan Canal. In 1816 a treaty between the United States and the Indians had ceded a strip of land twenty miles wide, running diago- nally from the southern end of Lake Michigan to the Illinois River. This tract was set out for the purpose of digging a canal to connect the lake with the river, thus improving upon the natural Chicago portage. The canal was begun in 1835, completed in 1848, and served until 1910, during which time it had a useful and romantic existence, carry- ing a great deal of traffic from the south branch of the Chicago River to the Illinois River at LaSalle.
During those years, the call of the canal-boatman to his mules, and the crack of his long whip were familiar sounds in Willow Springs, Summit, and Lemont. Business reached its peak in 1865, when 275 barges were in operation. Several travelers of the period, some of them
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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE
Chicago Historical Society Photo
Scene along the Illinois-Michigan Canal in the 1880's.
Travelers of the period have left written accounts of their trips along this waterway.
from distant lands, have left written accounts of their trips on this water-way.
The dry bed of the canal is still there, also the tow-paths, and some of the locks along the way. The canal company's office building still can be seen at Lockport. As far back as 1673 Louis Joliet had envisioned this canal, cutting across the portage, and some of the great-grandparents of present-day Hinsdaleans helped to make it pos- sible by investing in the company's shares. Although the State Legis- lature attempted to protect those investments by prohibiting the early, paralleling railroads from carrying goods at rates lower than those charged by the canal boats, the canal was doomed to a slow demise. The rails, and another canal; the present Sanitary & Ship Canal, dug and maintained by the Government, put it out of business.
The growth of farms in number and productivity, and the growth of centers of population, was accompanied by further extension of roads for wagons and coaches, and a rapid increase in the number of those vehicles. This, in turn, called for taverns and hotels. One of the most colorful phases of life in early Chicagoland, and one which
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SETTLEMENT UNDER WAY
touched the immediate neighborhood of Hinsdale, was the era of the stage coach. Hinsdale is situated between two of the best traveled routes over which those cumbersome vehicles lurched from Chicago to Galena and to Ottawa.
Prior to 1831 the old southwest highways, Ogden and Plainfield Roads were in their "natural" state, having been beaten down through the centuries by the passage of Indian and trapper. For travel by foot, they probably presented an agreeable surface, but the coming of wheeled vehicles brought ruts and mud holes.
At a meeting of the first court of the newly organized Cook County, in 1830, a resolution was adopted for improving the road leading from Chicago to Plainfield, and of Ogden Avenue as far west as the Des- plaines River. These are the first recorded instances of road improve- ment in this region, but the work consisted mostly of straightening and widening, without much betterment of the surface. During all the years before the Civil War, the highways of this district were rough, muddy, and dusty, and often treacherous, especially at those points where inadequate bridges were thrown across the streams. Little skill went into their construction and they were quite unsafe, especially at night.
The first stage coach line from Chicago to the southwest is said to have been opened by Dr. John L. Temple. In 1834 his line ran to St. Louis, using the Plainfield Road for the first leg of the journey. The next line to pass through here, or at any rate the first to advertise a regular service, after 1834, was a line operated by John D. Winters. The following advertisement was inserted by him in the Chicago Morning Democrat, Sept. 11, 1841:
STAGE LINE CHICAGO TO GALENA VIA DIXON'S FERRY FARE THROUGH TO GALENA $5 Leaves Chicago Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday at 4 O'clock A.M. via Brush Hill, Downers Grove Naperville and Aurora .-
Mr. Winter's line had only a brief tenure, because it was soon super- seded by the line of Frink and Bingham, later known as Frink and
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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE
Walker. This firm operated stages over both of the southwest highways and within a few years had obtained Government contracts for carrying the mails throughout several of the mid-western states. The company was highly regarded for its service under the trying conditions then existing on the frontier highways. According to its advertisements, $12 became the charge between Chicago and Galena.
Judging from everything we read about the roads of those days, and traveling accommodations in general, the chief impression to be gained is how bad they were. These included crowded coaches, deep depressions in the roads filled with mud, highwaymen, delays, dirty taverns, poor food, and long periods of waiting between connections.
