History of Bureau County, Illinois

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Preface

I HE history of Bureau County, Illinois, after much toil and patient research, is now completed, and it is believed that no object of public importance or interest has been omitted, save where the most diligent efforts failed to secure reliable results.

The chief aim of this book is to give the facts and dates as we found them in the recollections of the few surviving early settlers, the private and public records in the County and State archives, the few private diaries, family Bibles and on the tombstones placed by the hands of affection over the final resting-places of the departed, in their chronological order. The legends and traditions have been carefully gone over, and no small part of the work has been in collating and verifying them, and in every case where fiction had found its way into the web or woof of the story, to retain the true and reject the false.

In some respects the reader may think, especially if he should be a stranger to the pioneers and their descendants, that at times there is a tediousness of detail, or even that some are unimportant, but a generation from now these very details will be the more highly prized the more full and complete they are.

In telling the story of the general county history we have combined and woven together the account as best we could, and in addition to the county's genealogy and chronology will be found that of the people, together with the biographies and lives of the living and the dead, that will some day be an invaluable prize in the hands of the future historian, as well as of interest and profit to the readers of to-day.

We believe the whole will be found clothed in a literary garb, and brightened with reflections, suggestions and philosophical deductions that will make it a store-house for the young and old, where they may find new and valuable ideas, and thus gain knowledge and pleasure that will repay them many times the original outlay for the book.

This work has cost us much labor and a large expenditure of money, and as the territory is but a single county, and, therefore, our patronage can be but limited, yet we have given here more than we promised, and we feel assured that all thoughtful and fair-minded people will recognize and appreciate the work and its permanent value.

There is a perceptibly constant increase in the interest in the history of the pioneers. This, of course, commenced in the original States of the Union, but is extending all over the West. In the New England States it is still far in advance of the Mississippi Valley. It may be true that these are richer historical grounds than the newer States can present, but it is not certain that, therefore, there are not great fields here for the real historian.

PREFACE.

because there is much in the man who writes the history of a people as to whether he finds and suitably points out, and fully works up the actual material that may he within his

possible ^eac^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ followed no beaten track in formulating the story, the subjects treated, or the manner of treatment, and some readers may conclude that to that extent we have marred what we have done, yet we have followed a general plan, and made prominent those special subjects that we have, after long study and reflection, conceived to be for the best in the end, even if not now.

And all we care to say in self defense is, that where the reader may fall upon chance paragraphs that do not meet his cordial approval, that in justice to the writer he withhold his iudsmenta until he can fairly view and estimate the work as a whole— the story in all its lights and shadows. H. C. BRADSBY.

December, 1884.

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER I.— iDtroduction to the Subject Generally— The State's Present Growth— The Anglo-Americana— Cavaliers and Puritans— People Sutfer Only for their Ignorance — Lawmakers Generally Considered— Meddlers in Social Organizations— Climate, Soil, Race, Epoch, and the Pent of the Public Jlind the (ireat Workers of Eyents— History Considers Men's Errors Mostly Because These Predominate — The Measure of People's Morality is the Knowledge They Possess — The Present is Completing the Past and the Past Explaining the Present, etc., etc 13

CHAPTER IL— Why History Interests Us— What is History ?— Laws of Development- The Soil and its Wonders — Importance of Teaching it to All — Needs of Our People — The Coming Public Schools — Learned Ignorance Should Stop Now — Early Illiteracy and Modern Demoralization Compared— Who Are the Real Immortals — True Philosophy and Kindly Thought — Teaching Error a Crime — How to Educate — An Agricultural People Should Have an Agricultural JCducation— Instances Given— Education the Most Practical Thing in the World— Geological History, its Immensity and Importance— The Rocks, Soil, Age, Climate Great Factors in Making History — Geology of Bureau County — Coal Measures — The Wonderful Stories of the Prairies, etc... 21

CHAPTER III.- The Wonders of Prehistoric People— Remains of Great Cities — The Indians and yet Older People Who Were Here— Winnebago War, Capture and Death of Red Bird— Black Hawk War— First Bloodless Campaign in 1S31 — Black Hawk Enters into a Treaty — Starved Rock, the First Settlement in Illinois— Joliet and Marquette— LaSalle's Colony and Fort St. Louis — Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery and Possession of the Country— First ^Yhite Settlement in the West Made in 1682, at Starved Rock— Capts. Willis Hawes, and Stewart's Companies and the Men from

