'LI B RARY
OF THE
UN IVERSITY
Of ILLINOIS
SHABBONA.
THE HISTORY
J-[ENRY BOUNTY, JLLINOIS,
ITS TAX -PAYERS AND VOTERS;
CONTAINING, ALSO, A
BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY,- A CONDENSED HISTORY OF THE STA TE : MAP OF THE
COUNTY; A BUSINESS DIRECTORY: AN ABSTRACT OF EVKRY-DAY
LAWS: WAR RECORD OF HENRY COUNTY ; OFFICERS
OF SOCIETIES, LODGES, ETC., ETC.
CHICAGO:
H. F. KETT.& Co., 15 LAKESIDE BUILDING.
1877.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by
H. F. KETT & CO.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
BUT few can realize the task involved in the publication of a work of this kind.
We have to contend against ignorance, prejudice and selfishness. Ignorance of
some people as to our objects, many refusing to give their names, for fear they
will be used for some swindling purpose ; or their politics, lest it be used to
their discredit; or how much property they own, fearing it is to increase their
taxes. Prejudice of people who have subscribed through agents for publications
and not having received what they expected, have forever thereafter sworn war-
fare against all agents, without discriminating, or taking into consideration the
absolute necessity of employing men under certain circumstances as the media
between publisher and people. Selfishness by citizens who expect to havej pub-
lished, gratuitously, every thing they see fit to send us, which usually is of a per-
sonal nature, or not relevant matter, and if published would be of no general
interest, therefore we deem best to suppress it, thereby receiving their outspoken
enmity. For this work we do not claim perfection ; that would be an impossi-
bility. Most townships have been gone over thoroughly, but still there are
undoubtedly errors, mostly in spelling names and in dates. We have several
cases in Henry County where members of the same family spell their names in
different ways, and a number of cases where the dates of births, of marriages, or
when they came into the county, were improbable, and when brought to their
notice, they had made a mistake generally of ten years in calculation. We give
j our agents the most positive instructions to be especially careful in getting
names and dates, but ofttimes men are indifferent in giving required information,
and when met on the road, at the thrashing machine, or in the rain or cold, the
information is given hurriedly or carelessly, and our agents are obliged to put it
down as given them, and when copied, mistakes necessarily occur.
We have endeavored to get the names of all tax-payers and voters. We have
about 8,300 names, the vote being about 5,500, which shows we could not have
missed many. In our History of the County we have endeavored to give an
interesting, condensed and correct sketch. Our History of Illinois will give the
reader some interesting and valuable historical facts. Our Laws should be
carefully read by every business man and farmer; they contain invaluable infor-
mation. In fact we have toiled long and at great expense, and have far exceeded
our promises to make every thing in these pages interesting and valuable, and
all you could expect or wish, and in your criticisms, please to bear in mind that
in gathering, compiling and publishing a volume of this kind, perfection would
.. be an impossibility.
We wish to extend our sincere and warmest thanks to the citizens of Henry
County for their kind treatment, and for assistance rendered us in furnishing
information for this work. They are too numerous to here name, but to the
1 press and early settlers in particular we are grateful for their labors in aiding us
: to gather the material for the History of the County. The Cambridge Chronicle
furnished us with its files of 1858 and 1859, which contained a series of articles
by Dr. A. A. Dunn, its editor, on the early settlement of the county, and from
them we have taken much of our early History.
H F. KETT & Co.
CONTENTS
PAGE.
Agricultural Statistics of Henry
County .".138
Constitution of United States 86
County Officers 548
County Schools 547
Electors of President and Vice-
President. 187* 100
Geology of Henry County 101
Henry Co. Agricultural Society. .555
Henry Co. Infirmary 545
PAGE.
History of Illinois 13
history of Henry Co lid
Morristown Colony 135
Wethersfleld Colony... 137
Bishop Hill Colony 145
Geneseo Colony 507
County Courts 151
Shabbona 152
History of Towns :
Atkinson 530
Anna wan 528
PAGE.
Andover 452
An nawau ; 396
Atkinson 266
Alba 237
Burns 407
Cambridge 282
Clover 32H
Colona 256
MISCELLANEOUS.
PAGE.
Interest Table 82
Miscellaneous Table 82
Map of Henry County... Front Page.
Officials of Societies, Lodges, etc.552
Old Settlers' Meeting 556
Population of Henry Count\ 504
Population of the United States.. 82
Population of Fifty Principal
Cities 82
HISTORICAL.
PAGE.
History of Towns :
Andover 524
Alpha 540
Cambridge L77
Cleveland 531
Colona 540
Dayton 539
Geneseo 507
Galva 168
Ke wanee 1 55
PAGE.
Population and Area of the U. S.. 83
Population of Principal Cities in
the World 83
Population of Illinois 84 & 85
Railroads 547
Real and Personal Pr .perty
Statement 549
Too Lates and Changes 590
Vote of Henry County 550
History of Towns :
Lynn 562
Morristown 130
Nekoma 541
Orion 521
Opheim 539
Osco 532
Oakley ...539
Utah 562
Woodhull 537
TOWNSHIP DIRECTORY.
PAGE.
Cornwall 225 ! Munson.
Edford 275 Oxford.
PAGE.
311
Galva 347
Geneseo 186
Hanna 241
Ke wanee 415
Lynn 388
Loraine 320
Osco 467
Phenix ...231
WethersBeld 479
Wellcr 490
Western 370
Yor^towu 249
BUSINESS DIRECTORY.
The Business Directory follows the townships in which they are located.
ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS.
PAGE.
Bills of exchange and promis-
sory notes 45
Interest 45
Descent 45
Wills and estates 48
Taxes 48
Jurisdiction of Courts 48
County Courts 49
Limitation of action 49
Married women 49
Exemption from forced sale 50
Estrays 51
Deads and Mortgages 51
Game 52
Weights and measures 52
Millers 53
Murks and brands 53
PAGE.
Allan James M 103
A y re* T. G 463
HI i-h Sylvester 93
BllshC.C 153
Bronson E. V 413
Basset t C 428
Blackburn John 143
Bell J. D 343
BeverldgeP. H 273
Crawford Andrew 123
Dunham C 193
Gould A 113
HoweJ. II 573
Howard Sullivan 443
Harrington K 213
PAGE.
Adoption of children 54
Surveyors and surveys 54
Roads 55
Drainage 57
Paupers 58
Fences HO
Damage from Trespass , 61
Landlord and Tenant 61
Liens 64
Definition of Commercial Terms 65
Church Organization 79
Suggestion to Persons purchas-
ing Books by Subscription... 80
Form of lilank Note 66
Order 6b
Receipt 66
" Bills of Purchase 66
Form of Articles of greement 67
Clerk forSe vices...... 67
Billsof Sale 68
Bonds 68
Chattel Mortgage 69
Lease of Buildings 7l
Landlord's Agreement. 72
" Tenant's " . 72
" Notice Tenant to Quit.. 73
Tenant's Notice to Quit 73
Real Estate Mortgage
to Secure Money 73
" Warranty Deed -74
Suit Claim Deed 75
elease 76
Form of Will 77
Codicil 79
PORTRAITS.
PAGE. '
Kuril Lewis 493 , Stickney Isaac..
Hinman J. S 303
Henderson Thomas G 563
Johnson Olof 173
KemerllDg Jacob 403
Kincr II. I, 223
KinzieR. A 323
Little Henry G 433
Little R. A 363
PAGE.
..333
Little A. I! 883 ( Whitney C. V.
ivrry Alfred \v..
Sannquist P. M 453
Shearer Lewis 203
Sawyer J. A 133
Shabbona Title Page
Smtthe Geo. C 233
Tenney R. A 263
Willar'd J. F 48S
WilberR. M 353
.253
.111:1 WarnerW. w 878
Page'O. E 183 Wellon F. G 293
RldenourJ. It 393
Seat. .11 B. W 243
Wilkinson L. G 313
Wilson Geo. F. II 283
HENRY COUNTY VOLUNTEERS.
Graham's Ind. Cav. Co
PAGE.
585
585
PAGE.
580
86th
89th
102(1
112th
124th
134th
139th
148th
151st
Miser
Infantry
PAGE.
586
34th
... 585
583
...582
574
4-M
581
....565
583
43d "
579
it
572
584
57th "
. ..577
584
14th
583
583 A .w>
n
578
69th "
579
584
583
"
586
...582
19th
...579 83d
....580
llaneous
585
CHURCHES OF HENRY CO. not mentioned in Town Histories Page 541
N il M
-fr
HISTORY OF ILLINOIS.
The name of this beautiful Prairie State is derived from Illim, a
Delaware word signifying Superior Men. It has a French termination,
and is a symbol of how the two races the French and the Indians
were intermixed during the early history of the country.
The appellation was no doubt well applied to the primitive inhabit-
ants of the soil whose prowess in savage warfare long withstood the
combined attacks of the fierce Iroquois on the one side, and the no less
savage and relentless Sacs and Foxes on the other. The Illinois were
once a powerful confederacy, occupying the most beautiful and fertile
region in the great Valley of the Mississippi, which their enemies coveted
.and struggled long and hard to wrest from them. By the fortunes of
war they were diminished in numbers, and finally destroyed. " Starved
Rock," on the Illinois River, according to tradition, commemorates their
last tragedy, where, it is said, the entire tribe starved rather than sur-
render.
EARLY DISCOVERIES.
The first European discoveries in Illinois date back over two hun-
dred years. They are a part of that movement which, from the begin-
ning to the middle of the seventeenth century, brought the French
Canadian missionaries and fur traders into the Valley of the Mississippi,
and which, at a later period, established the civil and ecclesiastical
authority of France from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico,
and from the foot-hills of the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains.
The great river of the West had been discovered by DeSoto, the
Spanish conqueror of Florida, three quarters of a century before the
French founded Quebec in 1608, but the Spanish left the country a wil-
derness, without further exploration or settlement within its borders, in
which condition it remained until the Mississippi was discovered by the
agents of the French Canadian government, Jolietand Marquette, in 1673.
These renowned explorers were not the first white visitors to Illinois.
In 1671 two years in advance of them came Nicholas Perrot to Chicago.
He had been sent by Talon as an agent of the Canadian government to
2
14 HISTORY OF THE STATE OP ILLINOIS.
call a great peace convention of Western Indians at Green Bay, prepara-
tory to the movement for the discovery of the Mississippi. It was
deemed a good stroke of policy to secure, as far as possible, the friend-
ship and co-operation of the Indians, far and near, before venturing upon
an enterprise which their hostility might render disastrous, and which
their friendship and assistance would do so much to make successful ;
and to this end Perrot was sent to call together in council the tribes
throughout the Northwest, and to promise them the commerce and pro-
tection of the French government. He accordingly arrived at Green
Bay in 1671, and procuring an escort of Pottawattamies, proceeded in a
bark canoe upon a visit to the Miamis, at Chicago. Perrot was there-
fore the first European to set foot upon the soil of Illinois.
Still there were others before Marquette. In 1672, the Jesuit mis-
sionaries, Fathers Claude Allouez and Claude Dablon, bore the standard
of the Cross from their mission at Green Bay through western Wisconsin
and northern Illinois, visiting the Foxes on Fox River, and the Masquo-
tines and Kickapoos at the mouth of the Milwaukee. These missionaries
penetrated on the route afterwards followed by Marquette as far as the
Kickapoo village at the head of Lake Winnebago, where Marquette, in
his journey, secured guides across the portage to the Wisconsin.
The oft-repeated story of Marquette and Joliet is well known.
They were the agents employed by the Canadian government to discover
the Mississippi. Marquette was a native of France, born in 1637, a
Jesuit priest by education, and a man of simple faith and of great zeal and
devotion in extending the Roman Catholic religion among the Indians.
Arriving in Canada in 1666, he was sent as a missionary to the far
Northwest, and, in 1668, founded a mission at Sault Ste. Marie. The
following year he moved to La Pointe, in Lake Superior, where he
instructed a branch of the Hurons till 1670, when he removed south, and
founded the mission at St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinaw. Here
he remained, devoting a portion of his time to the study of the Illinois
language under a native teacher who had accompanied him to the mission
from La Pointe, till he was joined by Joliet in the Spring of 1673. By
the way of Green Bay and the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, they entered
the Mississippi, which they explored to the mouth of the Arkansas, and
returned by the way of the Illinois and Chicago Rivers to Lake Michigan.
