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Full text of "History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois"

E> RAR.Y 

OF THE 
UNIVERSITY 
OF ILLINOIS 



977379 



H62w 



ILLINOIS HISTORY SURVEY 
LIBRARY 



HISTORY 



OF 



WAYNE« CLAY COUNTIES 



ILLINOIS. 



I LKUSTRATRD 



CHICAGO: 

GLOBE PUBLISHING CO., HISTORICAL PUBLISHERS 

183 Lake Strekt. 

1884. 









M 









JOHN MORRIS. SUCCESSOR TO 








J18 M 



PREFACE 



WE herewith present to the people of Wayne and Clay Counties a history of this por- 
tion of Illinois, from its earliest known existence to the present time. In some 
things the reader may think, especially if he should be a stranger to the pioneers or their 
descendants, that at times we deal in details that are tedious, but in a generation from now 
these details will be the more highly prized the more full and complete they are. 

Then, in telling the story of the general county histories, we believe they will be found 
clothed in a literary garb, and brightened with reflections, suggestions and philosophical 
deductions, that will make it a storehouse for young and old, where they may acquire new 
and enlarged ideas, and thus receive profit as well as pleasure, that will repay them a thou- 
sand-fold for the small outlay of the original cost of the book. 

This work has cost us much labor, and a large expenditure of money, and although our 
territory for patrons is sparsely settled, and, therefore, our patronage but limited, yet we 
have given in this book more than we promised, and we feel assured that all thoughtful 
people in the county now, and especially in the future, will recognize and appreciate the 
work and its permanent value. 

We are indebted to the kind assistance of most of the prominent people in the county 
for interesting facts and assistance in our compilations, and also to F. M. Woolard and G 
W. Smith for their valuable contributions of interesting chapters. 

THE PUBLISHERS 

Makoh, 1884. 



214264 



CONTENTS, 



PART I. 

HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 

Page. 
CHAPTER I.— A few Words on Geology in the Schools- 
Many Interesting Suggestions — The Outlines of Geology 
— Prairies, and about Their Formation— The Geology of 
Wayne County — Probabilities of Finding Coal Here, 
etc., etc., etc 11 

CHAPTER II.— The Daring Discoveries and Operations of 
the French in the Mississippi Valley — Some Corrections 
in History — The Catholic Missionaries— Discovery of 
the Mississippi River— Pontiac's Conspiracy — The Down- 
fall of Quebec— The Territory Ceded by the Indians — 
Illinois Separated from Indiana, etc., etc 21 

CHAPTER III.— The Old Settlers, Where They Were From, 
Together With Many Interesting Facts Concerning 
Them — Isaac Harris, Mrs. Goodwin, Col, Samuel Leech, 
George Merritt, "Jacky " Jones, George McCown, and 
Many Others — Rangers — Joe Boltinghouse's Avengers 
—Wayne County Organized March 26, 1819, etc 35 

CHAPTER IV.— Habits and Pastimes— The Borah Family- 
Cannons— Owens — Halls— First and Second Settlements 
in the County — First Schools and Churches— Gatherings 
of Old Settlers and Their Names— Nathan Atteberry— 
W. W. George— David Wright — Ellidges— Andrew Crews 
Alexander Campbell — And Many Others— Incidents and 
Anecdotes — The Disappearance of the Indian — Wild 
Game, etc., etc., etc 48 

CHAPTER V.— Some More Reflections Worth Reading— 
The Evils and the Good of the Country — An Account of 
the Officials and Who They Were — Some Big Men and 
Some not so Big— Gen. Leech, Rigdon B. Slocumb, W. 
B.Davis, or Black Bill — Senators, Representatives and 
County Officials— David W. Barkley, Warnioth, Turney, 
Burns, Barnhill, Nathan Crews, Clark, Hogue, Hanna, 
and Many Others — First Deed — Township Organization 
—Whisky Banished from the County, etc 60 

CHAPTER VI.— The Wars for Our Liberties— George Wash- 
ington and His Wayne County Heroes— Sequel to the 
Holtinghouse Massacre and its Wayne County Avengers 
— The Rangers Here and who They were— Winnebago 
and Black Hawk War— First Campaign a Bloodless One 
— Mexican War and the Part Therein of Wayne County 
— Col. Leech— Our Civil War, When Its Real History will 
be Written — The Companies That went from Wayne 
County, and Some Account of Them — Who were Killed 
and Wounded in Battle — The Eleven Companies Fur- 
insbed by Wayne'County — Capture of Jeff Davis, etc.. etc 68 



Page. 
CHAPTER TIL— Miscellaneous Items of Interest— Birth>. 
Deaths and Marriages — Census of 1845 — Literary Sp< i. - 
ties— Old Store Accounts, etc., etc 68 

CHAPTER VIII.— A Complete History of all the Churches 
—The Methodist— Different Baptists— Christian— Pres- 
byterian— Catholic— Who Organized Them— Sketches 
of the Prominent Churchmen, etc 95 

CHAPTER IX.— Bench and Bar of Wayne County— The 

People of "Precedents"— The Coming Lawyer— The 
Laws and Other Legislation— First Court, Grand Jury 
and Lawyer in the County— Hubbard, Wilson— Edwin 
andC. A. Beech er— Campbell, Hanna, Boggs and Many 
Others, Including the Present Active Practitioners, et< - 129 

CHAPTER X.— The Press of Wayne County — MauySalutatn- 
ries and as Many Farewells— Wilmaus, Joe Prior, i'.augh, 
Tilden, Sibley, Schell, Smith, Walden, Stickney, Litzeu- 
berger, Barkley, McClung, Tracy, Holmes— Some Ac- 
count of the Many Papers that Started ;ind Perished, 
etc., etc., etc 148 

CHAPTER XL— Schools— An Account From the First One to 
the Present Day— A Comparison of the Improvements- 
Sunday Schools and the First Free Schools— Difficulties 
Attending Education at an Early Day— The Changes of 
Fifty Years— Discussions of the School System— Statis- 
tics, etc 1.57 

CHAPTER XIL— Railroads— Internal Improvement Fol- 
lies— Some Thoughts on Municipal Aid— Voters and 
Their Demagogues— Monopolies and Paupers— The Un- 
wisdom of Law-makers— Ignorance in Bulk Considered 
—The Five Horse Court — Swamp Lands— Sharp Figur- 
ing— O. A M. Road— Air Line— I). & O. Line— Narrow 
• lauge, etc., etc., etc 161 

CHAPTER XIIL— Recapitulation— Some General and Spe- 
cial Accounts of the People— Early Wills and Adminis- 
trations — Present County Wealth —Wayne Formed 
from Edwards, and then the South Line Changed— 
Then a Portion Set off to Clay County— Full List of Of- 
ficers— Some of the Literature of the Early and Present 
Day— An Immortal Speech— Israel Dewey, etc., etc., etc.. 172 

CHAPTER XIV.— City of Fairfield— The Original Plat, 
With Numerous Additions— Growth and Development 
—Some of the First Houses and Old Landmarks— Mer- 
chants and Merchandising— Taverns, Mills and Facto- 
ries — The Court House — Churches, Schools and News- 
papers — Freemasonry and Other Benevolent Orders — 
Incorporation of Fairfield— Town Boards, etc., etc 178 



CONTEXTS. 



Page. 

• il U'TER XV.— Barnhill and Big Mound Townships — 

Their Geographical ami Physical Features— Settlement 
— An Incident of DaTia -Who the Pioneers Were, What 
They Hid, ami Where They fame From— Early Im- 
provements and Industries— The First Efforts at Mer- 
chandising—Wright's St, ire. Mill and Tanyard— A Busi- 
ness Place— Schools and Churches in Harnhill— The 
Same in Big Mound— Odds and Ends— Fairfield's Birth, 
etc., etc 193 

• 11 IPTEB XVI.— Jasper Township— Topography, Drain- 

age, -oil and Beauties— Its Streams, Lakes, Timbers and 
Wild Fruits— Bees, Honey, Flora and Fauna-Joshua 
Graham, the First Settler— Then Came James Dickin- 
son, the Cannons, William Husk, George Frazer, John 
Pitchett, Joseph Martin, the Borahs, Thomas Bradshaw, 
Ihe Owens, Jonathan Douglas and Many Others— How 
They Lived and Struggled— First Birth and Death— The 
First House. Mill, Blacksmith Shop, Lime-kiln and 
Land Entry and Marriage— A Panther Attacks a Wo- 
man—First Schools and Singing Schools, and Who 
Taught Them— First Sermons and Preachers— When 
Leading Families Came "" 