Bureau County, in the Black Hawk War, etc., etc 43

I

CHAPTER IV.— The Genealogy of the County— New j

France — Canada — Louisiana— Northwestern Territory |

— St. (.lair County — Madison, Clark, Bond, Crawford, Pike, Fulton. Peoria, Putnam and Finally Bureau County— The Several and Final Treaties— The Chain of Title to the Territory— Title to the Land, etc., etc 58

CHAPTER v.— The Grand March of Empire— The Marvels in the Sweep of Population Across our Continent— The Work of One Hundred Years— The Legislative Act Creating Bureau County, etc., etc 65

CHAPTER VI.— The Order in which the People Came— First the Explorer, then the Trafficker, then the Trapper and Hunter, and then the Settler — Their Curious Habits and Customs— The Children of the Solitudes— What They Encountered— Hog and Hominy— The Shirt-tail Age— Houses and Furniture— Suffering for Bread- Anecdotes — Some of the Experiences of Pioneer Children — To Your Gums I ! ! — Experiences of a Boy at His First Hotel— He Hears a Gong — Supposes the House Busted— Board Two Dollars and a Half a Day, and He Eats Bread and Water— Witches, Wizards, and the Horrors of Superstition- How People Ported- Weddings, Dances, and the ( )ne-Eyed Fiddler— Bottle Race— How People Dressed— Salute Your Bride— Going to Housekeeping, etc.. etc 69

PAftE-

CHAPTER VII.— The Name of Bureau Countv— How it Came— The First Five Families— Who They Were — Bulbona, John Dixon. Charles S. Boyd, Henry Thomas —Sketches and Anecdotes of Early Settlers— Death and Burial of John Dixon— Gurdon S. Hubbard— Who Was the First Postmaster— Oldest Living Settlers— Abram Stratton.— His Remarkable Trip in 1829— Sketch of Him —The Brighams— The Countv's Total First Tax- Remarkable Career of John H. Boyd— The Three Brothers-in-Law— The First Death in the County, Daniel Smith— His Widow and Family, etc., etc., etc 79

CHAPTER VIII.— Records Made by Old Settlers— On All Disputed Questions They are the Best Authority— Old Settlers Society— First Agitation of the Subject— Historical Importance of Speeches, Poems, Addresses, Remarks, Anecdotes and Pictures— Address of E. S. Phelps— First Old Settlers' Meeting — Who Participated— Their Records of Early Settlers, and When They Came— Poem by John H. Bryant— " Doctor Bill "—Officers of the Society— Killing of Phillips— Milo Kendall's Address- Warren's History of Putnam County— E. Strong Phelps — John M. Gay, Munson and Miss Hall— First Burial and First Birth- Caleb Cook— Aquilla Triplett— A Long List of the Early Settlers and Their Descendants —Arthur Bryant's Poem — Michael Kitterman, Sketch of — Thirteen Dogs and the Assessor — More Anecdotes — Rev. Martin and His Dog "Penny"— The Perkinses- George Hinsdale— C. G. Corss— And a Great Many Others, etc., etc 87

CHAPTER IX.— Lone Tree— Putnam County Organized— Capt. Haws — John M. Gay Elected Commissioner — Dr. N. Chamberlain School Superintendent in isai — Bureau Precinct— Its First Nineteen Voters— Their Names and Whom They Voted For— A Democratic Majority at the First Election— Bureau Men on the Jury in 1831— Daniel M. Gay and Daniel Dimmick Elected Justices— Gurdon S. Hubbard's Account of Burbonnais— Peoria and <_ialena Road— Dave Jones— First Steamboat on the Illinois River— First Grist and Saw Mill— " Dad Joe" Smith, a Sketch— Young Dad Joe's Ride— Alex Boyd's Ride— People Flee the Country— Shabbona, etc.. etc 110