On his way up the Illinois, Marquette visited the great viHage of
the Kaskaskias, near what is now Utica, in the county of LaSalle. The
following year he returned and established among them the mission of
the Immaculate Virgin Mary, which was the first Jesuit mission founded
in Illinois and in the Mississippi Valley. The intervening winter he
had spent in a hut which his companions erected on the Chicago River, a
few leagues from its mouth. The founding of this mission was the last
HISTOKY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 15
act of Marquette's life. He died in Michigan, on his way back to Green
Bay, May 18, 1675.
FIRST FRENCH OCCUPATION.
The first French occupation of the territory now embraced in Illi-
nois was effected by LaSalle in 1680, seven years after the time of Mar-
quette and Joliet. LaSalle, having constructed a vessel, the " Griffin,"
above the falls of Niagara, which he sailed to Green Bay, and having
passed thence in canoes to the mouth of the St. Joseph River, by which
and the Kankakee he reached the Illinois, in January, 1680, erected Fort
Crevecceur, at the lower end of Peoria Lake, where the city of Peoria is
now situated. The place where this ancient fort stood may still be seen
just below the outlet of Peoria Lake. It was desiined, however, to a
temporary existence. From this point, LaSalle determined to descend
the Mississippi to its mouth, but did not accomplish this purpose till two
years later in 1682. Returning to Fort Frontenac for the purpose of
getting materials with which to rig his vessel, he left the fort in charge of
Touti, his lieutenant, who during his absence was' driven off by the Iro-
quois Indians. These savages had made a raid upon the settlement of
the Illinois, and had left nothing in their track but ruin and desolation.
Mr. Davidson, in his History of Illinois, gives the following graphic
account of the picture that met the eyes of LaSalle and his companions
on their return :
" At the great town of the Illinois they were appalled at the scene
which opened to their view. No hunter appeared to break its death-like
silence with a salutatory whoop ot welcome. The plain on which the
town had stood was now strewn with charred fragments of lodges, which
had so recently swarmed with savage life and hilarity. To render more
hideous the picture of desolation, large numbers of skulls had been
placed on the upper extremities of lodge-poles which had escaped the
devouring flames. In the midst of these horrors was the rude fort of
the spoilers, rendered frightful by the same ghastly relics. A near
approach showed that the graves had been robbed of their bodies, and
swarms of buzzards were discovered glutting their loathsome stomachs
on the reeking corruption. To complete the work of destruction, the
growing corn of the village had been cut down and burned, while the
pits containing the products of previous years, had been rifled and their
contents scattered with wanton waste. It was evident the suspected
blow of the Iroquois had fallen with relentless fury."
Touti had escaped LaSalle knew not whither. Passing down the
lake in search of him and his men, LaSalle discovered that the fort had
been destroyed, but the vessel which he had partly constructed was still
16 HISTORY OP THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
on the stocks and but slightly injured. After further fruitless search,
failing to find Touti, he fastened to a tree a painting representing himself
and party sitting in a canoe and bearing a pipe of peace, and to the paint-
ing attached a letter addressed to Touti.
Touti had escaped, and, after untold privations, taken shelter among
the Pottawattamies near Green Bay. These were friendly to the French.
One of their old chiefs used to say, " There were but three great cap-
tains in the world, himself, Touti and LaSalle."
GENIUS OF LASALLE.
We must now return to LaSalle, whose exploits stand out in such
bold relief. He was born in Rouen, France, in 1643. His father was
wealthy, but he renounced his patrimony on entering a college of the
Jesuits, from which he separated and came to Canada a poor man in 1666.
The priests of St. Sulpice, among whom he had a brother, were then the
proprietors of Montreal, the nucleus of which was a seminary or con-
vent founded by that order. The Superior granted to LaSalle a large
tract of land at LaChine, where he established himself in the fur trade.
He was a man of daring genius, and outstripped all his competitors in
exploits of travel and commerce with the Indians. In 1669, he visited
the headquarters of the great Iroquois Confederacy, at Onondaga, in the
heart of New York, and, obtaining guides, explored the Ohio River to
the falls at Louisville.
In order to understand the genius of LaSalle, it must be remembered
that for many years prior to his time the missionaries and traders were
obliged to make their way to the Northwest by the Ottawa River (of ,
Canada) on account of the fierce hostility of the Iroquois along the lower
lakes and Niagara River, which entirely closed this latter route to the
Upper Lakes. They carried on their commerce chiefly by canoes, pad-
dling them through the Ottawa to Lake Nipissing, carrying them across
the portage to French River, and descending that to Lake Huron. This
being the route by which they reached the Northwest, accounts for the
fact that all the earliest Jesuit missions were established in the neighbor-
hood of the Upper Lakes. LaSalle conceived the grand idea of opening
the route by Niagara River and the Lower Lukes to Canadian commerce
by sail vessels, connecting it with the navigation of the Mississippi, and
thus opening a magnificent water communication from the Gulf of St.
Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. This truly grand and comprehensive
purpose seems to have animated him in all his wonderful achievements
and the matchless difficulties and hardships he surmounted. As the first
step in the accomplishment of this object he established himself on Lake
Ontario, and built and garrisoned Fort Fronteuac, the site of the present
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 17
city of Kingston, Canada. Here be obtained a grant of land from the
French crown and a body of troops by which he beat back the invading
Iroquois and cleared the passage to Niagara Falls. Having by this mas-
terly stroke made it safe to attempt a hitherto untried expedition, his
next step, as we have seen, was to advance to the Falls with all his
outfit for building a ship with which to sail the lakes. He was success-
ful in this undertaking, though his ultimate purpose was defeated by a
strange combination of untoward circumstances. The Jesuits evidently
hated LaSalle and plotted against him, because he had abandoned them
and co-operated with a rival order. The fur traders were also jealous of
his superior success in opening new channels of commerce. At LaChine
he had taken the trade of Lake Ontario, which but for his presence there
would have gone to Quebec. While they were plodding with their bark
canoes through the Ottawa he was constructing sailing vessels to com-
mand the trade of the lakes and the Mississippi. These great plans
excited the jealousy and envy of the small traders, introduced treason and
revolt into the ranks of his own companions, and finally led to the foul
assassination by which, his great achievements were prematurely ended.
In 1682, LaSalle, having completed his vessel at Peoria, descended
the Mississippi to its confluence with the Gulf of Mexico. Erecting a
standard on which he inscribed the arms of France, he took formal pos-
session of the whole valley of the mighty river, in the name of Louis
XIV., then reigning, in honor of whom he named the country LOUISIANA.
LaSalle then went to France, was appointed Governor, and returned
with a fleet and immigrants, for the purpose of planting a colony in Illi-
nois. They arrived in due time in the Gulf of Mexico, but failing to
find the mouth of the Mississippi, up which LaSalle intended to sail, his
supply ship, with the immigrants, was driven ashore and wrecked on
Matagorda Bay. With the fragments of the vessel he constructed a
stockade and rude huts on the shore for the protection of the immigrants,
calling the post Fort St. Louis. He then made a trip into New Mexico,
in search of silver mines, but, meeting with disappointment, returned to
find his little colony reduced to forty souls. He then resolved to travel
on foot to Illinois, and, starting with his companions, had reached the
valley of the Colorado, near the mouth of Trinity river, when he was
shot by one of his men. This occurred on the 19th of March, 1687.
Dr. J. W. Foster remarks of him : " Thus fell, not far from the banks
of the Trinity, Robert Cavalier de la Salle, one of the grandest charac-
ters that ever figured in American history a man capable of originating
the vastest schemes, and endowed with a will and a judgment capable of
carrying them to successful results. Had ample facilities been placed by
the King of France at his disposal, the result of the colonization of this
continent might have been far different from what we now behold."
18 HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
A temporary settlement was made at Fort St. Louis, or the old Kas-
kaskia village, on the Illinois River, in what is now LaSalle County, in
1682. In 1690, this was removed, with the mission connected with it, to
Kaskaskia, on the river of that name, emptying into the lower Mississippi
in St. Glair County. Cahokia was settled about the same time, or at
least, both of these settlements began in the year 1690, though it is now
pretty well settled that Cahokia is the older place, and ranks as the oldest
permanent settlement in Illinois, as well as in the Mississippi Valley.
The reason for the removal of the old Kaskaskia settlement and mission,
was probably because the dangerous and difficult route by Lake Michigan
and the Chicago portage had been almost abandoned, and travelers and
traders passed down and up the Mississippi by the Fox and Wisconsin
River route. They removed to the vicinity of the Mississippi in order
to be in the line of travel from Canada to Louisiana, that is, the lower
part of it, for it was all Louisiana then south of the lakes.
During the period of French rule in Louisiana, the population prob-
ably never exceeded ten thousand, including whites and blacks. Within
that portion of it now included in Indiana, trading posts were established
at the principal Miami villages which stood on the head waters of the
Maumee, the Wea villages situated at Ouiatenon, on the Wabash, and
the Piankeshaw villages at Post Vincennes ; all of which were probably
visited by French traders and missionaries before the close of the seven-
teenth century.
In the vast territory claimed by the French, many settlements of
considerable importance had sprung up. Biloxi, on Mobile Bay, had
been founded by D'Iberville, in 1699 ; Antoine de Lamotte Cadillac had
founded Detroit in 1701 ; and New Orleans had been founded by Bien-
ville, under the auspices of the Mississippi Company, in 1718. In Illi-
nois also, considerable settlements had been made, so that in 1730 they
embraced one hundred and forty French families, about six hundred " con-
verted Indians," and many traders and voyageurs. In that portion of the
country, on the east side of the Mississippi, there were five distinct set-
tlements, with their respective villages, viz. : Cahokia, near the mouth
of Cahokia Creek and about five miles below the present city of St.
Louis ; St. Philip, about forty-five miles below Cahokia, and four miles
above Fort Chartres ; Fort Chartres, twelve miles above Kaskaskia ;
Kaskaskia, situated on the Kaskaskia River, five miles above its conflu-
ence with the Mississippi; and Prairie du Rocher, near Fort Chartres.
To these must be added St. Genevieve and St. Louis, on the west side
of the Mississippi. These, with the exception of St. Louis, are among
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 19
the oldest French towns in the Mississippi Valley. Kaskaskia, in its best
days, was a town of some two or three thousand inhabitants. After it
passed from the crown of France its population for many years did not
exceed fifteen hundred. Under British rule, in 1773, the population had
decreased to four hundred and fifty. As early as 1721, the, Jesuits had
established a college and a monastery in Kaskaskia.
Fort Chartres was first built under the direction of the Mississippi
Company, in 1718, by M. de Boisbraint, a military officer, under command
of Bienville. It stood on the east bank of the Mississippi, about eighteen
miles below Kaskaskia, and was for some time the headquarters of the
military commandants of the district of Illinois.
In the Centennial Oration of Dr. Fowler, delivered at Philadelphia,
by appointment of Gov. Beveridge, we find some interesting facts with
regard to the State of Illinois, which we appropriate in this history:
In 1682 Illinois became a possession of the French crown, a depend-
ency of Canada, and a part of Louisiana. In 1765 the English flag was
run up on old Fort Chartres, and Illinois was counted among the treas-
ures of Great Britain.
In 1779 it was taken from the English by Col. George Rogers Clark.
This man was resolute in nature, wise in council, prudent in policy, bold
in action, and heroic in danger. Few men who have figured in the his-
tory of America are more deserving than this colonel. Nothing short of
first-class ability could have rescued Vincens and all Illinois from the
English. And it is not possible to over-estimate the influence of this
achievement upon the republic. In 1779 Illinois became a part of Vir-
ginia. It was soon known as Illinois County. In 1784 Virginia ceded
all this territory to the general government, to be cut into States, to be
republican in form, with " the same right of sovereignty, freedom, and
independence as the other States."
In 1787 it was the object of the wisest and ablest legislation found
in any merely human records. No man can study the secret history of
THE "COMPACT OF 1787,"
and not feel that Providence was guiding with sleepless eye these unborn
States. The ordinance that on July 13, 1787, finally became the incor-
porating act, has a most marvelous history. Jefferson had vainly tried
to secure a system of government for the northwestern territory. He
was an emancipationist of that day, and favored the exclusion of slavery
from the territory Virginia had ceded to the general government ; but
the South voted him down as often as it came up. In 1787, as late as
July 10, an organizing act without the anti-slavery clause was pending.
This concession to the South was expected to carry it. Congress was in
20 HISTORY OK THE STATE OP ILLINOIS.
session in New York City. On July 5, Rev. Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of
Massachusetts, came into New York to lobby on the northwestern terri-
tory. Everything seemed to fall into his hands. Events were ripe.