CHAPTER XVII.— Massillon Township— Early Facts and 
Reminiscences as Gathered from Jacob Hall, W. N. 
Borah, ,1. B. Borah, Judge Wilson and Others— Lovelette, 
the Traditional First Comer— Enoch Beach, the First 
Settler, with a Sketch— Name and Sketches of Our Sel- 
lers and Their Families— Camps and Cabins of the Ear- 
ly Day— Trundle Beds and Their Trash— First School 
and Who Taught It-First Marriage, Birth and Death— 
The Old Rangers— J udge Wilson and the Deer That 
Tore His Clothes off— John McCollum and His Coon- 
Wild Cats— First Mills, Churches, Preachers, etc., etc., 
etc., etc 217 

CHAPTER XYUL— Laniard Township— Description— To- 
pography, etc.— Early Settlements— Pioneer Improve- 
ments and Industries— Caudle's Distillery and the Early 
Fse of Whisky— Churches and Church Buildings— 
Schools— Dr. Jones, the First Teacher-How he went 
Snipe Hunting— Jeffersonville Laid Out as a Village- 
Its Growth, Development and Incorporation— Business 

. . 227 

Statistics, etc 

CHAPTER SIX.— Bedford Township— Geographical De- 
scription, Topography, etc.— Coming of the Pioneers— 
Their Early Struggles and Hardship—Wild Game- 
Pioneer Mills antl Who Built Them— Schools and 
Churches— Villages— Cisne Laid Out as a Town— Its 
Growth and Development — Hiuard — Laid Out, Im- 
proved, etc., etc., etc - 33 

CHAPTER XX.— Indian Prairie Township— Description- 
Topography, etc.— Early Settlements— Pioneer Improve- 
ments and Industries— Early Preachers and Churches- 
First School Teachers— First Death in the Township— 
1 hurches, Preachers and Officers— Johnsonville— When 
and by Whom Laid 1 Hit— Its' Growth and Improvements 
and Its Future Outlook— Railroad Prospects— Bine 
Point— When Laid Out and by Whom— A List of Town- 
ship Officers, etc., etc., etc 241 

CHAPTER XXL— lour Mile Township— Introduction- 
Boundaries— Surface— Water-courses — Productions— 



Pahk. 
Beaus— Frog Island— Early Settlers and Sketches— 
The Wild Man— Population— Wayne city— Middleton— 
Keens— Schools, Churches -Politics— Officers, etc 246 

CHAPTER XX1L— Elm River Township— Boundaries and 
Settlement— Pioneer Incidents — Population — Surface 
and Water-courses— Enterprise— Education and School 
Statistics— Churches and Preachers, etc 251 

CHAPTER XXIII.— Zif Township— Boundaries and Sur- 
face—Origin of Name— First Settlers— Zif— Religious 
and Educational Notes— Agriculture— Main Productions 
—The Great Prairie Fire, etc 26* 

CHAPTER XXIV.— Mount Erie Township— Introduction 
—Boundaries— Early Settlers and Incidents— Alexan- 
der Ramsey— Topography— Chief Productions— Mills— 
The Village of Mount. Erie— When and by Whom Laid 
Out— Its Present Business Representations— Lodges- 
Churches— Schools, etc 2-'" 5 

CHAPTER XXV.— Arrington Township— Boundaries- 
First Settlers and Incidents— Uncle Jimmy Siniins— 
Topography— Chief Productions— Mills— Sims— Cincin- 
nati and Covington— Early Schools and Teachers- 
Churches— Officers, etc - 6 '- 

CHAPTER XXVI —Brush Creek Township— Description 
and Topograghy, etc.— Early Settlements— Pioneer Im- 
provements—Early Preachers— Berry Elledge, the First 
Schoolteacher— His Stroke of Paralysis Compelling Him 
to lay Three Days in the Woods Surrounded by Wild 
Animals— Murder of a Mr. Brazell by William Fathree 
—First Marriage, First Death— Churches— Schools, etc. 265 

CHAPTER XXVII.— Leech Township— Boundaries and To- 
pography— Water-co urses— General Productions— Ori- 
gin of Name and First Settlements— Some Indian 
Stories— Internal Improvements— Towns— Church His- 
tory and School Statistics, etc 369 

CHAPTER XXVIII.— Hickory HillTowuship— Topography 
and Boundaries— First Settlers— Who They Were— First 
Birth— First Farming— First Roads, etc 274 



PART II. 

HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY. 
CHAPTER I— An Interesting Chapter as well as much In- 
formation—Practical Questions Considered— Some Ideas 
on Education— How Farmers may Become the First 
People in the World— Wonderful Things from the Soil 
—Rocks, Soil and the Natural Products of the County- 
Coal and Mineral Springs, etc '■ 

CHAPTER IX— 1778— George Rogers Clark— Capt. Helm 
and Private Henry— Clay County Revolutionary 
Grounds— Its Soil Made Sacred by the Tread of the Rev- 
olutionary Army— The Hannibal of the Northwest— An 
Army of an Officer and Private— our Land Titles- 
Names of Some of the Army that Passed Through Clay 



County, etc 

CHAPTER 1 1 1.— The Earliest Settlers— Who They Were and 
How 'They Came -Appearance of the Country— John 
McCawley— How Our Titles to the Land Came— The 



300 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
indians— A List of Early Settlers— Thomas McCrackin, 
and Many Others — Trundle Bed — School Teacher — 
Singing Master^First Dudes— Writing Master— Bottle 
Race— Weddings— Many Other Interesting Facts and 
Fancies, etc 307 

CHAPTER IV.— Organization of the County- Its Name- 
Henry Clay— The First County Seat— Hist Officers- 
Grand Juries— Incidents, etc— Clay County— Its Name 
— Date Organized — Commissioners — First County Court 
and Officers, and List Complete to 1850— Hubbardsville, 
Maysville and Louisville the Three County Capitals— 
The County Buildings— Full Account of Early Roads, 
Bridges and Juries— A Chapter in which Every Para- 
graph is Full of Interest, etc 319 

CHAPTER V— Additional Accounts of the People — Neigh- 
borhood Feuds— Regulators and Some of Their Victims 
—Marriages, Commencing with Number One— The 
Courts — Juries and Lawyers and Court and County Offi- 
cers to date— First Indictments— First County Officers— 
The Presiding Judges, etc 328 

CHAPTER VI.— Agriculture and Horticulture— Stock-rais- 
ing— Dairying— Matters of Interest and Value to Every 
One— Apples and Sorghum— How to Make Your Land 
Worth $500 per Acre, etc 340 

CHAPTER VII. -Schools— A Reference to the Originals- 
Some Thoughts on the Subject Generally— The First 
Schools and Teachers-jThe Early Schools and Those of 
To-day Compared and Estimated— Thoughts on the Sub- 
ject of General Interest, etc 345 

( HAPTER VIII. — War — Revolutionary Soldiers — Black 
Hawk War— The Late Civil War— The Heroic Conduct 
and Bearing of the People of Clay County— lien. L. B. 
Parsons, Capt. .1. W. Westcott and Many Others, etc 351 

( HAPTER IX.— Harter Township and Flora— Who Came, 
and About Them— Thomas Elliott, Matthias Misen- 
heimer, Seth F. Hinkley, Russell T. Logan, Robert Bry- 
ant, James Jacobs, William Nichols and Others— Land 
Entries, First Schools, Teachers and Churches— Flora 
and Its History— Anecdotes— Railroads— Business, etc... 358 

CHAPTER X. — Louisville Township — Configuration- 
Boundaries, etc.— Drainage— Early Pioneers— Water 
Mills— Early Industries— Life on the Little Wabash— 
Boating— First Buildings and Business Houses—" Blind 
Tiger" and "Horned Rooster"— The Old Agricultural 
Society— Churches and Schools — Township Records, ete. 374 

CHAPTER XL— (lay City Township— Description— Topog- 
raphy— Flora and Fauna — Pioneer Settlers — John Mc- 
Cawley Driven Off by Indians— His Return— Capt. Rob- 
ert Toler— Faris— sheriff Riley— How He Held a Pris- 
oner—The "Hoss" Ordered to the Stable— Bill Colwell 
— First School and First Teacher— Schools and Officers — 
First Child— Township officers— Old Maysville— Its 
History, Settlement and Growth— County Seat— Hotels 
— Town Officers— List of Prominent People— Churches 
and Church People— List of Officials— Anecdotes, etc 390 

CHAPTER XII.— Stanford Township— Its Local History- 
Topography — Its Name — Stanford F'amily — Judge N. H. 



Page. 