CHAPTER X.— End of the Indian Troubles— Commencement of Permanent Settlements and Improvements — Election of 1834 — Bryant and Brigham Elected for Bureau Precinct^ — Estimated Number of People Here Then— Browne's Company of Rangers— Hampshire Colony — William O. r'hamberlain ItsOriginal Inventor — E. H. Phelp's Account of the Colony and Their Coming and the History Thereof— Names and an Account of the Colonists and Their Friends 125-

CHAPTER XI.— "Curt " Williams, the Man of Many Marks —Smiley Shepherd— The Deep Snow of 1R31— John, Job, Timothy, Brown and David Searle— Greenbury Hall- Lewis Cobb — The Cholera in 1832 — Scott's Army and Its Suflering From the Plague — First Steamboats Arrive in Chicago, 1832— Politicia'hs In the Black Hawk War-" I Surrender, Mr. Indian" — Sketches of Many Early Settlers-Henry F. Miller— M. Studyvin— David Chase — James Coddington — Enoch Lumry — James Garvin — E. Piper — James Wilson — Jacob Galer — John Leeper — John Baggs—Wiswalls—Tripletts— Halls — How Negro Creek Got its Name, etc., etc 13S

Contents

CHAPTER XII.— Immke's Group Picture of Early Settlers — Of Gre;it Value Now, Hut of Greater Value in the Future — Appeal to the CouDty Authorities— The First Families, the Keal Knickerbockers— A Chapter That Will Long Grow in Value, etc., etc 144

CUAITER XIII.— John H. Bryant—The Farmer Poet— A Sketch of His Life and Works— His Kame Identified Wiih Every Important Movement in the County Since He Came Here, etc., etc 155

CHAPTERXIV.— Something About a Great Many People of the County — When Ditferent Places Were Settled and by Whom— First (Jovernmeut Land Surveys— The I'enhanis — Moseleys — .T, V. Thompson — -Tudge R. T. Templeton — Rev. E. Scudder High and I>oughnuts — To Market to Sell a Pig— Walnut and Ohio Townships, etc., etc 169

I

ILLINOIS has passed through its pioneer period of development, and from a raw state of savagery and wild waste to one of the foremost States in the Union — ah-eady the first State, indeed, in many of those standard articles of agriculture that are contributing so much to make the Upper Mississippi Valley the garden and granary of the world; a State but sixty-six years old (1818-1884) and already in the lead in the number of miles of operated railroads, as well as leading in many of the best agricultural products; the third State in the number of persons engaged in the various occupations of life ; a greater population engaged in agriculture than any other State in the Union, and this industry extended during the past decade beyond anything before known in history; her mining and manufacturing industries lagging only behind her agricultural growth, and yet keeping pace well with perhaps any other similar sized communitj' in the world. In all the elements of present wealth and future promise, the State, young as it is, bids well at no distant day to stand peerless and alone. And phenomenal as has been the gi'owth of population and wealth, the increase bears the evidences that it is not sporadic, but regular and permanent, and the limits of its future are too vast for present possible estimate.

Some measure of the mental and commercial activity of a people may be gained perhaps as well or better through the postoffice reports than from any other easily accessible source. The total postoffice expenditures for the State in 1882 in Illinois were second to that of the State of New York, although in population we are the fourth State in the Union. In illiterates — those ten years of age and over — Illinois is the foiuteenth State. In newspapers, she stands next to New York; in the average daily attendance in the public schools, Illinois is the fourth State ; in colleges she is second, leading New York by one. [Railroads, in mileage, Illinois by far exceeds any State in the Union, nearly doubling the mileage of New York.] But with a much smaller mileage, the railroads of Pennsylvania have larger annual earnings than the Illinois roads.

II

The prosperity of a new State, especially when it is marked, is as a rule ephemeral. At first all industries flourish, but soon competition is felt, and the wave of prosperity is followed usually by a marked decadence of all these, or a relaxation of the active energies that seem to wait for the new growth of an increased demand that will come iu time and revive trade and traffic to renewed energy

HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.

and effort. This general experience of new and rapidly growing communities has never come to Illinois. Flush times and hard times have come and gone here as well as elsewhere, but they were the same in their visits, and at the same time that they made their appearance all over the land. The permanency of her growth, and the solidity and glory of her marvelous greatness has consisted chiefly in her farmers — those whose prudent foresight discovered here a wealth of soil and climate unequaled in the world.