The state of the public credit, the growing of Southern prejudice,
the basis of his mission, his personal character, all combined to complete
one of those sudden and marvelous revolutions of public sentiment that
once in five or ten centuries are seen to sweep over a country like the
breath of the Almighty. Cutler was a graduate of Yale received his
A.M. from Harvard, and his D.D. frqm Yale. He had studied and taken
degrees in the three learned professions, medicine, law, and divinity. He
had thus America's best indorsement. He had published a scientific
examination of the plants of New England. His name stood second only
to that of Franklin as a scientist in America. He was a courtly gentle-
man of the old style, a man of commanding presence, and of inviting
face. The Southern members said they had never seen such a gentleman
in the North. He came representing a company that desired to purchase
a tract of land now included in Ohio, for the purpose of planting a colony.
It was a speculation. Government money was worth eighteen cents on
the dollar. This Massachusetts company had collected enough to pur-
chase 1,500,000 acres of land. Other speculators in New York made
Dr. Cutler their agent (lobbyist). On the 12th he represented a demand
for 5,500,000 acres. This would reduce the national debt. Jefferson
and Virginia were regarded as authority concerning the land Virginia
had just ceded. Jefferson's policy wanted to provide for the public credit,
and this was a good opportunity to do something.
Massachusetts then owned the territory of Maine, which she was
crowding on the market. She was opposed to opening the northwestern
region. This fired the zeal of Virginia. The South caught the inspira-
tion, and all exalted Dr. Cutler. The English minister invited him to
dine with some of the Southern gentlemen. He was the center of interest.
The entire South rallied round him. Massachusetts could not vote
against him, because many of the constituents of her members were
interested personally in the western speculation. Thus Cutler, making
friends with the South, and, doubtless, using all the arts of the lobby,
was enabled to command the situation. True to deeper convictions, he
dictated one of the most compact and finished documents of wise states-
manship that has ever adorned any human law book. He borrowed from
Jefferson the term " Articles of Compact," wbich, preceding the federal
constitution, rose into the most sacred character. He then followed very
closely the constitution of Massachusetts, adopted three years before.
Its most marked points were :
1. The exclusion of slavery from the territory forever.
2. Provision for public schools, giving one township for a seminary,
HISTORY OF THE STATE OP ILLINOIS. 21
and every section numbered 16 in each township ; that is, one-thirty-sixth
of all the land, for public schools.
3. A provision prohibiting the adoption of any constitution or the
enactment of any law that should nullify pre-existing contracts.
Be it forever remembered that this compact declared that " Religion,
morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall always
be encouraged."
Dr. Cutler planted himself on this platform and would not yield.
Giving his unqualified declaration that it was that or nothing that unless
they could make the land desirable they did not want it he took his
horse and buggy, and started for the constitutional convention in Phila-
delphia. On July 13, 1787, the bill was put upon its passage, and was
unanimously adopted, every Southern member voting for it, and only one
man, Mr. Yates, of New York, voting against it. But as the States voted
as States, Yates lost his vote, and the compact was put beyond repeal.
Thus the great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wis-
consin a vast empire, the heart of the great valley were consecrated
to freedom, intelligence, and honesty. Thus the great heart of the nation
was prepared for a year and a day and an hour. In the light of these eighty-
nine years I affirm that this act was the salvation of the republic and the
destruction of slavery. Soon the South saw their great blunder, and
tried to repeal the compact. In 1803 Congress referred it to a committee
of which John Randolph was chairman. He reported that this ordinance
was a compact, and opposed repeal. Thus it stood a rock, in the way
of the on-rushing sea of slavery.
With all this timely aid it was, after all, a most desperate and pro-
tracted struggle to keep the soil of Illinois sacred to freedom. It was
the natural battle-field for the irrepressible conflict. In the southern end
of the State slavery preceded the compact. It existed among the old
French settlers, and was hard to eradicate. The southern part of the
State was settled from the slave States, and this population brought their
laws, customs, and institutions with them. A stream of population from
the North poured into the northern part of the State. These sections
misunderstood and hated each other perfectly. The Southerners regarded
the Yankees as a skinning, tricky, penurious race of peddlers, filling the
country with tinware, brass clocks, and wooden nutmegs. The North-
erner thought of the Southerner as a lean, lank, lazy creature, burrowing
in a hut, and rioting in whisky, dirt and ignorance. These causes aided
in making the struggle long and bitter. So strong was the sympathy
with slavery that, in spite of the ordinance of 1787, and in spite of the
deed of cession, it was determined to allow the old French settlers to
retain their slaves. Planters from the slave States might bring their
22 HISTORY OP THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
slaves, if they would give them a chance to choose freedom or years
of service and bondage for their children till they should become
thirty years of age. If they chose freedom they must leave the State
in sixty days or be sold as fugitives. Servants were whipped for offenses
for which white men are fined. Each lash paid forty cents of the fine. A
negro ten miles from home without a pass was whipped. These famous
laws were imported from the slave States just as they imported laws for
the inspection of flax and wool when there was neither in the State.
These Black Laws are now wiped out. A vigorous effort was made
to protect slavery in the State Constitution of 1817. It barely failed.
It was renewed in 1825, when a convention was asked to make a new
constitution. After a hard fight the convention was defeated. But
slaves did not disappear from the census of the State until 1850. There
were mobs and murders in the interest of slavery. Lovejoy was added
to the list of martyrs a sort of first-fruits of that long life of immortal
heroes who saw freedom as the one supreme desire of their souls, and
were so enamored of her that they preferred to die rather than survive her.
The population of 12,282 that occupied the territory in A.D. 1800,
increased to 45,000 in A.D. 1818, when the State Constitution was
adopted, and Illinois took her place in the Union, with a star on the flag
and two votes in the Senate.
Shadrach Bond was the first Governor, and in his first message he
recommended the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
The simple economy in those days is seen in the fact that the entire
bill for stationery for the first Legislature was only $13.50. Yet this
simple body actually enacted a very superior code.
There was no monej r in the territory before the war of 1812. Deer
skins and coon skins were the circulating medium. In 1821, the Legis-
lature ordained a State Bank on the credit of the State. It issued notes
in the likeness of bank bills. These notes were made a legal tender for
every thing, and the bank was ordered to loan to the people $100 on per-
sonal security, and more on mortgages. They actually passed a resolu-
tion requesting the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States to
receive these notes for land. The old French Lieutenant Governor, Col.
Menard, put the resolution as follows: " Gentlemen of the Senate : It is
moved and seconded dat de notes of dis bank be made land-office money.
All in favor of dat motion say aye ; all against it say no. It is decided
in de affirmative. Now, gentlemen, I bet you one hundred dollar he
never be land-office money!" Hard sense, like hard money, is always
above par.
This old Frenchman presents a fine figure up against the dark back-
ground of most of his nation. They made no progress. They clung to
their earliest and simplest implements. They never wore hats or caps.
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 23
Thev pulled their blankets over their heads in the winter like the Indians,
with whom they freely intermingled.
Demagogism had an early development. One John Grammar (only
in name), elected to the Territorial and State Legislatures of 1816 and
1836, invented the policy of opposing every new thing, saying, "If it
succeeds, no one will ask who voted against it. If it proves a failure, he
could quote its record." In sharp contrast with Grammar was the char-
acter of D. P. Cook, after whom the county containing Chicago was
named. Such was his transparent integrity and remarkable ability that
his will was almost the law of the State. In Congress, a young man,
and from a poor State, he was made Chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee. He was pre-eminent for standing by his committee, regard-
less of consequences. It was his integrity that elected John Quincy
Adams to the Presidency. There were four candidates in 1824, Jackson,
Clay, Crawford, and John Quincy Adams. There being no choice by the
people, the election was thrown into the House. It was so balanced that
it turned on his vote, and that he cast for Adams, electing him ; then
Went home to face the wrath of the Jackson party in Illinois. It cost
him all but character and greatness. It is a suggestive comment on the
times, that there was no legal interest till 1830. It often reached 150
per cent., usually 50 per cent. Then it was reduced to 12, and now to
10 per cent.
PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE PRAIRIE STATE.
In area the State has 55,410 square miles of territory. It is about
150 miles wide and 400 miles long, stretching in latitude from Maine to
North Carolina. It embraces wide variety of climate. It is tempered
on the north by the great inland, saltless, tideless sea, which keeps the
thermometer from either extreme. Being a table land, from 600 to 1,600
feet above the level of the sea, one is prepared to find on the health
maps, prepared by the general government, an almost clean and perfect
record. In freedom from fever and malarial diseases and consumptions,
the three deadly enemies of the American Saxon, Illinois, as a State,
stands without a superior. She furnishes one of the essential conditions
of a great people sound bodies. I suspect that this fact lies back of
that old Delaware word, Illini, superior men.
The great battles of history that have been determinative of dynas-
ties and destinies have been strategical battles, chiefly the question of
position. Thermopylae has been the war-cry of freemen for twenty-four
centuries. It only tells how much there may be in position. All this
advantage belongs to Illinois. It is in the heart of the greatest valley in
the world, the vast region between the mountains a valley that could
24 HISTORY OP THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
feed mankind for one thousand years. It is well on toward the center of
the continent. It is in the great temperate belt, in which have been
found nearly all the aggressive civilizations of history. It has sixty-five
miles of frontage on the head of the lake. With the Mississippi forming
the western and southern boundary, with the Ohio running along the
southeastern line, with the Illinois River and Canal dividing the State
diagonally from the lake to the Lower Mississippi, and with the Rock and
Wabash Rivers furnishing altogether 2,000 miles of water-front, con-
necting with, and running through, in all about 12,000 miles of navi-
gable water.
But this is not all. These waters are made most available by the
fact that the lake and the State lie on the ridge running into the great
valley from the east. Within cannon-shot of the lake the water runs
away from the lake to the Gulf. The lake now empties at both ends,
one into the Atlantic and one into the Gulf of Mexico. The lake thus
seems to hang over the laud. This makes the dockage most serviceable ;
there are no steep banks to damage it. Both lake and river are made
for use.
The climate varies from Portland to Richmond ; it favors every pro-
duct of the continent, including the tropics, with less than half a dozen
exceptions. It produces every great nutriment of the world except ban-
anas and rice. It is hardly too much to say that it is the most productive
spot known to civilization. With the soil full of bread and the earth full
of minerals ; with an upper surface of food and an under layer of fuel ;
with perfect natural drainage, and abundant springs and streams and
navigable rivers ; half way between the forests of the North and the fruits
of the South ; within a day's ride of the great deposits of iron, coal, cop-
per, lead, and zinc ; containing and controlling the great grain, cattle,
pork, and lumber markets of the world, it is not strange that Illinois has
the advantage of position.
This advantage has been supplemented by the character of the popu-
lation. In the early days when Illinois was first admitted to the Union,
her population were chiefly from Kentucky and Virginia. But, in the
conflict of ideas concerning slavery, a strong title of emigration came in
from the East, and soon changed this composition. In 1870 her non-
native population were from colder soils. New York furnished 133,290 ;
Ohio gave 162,623; Pennsylvania sent on 98,352; the entire Soutli gave
us only 206,734. In all her cities, and in all her German and Scandina-
vian and other foreign colonies, Illinois has only about one-fifth of her
people of foreign birth.
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 25
PROGRESS OF DEVELOPMENT.
One of the greatest elements in the early development of Illinois is
the Illinois and Michigan Canal, connecting the Illinois and Mississippi
Rivers with the lakes. It was of the utmost importance to the State.
It was recommended by Gov. Bond, the first governor, in his first message.
In 1821, the Legislature appropriated $10,000 for surveying the route.
Two bright young engineers surveyed it, and estimated the cost at
$600,000 or $700,000. It finally cost $8,000,000. In 1825, a law was
passed to incorporate the Canal Company, but no stock was sold. In
1826, upon the solicitation of Cook, Congress gave 800,000 acres of land
on the line of the work. In 1828, another law commissioners appointed,
and work commenced with new survey and new estimates. In 1834-35,
George Farquhar made an able report on the whole matter. This was,
doubtless, the ablest report ever made to a western legislature, and it
became the model for subsequent reports and action. From this the
work went on till it was finished in 1848. It cost the State a large
amount of money ; but it gave to the industries of the State an impetus
that pushed it up into the first rank of greatness. It was not built as a
speculation any more than a doctor is employed on a speculation. But
it has paid into the Treasury of the State an average annual net sum of
over $111,000.
Pending the construction of the canal, the land and town-lot fever
broke out in the State, in 1834-35. It took on the malignant t} 7 pe in
Chicago, lifting the town up into a city. The disease spread over the
entire State and adjoining States. It was epidemic. It cut up men's
farms without regard to locality, and cut up the purses of the purchasers
without regard to consequences. It is estimated that building lots enough
were sold in Indiana alone to accommodate every citizen then in the
United States.