Dull— J. K. Bothwell — First Settlers and the Order of 
Their Coming — Schools and Churches — Anecdotes — 
Lynch Court — Early Preaching and Hunting— A Wolf 
Story — Township Record and Officers, etc 109 

CHAPTER XIII.— Oskaloosa Township— Its Topography- 
Early Settlement — Development — Village of Oskaloosa — 
Schools— Religion — Politics— Officials, Incidents, etc 122 

CHAPTER XIV.— Xenia Township — Description — First 
Settlers — Early Schools and Churches — Villages — Secret 
Societies, etc 12G 

CHAPTER XV.— Songer Township— Description — Agri- 
culture — Vegetation — Early Settlement and Settlers — 
Schools — Churches, etc 437 

CHAPTER XVI.— Blair Township— Full Account of all 
the Pioneers and People Down to Date — Incidents- 
Characters — Churches— Schools — Town Officers, etc 440 

CHAPTER XVIL— Hoosier Township— Its Topography and 
Physical Features — First F2ntries and Early Settlers — 
Churches, Schools, etc I4E 

CHAPTER XVIII.— Larkinsburg Township— Topography 
and Physical F'eatures — Soil aud Timber — Pioneer Set- 
tlement— Iiarly Mills — Its Growth and Development — 
Secret Societies — Schools and Churches— Present Busi- 
ness — Township Records, etc I ■ 

CHAPTER XIX —Bible Grove Township— Location— To- 
pography — Soil and Timber — How Its Name Came — 
F'irst Settler, With Long List of the People and the 
Order in Which They Came — Incidents — Robbery of — 
McKnight — Violent Deaths, etc 460 

CHAPTER XX. — Pisley Township — Geographical Position 
— Settlement by the Whites — Improvements — Mills and 
Roads — Schools, Schoolhouses. Churches, etc. — Village 
of Ingraham 46S 



PART III. 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

Wayne County — City of Fairfield s 

Barnhill Township 43 

Mount Erie Township 61 

Bedford Township 72 

Biy; Mound Township 85 

Jasper Township 94 

Indian Prairie Township 102 

Leech Township 108 

MassiNon Township 113 

Arrington Township 117 

Laniard Township 121 

Brush Creek Township 126 

Four Mile Township 12S 

Elm River Township 137 

Zif Township 139 

Hickory Hill Township 140 

Bedford Township, Extra 142- 



CONTENTS. 



PART IV. 

BIi H iRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

Page. 

Clay County. — Louisville Township 145 

Xenia Township 159 

Clay City Township 171 

I lousier Township 184 

City of Flora 191 

Harter Township 210 

Rible Grove Township 216 

Songer Township 224 

Pixley Township 229 

Stanford Township 234 



'age. 

Larkinsburg Township 238 

lllair Township 240 

PORTRAITS. 

Barkley, J. G 79 

Cisne, W. H 257 

George, Francis 115 

Hall, Jacob 151 

Johnson, William M 187 

McCartney, James 43 

Smith, G. W 329 

Walters, J. P 223 

Westcott, J. W 298 




|T~sk; * 



PAET I. 



-MtWSfr 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, 



I' ART I 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY 



CHAPTER I. 



A FEW WORDS ON GEOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS— MANY INTERESTING SUGGESTIONS— THE OUTLINES 

OF GEOLOGY— PRAIRIES, AND ABOUT THEIR FORMATION— THE GEOLOGY OF WAYNE 

COUNTY— PROBABILITIES OF FINDING COAL HERE, ETC., ETC., ETC. 



A FEW words of the agricultural history 
of the county is not an inappropriate 
introduction to the story of the people who 
were here when the white man discovered 
the country, and their passing away, mark- 
ing, as they did. every step of their sullen, 
backward movement before the faces of the 
white man, with bloody and cruel carnage. 
as well as the interesting account of the 
brave pioneers and their tierce conflicts with 
the savages, the wild beasts and deadly dis- 
eases that afflicted the early settlers of the 
Mississippi Valley 

The soil is the Alma Mater — the nourish- 
ing mother, indeed, of all animate life in 
this world. The hopes, the ambitions, the 
wealth and joys, the beauties of both art and 
nature, the sweet maiden's blush, the love-lit 
eye, the floating Armada, the thundering 
train, the flaming forge and the flying spin 
die. the rippling laughter, and all there has 
been or will be in this bright and beautiful 
world is directly or remotely from the dull 
soil upon which we tread. Here is the 
fountain head, the nursing mother of all 
and every conceivable thing of; utility or 
beauty, mentally or physically, that a wise 



God has given to man. This page, reader, 
you are now perusing, the sweet girl's melo- 
dy that you may or have so passionately 
worshiped, the angel mother's voice, that 
will linger in your heart till the close of 
life's great final tragedy, are, with everything 
else, from the one same source — the soil. 
The Sun worshipers were not base in their 
adored ideal, the warmth and sunlight were 
a near approach to the fountains of life, and 
yet it was only as the husbandman, who aids 
the soil with his labors, and a world grows 
vocal with joys. It was the soil at last and 
not the husbandman who created, fructified 
and produced, not only our possessions, but 
life itself. Yet in the gray dawn of the 
traditions we find no account of the Soil 
worshiper-, and the fact is now unquestion- 
.iM\ plain that the soil has not been appre- 
ciated, its all commending value in this 
world not at all understood; and in the 
progress of civilization it was eventually rel- 
■d to the world's "drudges." the lit com- 
panion and associate only of serfs and slaves, 
and finally in a country whose air was too 
pure for a slave to breathe, inaugurated the 
long reign of the Feudal system, where the 



12 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



laborer and the soil he cultivated came to 
be considered one and the same, and the title 
to the so-called free man passed with the 
deed to the land on which he lived. While 
the soil has found no worshipers, it has been 
carefully ignored, and it has gone on increas- 
ing its bounties, showering its benefits upon 
us until it has lifted us from dull and dirty 
savages to this age of steam and electricity, 
until space itself has ceased to be in the 
transactions and social life of the world. 

Why should we teach our children to un- 
derstand the dull, stupid, uninteresting soil? 
Build schoolhouses and teach your children 
metaphysical mathematics seems to be the 
idea that has held sway in the world for all 
the ages. It's but dirt that flies as dust and 
soils your clothes, or as sticky mud seizes 
upon you and clings wherever it touches, 
and thus it comes to be considered but an 
evil of life. And from infancy to old age it 
is the same old story of 

" The yellow primrose on the river's bank, 
A yellow primrose is." 

The Soil comes from the rocks, and hence 
to the intelligent eye that examines the un- 
derlying rocks of a country it is at once 
plain enough of what the elements of the soil 
are composed, and what, if any, vegetation it 
will best sustain. Oar people are agricult- 
ural, their relation and interest in the soil 
is primary, and in the natural order of 
things one would suppose that this would be 
the first subject they would set about master- 
ing, or at least understanding the practical 
and hourly subjects of vital interests to 
which it is the eternal basis and foundation. 
Amazing as it may seem, the very reverse of 
this is true, 'and the evils it has inflicted are 
but too plainly visible in this wide tendency 
of the young men reared on farms to rush to 
the villages, towns and cities, and become 
clerks, tradesmen, or "learn a trade," and 



thus advance themselves beyond the station to 
which they were born. They see and feel 
the real and imagined refinement, elegance 
and ease and culture of the wealthy of the 
cities, and they look with contempt upon all 
forms of country life. They are not much 
to blame. The whole world has been falsely 
educated on this point. The farmer has been 
told to educate his family — send them to col- 
lege and have them taught to read Latin and 
Greek, and thus they can live without work, 
etc. The three or four years at school has 
taught him to know nothing about farming 
certain, and if there he has acquired a single 
idea that he can utilize in the practical 
affairs of life, he has surely beeD the fortu- 
nate one in a thousand. Teach them ab- 
struse mathematics, through all the arith- 
metics, algebras, geometries, trigonometries, 
the calculus, etc., and then he may become a 
starving professor, and drool out his useless 
life in a clean white shirt and an empty 
stomach, and imagine such a half-mendicant 
existence is eminently respectable. He left 
home a bright farmer boy, he returns a 
cheaply veneered gentleman — but little else, 
in fact, than an incipient tramp, prepared to 
soon spend what little fortune may be left 
him. and then enter upon that nightmare 
life of an educated young man looking for a 
"situation." Many years ago, Horace Gree- 
ley, in a well considered article in the Trib- 
une, estimated there were then in the city 
of New York 5,000 college-bred young men 
hunting for " situations " and half-starving. 
Here were the gathered fruits of this most 
vicious and cardinal idea that is inculcated 
in all the schools of getting an education and 
living without manual labor. To a sane 
mind, what a monstrous idea it is to call an 
institution a school where the child is taught 
that manual labor, farming especially, is both 
low and degrading. But all the schools will 



HISTORY OF WAYNE rorXTY. 