For more than a century after the discovery and first small settlements of what is now Illinois by Joliet, La Salle, and the Jesuits — Marquette and Hennepin — the feeble but daring little colonies were isolated in the heart of our great continent, and more remotely separated from the civilized world than could any people now be upon any portion of the globe; their growth was only the natural increase, as their isolation from mankind was almost complete. Religious enthusiasts, bearing aloft the cross of the church and the lilies of France, penetrated the wilderness and carried to the untutored savage the sublime message of "peace on earth and good will to man." And following in the long course of time these children of the church, came the "war-whoop that oft woke the sleep of the cradle," the massacres, the assassinations and the wars, and the last were the means in every instance of bringing here the first streams of immigrants, who were the base upon which has grown the present greatness of the State. It was the sons of Mars who were the fathers of oui- State builders. First, the war of 1776 and of 1812-15 brought the Virginians and Carolinians, and made them acquainted with Southern Illinois, and then the war of 1832 extended the acquaintance of the Northern and Southern States to the northern limits of Illinois; and ther wonderful stories of the beauties and natural wealth of the new country were told to their friends in their old homes, and thus again and again were the streams of immigrants started afresh. The first fruits of discovery and occupation were from the church ; the final great results came of war and marching armies.

in.

The controlling, the supreme human forces upon this continent are the Anglo-Americans, the commanding and master-spirits among men. And it is their restless and wandering activities, and the fact that, except the Jew, they are the most cosmopolitan people in history, ancient and modern, that has been one of the distinguishing marks of this race, and has contributed much to maintain their matchless superiority. The earliest history of the Anglo-Saxon people presents them as pirates upon the high seas and roving and dauntless invaders and robbers upon land. And when they attached themselves to the soil in the British Isles, their roving habits and knowledge of the waters resulted in making them the greatest commercial people in the world, and to this fact is due much of those characteristics that to-day so distinguish them from all other people. They traded, trafficked and warred all over the known world, and in one way or another they came in contact with every variety of peoples, and thus, in the race of life, distanced all. They are a remarkable demonstration of the fact that man's best schoolmaster is his fellow-man, in his endless varieties; and that a people that attaches itself to the soil becomes stationary, as it were, and if not visited by those of different ideas, manners and bias of mind they are never a progressive people.

IV. The early settlers upon our continent were

HISTORY OF BUREAU COUI^TY.

the Cavaliers and the Puritans — the latter locating in New England, and the former in the South; the Cavaliers just entering upon a career of refinement and luxurious indolence, and the Puritans emerging from the severe religious ordeals that had filled his blood with iron and had prepared him well for entering upon the race for thrift, energy, power and wealth. His sufterings had taught him the severest economy, and the people of the South were learning their lessons in indolent ease, while their New England brothers were practicing a rigid frugality and learning well the fact that money is a 'direct power that gratifies the ambition^ and, commands a certain respect that need not be despised. The Cavalier grew haughty and domineering, as was natural from the position of master and slave, and the Pui-itan despised these vain pretensions and soon learned to meddle in the afi'airs of his distant and slave-proud neighbors. And in the longdistant years ago were planted the seeds of the " irrepressible conflict " whose fat harvest was war.

The misfortune to both and the whole was that our country was so large that both had taken up their abodes in the distant portions of the land, and in time they nearly ceased to mingle and associate together in the every-day business and social affairs of life; and in the end the war was something of a necessity to bring the two extremes once more together, even if it was upon the field of blood; for amid the wrecks and woe and desolation, the dead, the wounded, the sick, the dying, the hospitals, the prisons, the flying skirmishes and the great red gaps of battle, the Northerner and the Southerner met, and here and there and everywhere was that " touch of human nature that makes all the world akin." And of the many results flowing out from the war, this one of making the people of the different sections better acquainted with each other can be contemplated by all with unmixed satisfaction.