Towns and cities were exported to the Eastern market by the ship-
load. There was no lack of buyers. Every up-ship came freighted with
speculators and their monfey.
This distemper seized upon the Legislature in 183637, and left not
one to tell the tale. They enacted a system of internal improvement
without a parallel in the grandeur of its conception. They ordered the
construction of 1,300 miles of railroad, crossing the State in all direc-
tions. This was surpassed by the river and canal improvements.
There were a few counties not touched by either railroad or river or
canal, and those were to be comforted and compensated by the free dis-
tribution of $200,000 among them. To inflate this balloon beyond cre-
dence it was ordered that work should be commenced on both ends of
26 HISTORY OF THE STATE OP ILLINOIS.
each of these railroads and rivers, and at each river-crossing, all at the
same time. The appropriations for these vast improvements were over
$12,000,000, and commissioners were appointed to borrow the money on
the credit of the State. Remember that all this was in the early days of
railroading, when railroads were luxuries ; that the State had whole
counties with scarcely a cabin ; and that the population of the State was
less than 400,000, and you can form some idea of the vigor with which
these brave men undertook the work of making a great State. In the
light of history I am compelled to say that this was only a premature
throb of the power that actually slumbered in the soil of the State. It
was Hercules in the cradle.
At this juncture the State Bank loaned its funds largely to Godfrey
Oilman & Co., and to other leading houses, for the purpose of drawing
trade from St. Louis to Alton. Soon they failed, and took down the
bank with them.
In 1840, all hope seemed gone. A population of 480,000 were loaded
with a debt of $14,000,000. It had only six small cities, really only
towns, namely : Chicago, Alton, Springfield, Quincy, Galena, Nauvoo.
This debt was to be cared for when there was not a dollar in the treas-
ury, and when the State had borrowed itself out of all credit, and when
there was not good money enough in the hands of all the people to pay
the interest of the debt for a single year. Yet, in the presence of all
these difficulties, the young State steadily refused to repudiate. Gov.
Ford took hold of the problem and solved it, bringing the State through
in triumph.
Having touched lightly upon some of the more distinctive points in
the history of the development of Illinois, let us next briefly consider the
MATERIAL RESOURCES OF THE STATE.
It is a garden four hundred miles long and one hundred and fifty
miles wide. Its soil is chiefly a black sandy loam, from six inches to
sixty feet thick. On the American bottoms it has been cultivated for
one hundred and fifty years without renewal. About the old French
towns it has yielded corn for a century and a half without rest or help.
It produces nearly everything green in the temperate and tropical zones.
She leads all other States in the number of acres actually under plow.
Her products from 25,000,000 of acres are incalculable. Her mineral
wealth is scarcely second to her agricultural power. She has coal, iron,
lead, copper, zinc, many varieties of building stone, fire clay, cuma clay,
common brick clay, sand of all kinds, gravel, mineral paint every thing
needed for a high civilization. Left to herself, she has the elements of
all greatness. The single item of coal is too vast for an appreciative
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 27
handling in figures. We can handle it in general terms like algebraical
signs, but long before we get up into the millions and billions the human
mind drops down from comprehension to mere symbolic apprehension.
When I tell you that nearly four-fifths of the entire State is under-
laid with a deposit of coal more than forty feet thick on the average (now
estimated, by recent surveys, at seventy feet thick), 'you can get some
idea of its amount, as you do of the amount of the national debt. There
it is ! 41,000 square miles one vast mine into which you could put
any of the States ; in which you could bury scores of European and
ancient empires, and have room enough all round to work without know-
ing that they had been sepulchered there.
Put this vast coal-bed down by the other great coal deposits of the
world, and its importance becomes manifest. Great Britain has 12,000
square miles of coal; Spain, 3,000; France, 1,719; Belgium, 578; Illinois
about twice as many square miles as all combined. Virginia has 20,000
square miles; Pennsylvania, 16,000; Ohio, 12,000. Illinois has 41,000
square miles. One-seventh of all the known coal on this continent is in.
Illinois.
Could we sell the coal in this single State for one-seventh of one cent
a ton it would pay the national debt. Converted into power, even with
the wastage in our common engines, it would do more work than could
be done by the entire race, beginning at Adam's wedding and working
ten hours a day through all the centuries till the present time, and right
on into the future at the same rate for the next 600,000 years.
Great Britain uses enough mechanical power to-day to give to each
man, woman, and child in the kingdom the help and service of nineteen
untiring servants. No wonder she has leisure and luxuries. No wonder
the home of the common artisan has in it more luxuries than could be
found in the palace of good old King Arthur. Think, if you can conceive
of it, of the vast army of servants that slumber in the soil of Illinois,
impatiently awaiting the call of Genius to come forth to minister to our
comfort.
At the present rate of consumption England's coal supply will be
exhausted in 250 years. When this is gone she must transfer her dominion
either to the Indies, or to British America, which I would not resist ; or
to some other people, which I would regret as a loss to civilization.
COAL IS KING.
At the same rate of consumption (which far exceeds our own) the
deposit of coal in Illinois will last 120,000 years. And her kingdom shall
be an everlasting kingdom.
Let us turn now from this reserve power to the annual products of
28 HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
the State. We shall not be humiliated in this field. Here we strike the
secret of our national credit. Nature provides a market in the constant
appetite of the race. Men must eat, and if we can furnish the provisions
we can command the treasure. All that a man hath will he give for his
life.
According to the last census Illinois produced 30,000,000 of bushels
of wheat. That is more wheat than was raised by any other State in the
Union. She raised last year 130,000,000 of bushels of corn twice as
much as any other State, and one-sixth of all the corn raised in the United
States. She harvested 2,747,000 tons of hay, nearly one-tenth of all the
hay in the Republic. It is not generally appreciated, but it is true, that
the hay crop of the country is worth more than the cotton crop. The
hay of Illinois equals the cotton of Louisiana. Go to Charleston, S. C.,
and see them peddling handfuls of hay or grass, almost as a curiosity,
as we regard Chinese gods or the cryolite of Greenland ; drink your
coffee and condensed milk; and walk back from the coast for many a
league through the sand and burs till you get up into the better atmos-
phere of the mountains, without seeing a waving meadow or a grazing
herd ; then you will begin to appreciate the meadows of the Prairie State,
where the grass often grows sixteen feet high.
The value of her farm implements is $211,000,000, and the value of
her live stock is only second to the great State of New York. Last year
she had 25,000,000 hogs, and packed 2,113,845, about one-half of all that
were packed in the United States. This is no insignificant item. Pork
is a growing demand of the old world. Since the laborers of Europe
have gotten a taste of our bacon, and we have learned how to pack it dry
in boxes, like dry goods, the world has become the market.
The hog is on the march into the future. His nose is ordained to
uncover the secrets of dominion, and his feet shall be guided by the star
of empire.
Illinois marketed $57,000,000 worth of slaughtered animals more
than any other State, and a seventh of all the States.
Be patient with me, and pardon my pride, and I will give you a list
of some of the things in which Illinois excels all other States.
Depth and richness of soil ; per cent, of good ground ; acres of
improved land ; large farms some farms contain from 40,000 to 60,000
acres of cultivated land, 40,000 acres of corn on a single farm ; number of
farmers ; amount of wheat, corn, oats and honey produced ; value of ani-
mals for slaughter ; number of hogs ; amount of pork ; number of horses
three times as many as Kentucky, the horse State.
Illinois excels all other States in miles of railroads and in miles of
postal service, and in money orders sold per annum, and in the amount of
lumber sold in her markets.
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 29
Illinois is only second in many important matters. This sample list
comprises a few of the more important : Permanent school fund (good
for a young state) ; total income for educational purposes ; number of pub-
lishers of books, maps, papers, etc.; value of farm products and imple-
ments, and of live stock ; in tons of coal mined.
The shipping of Illinois is only second to New York. Out of one
port during the business hours of the season of navigation she sends forth
a vessel every ten minutes. This does not include canal boats, which go
one every five minutes. No wonder she is only second in number of
bankers and brokers or in physicians and surgeons.
She is third in colleges, teachers and schools ; cattle, lead, hay,
flax, sorghum and beeswax.
She is fourth in population, in children enrolled in public schools, in
law schools, in butter, potatoes and carriages.
She is fifth in value of real and personal property, in theological
seminaries and colleges exclusively for women, in milk sold, and in boots
and shoes manufactured, and in book-binding.
She is only seventh in the production of wood, while she is the
twelfth in area. Surely that is well done for the Prairie State. She now
has much more wood and growing timber than she had thirty years ago.
A few leading industries will justify emphasis. She manufactures
$205,000,000 worth of goods, which places her well up toward New York
and Pennsylvania. The number of her manufacturing establishments
increased from 1860 to 1870, 300 per cent.; capital employed increased 350
per cent., and the amount of product increased 400 per cent. She issued
5,500,000 copies of commercial and financial newspapers only second to
New York. She has 6,759 miles of railroad, thus leading all other States,
worth. $636, 458, 000, using 3,245 engines, and 67,712 cars, making a train
long enough to cover one-tenth of the entire roads of the State. Her
stations are only five miles apart. She carried last year 15,795,000 passen-
gers, an average of 36^ miles, or equal to taking hei entire population twice
across the State. More than two-thirds of her land is within five miles of
a railroad, and less than two per cent, is more than fifteen miles away.
The State has a large financial interest in the Illinois Central railroad.
The road was incorporated in 1850, and the State gave each alternate sec-
tion for six miles on each side, and doubled the price of the remaining
land, so keeping herself good. The road received 2,595,000 acres of land,
and pays to the State one-seventh of the gross receipts. The State
receives this year $350,000, and has received in all about $7,000,000. It
is practically the people's road, and it has a most able and gentlemanly
management. Add to this the annual receipts from the canal, $111,000,
and a large per cent, of the State tax is provided for.
30 HISTORY OF THE STATIC OK ILLINOIS.
THE RELIGION AND MORALS
of the State keep step with her productions and growth. She was born
of the missionary spirit. It was a minister who secured for her the ordi-
nance of 1787, by which she has been saved from slavery, ignorance, and
dishonesty. Rev. Mr. Wiley, pastor of a Scotch congregation in Randolph
County, petitioned the Constitutional Convention of 1818 to recognize
Jesus Christ as king, and the Scriptures as the only necessary guide and
book of law. The convention did not act in the case, and the old Cove-
nanters refused to accept citizenship. They never voted until 1824, when
the slavery question was submitted to the people; then they all voted
against it and cast the determining votes. Conscience has predominated
whenever a great moral question has been submitted to the people.
But little mob violence has ever been felt in the State. In 1817
regulators disposed of a band of horse-thieves that infested the territory.
The Mormon indignities finally awoke the same spirit. Alton was also
the scene of a pro-slavery mob, in which Lovejoy was added to the list of
martyrs. The moral sense of the people makes the law supreme, and gives
to the State unruffled peace.
With $22,300,000 in church property, and 4,298 church organizations,
the State has that divine police, the sleepless patrol of moral ideas, that
alone is able to secure perfect safety. Conscience takes the knife from
the assassin's hand and the bludgeon from the grasp of the highwayman.
We sleep in safety, not because we are behind bolts and bars these only
fence against the innocent ; not because a lone officer drowses on a distant
corner of a street ; not because a sheriff may call his posse from a remote
part of the county ; but because conscience guards the very portals of the
air and stirs in the deepest recesses of the public mind. This spirit issues
within the State 9,500,000 copies of religious papers annually, and receives
still more from without. Thus the crime of the State is only one-fourth
that of New York and one-half that of Pennsylvania.
Illinois never had but one duel between her own citizens. In Belle-
ville, in 1820, Alphonso Stewart and William Bennett arranged to vindi-
cate injured honor. The seconds agreed to make it a sham, and make
them shoot blanks. Stewart was in the secret. Bennett mistrusted some-
thing, and, unobserved, slipped a bullet into his gun and killed Stewart.
He then fled the State. After two years he was caught, tried, convicted,
and. in spite of friends and political aid, was hung. This fixed the code
of honor on a Christian basis, and terminated its use in Illinois.
The early preachers were ignorant men, who were accounted eloquent
according to the strength of their voices. But they set the style for all
public speakers. Lawyers and political speakers followed this rule. Gov.
HISTORY OP THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 31
Ford says: "Nevertheless, these first preachers were of incalculable
benefit to the country. They inculcated justice and morality. To them
are we indebted for the first Christian character of the Protestant portion
of the people."