13 



claim that this charge does not apply to 
thorn; that they are the latest patent im- 
provement, and they teach the pupil to think 
for himself. And they will in all earnest- 
ness tell you of the hundreds of devices they 
have invented, all tending to this divine 
perfection. After duly listening to all they 
claim, we deliberately repeat what we have 
said above. The young mind is not taught 
to think. We are not convinced that this i8 
among the human possibilities yet It may 
be done some day, it has not yet been done 
most certainly. In our judgment, there has 
not been a school ever yet taught where 
there was any approach toward this wonder- 
ful invention of teaching the mind to think. 
The incontestible evideuce of this is given 
in the fewness, the rarity of philosophical 
thinkers there are now or have been in the 
world. Read the books, the newspapers, the 
sermons, the discussions, of which the world 
is full, and about all of it, to the trained 
philosophical thinker, is but words, words, 
words, signifying nothing. For instance, if 
you go and listen to a joint discussion be- 
tween two men, the most eminent men in the 
country say. upon any subject, political, po- 
lemical or otherwise, and they divide the 
time, and by the day, week or month carry 
on the discussion, and you listen to it all 
from the first word to the last, nud you final- 
ly come to the end and go home and in your 
quiet add up what new knowledge you have 
gained. And what is it? If you are frank 
with yourself, you will acknowledge that after 
it all you really know less about it than you 
did before. There is a reason for this. The 
speakers or writers were empirics and so 
were their audiences. An empiric is a man 
who forms a judgment upon a subject from a 
one-sided view. His judgment may be cor- 
rect, but it is so by accident. A philosopher 
bases his judgment upon the fullest possible 



investigation of everything, immediate and 
remote, that can possibly bear upon the sub- 
ject, and still he doubts, or leaves room for 
possible doubts. The empiric is always very 
positive, and he loves to toll you how he 
hates a man who has no positive opinions. 
Educated empiricism may be a little better 
than downright ignorance, but it is not 
much, and mankind as yet has produced lit- 
tle else. It is said that the newspapers, the 
stump speakers, and the widespread discus- 
sions of political questions that precede our 
elections, make the best posted people 
on questions of political economy in the 
world. Is this true"? There is no question 
but that Washington and his compatriots 
left us the best government in the world, and 
there is just as little question but that we have 
allowed it to retrograde to some extent. If 
this is true, it is a marvelous fact, an amaz- 
ing commentary upon our boasted civiliza- 
tion, a biting irony upon the election and 
Fourth of July hulabaloos that do so abound 
and are so like the plunging Niagara. 

Last summer we dropped in for an hour 
and listened to the proceedings of a teacher's 
institute. There we're present 100 teachers, 
and we understood they were being taught 
how to teach school, how to teach tho best 
possible school and in the best way. During 
the hour we were present, there was a teacher 
at the black-board, and he was elucidating 
the subject of the " Equation of Payments," 
when probably not a teacher present nor a 
single future pupil of any of them, no mat- 
ter what his business in life might be. would 
ever have a single occasion to use the rule or 
anything connected with it, except in case 
he or she should become a school teacher. 
Years and years are spent in the school room 
in this way, and not perhaps a graduate who 
could return to his father's farm and pick up 
a clod of earth, and give you any idea at all 



14 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



about it. And yet in that simple clod are the 
destinies of all mankind and knowledge that 
is of endless and immeasurablevalne. Some 
gentlemen once applied to Agassiz for in- 
formation upon the subject of how to breed 
the best horse. " It is a question of rocks," 
was his sententious reply. The learned 
Professor was right. He knew the soil came 
from the rocks, and certain kind of rocks 
would produce a certain kind of vegetable 
growth and water, and that this determined 
not only the kind of horses that it would 
eventually produce, but the kind of people. 
In short, that he who understands the rocks 
and the soil will not only be the best farmer 
in the world, but he can tell the kind and 
quality of civilization it will eventually pro- 
duce and sustain. There is no witchery 
about this, but it is the simple result of 
knowledge, being really educated upon one 
of the most- practical and important subjects 
of life. The proper teacher can soon teach 
the children of his school the necessary ele- 
ments of geology and botany, so that they 
would make men and women who would place 
farm life where it should be. in the front 
rank of social existence; take it out of what 
it now mostly is, a life of dull drudgery and 
poorly paid toil. The agricultural people 
should possess a full share of the world's 
wealth — an abundance to give thnm the ease 
and leisure for education, travel, culture and 
relinement that would make it the most invit- 
ing and enviable position in life. The pres- 
ent state of affairs is the result of mistakes 
in education, and a false political economy 
that enslaves and cruelly oppresses. Suppose 
that for the mostly foolish, if not silly, ques- 
tions that are now required to be answered by 
the School Superintendents, and which all 
applicants to teach school are required to be 
able to answer before they can get a certifi- 
cate to teach, there were substituted a few 



common sense questions upon practical sub- 
jects of life. For instance: Tell us about 
the rocks in the county; and certain 
rocks given, what kind of soil do they 
make? And what the plant food they 
give, and about the water? When cer- 
tain vegetation is seen, what kind of a 
soil does it indicate'? An intelligent answer 
to these questions would indicate that the 
teacher could be able to take your children 
and ramble through the woods (to their in- 
finite delight and permanent benefit), and in 
the flowers, the trees, and babbling brooks, 
gather lessons they would never forget — that 
would be of inestimable value to them. Any 
ordinarily intelligent child can readily be 
taught such lessons as these, and understand 
it much better than they can the " rule of 
three," or any rule of the English grammar. 
But it must be taught by a teacher who could 
do more than is now required of teachers in 
the school room, namely, to make the child 
memorize its lessons, and when this is done 
enough, give him a diploma and pronounce 
his education complete. 

AVhen we come to give an [account of 
the schools of the county, we may then 
take occasion to more specifically point 
out the faults that have found their 
way into, and permanent lodgment in 
the school systems. We only wish here 
to point out the importance of an un- 
derstanding of the geology of your immediate 
locality at least, or of that part of the geology 
that bears its vital and practical lessons of 
wisdom, and results in benefits to all man- 
kind. If our views upon the subject are at 
all correct, are we not right in saying that 
the chapter on the topography and geology 
of the county should be recognized by the 
reader as being one of the most important 
chapters in the book? 

The world's history going back through 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COTNTY. 



15 



its millions, probably billions of years, of ex- 
istence, is written in the rocks to be read and 
interpreted with almost unerring accuracy. 
At one time it was so hot that everything in 
the world was not only melted, but fused into 
the original gases — the sixty-one element- 
ary substances which variously combining, 
produce every form and quality of existence. 
The simplest designation of the rocks are 
the stratified and the unstratified. The un- 
stratified are called igneous rocks, because 
they have been melted by intense heat and 
occur in irregular masses. The desintegra- 
tion of the elements carried a sediment from 
these igneous rocks, and the waters carried 
these into the earth's depressions, and here it 
settled in parallel layers and thus formed the 
stratified rocks. This process of building 
the stratified rocks commenced upon the 
earth's first surface and extended upward. 
In the silent depths of the stratified rocks are 
the former creation of plants and animals, 
which lived and died during the slow, drag- 
ging ages of their formation. These fossil 
remains are fragments of history which 
enable us to extend our researches into the 
past, and determine their modes of life. We 
find that such has been the profusion of 
life that the great limestone formations of 
the globe consist mostly of animal remains 
cemented by the infusion of mineral matter. 
A large part of the soil spread over the 
earth's surface has been elaborated in animal 
organisms. Fiist, as nourishment, it enters 
the structure of plants and forms vegetable 
tissue. Passing thence as food into the ani- 
mal, it becomes endowed with life, and when 
death occurs, it returns to the soil and im- 
parts to it additional elements of fertility. 

Wayne County forms the dividing line 
between the heavily timbered belt of Southern 
Illinois and the great prairie ranges of the 
central and northern parts of the State. The 



true prairie is found here, but in small 
patches, and their whole extent in the county 
is only about twenty per cent of the area. 
How these prairies have been formed has 
long been one of the most interesting ques- 
tions for discussion among the scientific men 
of the country. Gov. Reynolds in his his- 
tory tells us how the caravan with which he 
came to Illinois was impressed with the view 
when the people first looked out upon the 
broad and undulating prairie, with its tall 
waving grass like the gentle roll of the 
waves of a great sea. He then proceeds to 
summarily settle these questions by saying 
there is no doubt but that they were formed 
by the annual tires that swept over the tall 
grass and burned up the young timber in its 
attempts to grow out over the prairies from 
all the edges of the timber. He thinks this 
is well demonstrated by the fact that since 
the fires have been subdued the timber has 
been rapidly encroaching upon the prairies. 
The ' ' old ranger " was mistaken. There 
has been no extension of the timber where it 
has been left to nature's forces. There are 
two theories that find advocates, one con- 
tending that the amount of rainfall deter- 
mines the question of the growth of timber, 
and that always where there is the greatest 
rainfall there is always the heaviest timber 
gr< iwth. According to the other view, prairies 
are at present in process of formation along 
the shores of lakes and rivers. During 
freshets and in flowing rivers, the center of 
the stream is always the highest and the 
heaviest particles carried in the waters are 
deposted at the outer edges of the channel, 
and thus by repeated deposts the banks are 
formed and are elevated above the floods. 
These natural levees, when sufficiently high, 
are overgrown with timber, and inclose large 
areas of bottom land back from the river and 
form Bloughs frequently of great extent. The 