Milo Quaife in his Chicago Highways, Old and New makes these observations concerning early travel by stage: "The traveler who em- barked upon an extended journey by stage committed himself to a venture whose outcome no man could foresee." In the taverns there was little privacy, the beds were likely to have been slept in by various guests and without a change of sheets, before the traveller arrived. Flies and insects shared the accommodations. "If a generalization may be attempted," says Mr. Quaife, "it would be that the food served in pioneer taverns was abundant as to quantity; commonly, however, there was little variety in the menu, and both quality and manner of service left much to be desired. Charles Cleaver, a prominent citizen of Chicago, who came West in 1833, records that the staple bill of fare of the typical tavern was bread, butter, potatoes, and fried pork, but variations, both seasonable and otherwise were occasionally en- countered." The traveler who could spend the night at a private home was fortunate, even though the home were only a cabin. All the early taverns were not uncomfortable, of course. Then, as now, each place was operated according to the attitude and ideas of its proprietor. But the general run of stopping places on the stage routes were below par, even for those times when modern conveniences were unknown.
Taverns of those days, in this neighborhood, were the Laughton's, previously mentioned, the Buckhorn and Vial establishments on the Plainfield Road, Castle Inn and the Grand Pacific at Brush Hill, the Tremont operated by Thomas Andrews in Downers Grove, Mark Beaubien's Toll Gate Inn, a few miles east of Naperville, the Pre- emption House in Naperville, Grave's Tavern in Lisle Township, and Mong's Tavern in Elmhurst.
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"Engineers," continues Mr. Quaife, "were scarce in the western country, and the early bridges were rude structures, oftentimes of wonderful architecture. Some were known as 'shaking bridges,' others as 'floating bridges.' One of the latter type spanned the Desplaines on the Chicago-Elgin road in the early forties. It was composed of planks, laid down on stringers which floated in the water." When wagons passed over this bridge it sank beneath the surface and rested on the bottom of the river, there preventing the wagon wheels from sinking into the soft bed of the stream. But the planks often came loose and floated away, increasing the difficulties for the next team of horses, or oxen.
In 1857 a piece of nostalgic fiction appeared in the Chicago Maga- zine, which has long since discontinued publication, describing an easterner's journey by stage from Chicago to Ottawa in the 1840's, and revealing incidentally something of the story writing style of those days: ". .. He left in the night in one of John Frink's stages, on the route toward Ottawa; to say road at that time would be trenching on the veritableness of history. He paid his fare to the good Mr. Stowell, the stage agent, and while he looked into his face and saw his honest good nature standing out, he felt as if the light of Massachusetts had fallen upon him. The old coach had much of a home look about it; it seemed the very same thing, the red body and green stripes, that twice a week came down over the hill, rolling and pitching like a ship on the waves, down by the old homestead (back east) .... Daylight sprang upon him and revealed to him the bright green of the prairies, twenty miles south-west of Chicago . ... "
The carriage and delivery of mail, and express packages, during the stage coach era is a most fascinating subject, one that could make up a book of its own. In the newly settled districts, letters were taken to the main centers along the highways by stage. From there they were carried by men on horseback to the more remote settlements. To obtain these letter carriers the Post Office Department inserted in the newspapers long lists, in fine print, under the heading: PROPOSALS FOR CARRYING THE MAIL, between different points. Persons desiring the work would then put in bids for the various routes that were open.
The transportation of boxes, chests, and packages was accomplished by no established system or service until express companies such as Adams and Wells Fargo came into being. Even then, the sizes and
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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE
weights of the packages carried were closely limited, and many were the hazards and uncertainties of delivery.
Roads were a serious problem in the 1830's and 40's, as attested by the various discussions and complaints on the subject that appear in the Chicago newspapers of the period.
"So far as our experience has extended," says one paper, "we have never seen worse roads than that to Barry's Point and five miles west to Doty's on the Naperville Road. (This was approximately Ogden Avenue as far west as Riverside.) In an enterprising community like ours, such obstacles to commerce and inland trade ought to be re- moved .... If the Commissioners of this county will not do it, let them authorize the city to make the road. But in all events let the road be made." It was the deplorable condition of the city approaches to the southwest highway that accounts for Ogden Avenue, both in and be- yond Chicago, having been the first road to be covered with wooden planks.