In education Illinois surpasses her material resources. The ordinance
of 1787 consecrated one thirty-sixth of her soil to common schools, and
the law of 1818, the first law that went upon her statutes, gave three per
cent, of all the rest to
EDUCATION INSTEAD OP HIGHWAYS.
The old compact secures this interest forever, and by its yoking
morality and intelligence it precludes the legal interference with the Bible
in the public schools. With such a start it is natural that we should have
11,050 schools, and that our illiteracy should be less than New York or
Pennsylvania, and only about one-half of Massachusetts. We are not to
blame for not having more than one-half as many idiots as the great
States. These public schools soon made colleges inevitable. The first
college, still flourishing, was started in Lebanon in 1828, by the M. E.
church, and named after Bishop McKendree. Illinois College, at Jackson-
ville, supported by the Presbyterians, followed in 1830. In 1832 the Bap-
tists built Shurtleff College, at Alton. Then the Presbyterians built Knox
College, at Galesburg, in 1838, and the Episcopalians built Jubilee College,
at Peoria, in 1847. After these early years colleges have rained down.
A settler could hardly encamp on the prairie but a college would spring
up by his wagon. The State now has one very well endowed and equipped
university, namely, the Northwestern University, at Evanston, with six
colleges, ninety instructors, over 1,000 students, and $ 1,500,000 endow-
ment.
Rev. J. M. Peck was the first educated Protestant minister in tne
State. He settled at Rock Spring, in St. Clair County, 1820, and left his
impress on the State. Before 1837 only party papers were published, but
Mr. Peck published a Gazetteer of Illinois. Soon after John Russell, of
Bluffdale, published essays and tales showing genius. Judge James Hall
published The Illinois Monthly Magazine with great ability, and an annual
called The Western Souvenir, which gave him an enviable fame all over the
United States. From these beginnings Illinois has gone on till she has
more volumes in public libaaries even than Massachusetts, and of the
44,500,000 volumes in all the public libraries of the United States, she
has one-thirteenth. In newspapers she stands fourth. Her increase is
marvelous. In 1850 she issued 5,000,000 copies ; in 1860, 27,590,000 ; in
1870, 113,140,000. In 1860 she had eighteen colleges and seminaries ; in
1870 she had eighty. That is a grand advance for the war decade.
This brings us to a record unsurpassed in the history of any age,
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
THE WAR RECORD OF ILLINOIS.
I hardly know where to begin, or how to advance, or what to say. I
can at best give you only a broken synopsis of her deeds, and you must
put them in the order of glory for yourself. Her sons have always been
foremost on fields of danger. In 1832-33, at the call of Gov. Reynolds,
her sons drove Blackhawk over the Mississippi.
When the Mexican war came, in May, 1846, 8,370 men offered them-
selves when only 3,720 could be accepted. The fields of Buena Vista and
Vera Cruz, and the storming of Cerro Gordo, will carry the glory of Illinois
soldiers along after the infamy of the cause they served has been forgotten.
But it was reserved till our day for her sons to find a field and cause and
foemen that could fitly illustrate their spirit and heroism. Illinois put
into her own regiments for the United States government 256,000 men,
and into the army through other States enough to swell the number to
290,000. This far exceeds all the soldiers of' the federal government in
all the war of the revolution. Her total years of service were over 600,000.
She enrolled men from eighteen to forty-five years of age when the law
of Congress in 1864 the test time only asked for those from twenty to
forty-five. Her enrollment was otherwise excessive. Her people wanted
to go, and did not take the pains to correct the enrollment. Thus the
basis of fixing the quota was too great, and then the quota itself, at least
in the trying time, was far above any other State.
Thus the demand on some counties, as Monroe, for example, took every
able-bodied man in the county, and then did not have enough to fill the
quota. Moreover, Illinois sent 20,844 men for ninety or one hundred days,
for whom no credit was asked. When Mr. Lincoln's attention was called
to the inequality of the quota compared with other States, he replied,
" The country needs the sacrifice. We must put the whip on the free
horse." In spite of all these disadvantages Illinois gave to the country
73,000 years of service above all calls. With one-thirteenth of the popu-
lation of the loyal States, she sent regularly one-tenth of all the soldiers,
and in the peril of the closing calls, when patriots were few and weary,
she then sent one-eighth of all that were called for by her loved and hon-
ored son in the white house. He,r mothers and daughters went into the
fields to raise the grain and keep the children together, while the fathers
and older sons went to the harvest fields of the world. I knew a father
and four sons who agreed that one of them must stay at home ; and they
pulled straws from a stack to see who might go. The father was left.
The next day he came into the camp, saying : " Mother says she can get
the crops in, and I am going, too." I know large Methodist churches
from which every male member went to the army. Do you want to know
HISTORY OF THE STATE OP ILLINOIS. 33
what these heroes from Illinois did in the field ? Ask any soldier with a
good record of his own, who is thus able to judge, and he will tell you
that the Illinois men went in to win. It is common history that the greater
victories were won in the West. When everything else looked dark Illi-
nois was gaining victories all down the river, and dividing the confederacy.
Sherman took with him on his great march forty-live regiments of Illinois
infantry, three companies of artillery, and one company of cavalry. He
could not avoid
GOING TO THE SEA.
If he had been killed, I doubt not the men would have gone right on.
Lincoln answered all rumors of Sherman's defeat with, " It is impossible ;
there is a mighty sight of fight in 100,000 Western men." Illinois soldiers
brought home 300 battle-flags. The first United States flag that floated
over Richmond was an Illinois flag. She sent messengers and nurses to
every field and hospital, to care for her sick and wounded sons. She said,
' These suffering ones are my sons, and I will care for them."
When individuals had given all, then cities and towns came forward
with their credit to the extent of many millions, to aid these men and
their families.
Illinois gave the country the great general of the war Ulysses S.
Grant since honored with two terms of the Presidency of the United
States.
One other name from Illinois comes up in all minds, embalmed in all
hearts, that must have the supreme place in this story of our glory and
of our nation's honor ; that name is Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois.
The analysis of Mr. Lincoln's character is difficult on account of its
symmetry.
In this age Ave look with admiration at his uncompromising honesty.
And well we may, for this saved us. Thousands throughout the length
and breadth of our country who knew him only as " Honest Old Abe,"
voted for him on that account ; and wisely did they choose, for no other
man could have carried us through the fearful night of the war. When
his plans were too vast for our comprehension, and his faith in the cause
too sublime for our participation ; when it was all night about us, and all
dread before us, and all sad and desolate behind us : when not one ray
shone upon our cause ; when traitors were haughty and exultant at the
South, and fierce and blasphemous at the North ; when the loyal men here
seemed almost in the minority ; when the stoutest heart quailed, the bravest
cheek paled ; when generals were defeating each other for place, and
contractors were leeching out the very heart's blood of the prostrate
republic : when every thing else had failed us, we looked at this calm,
patient man standing like a rock in the storm, and said : " Mr. Lincoln
34 HISTORY OF THE STATE OP ILLINOIS.
is honest, and we can trust him still." Holding to this single point with
the energy of faith and despair we held together, and, under God, he
brought us through to victory.
His practical wisdom made him the wonder of all lands. With such
certainty did Mr. Lincoln follow causes to their ultimate effects, that his
foresight of contingencies seemed almost prophetic.
He is radiant with all the great virtues, and his memory shall shed a
glory upon this age that shall fill the eyes of men as they look into his-
tory. Other men have excelled him in some point, but, taken at all
points, all in all, he stands head and shoulders above every other man of
6,000 years. An administrator, he saved the nation in the perils of
unparalleled civil war. A statesman, he justified his measures by their
success. A philanthropist, he gave liberty to one race and salvation to
another. A moralist, he bowed from the summit of human power to the
foot of the Cross, and became a Christian. A mediator, he exercised mercy
under the most absolute abeyance to law. A leader, he was no partisan.
A commander, he was untainted with blood. A ruler in desperate times,
he was unsullied with crime. A man, he has left no word of passion, no
thought of malice, no trick of craft, no act of jealousy, no purpose of
selfish ambition. Thus perfected, without a model, and without a peer,
he was dropped into these troubled years to adorn and embellish all that
is good and all that is great in our humanity, and to present to all coming
time the representative of the divine idea of free government.
It is not too much to say that away down in the future, when the
republic has fallen from its niche in the wall of time ; when the great
war itself shall have faded out in the distance like a mist on the horizon ;
when the Anglo-Saxon language shall be spoken only by the tongue of
the stranger; then the generations looking this way shall see the great
president as the supreme figure in this vortex of history
CHICAGO.
It is impossible in our brief space to give more than a meager sketch
of such a city as Chicago, which is in itself the greatest marvel of the
Prairie State. This mysterious, majestic, mighty city, born first of water,
and next of fire; sown in weakness, and raised in power; planted among
the willows of the marsh, and crowned with the glory of the mountains ;
sleeping on the bosom of the prairie, and rocked on the bosom of the sea ;
the youngest city of the world, and still the eye of the prairie, as Damas-
cus, the oldest city of the world, is the eye of the desert. With a com-
merce far exceeding that of Corinth on her isthmus, in the highway to
the East ; with the defenses of a continent piled around her by the thou-
sand miles, making her far safer than Rome on the banks of the Tiber ;
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 35
with schools eclipsing Alexandria and Athens ; with liberties more con-
spicuous than those of the old republics ; with a heroism equal to the first
Carthage, and with a sanctity scarcely second to that of Jerusalem set
your thoughts on all this, lifted into the eyes of all men bythe miracle of
its growth, illuminated by the flame of its fall, and transfigured by the
divinity of its resurrection, and you will feel, as I do, the utter impossi-
bility of compassing this subject as it deserves. Some impression of her
importance is received from the shock her burning gave to the civilized
world.
When the doubt of her calamity was removed, and the horrid fact
was accepted, there went a shudder over all cities, and a quiver over all
lands. There was scarcely a town in the civilized world that did not
shake on the brink of this opening chasm. The flames of our homes red-
dened all skies. The city was set upon a hill, and could not be hid. All
eyes were turned upon it. To have struggled and suffered amid the
scenes of its fall is as distinguishing as to have fought at Thermopylae, or
Salamis, or Hastings, or Waterloo, or Bunker Hill.
Its calamity amazed the world, because it was felt to be the common
property of mankind.
The early history of the city is full of interest, just as the early his-
tory of such a man as Washington or Lincoln becomes public property,
and is cherished by every patriot.
Starting with 560 acres in 1833, it embraced and occupied 23,000
acres in 1869, and, having now a population of more than 500,000, it com-
mands general attention.
The first settler Jean Baptiste Pointe au Sable, a mulatto from the
West Indies came and began trade with the Indians in 1796. John
Kinzie became his successor in 1804, in which year Fort Dearborn was
erected.
A mere trading-post was kept here from that time till about the time
of the Blackhawk war, in 1832. It was not the city. It was merely a
cock crowing at midnight. The morning was not yet. In 1833 the set-
tlement about the fort was incorporated as a town. The voters were
divided on the propriety of such corporation, twelve voting for it and one
against it. Four years later it was incorporated as a city, and embraced
560 acres. .
The produce handled in this city is an indication of its power. Grain
and flour were imported from the East till as late as 1837. The first
exportation by way of experiment was in 1839. Exports exceeded imports
first .in 1842. The Board of Trade was organized in 1848, but it was so
weak that it needed nursing till 1855. Grain was purchased by the
wagon-load in the street.
I remember sitting with my father on a load of wheat, in the long
36 HISTORY OP THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
line of wagons along Lake street, while the buyers came and untied the
bags, and examined the grain, and made their bids. That manner of
business had to cease with the day of small things. Now our elevators
will hold 15,000,000 bushels of grain. The cash value of the produce
handled in a year is $215,000,000, and the produce weighs 7,000,000
tons or 700,000 car loads. This handles thirteen and a half ton each
minute, all the year round. One tenth of all the wheat in the United
States is handled in Chicago. Even as long ago as 1853 the receipts of
grain in Chicago exceeded those of the goodly city of St. Louis, and in
1854 the exports of grain from Chicago exceeded those of New York and
doubled those of St. Petersburg, Archangel, or Odessa, the largest grain
markets in Europe.
The manufacturing interests of the city are not contemptible. In
1873 manufactories employed 45,000 operatives ; in 1876, 60,000. The
manufactured product in 1875 was worth $177,000,000.