In the exultation of victors (this admonition will never be needed by the vancjuished) the North should not forget that a society cannot permanently prosper that is founded only on the pursuit of wealth, pleasure and power. A profound respect for liberty and justice are the first essentials to real national greatness and glory. Splendid cities, costly cathedrals, vast and numerous churches, many and magnificent schoolhouses, the colossal fortunes of millionaires, and immense factories and their many hundreds of employes, are not the absolutely necessary finger-boards pointing always to the greatest welfare and happiness of the people. The cottages vastly outnumber the palaces, as do the laborers far exceed the idle and the rich. The real people live in humble homes; their toil is the world's wealth; and their health, happiness, comforts and their education and content are the true measure of a nation's greatness and glory.

V

"Genuine history,"' says Taine, "is brought into existence only when the historian begins to unravel, across the lapse of time, the living man, toiling, impassioned, entrenched in his customs, with his voice and features, his gestures and dress, distinct and complete as he from whom we have just part ed in the street." A history of a people which has passed away is the effort to make the past the present; to revivify the dead and present every phase of actual life as it once existed, with all its bad and good, its blessings and its sufferings; the home life, the public highway, the street, the field, men and women privately, collectively, at work and at

HISTORY OF BUREAU COUNTY.

play, socially and morally, as they once were here in the struggle for life. A picture most difficult, perhaps about impossible to draw. Hence, to approach this perfection in any respect, will make a valuable book, and one whose lessons will remain perpetually to the coming generations.

VI

The people of a State, or any separate civil government of laws and police powers, must be considered in reference to their local laws and government, as well as estimated morally and socially, in order to fathom the causes when the facts are once understood. This is unquestionably the freest government established among men, and it may possibly have the " finest civil service on the planet," yet one fact is patent, namely: that it is already complex and is growing in these intricacies, and from this is and long has been coming some of that confusion among men's ideas of what are the true boundary lines where the people should cry out to the lawmakers, " hands off here. '' We have a general government and laws, applicable to all the people of the country, then State laws and institutions that are local; then county, town and cit}- governments, laws, police and courts; and the constant tendency is to increase these — enlarge their complexity, and the genius of our law-makers is exhausted in the scramble for new laAvs. From the earliest childhood, from ancient times, when civilization was emerging from darkness, all were taught to respect the law and to pray regularly for the rulers and law-makers. And to worship the flag and condone the crimes of those in power is the common measure of your neighbor's patriotism. A rather stupid judgment, truly, iiut the very best the average man of this age could be expected to form. The tendency of all this is to run to those most glaring evils of all governments, overlegislation, and thus what was intended for a protection, may become the heaviest oppression. In so far as laws and governments are concerned, they are a necessary evil — something not needed by the good — their only I^urpose or excuse for existence being to restrain the bad, and to protect all from the evil, the ignorant and the perverse. The evils of overmuch law and government meddling in the affairs of men, affairs that every one should shape and control for himself, have been too little considered by the people, those who suffer as the result of their own ignorance. The world is full of men who think a vote will make them wise, virtiious, rich and happy, and when these mistaken men are clothed with the ballot, and find themselves far from complete happiness, they are very apt to tui-n their eyes ever toward some new law, some commission or new office, created to relieve them of all their woes. When all these panaceas have run the gamut of experience and dismal failures, he may then wail at the demagogues, and fairly bray in a mortar, this meek and ever patient long eared animal.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is iu ourselves And not in our stars that we are underlings."

The right of universal suffrage, in fact, all right of voting, implies and compels for the voter either the intelligence to select the proper representative to make and execute the laws, or he must abide the cruel consequences of the inevitable mistakes of ignorance. In your law-maker's hands are entrusted the great questions of not only your happiness, but of life and death itself. As new and strange as these propositions nia_v seem to many readers, they are not new to those who think best about the great problems of life. They are open secrets, and which are yet so open that they ought not to remain

HISTORY OF BUEEAU COUNTY.

secrets to those who take upon themselves the awful responsibility of self-government, or of electing those who are to make and execute the laws, those men who undertake the vast and terrible responsibility of dealing with millions of human beings by measures which, if they do not conduce to their happiness, will increase their miseries and accelerate their deaths.