16 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



shallow and stagnant waters are first invaded 
by mosses and other aquatic plants which 
grow under the surface and contain in their 
tissues lime, alumina and silica, the constit- 
uents of clay. They also subsist immense 
numbers of small mollusks and other diminu- 
tive creatures, and the constant decomposi- 
tion of vegetables and animals forms a stratum 
of clay corresponding with that which under- 
lies the finished prairies. As the marshy bot- 
toms are by this means built up to the sur- 
face of the water, the mosses are then inter- 
mixed with coarse grasses, which become 
more and more abundant as the depth dimin 
ishes. These reedy plants, now rising above 
the surface, absorb and decompose the car- 
bonic gas of the atmosphere and convert it 
into woody matter, which at first forms a 
clayey mold, and afterward the black mold of 
the prairie. The same agencies now operat- 
ing in the ponds skirting the banks of rivers, 
originally formed all the prairies of the Mis 
sissippi Valley. The present want of hori- 
zontality in some of them is due to the ero- 
sive action of water. The drainage, moving 
in the direction of the creeks and rivers, at 
length furrowed' the surface with tortuous 
meanders, resulting finally in the present 
undulating or rolliDg prairies. The absence 
of trees, the most remarkable feature, is 
attributable first to the formation of ulmic 
acid, which favors the growth of herbaceous 
plants, and retards that of forests ; secondly, 
trees absorb by their roots large quantities of 
air, which they cannot obtain when the sur- 
face' is under water or covered by a compact 
soil or sod; and. thirdly, they require solid 
points of attachment which marshy flats are 
unable to furnish. When, however, they 
become dry and the sod is broken by the 
plow, they may then only produce trees, but 
not otherwise. 

This is a mere statement of the different 



theories upon the subject cf the formation of 
prairies, without any effort to give the argu- 
ments upon which either are based. So far 
as the writer now remembers, the discussion 
was commenced about twenty- five years ago 
by Judge Walter B. Scates, of this State, and 
has since been taken up and carried on by 
some of the most eminent scientists of the 
country. The discussion is interesting and 
full of facts and valuable information. 

The surface of the county is generally 
rolling, and elevated from 50 to 100 feet 
above the bed of the streams. The bottoms 
on Skillet Fork and Little Wabash are rather 
low and flat, and are heavily timbered. The 
geological features are very similar to those 
of Wabash and Edwards, the drift deposits 
and the upper coal measures being the only 
formations exposed. In the southern portion 
of the county, the drift clays seldom exceed 
a thickness of fifteen to twenty feet, and in 
sinking wells the bed-rock is often found at a 
depth of ten or twelve feet below the surface. 
Toward the northern boundary of the county 
they are somewhat heavier, and on Elm 
Creek there are bluffs thirty feet or more in 
height that seem to be composed entirely of 
drift. Here the lower portion consists of the 
bluish-gray hard-pan, where it is sometimes 
found from fifty to seventy-five feet or more 
in thickness. The upper portion of these 
superficial deposits may be represented along 
the bluffs of the Little Wabash by a few feet 
of loess, but generally it consists of yellowish- 
brown gravelly clays and sands with numer- 
ous rounded pebbles, and occasionally bowl- 
ders, of metamorphic rock, of moderate size. 
Locally, the gravelly clays are tinged with a 
reddish-brown color, with the red oxide of 
iron, derived probably from the decomposi- 
tion of a ferruginous sandstone that forms 
the bed-rock in many places in the southern 
part of the county. The undulations of the 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COl'XTY. 



17 



surface often take the form of long ridges 
from thirty to forty feet in height, with a 
direction nearly parallel with the course of 
the streams. These ridges usually have a 
nucleus of sandstone or shale, but their Fides 
are so gently sloping, and the drift clay cov- 
ers then so evenly that the bed-rock is seldom 
exposed to view. The streams are sluggish, 
and meander through wide, fiat valleys, sel- 
dom showing any outcrop of the bed-rock 
along their courses. This renders the con- 
struction of continuous sections very difficult, 
and the determination of the true sequence 
of the strata can only be made in a general 
way by the examination of isolated outcrops. 
Coal Measures. —At the iron bridge on the 
Little Wabash, on the stage road from Fair- 
field to Albion, the following section is to 
be seen on the oast bank of the stream: 

PEET 

Sandstone, partly in regular beds and partly 
massive 25 

Pebbly conglomerate, with fragments of coal 
and mineral charcoal '.'in I 

Black laminated shale, with concretions of 
bituminous limestone 3 

Dove-colored clay shale, with fossil ferns. . . .2 to 3 

Shaly sandstone appealing some distance be- 
low 3 to 4 

No fossils are found here that would ena- 
ble us to fix the horizon of these beds, but 
they present nearly the same lithological 
characters as the outcrop at Hamiaker's old 
mill on the Boupas, in Edwards County. At 
Beech Bluff, three or four miles above the 
bridge, the sandstone is more massive and 
extends to the river level, showing no out- 
crop of the underlying beds. 

At Massillon, on the west bank of the Lit- 
tle Wabash, on the northwest quarter of 
Section 15, Town 1 south. Range 9 east, the 
bluff is composed mainly of sandstone and 
sandy shale, with a few feet of argillaceous 
shales near the river level, containing several 
bands of clay iron ore. This outcrop seems 



to be identical with that at the old ford three 
miles above, in Edwards County, and it is 
quite probable the thin coal found there is a 
little below the river bed. A thin coal is 
found here in the sandstone some twenty feet 
or more above the river level; but it is prob- 
ably only a local deposit, or pocket, such as 
may be frequently met with in the sandstones 
of the coal measures. 

Mill Shoals is situated on the Skillet Fork, 
just over the line in White County, but the 
section made in this vicinity is partly in 
Wayne, and is as follows: 

FEET. 

Sandstone in thiu beds, partial exposure of 

about 6 

Bituminous shale, with streak of impure 

coal near the top 2A to 3 

Sandstone and sandy shale 40 to 50 

Space unexposed 15 to 20 

Hard, shaly sandstone in the bank of 

Skillet Fork 3 to 4 

Hard, black laminated shale, passing lo- 
cally into clay shale 6 to 8 

Shale with a thin coal 2 to 3 

Hard-grained limestone without fossils.. 2 to 3 

Greenish, pebbly shale 2 

Sandy shale 1 

The three upper beds in the foregoing sec- 
tion are found in Wayne County, about three- 
quarters of a mile northeast of Fairfield. 
Prof. Cox reports a section six miles south- 
east of Fairfield which seems to be nearly a 
repetition of that at Mill Shoals, as follows: 

FEET. 

Yellow clay and drift 15 

Sandstone, and locally some shale 45 

Gray silicinus shale 10 

Thin coal 

Limestone without fossils 2 

These two sections will give a general idea 
of the prevailing character of the rocks in 
the south part of Wayne County. The fol- 
lowing is a section of a well bored for oil by 
Maj. Collins on Section 25, of Township 2, 
Range 7 : 



18 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



FEET. 

Soil and subsoil 3 

Sandstone 50 

Slate (shale?) 27 

Coal 3 

Clay and blue shale 2 

Hard, gritty rock 4 

Hard yellow rock 4 

Hard sandstone 8 to 10 

Dark slate (shale?) 28 

White sandstone 66 

Black shale 4 

Total 206 

Reports have gone out from this county, as 
they have frequently from other counties, of 
the discovery of oil wells. These are to be 
taken with due allowance, in consideration 
of the fact that the persons having the work 
in charge were seldom qualified to determine 
the true character of the beds through which 
their drill was passing, and we see in the 
above section that no attempt was made to 
define the character of two beds of hard rock, 
while the beds denominated slates were prob- 
ably shale, with possibly a thin bed of slate 
intercalated therein. In this way bituminous 
slate is often mistaken for coal, and where 
the substance is reduced to an impalpable 
powder by the drill no one but an expert can 
fully determine the one from the other by 
the material brought up in the sand pump. 
At Mr. Black's place, about two miles north- 
west of Fairfield, there is an outcrop of hard, 
dark bluish-gray limestone weathering to a 
buff color, which is overlaid by a clay shale, 
with a thin coal or bituminous shale inter- 
calated therein, as indicated by a streak of 
smutty material, to be seen a few feet above 
the limestone. A thin coal, sometimes as much 
as eighteen inches in thickness, occurs at an- 
other locality under a limestone similar to this, 
and the same may be possibly found here by 
digging a few feet below the rock. The 
limestone has been quarried here as well as 
on the adjoining farm for building stone and 



for lime, and ranges from two to three feet 
in thickness. 

On Mr. J. H. Thomas' place, on Section 
7, Township 1 south, Range 8 east, a thin 
coal has been found below a limestone sim- 
ilar to that above mentioned. The coal was 
opened a few years since by sinking a shaft 
some fifteen or twenty feet in depth, and the 
coal is reported to have been eighteen inches 
thick, and the limestone two feet. The shaly 
poition of the limestone contained a few fos- 
sils, among which we identified Orthis pecosi, 
Spirifer cameratus, Chonetes vernenilianus 
and Lophophillum proliferum. 