No estimate of the size and power of Chicago would be adequate
that did not put large emphasis on the railroads. Before they came
thundering along our streets canals were the hope of our country. But
who ever thinks now of traveling by canal packets ? In June, 1852,
there were only forty miles of railroad connected with the city. The
old Galena division of the Northwestern ran out to Elgin. But now,
who can count the trains and measure the roads that seek a terminus or
connection in this city ? The lake stretches away to the north, gathering
in to this center all the harvests that might otherwise pass to the north
of us. If you will take a map and look at the adjustment of railroads,
you will see, first, that Chicago is the great railroad center of the world,
as New York is the commercial city of this continent; and, second, that
the railroad lines form the iron spokes of a great wheel whose hub is
this city. The lake furnishes the only break in the spokes, and this
seems simply to have pushed a few spokes together on each shore. See
the eighteen trunk lines, exclusive of eastern connections.
Pass round the circle, and view their numbers and extent. There
is the great Northwestern, with all its branches, one branch creeping
along the lake shore, and so reaching to the north, into the Lake Superior
regions, away to the right, and on to the Northern Pacific on the left,
swinging around Green Bay for iron and copper and silver, twelve months
in the year, and reaching out for the wealth of the great agricultural
belt and isothermal line traversed by the Northern Pacific. Another
branch, not so far north, feeling for the heart of the Badger State.
Another pushing lower down the Mississippi all these make many con-
nections, and tapping all the vast wheat regions of Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Iowa, and all the regions this side of sunset. There is that elegant road,
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, running out a goodly number of
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 87
branches, and reaping the great fields this side of the Missouri River.
I can only mention the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis, our Illinois Central,
described elsewhere, and the Chicago & Rock Island. Further around
we come to the lines connecting us with all the eastern cities. The
Chicago, Indianapolis & St. Louis, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne &
Chicago, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, and the Michigan Cen-
tral and Great Western, give us many highways to the seaboard. Thus we
reach the Mississippi at five points, from St. Paul to Cairo and the Gulf
itself by two routes. We also reach Cincinnati and Baltimore, and Pitts-
burgh and Philadelphia, and New York. North and south run the water
courses of the lakes and the rivers, broken just enough at this point to
make a pass. Through this, from east to west, run the long lines that
stretch from ocean to ocean.
This is the neck of the glass, and the golden sands of commerce
must pass into our hands. Altogether we have more than 10,000 miles
of railroad, directly tributary to this city, seeking to unload their wealth
in our coffers. All these roads have come themselves by the infallible
instinct of capital. Not a dollar was ever given by the city to secure
one of them, and only a small per cent, of stock taken originally by her
citizens, and that taken simply as an investment. Coming in the natural
order of events, they will not be easily diverted.
There is still another showing to all this. The connection between
New York and San Francisco is by the middle route. This passes inevit-
ably through Chicago. St. Louis wants the Southern Pacific or Kansas
Pacific, and pushes it out through Denver, and so on up to Cheyenne.
But before the road is fairly under way, the Chicago roads shove out to
Kansas City, making even the Kansas Pacific a feeder, and actually leav-
ing St. Louis out in the cold. It is not too much to expect that Dakota,
Montana, and Washington Territory will find their great market in Chi-
cago.
But these are not all. Perhaps I had. better notice here the ten or
fifteen new roads that have just entered, or are just entering, our city.
Their names are all that is necessary to give. Chicago & St. Paul, look-
ing up the Red River country to the British possessions ; the Chicago,
Atlantic & Pacific ; the Chicago, Decatur & State Line ; the Baltimore &
Ohio; the Chicago, Danville & Vincennes; the Chicago & LaSalle Rail-
road ; the Chicago, Pittsburgh & Cincinnati ; the Chicago and Canada
Southern ; the Chicago and Illinois River Railroad. These, with their
connections, and with the new connections of the old roads, already in.
process of erection, give to Chicago not less than 10,000 miles of new
tributaries from the richest land on the continent. Thus there will be
added to the reserve power, to the capital within reach of this city, not
less than $1,000,000,000.
HISTORY OF THE STATE OP ILLINOIS.
Add to all this transporting power the ships that sail one every nine
minutes of the business hours of the season of navigation ; add, also, the
canal boats that leave one every five minutes during the same time and
you will see something of the business of the city.
TtfE COMMERCE OF THIS CITY
has been leaping along to keep pace with the growth of the country
around us. In 1852, our commerce reached the hopeful sum of
20,000,000. In 1870 it reached $400,000,000. In 1871 it was pushed
up above $450,000,000. And in 1875 it touched nearly double that.
One-half of our imported goods come directly to Chicago. Grain
enough is exported directly from our docks to the old world to employ a
semi-weekly line of steamers of 3,000 tons capacity. This branch is
not likely to be greatly developed. Even after the great Welland Canal
is completed we shall have only fourteen feet of water. The great ocean
vessels will continue to control the trade.
The banking capital of Chicago is $24,431,000. Total exchange in
1875, $659,000,000. Her wholesale business in 1875 was $294,000,000.
The rate of taxes is less than in any other great city.
The schools of Chicago are unsurpassed in America. Out of a popu-
lation of 300,000 there were only 186 persons between the ages of six
and twenty-one unable to read. This is the best known record.
In 1831 the mail system was condensed into a hlf-breed, who went
on foot to Niles, Mich., once in two weeks, and brought back what papers
and news he could find. As late as 1846 there was often only one mail
a week. A post-office was established in Chicago in 1833, and the post-
master nailed up old boot-legs on one side of his shop to serve as boxes
for the nabobs and literary men.
It is an interesting fact in the growth of the young city that in the
active life of the business mea of that day the mail matter has grown to
a daily average of over 6,500 pounds. It speaks equally well for the
intelligence of the people and the commercial importance of the place,
that the mail matter distributed to the territory immediately tributary to
Chicago is seven times greater than that distributed to the territory
immediately tributary to St. Louis.
The improvements that have characterized the city Jlre as startling
as the city itself. In 1831, Mark Beaubien established a ferry over the
river, and put himself under bonds to carry all the citizens free for the
privilege of charging strangers. Now there are twenty-four large bridges
and two tunnels.
In 1833 the government expended $30,000 on the harbor. Then
commenced that series of maneuvers with the river that has made it one
HISTOKY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 39
of the world's curiosities. It used to wind around in the lower end of /
the town, and make its way rippling over the sand into the lake at the
foot of Madison street. They took it up and put it down where it now
is. It was a narrow stream, so narrow that even moderately small crafts
had to go up through the willows and cat's tails to the point near Lake
street bridge, and back up one of the branches to get room enough in
which to turn around.
In 1844 the quagmires in the streets were first pontooned by plank
roads, which acted in wet weather as public squirt-guns. Keeping you
out of tlie mud, they compromised by squirting the mud over you. The
wooden-block pavements came to Chicago in 1857. In 1840 water was
delivered by peddlers in carts or by hand. Then a twenty-five horse-
power engine pushed it through hollow or bored logs along the streets
till 1854, when it was introduced into the houses by new works. The
first fire-engine was used in 1835, and the first steam fire-engine in 1859.
Gas was utilized for lighting the city in 1850. , The Young Men's Chris-
tian Association was organized in 1858, and horse railroads carried them
to their work in 1859. The museum was opened in 1863. The alarm
telegraph adopted in 1864. The opera-house built-in 1865. The city
grew from 560 acres in 1833 to 23,000 in 1869. In 1834, the taxes
amounted to $48.90, and the trustees of the town borrowed $60 more for
opening and improving streets. In 1835, the legislature authorized a loan
of $2,000, and the treasurer and street commissioners resigned rather than
plunge the town into such a gulf.
Now the city embraces 36 square miles of territory, and has 30 miles
of water front, besides the outside harbor of refuge, of 400 acres, inclosed
by a crib sea-wall. One-third of the city has been raised up an average
of eight feet, giving good pitch to the 263 miles of sewerage. The water
of the city is above all competition. It is received, through two tunnels
extending to a crib in the lake two miles from shore. The closest analy-
sis fails to detect any impurities, and, receded 35 feet below the surface,
it is always clear and cold. The first tunnel is five feet two inches in
diameter and two miles long, and can deliver 50,000,000 of gallons per
day. The second tunnel is seven feet in diameter and six miles long,
running four miles under the city, and can deliver 100,000,000 of gal-
lons per day. This water is distributed through 410 miles of water-
mains.
The three grand engineering exploits of the city are: First, lifting
the city up on jack-screws, whole squares at a time, without interrupting
the business, thus giving us good drainage ; second, running the tunnels
under the lake, giving us the best water in the world ; and third, the
turning the current of the river in its own channel, delivering us from the
old abominations, and making decency possible. They redound about
40 HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
equally to the credit of the engineering, to the energy of the people, and
to the health of the city.
That which really constitutes the city, its indescribable spirit, its soul,
the way it lights up in every feature in the hour of action, has not been
touched. In meeting strangers, one is often surprised how some homely
women marry so well. Their forms are bad, their gait uneven and awk-
ward, their complexion is dull, their features are misshapen and mismatch-
ed, and when we see them there is no beauty that we should desire them.
But when once they are aroused on some subject, they put on new pro-
portions. They light up into great power. The real person comes out
from its unseemly ambush, and captures us at will. They have power.
They have ability to cause things to come to pass. We no longer wonder
why they are in such high demand. So it is with our city.
There is no grand scenery except the two seas, one of water, the
other of prairie. Nevertheless, there is a spirit about it, a push, a breadth,
a power, that soon makes it a place never to be forsaken. One soon
ceases to believe in impossibilities. Balaams are the only prophets that are
disappointed. The bottom that has been on the point of falling out has
been there so long that it has grown fast. It can not fall out. It has all
the capital of the world itching to get inside the corporation.
The two great laws that govern the growth and size of cities are,
first, the amount of territory for which they are the distributing and
receiving points ; second, the number of medium or moderate dealers that
do this distributing. Monopolists build up themselves, not the cities.
They neither eat, wear, nor live in proportion to their business. Both
these laws help Chicago.
The tide of trade is eastward not up or down the map, but across
the map. The lake runs up a wingdatn for 500 miles to gather in the
business. Commerce can not ferry up there for seven months in the year,
and the facilities for seven months can do the work for twelve. Then the
great region west of us is neajjy all good, productive land. Dropping
south into the trail of St. Louis, you fall into vast deserts and rocky dis-
tricts, useful in holding the world together. St. Louis and Cincinnati,
instead of rivaling and hurting Chicago, are her greatest sureties of
dominion. They are far enough away to give sea-room, farther off than
Paris is from London, and yet they are near enough to prevent the
springing up of any other great city between them.
St. Louis will be helped by the opening of the Mississippi, but also
hurt. That will put New Orleanson her feet, and with a railroad running
over into Texas and so West, she will tap the streams that now crawl up
the Texas and Missouri road. The current is East, not North, and a sea-
port at New Orleans can not permanently help St. Louis.
Chicago is in the field almost alone, to handle the wealth of one-
HISTORY OF THK STATE OF ILLINOIS. 41
fourth of the territory of this great republic. This strip of seacoast
divides its margins between Portland, Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore and Savannah, or some other great port to be created for the
South in the next decade. But Chicago has a dozen empires casting their
treasures into her lap. On a bed of coal that can run all the machinery
of the world for 500 centuries ; in a garden that can feed the race by the
thousand years; at the head of the lakes that give her a temperature as a
summer resort equaled by no great city in the land ; with a climate that
insures the health of her citizens ; surrounded by all the great deposits
of natural wealth in mines acid forests and herds, Chicago is the wonder
of to-day, and will be the city of the future.
MASSACRE AT FORT DEARBORN.
During the war of 1812, Fort Dearborn became the theater of stirring
events. The garrison consisted of fifty-four men under command of
Captain Nathan Heald, assisted by Lieutenant Helm (son-in-law of Mrs.
Kinzie) and Ensign Ronan. Dr. Voorhees was surgeon. The only resi-
dents at the post at that time were the wives of Captain Heald and Lieu-
tenant Helm, and a few of the soldiers, Mr. Kinzie and his family, and
a few Canadian voyageurs, with their wives and children. The soldiers
and Mr. Kinzie were on most friendly terms with the Pottawattamies
and Winnebagos, the principal tribes around them, but they could not
win them from their attachment to the British.
One evening in April, 1812, Mr. Kinzie sat playing on his violin and
his children were dancing to the music, when Mrs. Kinzie came rushing
into the house, pale with terror, and exclaiming: "The Indians! the
Indians!" "What? Where?" eagerly inquired Mr. Kinzie. "Up
at Lee's, killing and scalping," answered the frightened mother, who,
when the alarm was given, was attending Mrs. Barnes (just confined)
living not far off. Mr. Kinzie and his family crossed the river and took
refuge in the fort, to which place Mrs. Barnes and her infant not a day
old were safely conveyed. The rest of the inhabitants took shelter in the
fort. This alarm was caused by a scalping party of Winnebagos, who
hovered about the fort several days, when they disappeared, and for several
weeks the inhabitants were undisturbed.