The idea of building plank roads came from Canada where many
The TribunePhone
RESTAURANT.
Chicago Historical Society Photo
Bull's Head Tavern was the eastern terminus of the southwestern plank road, which extended to Brush Hill on the west. The building was located at Ogden Avenue and Madison Street in Chicago. Later, it was moved to the corner of Ogden and Harrison, where it stood until 1910.
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SETTLEMENT UNDER WAY
stretches of marsh land had been made passable by this means, and after it was introduced to the United States the idea spread rapidly. The Southwest Plank Road, as it came to be known, extended from Bull's Head Tavern at the corner of Ogden and Madison Street in Chicago, to Brush Hill (Fullersburg) reaching the latter point in 1850. It was a one lane road, eight feet wide, made of planks three inches thick placed crosswise on parallel log stringers which were embedded in the ground.
It naturally followed that this first plank highway, which ended at the Cook County boundary line, would be extended on to the west. So we find that in 1847 Morris Sleight of Naperville was authorized by the "Commissioners Court" of Du Page County to "establish a plank causeway from Naperville to the east and west lines of said county, 20 feet wide to connect with a plank causeway to be built in Cook County, the following schedule of prices to be charged for use of the plank road":
Carriage, cart, or buggy (one horse) . 25¢
Carriage and two horses .
371/2¢
Horse
10¢
Head of cattle
4¢
Hog .
3¢
Sheep
3¢
These fees were collected at toll gates.
The southwest plank road was built and maintained as a private stock enterprise and was such an immediate financial success that five other plank roads were soon under construction leading in as many directions from the city. Good transportation between Chicago and points West, for a few years at least, was assured.
Better roads were a commercial necessity, quite aside from any consideration of the traveler's comfort. Produce from the farms, mines, and timberlands had to be taken to the towns and cities. There was no way of doing this except by wagon, and these vehicles became ex- tremely numerous, especially on the main roads, before 1855. The towns of this neighborhood were not known as "suburbs" in those days. This district was out in the country, and farming was the principal occupation.
A Mr. Hunt of Naperville, who remembered the plank road from there to Chicago wrote, some years ago-
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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE
"Yes, we thought that we had a good thing when we got the plank road. Our town was always crowded with farmers on their way to Chicago. They came from miles around. This was the only good road into the city. The string of teams never ended. It was like the belt of a great pulley, with its sheaves at Chicago and Naperville, the full wagons going up on the right, the empty coming back on the left (the drivers vice versa) . In the busiest seasons the wagons had to keep their places as exactly as a rope. If a kink got in the line anywhere, the whole machine was stopped."
This most celebrated of the plank roads, the "Southwestern," was so called from Chicago to Fullersburg. From there to Naperville it was the "Oswego" plank road. It ended at Naperville and was never ex- tended to Oswego, but extensions were completed to Warrenville and to St. Charles. For about ten years the plank road boosted traffic be- tween Naperville and Chicago. It was just a day's journey between the two places, and Brush Hill was a convenient stopping point, about mid-way.
Deacon Horatio N. Field, an ancestor of the Walter Fields of Hins- dale traveled through Brush Hill on the plank road many times from Galesburg. When Knox College was being built there, wagon owners were asked to go to Chicago for loads of brick for the college buildings. Horatio Field offered his services and "many a trip was made over the plank road with a load of brick to help erect the new college."
A notice in the Chicago Journal February 5, 1850 said: "The whole amount of stock of the Naperville and Oswego Plank Road has been taken." This venture was, for a while so popular, and so many of Naper- ville's leading citizens had stock in the enterprise, that Naperville refused to allow the Chicago and Galena Union Railroad to build through their town. So when the plank roads deteriorated, Naperville was isolated for a time, until the building of the Chicago Burlington and Quincy.
The plank roads did not last, for obvious physical reasons. They wore out, and periodical replacement of the planks was found less economical than the surfacing of the roads by other means. Rock crushers were coming into use. And there was a good deal of talk about a new means of transportation that was meeting with considerable success in South Carolina, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsyl- vania. It was called the "rail road."