On Mr. E. Pilcher's land, in Section 20 of 
the same township, a bed of black shale crops 
out on a hillside, at an elevation consider- 
ably above the coal shaft above mentioned, 
and was penetrated to the depth of fifteen 
feet in search of coal, but without finding it. 
On the opposite side of the hill and below 
the level of the "black shale, a calcareo- 
silicious rock has been quarried for building 
stone. It has a slaty structure, and is filled 
with fragments of broken plants, and appears 
to be the exact equivalent of the arenaceous 
limestone found at Mr. Boden's place two 
miles and a half south of Flora. The bitu- 
minous shale at Mr. Pilcher's place contains 
rounded bowlders of black limestone that 
weathers to a bluish dove color, and similar 
concretions were seen at the exposure south 
of Flora, which leaves no reasonable doubt 
of the identity of the beds at these points. 
A short distance south of Mr. Pilcher's land, 
limestone] was formerly quarried for lime- 
burning, but the outcrop is now covered up. 
The relative position of the beds above de- 
scribed is represented by the following sec- 
tion : 

FEET. 

Bituminous shale, with concretion of black 

limestone 15 to 20 

Shale partly exposed 10 to 15 



IlIsTOHY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



lit 



Slat} arenacious limestone with broken 

plants % to 4 

Dark limestone 2 

Shale (thickness not determined) 

Coal 1 

On Mrs. Williams' place on northwest quar- 
ter of Section 29, Town 1 south, Range 7 
east, about seven miles northwest of Fairfield, 
there is an outcrop of 1"> to Hi) feet of sandy 
and argillaceous shale, containing numerous 
hands of kidney iron ore of good quality. A 
thin coal has been passed through in digging 
wells in this neighborhood, and either under- 
lies these shales or is intercalated in them. 
This outcrop closely resembles those at the 
McDaniel place, near the north line of the 
county, hereafter to be mentioned, and the 
well water in this neighborhood is impreg- 
nated with epsom salts, like wells and springs 
in the locality above mentioned. Between 
this locality and Fairfield, and about three 
miles a little north of west from the town, 
an even-bedded sandstone is quarried for 
building purposes, similar to that at Hoag's 
quarry north of Xenia. This sandstone 
probably underlies the shale outcropping at 
the Williams place, three or four miles to 
the westward, and the coal there is probably 
a local deposit. 

On Section 21, Town 2 north, Range 6 
east, in the bluffs of Bear Creek, near the 
north line of the county, a massive sandstone 
outcrops for a long distance along the course 
of the stream, in perpendicular cliffs from 
twenty to thirty feet in height. This sand- 
stone was struck in the boring at Flora, at 
the depth of about sixty feet, and was pene- 
trated to the depth of about eighty-four feet. 
The outcrops on Bear Creek probably repre- 
sent only the lower portion of the bed. 

On Section '27, Town 2 north. Range 6 
east, argillaceous and sandy shales with bands 
of kidney iron ore crop out in the slopes of 
hills at various poiuts, showing an aggregate 



thickness of twenty feet or more, with a bi- 
tuminous shale or impure coal at the top of 
the exposure. A well sunk here struck a vein 
of water at the depth of twenty-two feet so 
strong that it soon rose to the surface, and 
has been flowing ever since. It has a strong 
taste of opsom salts, and produces an effect 
similar to that drug upon those who use it. 
At Eli McDaniel's place adjoining the above, 
a spring of the same kind of water is found, 
somewhat, stronger in mineral properties than 
that in the well. The water here seems to 
derive its mineral properties from the bed of 
argillaceous slate which forms the bed rock 
in this vicinity, as the wells sunk in the over- 
laying sandstone afford pure water. The fol- 
lowing additional notes and sections are re- 
ported by Prof. Cox in this county: " At Lib- 
erty they pass through sandstone in digging 
wells from ten to forty feet, and obtain pure 
water. On Section 30, Town 2, Range 7, 
limestone is obtained for building and for 
lime bed three feet thick, upper part shaly 
contains Productm loiii/is/u'iiHs, Machrohei 
lux jiriiiiigeniiis, Ailii/ris subtilita, Produc- 
ing costatus, and joints of Crinoidea. The 
same limestone is exposed at Whittaker's, 
on Section 25, of Town 2, Range 7. A thin 
coal is usually found beneath the limestone, 
and impure coal or bituminous shale is fre- 
quently seen in the shales above it. Clay 
iron ore occurs in a grayish shale, seven miles 
north of Fairfield, exposed by awash on the 
hillside. On Section :'>!, Town 1 south. 
Range 9 east, the following beds are seen: 

Kt. In. 

Heavy beaded sandstone '-25 

Arenaceous shale 10 

Black slaty shale .'. 2 

Pyritiferous shale, with fragments of shells 10 ^ 

Fire clay (good quality) 1 

Clayshale 6 

Shaly sandstone in river bed '•.' 6 

From the foregoing sections and remarks, 



20 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



it will be seen that there is but little divers- 
ity in the character of the rocks exposed in 
this county. They probably represent a 
thickness of 175 feet to 200 feet or more, com- 
prising mainly sandstone and shales, most of 
which decompose readily on exposure, and 
are therefore seldom found in bold outcrops. 
Building Stone. — Sandstone of a fair qual- 
ity for building purposes, is tolerably abun- 
dant, and quarries have been opened in nearly 
every township in the county. Three miles 
a little southwest of Fairfield, an excellent 
sandstone is quarried on a small branch trib- 
utary to the Skillet Fork The rock is in 
smooth, even layers, and resembles the sand- 
stone in Hoag's quarry, near Xenia. Along 
the Little Wabash, a heavy bedded sandstone 
is found throughout the course in the south- 
eastern part of 'the county, which, from the 
bold cliff it forms at many points along the 
bluffs of the stream, will no doubt afford a 
large amount of building material. Six 
miles southeast of, Fairfield, a good flag- 
sandstone is quarried in large slabs six in- 
ches thick. Three and a half miles north of 
Jeffersonville, on Section 30, Town 1 north. 
Range 6 east, a grayish sandstone of good 
quality is quarried in large slabs from a foot 
to eighteen inches in thickness. A similar 
stone is also quarried by Mr. Philips, on 
Section 16, Town 1 north , Range 7 east. 
These are some of the most valuable quarries 
opened at the present time, but others equally 
good may be opened at various places in the 
county, as the wants of the people may re- 
quire. Thej limestone over the eighteen- 
inch coal seam has been quarried at almost 
every spot where it outcrops, but the bed is 
thin and the supply to be obtained from it, 
without too great expense in stripping, is 
rather limited. 

Coal. — The only coal in the county that 
promises to be of any value for practical 



mining, is the eighteen-inch seam north and 
northeast of Fairfield. This might be 
worked in a limited way either by stripping, 
or by an inclined tunnel near its outcrop. 
But the seam is too thin to furnish an ade- 
quate supply for the general market. The 
main coals of the lower measures may be 
reached in the southern portion of the 
county, at depths varying from 4 to 600 
feet, and in the northern part from 5 to 800. 
Iron Ore. — Bands of iron ore of good 
quality occur at several places in the shales 
of this county, and have been noted in the 
sections already given. They seem to be in 
sufficient quantity in several localities to 
eventually become of some economical value. 
In Great Britain, bands six to eight inches 
thick are said to be worked successfully, and 
we find many localities in the coal measures 
where from twelve to eighteen inches of good 
ore can be obtained, from a vertical thickness 
of five or six feet of shale. The shale con- 
taining the iron ore observed in this county, 
underlies a considerable area in the center 
and western portions, mainly in Ranges 6 and 
7 east. At Mrs. Williams' place on the 
northwest quarter of Section 29 of Township 
1 south, Range 7 east, iron ore of good 
quality seemed to be quite abundant, and 
also at several places, in the ravines near 
Mr. McDaniel's place, not far from the north 
line of the county. Prof. Cox also notes 
an outcrop of clay iron ore in a grayish shale 
seven miles north of Fairfield, and also on 
Section 15, Town 1 north, Range 8 east. 

Potters' Clay. — A good clay, suitable for 
pottery or fire-brick is found on Section 32, 
Township 1 south, Range 9 east, but at the 
outcrop it was only one foot thick. Possibly 
it may be found at some other locality near 
by, where it is thick enough to be utilized 
for the manufacture of pottery or fire-brick. 

Clay or Sand. — Materials for brick can be 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



21 



obtained from the subsoils of the uplands, 
almost anywhere in the county, and from the 
abundant supply of wood for fuel, brick can 
be made in sufficient quantity to supply all 
future demands for this indispensable build- 
ing material. 