On the 7th of August, 1812, General Hull, at Detroit, sent orders to
Captain Heald to evacuate Fort Dearborn, and to distribute all the United
States property to the Indians in the neighborhood a most insane order.
The Pottawattamie chief, who brought the dispatch, had more wisdom
than the commanding general. He advised Captain Heald not to make
the distribution. Said he : " Leave the fort and stores as they are, and
let the Indians make distribution for themselves ; and while they are
engaged in the business, the white people may escape to Fort Wayne."
42 HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
Captain Heald held a council with the Indians on the afternoon of
the 12th, in which his officers refused to join, for they had been informed
that treachery was designed that the Indians intended to murder the
white people in the council, and then destroy those in the fort. Captain
Heald, however, took the precaution to open a port-hole displaying a
cannon pointing directly upon the council, and by that means saved
his life.
Mr. Kinzie, who knew the Indians well, begged Captain Heald not
to confide in their promises, nor distribute the arms and munitions among
them, for it would only put power into their hands to destroy the whites.
Acting upon this advice, Heald resolved to withhold the munitions of
war ; and on the night of the 13th, after the distribution of the other
property had been made, the powder, ball and liquors were thrown into
the river, the muskets broken up and destroyed.
Black Partridge, a friendly chief, came to Captain Heald, and said :
" Linden birds have been singing in my ears to-day: be careful on the
march you are going to take." On that dark night vigilant Indians had
crept near the fort and discovered the destruction of their promised booty
going on within. The next morning the powder was seen floating on the
surface of the river. The savages were exasperated and made loud com-
plaints and threats.
On the following day when preparations were making to leave the
fort, and all the inmates were deeply impressed with a sense of impend-
ing danger, Capt. Wells, an uncle of Mrs. Heald, was discovered upon
the Indian trail among the sand-hills on the borders of the lake, not far
distant, with a band of mounted Miamis, of whose tribe he was chief,
having been adopted by the famous Miami warrior, Little Turtle. When
news of Hull's surrender reached Fort Wayne, he had started with this
force to assist Heald in defending Fort Dearborn. He was too late.
Every means for its defense had been destroyed the night before, and
arrangements were made for leaving the fort on the morning of the 15th.
It was a warm bright morning in the middle of August. Indications
were positive that the savages intended to murder the white people ; and
when they moved out of the southern gate of the fort, the march was
like a funeral procession. The band, feeling the solemnity of the occa-
sion, struck up the Dead March in Saul.
Capt. Wells, who had blackened his face with gun-powder in token
of his fate, took the' lead with his band of Miamis, followed by Capt.
Heald, with his wife by his side on horseback. Mr. Kinzie hoped by his
personal influence to avert the impending blow, and therefore accompanied
them, leaving his family in a boat in charge of a friendly Indian, to be
taken to his trading station at the site of Niles, Michigan, in the event of
his death.
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. 43
The procession moved slowly along the lake shore till they reached
the sand-hills between the prairie and the beach, when the Pottawattamie
escort, under the leadership of Blackbird, filed to the right, placing those
hills between them and the white people. Wells, with his Miamis, had
kept in the advance. They suddenly came rushing back, Wells exclaim-
ing, " They are about to attack us ; form instantly." These words were
quickly followed by a storm of bullets, which came whistling over the
little hills which the treacherous savages had made the covert for their
murderous attack. The white troops charged upon the Indians, drove
them back to the prairie, and then the battle was waged between fifty-
four soldiers, twelve civilians and three or four women (the cowardly
Miamis having fled at the outset) against five hundred Indian warriors.
The white people, hopeless, resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible.
Ensign Ronan wielded his weapon vigorously, even after falling upon his
knees weak from the loss of blood. Capt. Wells, who was by the side of
his niece, Mrs. Heald, when the conflict began, behaved with the greatest
coolness and courage. He said to her, " We have not the slightest chance
for life. We must part to meet no more in this world. God bless you."
And then he dashed forward. Seeing a young warrior, painted like a
demon, climb into a wagon in which were twelve children, and tomahawk
them all, he cried out, unmindful of his personal danger, " If that is your
game, butchering women and children, I will kill too." He spurred his
horse towards the Indian camp, where they hud left their squaws and
papooses, hotly pursued by swift-footed young warriors, who sent bullets
whistling after him. One of these killed his horse and wounded him
severely in the leg. With a yell the young braves rushed to make him
their prisoner and reserve him for torture. He resolved not to be made
a captive, and by the use of the most provoking epithets tried to induce
them to kill him instantly. He called a fiery young chief a squaw, when
the enraged warrior killed Wells instantly with his tomahawk, jumped
upon his body, cut out his heart, and ate a portion of the warm morsel
with savage delight !
In this fearful combat women bore a conspicuous part. Mrs. Heald
was an excellent equestrian and an expert in the use of the rifle. She
fought the savages bravely, receiving several severe wounds. Though
faint from the loss of blood, she managed to keep her saddle. A savage
raised his tomahawk to kill her, when she looked him full in the face,
and with a sweet smile and in a gentle voice said, in his own language,
" Surely you will not kill a squaw ! " The arm of the savage fell, and
the life of the heroic woman was saved.
Mrs. Helm, the step-daughter of Mr. Kinzie, had an encounter with
a stout Indian, who attempted to tomahawk her. Springing to one side,
she received the glancing blow on her shoulder, and at the same instant
44 HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
seized the savage round the neck with her arms and endeavored to get
hold of his scalping knife, which hung in a sheath at his breast. While
she was thus struggling she was dragged from her antagonist by another
powerful Indian, who bore her, in spite of her struggles, to the margin
of the lake and plunged her in. To her astonishment she was held by
him so that she would not drown, and she soon perceived that she was
in the hands of the friendly Black Partridge, who had saved her' life.
The wife of Sergeant Holt, a large and powerful woman, behaved as
bravely as an Amazon. She rode a fine, high-spirited horse, which the
Indians coveted, and several of them attacked her with the butts of their
guns, for the purpose of dismounting her ; but she used the sword which
slits had snatched from her disabled husband so skillfully that she foiled
them ; and, suddenly wheeling her horse, she dashed over the prairie,
followed by the savages shouting, " The brave woman ! the brave woman !
Don't hurt her ! " They finally overtook her, and while she was fighting
them in front, a powerful savage came up behind her, seized her by the
neck and dragged her to the ground. Horse and woman were made
captives. Mrs. Holt was a long time a captive among the Indians, but
was afterwards ransomed.
In this sharp conflict two-thirds of the white people were slain and
wounded, and all their horses, baggage and provision were lost. Only
t\vi-nty-eight straggling men now remained to fight five hundred Indians
rendered furious by the' sight of blood. They succeeded in breaking
through the ranks of the murderers and gaining a slight eminence on the
prairie near the Oak Woods. The Indians did not pursue, but gathered
on their flanks, while the chiefs held a consultation on the sand-hills, and
showed signs of willingness to parley. It would have been madness on
the part of the whites to renew the fight ; and so Capt. Heald went for-
ward and met Blackbird on the open prairie, where terms of surrender
were soon agreed upon. It was arranged that the white people should
give up their arms to Blackbird, and that the survivors should become
prisoners of war, to be exchanged for ransoms as soon as practicable.
With this understanding captives and captors started for the Indian
camp near the fort, to which Mrs. Helm had been taken bleeding and
suffering by Black Partridge, and had met her step-father and learned
that her husband was safe.
A new scene of horror was now opened at the Indian camp. The
wounded, not being included in the terms of surrender, as it was inter-
preted by the Indians, and the British general, Proctor, having offered a
liberal bounty for American scalps, delivered at Maiden, nearly all the
wounded men were killed and scalped, and the price of the trophies was
afterwards paid by the British government.
ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS.
BILLS OF EXCHANGE AND PROMISSORY NOTES.
No promissory note, check, draft, bill of exchange, order, or note, nego-
tiable instrument payable at sight, or on demand, or on presentment, shall
be entitled to days of grace. All other bills of exchange, drafts or notes are
entitled to three days of grace. All the above mentioned paper falling
due on Sunday, New Years' Day, the Fourth of July, Christmas, or any
day appointed or recommended by the President of the United States or
the Governor of the State as a day of fast or thanksgiving, shall be deemed
as due on the day previous, and should two or more of these days come
together, then such instrument shall be treated as due on the day previous
to the first of said days. No defense can be made against a negotiable
instrument (assigned before due) in. the hands of the assignee without
notice, except fraud was used in obtaining the same. To hold an indorser,
due diligence must be used by suit, in collecting of the maker, unless suit
would have been unavailing. Notes payable to person named or to order,
in order to absolutely transfer title, must be indorsed by the payee. Notes
payable to bearer may be transferred by delivery, and when so payable
every indorser thereon is held as a guarantor of payment unless otherwise
expressed.
In computing interest or discount on negotiable instruments, a month
shall be considered a calendar month or twelfth of a year, and for less
than a month, a day shall be figured a thirtieth part of a month. Notes
only bear interest when so expressed, but after due they draw the legal
interest, even if not stated.
INTEREST.
The legal rate of interest is six per cent. Parties may agree in writ-
ing on a rate not exceeding ten per cent. If a rate of interest greater
than ten per cent, is contracted for, it works a forfeiture of the whole of
said interest, and only the principal can be recovered.
DESCENT.
When nn will is made, the property of a deceased person is distrib-
uted as follows:
45
46 ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS.
First. To his or her children and their descendants in equal parts ;
the descendants of the deceased child or grandchild, taking the share of
their deceased parents in equal parts among them.
Second. When there is no child of the intestate, nor descendant of
such child, and no widoio or surviving husband, then to the parents, broth-
ers or sisters of the deceased, and their descendants, in equal parts among
them, allowing to each of the parents, if living, a child's part, or to the
survivor of them if one be dead, a double portion; and if there is no
parent living, then to the brothers and sisters of the intestate, and their
descendants.
Third, When there is a widow or surviving husband, and no child or
children, or descendants of a child or children of the intestate, then
(after the payment of all just debts) one-half of the real estate and the
whole of the personal estate shall descend to such widow or surviving hus-
band as an absolute estate forever.
Fourth. When there is a widow or surviving husband, and also a child
or children, or descendants of such child or children of the intestate, the
widow or surviving husband shall receive as his or her absolute personal
estate, one-third of all the personal estate of the intestate.
Fifth. If there is no child of the intestate, or descendant of such
child, and no parent, brother or sister, or descendant of such parent,
brother or sister, and no widow or surviving husband, then such estate
shall descend in equal parts to the next of kin to the intestate, in equal
degree (computing by the rules of the civil law), and there shall be no
representation among collaterals, except with the descendants of broth-
ers and sisters of the intestate ; and in no case shall there be any distinc-
tion between the kindred of the whole and the half blood.
Sixth. If any intestate leaves a /rid'.nc <>r surviving husband and no
kindred, his or her estate shall descend to such ividow or surviving husband.
WILLS AND ESTATES OF DECEASED PERSONS.
No exact form of words are necessary in order to make a will good at
law. Every male person of the age of twenty-one years, and every female
of the age of eighteen years, of sound mind and memory, can make a valid
will ; it must be in writing, signed by the testator or by some one in his
or her presence and by his or her direction, and attested by two or more
credible witnesses. Care should be taken that the loitnesses are not inter-
ested in the will. Persons knowing themselves to have been named in the
will or appointed executor, must within thirty days of the death of
deceased cause the will to be proved and recorded in the proper county,
or present it, and refuse to accept; on failure to do so are liable to forfeit
the sum of tiri'nf// Julfiirs per month. Inventory to be made by executor
or administrator within three months from date of letters testamenturv or
ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS. 47
of administration. Executors' and administrators' compensation not to
exceed six per cent, on amount of personal estate, and three per cent,
on money realized from real estate, with such additional allowance a?
shall be reasonable for extra services. Appraisers'' compensation $2 pef
day.
Notice requiring all claims to be presented against the estate shall bd
given by the executor or administrator within six months of being quali'
fied. Any person having a claim and not presenting it at the time fixed
by said notice is required to have summons issued notifying the executor
or administrator of his having filed his claim in court ; in such cases the
costs have to be paid by the claimant. Claims should be filed within two
years from the time administration is granted on an estate," as after that
time they are forever barred, unless other estate is found that was not in-
ventoried. Married women, infants, persons insane, imprisoned or without
the United States, in the employment of the United States, or of this
State, have two years after their disabilities are removed to file claims.
Claims are classified and paid out of the estate in the following manner :
First. Funeral expenses.