CHAPTER V
Brush Hill (Fullersburg)
C LASSICAL POEMS have been written about such commonplace transitory objects as a daisy, or a butterfly; and enduring passages of prose retain for posterity an autumn landscape, or the sound of a running brook. Brush Hill, too, is such an object. Not for its accom- plishments, not for its affluence or grandeur, will it be remembered, but just because it was a picturesque little hamlet with a character so representative of early America. That is reason enough for a place in history.
It was settled by sturdy homesteaders from the east who first built their cabins on prairie and timberland surrounding the site of the village that was to grow there. Then a tavern was built, to lodge the newcomers until they could make up their minds where to stake their claims, and the transients who decided to move on, in hope of finding a more likely spot. After a while the tavern keeper was made Postmaster to handle letters to and from the neighboring settlers. Gradually there was felt the need of a store, a church, a blacksmith, a shoemaker, a doctor, a carpenter, and the town came into being. Yes, there were thousands of Brush Hills throughout the length and breadth of our land.
But there are some features of its history that are unique in this hamlet: for one, various notable persons passed this way even before Chicago was large enough to boast of many such of her own, for the community straddles one of the ancient southwest highways, the origin and beginnings of which go back so far as to be unrecorded. For cen- turies perhaps, this road was traversed by leading Indian chiefs, their squaws, warriors, and couriers, from the first habitation down to 1835 when most of the Indians of the region were removed. There were the chiefs Checagou during the French era, and later such Indian notables as Keokuk, Black Partridge of Fort Dearborn massacre fame; Wanata "the charger," grand chief of all the Sioux; Mahaska, chief of the Ioways; Red Wing, Big Foot, and Black Hawk, principal enemies of our first settlers, and many others who came out of the West to the foot of the big lake.
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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE
Three small armies, and other military detachments, marched past the site on which Brush Hill grew. In 1730 there was De Villiers, with 50 Frenchmen and 500 Indians on their way to battle with the Fox at Maramech, near Plano, 35 miles west of here. During the Revolution, Charles de Verville and his band marched from Lyons to Peoria over the Ogden or the Plainfield Road. The Black Hawk uprising saw several of the locally recruited companies pass and re-pass the site. Winfield Scott and members of his staff drove through. Some say he named the place, but this probably never will be known for sure. The prairie schooners of countless Forty-Niners and others, whose deeds now are inscribed across the histories of the far West, passed here too.
There were statesmen and soldiers who used the road, between Chicago and western points, during both war and peace: Lincoln, dur- ing his residence in Springfield, and before the Illinois Central Rail- road reached there; Stephen Douglas, Zachary Taylor, during his Mid-Western army service, also Albert Sydney Johnston, and Henry Dodge; Ulysses Grant, while he was a resident of Galena, and Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan very likely were among those who passed through on Ogden Avenue at one time or another, before the rails came. So the main road through Fullersburg is a well-worn street over whose dirt, plank, macadam, and concrete, in their turn, have traveled many of the great, the near great, a host of the unknown, and un- doubtedly many a frontier reprobate.
This also was the birthplace of Loie Fuller, a dancer of interna- tional reputation. It was the site of a grist mill which served the farmers over a wide area for many years. And it is now a part of Hinsdale.
We do not know who was the first man to settle on farm land adjacent to the town, or who was the first to occupy a lot on the town site. Elisha Fish could have been the first, or Jesse Atwater, John Tal- madge, Orente Grant, or John Rieder; it makes no great difference, but we do know that these were the first five to settle on or near the site of Brush Hill. Probably the next was Sherman King who moved there from Naperville, and who had been a member of Joe Naper's mounted volunteer company in the Black Hawk War. Soon afterward, the Fullers and the Torodes arrived. Orente Grant very likely was the first to set out a lot and build within the town, because it was he who erected Castle Inn, the first hotel, and this occurred before the town was platted. The others established farms near by, mostly north along Salt
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BRUSH HILL
Photo lent by Mrs. Pearl Dumphy
Jacob, the father of all the Fullers, built his house west of Spring Road, north of Thirty-First Street.