Speaking on this subject, and especially in reference to the plainest requirements that should be possessed by every law-maker, Herbert Spencer says: "There is first of all the undeniable truth, conspicuous and yet absolutely ignored, that there are no phenomena which a society presents but what have their origins in the phenomena of individual human life, which again have their roots in vital phenomena at large. And there is the inevitable implication that unless these vital phenomena, bodily and mentally, are chaotic in their relations (a supposition excluded by the very maintenance of life) the resulting phenomena can not be wholly chaotic; there must be some kind of order in the phenomena which grow out of them when associated human beings have to co-operate. Evidently, then, when one who has not studied such resulting phenomena of social order undertakes to regulate society he is pretty certain to work mischiefs.

' 'In the second place, apart from a priori reasoning, this conclusion should be forced on the legislator by comparisons of societies. It ought to he saiSciently manifest that, before meddling with the details of social organization, inquiry should be made whether social organization has a natural history; and that, to answer this inquiry, it would be well, setting out with the simplest societies, to see in what respects social structures agree. Such comparative sociology, pui'sued to a very small extent, shows a substantial uniformity of genesis. The habitual existence of chieftainship, and the establishment of chiefly authority by war; the rise everywhere of the medicine-man and priest; the presence of a cult having in all places the fundamental traits; the traces of division of labor, early displayed, which gradually become more marked, and the various complications — political, ecclesiastical, industrial, which arise as groups ai'e compounded and recompounded by war — quickly prove to anyone who compares them that, apart from all their special diiferences, societies have general resemblances in their modes of origin and development. They present traits of structure showing that social organization has laws which override individual wills, and laws the disregard of which must be fraught with disaster.

"And then, in the third place, there is that mass of guiding information yielded by the records of law- making in our own country and in other countries, which still more obviously demands attention. Here and elsewhere attempts of multitudinous kinds made by kings and statesmen have failed to do the good intended and have worked unexpected evils. Century after centm-y now measures like the old ones, and other measures akin in principle, have again disappointed hopes and again brought disaster. And yet it is thought neither by electors nor by those they elect that there is any need for systematic study of that legislation which in by-gone ages went on working the ill-being of the people when it tried to achieve their well-being. Surely there can be no litness for legislative functions without wide knowledge of those legislative experiences which the past has bequeathed. ' '

These are the thoughts of a philosopher, not a politician nor statesman: The conclusions of a great man, a man who refused recently to accept a seat in the British Parliament because he could not waste his time in trj'ing to benefit the people by giving them a government they were not jet ready to receive or appreciate.

YII.

A history of a people must, therefore, carefully C(jnsider the race, the epoch, and the climate and soil and their combined effects in elucidating the causes, after the facts have been collated. Where the period of time covered by the story is short — only a little more than a generation — as in the history of this county, the effects flowing out from these causes become shadowy and indistinct — more difficult to trace out and fix clearly to the view, in due ratio to the brevity of the period which comes within the purview of the writer.

These conceptions of history were unknown to our forefathers. They wi'ote of all men, looking always from the same stand-point, and from their abstract conceptions, exactly as though all men, of all ages, climes and surroundings, were exactlj' the same. Their conceptions and conclusions were abstract, and, like their philosophy, were metaphysical, and whence comes the fact that real history is a modern discovery; not wholly, but mostly so.

The fact is, the so-called lore of the classical ages are the works of those abstruse metaphysicians who fairly dazzled the world with their brilliant writings. The genius of these men was attractive and fascinating, and its power is evidenced well by the mastery it has wielded over men's minds for centuries; in fact, even to the present hour, we find its influence lingering about our oldest colleges, universities and schools. The wrong bent it gave the mind in many things has been one of the heavj- burdens upon the development and expansion of the human mind, and the diffusion and growth of knowledge. And the misfortune was that for centuries and centuries the schools of the world were organized and run upon theoretical and not scientific and practical ideas. And the amazing facts are now that we hear only of the classical and scientific schools, the former being generally regarded as the only proper standard of a high grade of education, and when we say a man is a classical scholar, all understand that to be the perfection of learning. And the best ideas of science in the schools is but miserable empiricism generally.