Soil and Agriculture. — The soil in this 
county is mainly a dark ash-gray or chocolate- 
colored clay loam, less highly charged with 
organic matter or humus than the black 
prairie soil of Central Illinois, but yielding 
fair crops of corn, wheat, oats and grass, 
both clover and timothy, and with judicious 
treatment will retain its fertility without any 
expense for artificial fertilizers 
afford excellent fruit farms. 



The ridges 



Recent developments have taught the peo- 
ple of Wayne County that here is the home 
of the apple in all its varieties. The soil 
and temperature made it the favored spot in 
the great, valley for the production of this 
valuable fruit. Either further north or fur- 
ther south than this, and the advantageous 
grounds are left for apple raising. The 
present season, 1883, has been marked in 
many parts of Illinois by a failure of much 
of the wheat and corn crops. It was too wet 
in the spring and too dry in the summer, but 
the apple crop in Wayne County has nearly 
compensated our people for the failure of 
corn and wheat. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE DARING DISCOVERIES AND OPERATIONS OF THE FRENCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY— SoMK 

CORRECTIONS IN HISTORY— THE CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES— DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI 

RIVER— PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY— THE DOWNFALL OF QUEBEC— THE TERRITORY 

CEDED BY THE INDIANS— ILLINOIS SEPARATED FROM INDIANA— ETC., ETC. 



" Naught telling how the victim died, 
Save faint tradition's faltering tongue." 

THE cradle of American history is the 
lower St. Lawrence River, and the great 
storehouse is the Mississippi Valley. And 
going back nearly four hundred years, it is one 
of the world's most wonderful tragedies, run- 
ning through nearly four centuries in duration. 
The thrilling story has been a grand epic of 
mankind, and while its recital thrills the stu- 
dent of those tremendous events with consum- 
ing interest, it may command the eager in- 
vestigation of the whole thinking world, 
because it is fraught with more mastering 
influences — forces that have shaped the desti- 
nies of mankind, and of civilization to a 



greater extent, than has any other period in 
all the world's history. 

The truths of history in reference to this 
spot upon the globe are only now being crit- 
ically examined; and the revelations they 
afford command a deep interest and a wide 
attention. For this empire of magnificent 
proportions (the Mississippi Valley), the lead- 
ing powers of the Old World contended for 
nearly three hundred years, and the savage 
Indian yet sharpens his scalping knife and 
lifts up in deadly revenge his tomahawk. 
Tun pj.ver of the Old World was the church, 
and it is a curious fact that these warlike 
nations that struggle for empire by the 
sword were guided and pointed the way to the 



22 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



new and tempting continent — to the very 
heart of the homes of the most powerful and 
savage tribes of men that were here, by the 
missionaries of the Catholic Church, who 
carried nothing more formidable for attack 
or defense than their prayer books and rosa- 
ries, and the gentle and divine command of 
"Peace on earth and good will among men.' 
The French Catholic missionaries were as 
loyal to their government as they were true 
to their God. They planted the lilies of 
France, and erected the cross of the mother 
church in the newly discovered countries, and 
chauted the solemn mass that soothed the 
savage breast, and smoke the calumet with 
wild men of the woods. 

The settlement of the West and the first 
discoveries were made by the French, and it 
was long afterward the country passed into 
the permanent possession of the English ; the 
letter people wrote the histories, and tinged 
them from first to last with their prejudices, 
and thus promulgated many serious errors of 
history. Time will always produce the icon- 
oclast who will dispassionately follow out the 
truth, regardless of how many fictions it 
may brush away in its course. Thus history 
is being continually re-written, and the 
(ruth is ever making its approaches, and the 
glorious deeds of the noble sons of France 
are becoming manifested, as the views of our 
history are brought to light, particularly 
their occupancy of the valley of the Father 
of Waters. 

As early as 1504, the French seamen from 
Brittany and Normandy visited the fisheries 
of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. These 
bold and daring men traversed the ocean, 
through the dangers of ice and storms, to 
pursue the occupation of fishery, an enter- 
prise which to-day has developed into one of 
gigantic magnitude. 

France not long after this commissioned 



•Tames Cartier, a distinguished mariner, to 
explore America. In 1535, in pursuance of 
the order, they planted the cross on the 
shores of the New World, on the banks of 
the St. Lawrence, bearing a shield with the 
lilies of France. He was followed by other 
adventurous spirits, and among them the im- 
mortal Samuel Champlain, a man of great 
enterprises, who founded Quebec in 1608. 
Champlain ascended the Sorel River, ex- 
plored Lake Champlain, which bears his 
name to-day. He afterward penetrated the 
forest and found his grave on the bleak shores 
of Lake Huron. He was unsurpassed for 
braverv, indefatigable in industry, and was 
one of the leading spirits in explorations 
and discoveries in the New World. 

In the van of the explorations on this con- 
tinent were found the courageous and pious 
Catholic missionaries, meeting dangers an 
death with a crucifix upon their breasts'' 
breviary in hand, whilst chanting their 
matins and vespers, along the shores of our 
majestic rivers, great lakes and unbroken 
forests. Their course was marked through 
the trackless wilderness by 'he carving of 
their emblems of faith upon the roadway, 
amidst perils and dangers, without food but 
pounded maize, sleeping in the woods with- 
out shelter, their couch being the ground and 
rock. Their beacon light, the cross, which 
was marked upon the oak of the forest in 
their pathway. 

After these missionaries had selected their 
stations of worship, the French hunters. 
courriers de boift, voyagers and traders, 
opened their traffic with the savages. France, 
when convenient and expedient, erected a 
chain 1 of forts along the rivers and lakes, in 
defense of Christianity and commerce. 

France, from 1008, acquired in this conti- 
nent a territory extensive enough to create a 
great empire, and was at that time untrod by 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY 



23 



the foot of the white man. and inhabited by 
roving tribos of the red man. As early as 
1615, we find Father LeCarron, a Catholic 
priest, in the forests of Canada, exploring 
the country for the purpose of converting 
the savages to the Christian religion. The 
following year he is seen on foot traversing 
the forests amongst the Mohawks, and reach- 
ing the rivers of the Ottewas. He was fol- 
lowed by other missionaries along the basin 
of the St. Lawrence and Kennebec Rivers, 
where some met their fate in frail barks, 
whilst others perished in the storms of a 
dreadful wilderness. 

In 1635 we find Father Jean Brebeauf, 
Daniels and Gabriel Lallamaud leaving Que- 
bec with a few Huron braves to explore Lake 
Huron, to establish chapels along its banks, 
from which sprung the villages of St. 
Joseph, St. Ignatius and St. Louis. To 
reach these places it was necessary to follow 
the Ottawae River through a dangerous and 
devious way to avoid the Mohawks, Oneidas, 
Cayugas. Senecas and Iroquois, forming a 
confederacy as the "Five Nations," occupy- 
ing a territory then known as the New York 
colony, who were continually at war with the 
Hurons, a tribe of Indians inhabiting Lake 
Huron territory. 

As early as 1639, three Sisters of Charity 
from France arrived at Quebec, dressed in 
plain black gowns with snowy white collars, 
whilst to their girdles hung the rosary. They 
proceeded to the chapel, led by the Governor 
of Canada, accompanied by braves and war 
riors, to chant the Te Deum. These holy 
and pious women, moved by religious zeal, 
immediately established the Ursuline Con- 
vent for the education of girls. In addition 
to this, the King of Franco and nobility of 
Paris endowed a seminary in Quebec for the 
education of all classes of persons. A pub- 
lic hospital was built by the generous Duchess 



of D'Arguilon, with the aid of Cardinal 
Richelieu, for the unfortunate emigrants, to 
the savages of all tribes and afflicted of all 
classes. A missionary station was established 
as early as Kill, at Montreal, under a rude 
tent, from which has grown the large city < f 
to-day, with its maguilicent cathedral and 
phurches, its massive business houses and its 
commerce. 

The tribes of Huron Lake and neighboring 
savages, in 1641, met on the banks of the 
Iroquois Bay to celebrate the " Festival of 
the Dead." The bones and ashes of the 
dead had been gathered in coffins of bark, 
whilst wrapped in magniticpnt furs, to be 
given an affectionate sepulcher. At this 
singular festival of the savages, the chiefs 
and braves of different tribes chanted their 
low, mournful songs, day and night, amidst 
the wails and groans of their women and 
children. During this festival appeared the 
pious missionaries, their cassocks with beads 
to their girdle, sympathizing with the red 
men in their devotion to the dead, whilst 
scattering their medals, pictures of our Savior 
and blessed and beautiful beads, which 
touched and won the hearts of the sons of 
the forest. What a beautiful spectacle to 
behold, over the grass of the tierce warriors, 
idolatry fading before the Son of God. 
Father Charles Raymbault and the indomit- 
able Isaac Jorjues in 1641 left Canada to ex- 
plore the country as far as Lake Superior. 
They reached the Falls of St. Moaray's and 
established a station at SauK de Ste. Marie, 
where were assembled many warriors and 
braves from the great West, to see and hear 
these two apostles of religion and to behold 
the cross of Christianity. These two mission- 
aries invoked them to worship the true God. 
The savages were struck with the emblem of 
the cross and its teachings, and exclaimed. 
" We embrace you as brothers: come and 
dwell in our cabins." 