Creek. There probably were no dwellings within the present village boundaries when Castle Inn was built. There were no surveyors around as yet, so these people, and many of those to follow, simply drew the boundary lines of their property between certain designated trees or rocks. Mostly the land was "preempted"; that is, it was settled on with the intention of establishing exact boundaries later. Legally, this was permitted.
Benjamin Fuller, one of those many progressive young men of New York State who was able to anticipate Horace Greeley's well known piece of advice, came West, riding a horse, in the year 1834, seeking a likely spot to make his home. This survey led him to Brush Hill, with which place he was so well pleased that he went home for other mem- bers of his family. He convinced his wife, Olive, his father, Jacob Fuller, his mother, and his five brothers and six sisters, of the attrac- tions of this locality, so they all packed up and moved, sight unseen, but with utmost confidence in Benjamin's judgment. Time has shown their confidence to have been well placed.
Three of the daughters came overland with the family by wagon,
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VILLAGE ON THE COUNTY LINE
the other three girls preferring a steamboat through the lakes. These new boats in those days were popularly known as "propellers," and it took the girls six weeks to reach Chicago from Buffalo by this novel means of travel. Mr. and Mrs. George E. Ruchty, from whom most of these facts have been gathered, do not know how much time was oc- cupied in the overland journey, but most of the pioneer treks by wagon from eastern states took well over a month. After completing the final lap through the swamps west of Chicago, they finally reached high ground in what is now York Township where they settled, in 1835, on land that Jacob purchased from the Government. This land comprised most of the area afterward known as Natoma Farm.
The sons of Jacob and Candace Fuller were Benjamin, Morell, Ruben, Lewis, George, and David. The daughters were Mary, Louise, Tammy, Ann, Harriet, and Katherine. Mary, the third daughter soon became the first school teacher, the first in this vicinity in fact. She went by foot from the house of one pupil to that of the next, always accom- panied by two large dogs, Pedro and Nero, for protection against the wolves that often roamed through the high prairie grass that grew in the fields at that time. Mary married Barto Van Velzer, who came here from New York State. He purchased land that is now the Mays Lake property, helped in laying out the plank road, and became toll-gate keeper at Brush Hill. Barto and Mary had ten children, and their house is still standing where the toll gate spanned the highway, east of Cass Street (York Road). See page 53.
Benjamin Fuller platted the original town, and purchased land on both sides of the main highway. Morell served as drum major in the Civil War, and all of the sons and daughters became good citizens of the growing village. Their numbers increased until many of the people in the town were either a Fuller or a relative, and so it has been through the years.
Following the earliest settlers of the Salt Creek area, there came the Thurstons in 1837, the Coes in '39, Marvin Fox in '50, the Wagners in '55, and John Hemshell in '59. "The folk tales of the 1830's and '40's mention few women, but undoubtedly there were women, who were mostly busy with the family chores .... " All of the Pottawattamie Indians did not leave with the main body of the tribe when it was removed from this region, and some of them lingered on the north bank of the creek, both east and west of York Road, at the time the
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BRUSH HILL
neighborhood was being settled. "They were good and kindly neigh- bors, and the children of the Indians and those of the white people played together. Benjamin Fuller showed the Indians how to shoe their horses." It is said that the Indians, as an expression of their grati- tude, presented his son with a pony. Mrs. Levi Pease, an early arrival, remembered seeing Indians in their canoes on Salt Creek.
The late Mrs. Harvey Brookins, daughter of Morell Fuller, in her notes alludes to this small community of Indians and tells of her father having had Indian playmates as a child. Among the Brookins family antiques are a deer gun, candle mold, spoon mold, and harvesting cradle, brought to Brush Hill by her grandparents when they came West.
The first school house in Brush Hill, according to Mrs. Brookins, was built by Lieutenant King in the early 1850's. The Hinsdale Public Library's historical collection contains several of the original papers pertaining to the building and the administration of this school, among them being minutes of the school director's meetings, cost accounts relating to construction, and a check-sheet which records the attend- ance of each student throughout the year.
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