Second. The widow's award, if there is a widow ; or children if there
are children, and no widow.
Third. Expenses attending the last illness, not including physician's
bill.
Fourth. Debts dueOhe common school or township fund .
Fifth. All expenses of proving the will and taking out letters testa-
mentary or administration, and settlement of the estate, and the physi-
cian's bill in the last illness of deceased.
Sixth. Where the deceased has received money in trust for any pur-
pose, his executor or administrator shall pay out of his estate the amount
received and not accounted for.
Seventh. All other debts and demands of whatsoever kind, without
regard to quality or dignity, which shall be exhibited to the court within
two years from the granting of letters.
Award to Widow and Children, exclusive of debts and legacies or be-
quests, except funeral expenses:
First. r f\ie family pictures and wearing apparel, jewels and ornaments
.of herself and minor children.
Second. School books and the family library of the value of 100.
Third. One sewing machine.
Fourth. Necessary beds, bedsteads and bedding for herself and family.
Fifth. The stoves and pipe used in the family, with the necessary
cooking utensils, or in case they have none, $50 in money.
Sixth. Household and kitchen furniture to the value of $100.
Seventh. One milch cow and calf for every four members of her family.
48 ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS.
Eighth. Two sheep for each member of her family, and the fleeces
taken from the same, and one horse, saddle and bridle.
Ninth. Provisions for herself and family for one year.
Tenth. Food for the stock above specified for six months.
Eleventh. Fuel for herself and family for three months.
Twelfth. One hundred dollars worth of other property suited to her
condition in life, to be selected by the widow.
The widow if she elects may have in lieu of the said award, the same
personal property or money in place thereof as is or may be exempt from
execution or attachment against the head of a family.
TAXES.
The owners of real and personal property, on the first day of May in
each year, are liable for the taxes thereon.
Assessments should be completed before the fourth Monday in June,
at which time the town board of review meets to examine assessments,
hear objections, and make such changes as ought to be made. The county
board have also power to correct or change assessments.
The tax books are placed in the hands of the town collector on or
before the tenth day of December, who retains them until the tenth day
of March following, when he is required to return them to the county
treasurer, who then collects all delinquent taxes.
No costs accrue on real estate taxes till advertised, which takes place
the first day of April, when three weeks' notice is required before judg-
ment. Cost of advertising, twenty cents each tract of land, and ten cents
eacli lot.
Judgment is usually obtained at May term of County Court. Costs
six cents each tract of land, and five cents each lot. Sale takes place in
June. Costs in addition to those before mentioned, twenty-eight cents
each tract of land, and twenty-seven cents each town lot.
Real estate sold for taxes may be redeemed any time before the expi-
ration of two years from the date of sale, by payment to the County Clerk
of the amount for which it was sold and twenty-five per cent, thereon if
redeemed within six months, fifty per cent, if between six and twelve
months, if between twelve and eighteen months seventy-five per cent.,
and if between eighteen months and two years one hundred per cent.,
and in addition, all subsequent taxes paid by the purchaser, with ten per
cent, interest thereon, also one dollar each tract if notice is given by the
purchaser of the sale, and a fee of twenty-five cents to the clerk for his
certificate.
JURISDICTION OF COURTS.
Justices have jurisdiction in all civil cases on contracts for the recovery
of moneys for damages for injury to real property, or taking, detaining, or
ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS. 49
injuring personal property ; for rent ; for all cases to recover damages done
real or personal property by railroad companies, in actions of replevin, and
in actions for damages for fraud in the sale, purchase, or exchange of per-
sonal property, when the amount claimed as due is not over $200. They
have also jurisdiction in all cases for violation of the ordinances of cities*
towns or villages. A justice of the peace may orally order an officer or a
private person to arrest any one committing or attempting to commit a
criminal offense. He also upon complaint can issue his warrant for the
arrest of any person accused of having committed a crime, and have him
brought before him for examination.
COUNTY COURTS
Have jurisdiction in all matters of probate, settlement of estates of deceased
persons, appointment of guardians and conservators, and settlement of
their accounts ; all matters relating to apprentices; proceedings for the
collection of taxes and assessments, and in proceedings of executions, admin-
istrators, guardians and conservators for the sale of real estate. In law
cases they have concurrent jurisdiction with Circuit Courts in all cases
where Justices of Peace now have when the amount claimed shall not
exceed $500, and in all criminal offenses where the punishment is not impris-
onment in the penitentiary or death, but no appeal is allowed from Justice
of the Peace to County Courts.
Circuit Courts Have unlimited jurisdiction.
LIMITATION OF ACTION.
Accounts five years. Notes and written contracts ten years. Judg-
ments twenty years. Partial payments or new promise in writing, within
or after said period, will revive the debt. Absence from the State deducted,
and when the cause of action is barred by the law of another State, it has
the same effect here. Slander and libel, one year. Personal injuries, two
years. To recover land or make entry thereon, twenty years. Action to
foreclose mortgage or trust deed, or make a sale, within ten years.
All persons in possession of land, and paying taxes for seven consecu-
tive years, with color of title, and all persons paying taxes for seven con-
secutive years, with color of title, on vacant land, shall be held to be the
legal owners to the extent of their paper title.
MARRIED WOMEN
May sue and be sued. Husband and wife not liable for each other's debts,
either before or after marriage, but both are liable for expenses and edu-
cation of the family.
50 ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS.
She may contract the same as if unmarried, except that in a partner-
ship business she can not, without consent of her husband, unless he has
abandoned or deserted her, or is idiotic or insane, or confined in peniten-
tiary ; she is entitled and can recover her own earnings, but neither hus-
band nor wife is entitled to compensation for any services rendered for the
other. At the death of the husband, in addition to widow's award, a
married woman has a dower interest (one-third) in all real estate owned
by her husband after their marriage, and which has not been released by
her, and the husband has the same interest in the real estate of the wife
at her death.
EXEMPTIONS FROM FORCED SALE.
Some worth $1,000, and the following Personal Property : Lot of ground
and buildings thereon, occupied as a residence by the debtor, being a house-
holder and having a family, to the value of $1,000. Exemption continues
after the death of the householder for the benefit of widow and family, some
one of them occupying the homestead until youngest child shall become
twenty-one years of age, and until death of widow. There is no exemption
from sale for taxes, assessments, debt or liability incurred for the purchase
or improvement of said homestead. No release or waiver of exemption is
valid, unless in writing, and subscribed by such householder and wife (if
he have one), and acknowledged as conveyances of real estate are required
to be acknowledged. The following articles of personal property owned
by the debtor, are exempt from execution, writ of attachment, and distress
for rent : The necessary wearing apparel of every person ; one sewing ma-
chine ; the furniture, tools and implements necessary to carry on his trade or
business, not exceeding $100 in value ; the implements or library of any
professional man, not exceeding $100 in value ; materials and stock designed
and procured for carrying on his trade or business, and intended to be used
or wrought therein, not exceeding $100 in value ; and also, when the debtor
is the head of a family and resides with the same, ;/>,,.,// brds, bedst.eail*.
and bedding, two stoves and pipe, necessary household furniture not exceeding
in value $100, one cow, calf, two swine, one yoke of oxen, or two horses in lieu,
thereof, worth not exceeding $200, with the harness therefor, necessary pro-
visions and fuel for the use of the family three months, and necessary food
for the stock hereinbefore exempted for the same time ; the bibles, school
books and family pictures ; the family library, cemetery lots, and rights of
burial, and tombs for the repositories of the dead ; one hundred dollars'
worth of other property, suited to his condition in life, selected by the
debtor. No personal property is exempt from sale for the wages of laborers
or serva-hts. Wages of a laborer who is the head of a family can not be
garnisheed, except the sum due him be in excess of $25.
ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS. 51
DEEDS AND MORTGAGES.
To be valid there must be a valid consideration. Special care should
be taken to have them signed, sealed, delivered, and properly acknowl-
edged, with the proper seal attached. Witnesses are not required. The
.acknowledgement must be made in this state* before Master in Chancery,
Notary Public, United States Commissioner, Circuit or County Clerk, Justice
of Peace, or any Court of Record having a seal, or any Judge, Justice, or
Clerk of any such Court. When taken before a Notary Public, or United
States Commissioner, the same shall be attested by his official seal, when
taken before a Court or the Clerk thereof, the same shall be attested by
the seal of such Court, and when taken before a Justice of the Peace resid-
ing out of the county where the real estate to be conveyed lies, there shall
be added a certificate of the County Clerk under his seal of office, that he
was a Justice of the Peace in the county at the time of taking the same.
A deed is good without such certificate attached, but can not be used in
evidence unless such a certificate is produced or other competent evidence
introduced. Acknowledgements made out of the state must either be
executed according to the laws of this state, or there should be attached
a certificate that it is in conformity with the laws of the state or country
where executed. Where this is not done the same may be proved by any
other legal way. Acknowledgments where the Homestead rights are to
be waived must state as follows : " Including the release and waiver of
the right of homestead."
Notaries Public can take acknowledgements any where in the state.
Sheriffs, if authorized by the mortgagor of real or personal property
in his mortgage, may sell the property mortgaged.
In the case of the death of grantor or holder of the equity of redemp-
tion of real estate mortgaged, or conveyed by deed of trust where equity
of redemption is waived, and it contains power of sale, must be foreclosed
in the same manner as a common mortgage in court.
ESTRAYS.
Horses, mules, asses, neat cattle, swine, sheep, or goats found straying
at any time during the year, in counties where such animals are not allowed
to run at large, or between the last day of October and the 15th day of
April in other counties, the owner thereof being unknown, may be taken up
as estrays.
No person not a, householder in the county where estray is found can
lawfully take up an estray, and then only upon or about his farm or place
of residence. Estrays should not be used before advertised, except animals
giving milk, which may be milked for their benefit.
UNIVERSITY Of
52 ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS.
Notices must be posted up within five (5) days in three (3) of the
most public places in the town or precinct in which estray was found, giv-
ing the residence of the taker up, and a particular description of the
estray, its age, color, and marks natural and artificial, and stating before
what justice of the peace in such town or precinct, and at what time, not
less than ten, (10) nor more than fifteen (15) days from the time of post-
ing such notices, he will apply to have the estray appraised.
A copy of such notice should be filed by the taker up with the town
clerk, whose duty it is to enter the same at large, in a book kept by him
for that purpose.
If the owner of estray shall not have appeared and proved ownership,
and taken the same away, first paying the taker up his reasonable charges
for taking up, keeping, and advertising the same, the taker up shall appear
before the justice of the peace mentioned in above mentioned notice, and
make an affidavit as required by law.
As the affidavit has to be made before the justice, and all other steps as
to appraisement, etc., are before him, who is familiar therewith, they are
therefore omitted here.
Any person taking up an estray at any other place than about or
upon his farm or residence, or without complying with the law, shall forfeit
and pay a fine of ten dollars with costs.
Ordinary diligence is required in taking care of estrays, but in case
they die or get away the taker is not liable for the same.
GAME.
It is unlawful to hunt, kill or in any manner interfere with deer, wild
turkey, prairie chicken, partridge or pheasants between the first day of Janu-
ary and the fifteenth day of August ; or any quail, between the first day of
January and the first day of October ; or any woodcock, between the first
day of January and the first day of July ; or any wild goose, duck, Wil^in
snipe brandt, or other water fowl, between the fifteenth day of April and the
fifteenth day of August, in each and every year. Penalty : Fine not less
than $10 nor more than $25, and costs of suit, and shall stand committed
to county jail until fine is paid, but not exceeding ten days.
It is unlawful to hunt with gun, dog or net, within the inclosed grounds
or lands of another, without permission. Penalty : Fine not less than $S
and not exceeding $100, to be paid into school fund.
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.
Whenever any of the following articles shall be contracted for, or
sold or delivered, and no special contract or agreement shall be made to
the contrary, the weight per bushel shall be as follows, to-wit:
ABSTRACT OF ILLINOIS STATE LAWS.
Stone Coal,
Unslauked Lime,
Corn in the ear,
Wheat,
Irish Potatoes,
White Beans,
Clover Seed, -
Onions,
Shelled Corn,
Rye, -
Flax Seed, -
Sweet Potatoes, -
Turnips,
Fine Salt, -
Pounds.
- 80
- 80
- 70
- 60
- 60
- 60
- 60
57
- 56
- 56
- 56
- 55
- 55
- 55
Buckwheat, -
Coarse Salt,
Barley, -
Corn Meal,
Castor Beans,
Timothy Seed, -
Hemp Seed, -
Malt, -
Dried Peaches,
Oats, -
Dried Apples,
Bran, -
Blue