24 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



When Father Joques and his party were 
returning from the Falls of St. Mary's to 
Quebec, they were attacked by the Mohawks, 
who massacred the chief and his braves, who 
accompanied him, whilst they held Bather 
Joques in captivity, showering upon him a 
great many indignities, compelling him to 
run the gantlet through their village. 
Father Brussini at the same time was beaten, 
mutilated, and made to walk barefooted 
through thorns and briers and then scourged 
by a whole village. However, by some 
miraculous way they were rescued by the 
generous Dutch of New York and both after- 
ward returned to France. Father Joques 
again returned to Quebec, and was sent as 
an envoy amongst the Five Nations. Con- 
trary to the savage laws of hospitality, he 
was ill-treated, and then killed as an en- 
chanter, his head hung upon the skirts of 
the village and his body thrown into the 
Mohawk River. Such was the fate of this 
courageous and pious man, leaving a monu- 
ment of martyrdom more enduring than the 
pyramids of Egypt. 

The year 1(545 is memorable, owing to a 
congress held by France and the " Five Na- 
tions " at the Three Rivers, in Canada. There 
the daring chiefs and warriors and the gal- 
lant officers of France met at the great coun- 
cil-fires. After the war-dance and numerous 
ceremonies, the hostile parties smoked the 
calumet of peace. The Iroquois said : " Let 
the clouds be dispersed and the sun shine on 
all the land between us." The Mohawks ex- 
claimed: "We have thrown the hatchet so 
high into the air and beyond the skies that 
no man on earth can reach to bring it down. 
Tho French shall sleep on our softest blank- 
ets, by the warm tire, that shall be kept blaz- 
ing all night." Notwithstanding the eloquent 
and fervent language and appearance of 
peace, it was but of short duration, for soon 



the cabin of the white man was in flames, 
and the foot-print of blood was seen along the 
St. Lawrence, and once more a bloody war 
broke out, which was disastrous to France, 
as the Five Nations returned to the allegiance 
of the English colonies. 

The village of St. Joseph, near Huron 
Lake, on the 4th of July, 1648, whilst her 
warriors were absent, was sacked and its 
people murdered by the Mohawks. Father 
Daniel, who officiated there, whilst endeavor- 
ing to protect the children, women and old 
men was fatally wounded by numerous arrows 
and killed. Thus fell this martyr in the 
cause of religion and progress. 

The next year the villages of St. Ignatius 
and St. Louis were attacked by the Iroquois. 
The village of St. Ignatius was destroyed 
and its inhabitants massacred. The village 
of St. Louis shared the same fate. At the 
latter place, Father Brebeauf and Lallemand 
were made prisoners, tied to a tree, stripped 
of their clothes, mutilated, burned with fagots 
and rosin bark, and then scalped. They per- 
ished in the name of France and Christianity. 

Father de la Ribourde, who had been the , 
companion of La Salle on the Griffin, and who 
officiated at Fort Creve Cceur, 111., whilst re- 
turning to Lake Michigan, was lost in the 
wilderness. Afterward, it was learned he 
had been murdered in cold blood by three 
young warriors, who carried his prayer book 
and scalp as a trophy up north of Lake Su- 
perior, which afterward fell into the hands 
of the missionaries. Thus died this martyr 
of religion, after ten years' devotion in the 
cabins of the savages, whose head had become 
bleached with seventy winters. Such was 
also the fate of the illustrious Father Rine 
Mesnard, on his mission to the southern shore 
of Lake Superior, where in after years his 
cassock and breviary was kept as amulets 
among the Sioux. After thpse atrocities, 



HISTOTIY OF WAYNE COUNTY 



•j: 



these noble missionaries never retraced 'their 
steps, and new troops pressed forward to take 
their places. They still continued to explore 
our vast country. The history of their labors, 
self-sacrifice and devotion is connected with 
the origin of every village or noted place in 
the North and great West. 

France ordered, by Colbert, its great min- 
ister, that an invitation be given to all tribes 
West for a general congress. This remark- 
able council was hold in May, 1671, at the 
Falls of St. Mary's. There were found the 
chiefs and braves of many nations of the 
West, decorated in their brightest feathers 
and furs, whilst, the French officers glistened 
with their swords and golden epaulets. In 
their midst stood the undaunted missionaries 
from all parts of the country. In this re- 
markable congress rose a log cedar cross, and 
upon a staff the colors of France. 

In this council, after many congratulations 
offered, and the war dance, the calumet was 
smoked- and peace declared. France secures 
here the friendship of the tribes and domin- 
ion over the great West. 

Marquette, while on his mission in the 
West, leaves Mackinac on the 13th of May, 
1673, with his companion Joliot and five 
Frenchmen and two Indian guides, in two 
bark canoes freighted with maize and smoked 
meat, to enter into Lake Michigan and Green 
Bay until they reached Fox River in Illinois, 
where stood on its banks an Indian village 
occupied by the Kickapoos, Mascoutins and 
Mianiis. where the noble Father Alloues offi- 
ciated. Marquette in this village preaches 
and announces to them his object of discover- 
ing the great river. They are appalled at 
the bold proposition. They say: "Those 
distant nations never spare the strangers; 
their mutual wars till their borders with 
bands of warriors. The great river abounds 
in monsters which devour both men and 



canoos. The excessive heat occasions death." 
From Fox River across the portage with 
the canoes they reach the Wisconsin River. 
There Marquette and Joliet separated with 
their guides, and in Marquette's language, 
" Leaving us alone in this unknown land in 
the hands of Providence," they float down 
the Wisconsin, whose banks are dotted with 
prairies and beautiful hills, whilst surrounded 
by wild animals and the buffalo. After seven 
days' navigation on this river, their hearts 
bound with gladness on beholding on the 
17th day of June, 1673. the broad expanse 
of the great Father of Waters, and upon its 
bosom they float down. About sixty leagues 
below this, they visit an Indian village. 
Their reception from the savages was cordial. 
They said: " We are Illinois, that is, we are 
men. The whole village awaits thee; thou 
shalt enter in peace our cabins." After six 
days' rest on the couch of furs, and amidst 
abundance of game, these hospitable Illinois 
conduct them to their canoes, whilst the 
chief places around Marquette's neck the cal- 
UTiiet of peace, being beautifully decorated 
with the feathers of birds. 

Their canoe again ripples the bosom of 
the great river (Mississippi). When further 
down, they behold on the high bluffs and 
smooth rock above (now Alton) on the Illinois 
shore, the figures of two monsters painted in 
various colors, of frightful appearance, and 
the position appeared to bo inaccessible to a 
painter. They soon reached the turbid waters 
of the Missouri, and thence floated down to 
the mouth of the Ohio. 

Farther down the river stands the village 
of Mitchigamea, being on the west, side of 
the river. When approaching this place, its 
bloody warriors with their war cry embark 
in their canoes to attack them, but the calu- 
met, held aloft by Marquette, pacifies them. 
So tbey are treated with hospitality and es- 



29 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



corted by them to the Arkansas River. They 
sojourn there a short time, when Marquette, 
before leaving this sunny land, celebrates 
the festival 'oi the church. Marquette and 
Joliet then turn their canoe northward to 
retrace their way back until they reach the 
Illinois River, thence up that stream, along 
its flowery prairies. The Illinois braves con 
duct them back to Lake Michigan, thence to 
Green Bay, where they arrived in September, 
1673. 

Marquette for two years officiated 
along Lake Michigan; afterward visited 
Mackinaw; from thence he enters a small 
river in Michigan (that bears his name) when, 
after saying mass, he withdraws for a short 
time to the woods, where he is found dead. 
Thus died this illustrious explorer and re- 
markable priest, leaving a name unparalleled 
as a brave, good and virtuous Christian. 

Robert Caralin La Salle, a native of Nor- 
mandy, an adventurer from France, arrived 
in Canada about 1670. Being ambitious to 
distinguish himself in making discoveries on 
this continent, he returned to France to solicit j 
aid for that purpose. He was made chevalier, 
upon the condition that he would repair Fort 
Frontenac, located on Lake Ontario, and open 
commerce with the savages. In 1678, he 
again returned to France, when, in July, 1679. 
with Chevalier Tonti, his Lieutenant, with 
thirty men, he left Rochelle for Quebec and 
Fort Frontenac. Whilst at Quebec, an agree- 
ment was made by the Governor of Canada 
with La Salle to establish forts along the 
northern lakes. At this time he undertook 
with great activity to increase the commerce 
of the West, by building a bark of ten tons 
to float on Lake Ontario. Shortly afterward 
he built another vessel, known as the Griffin, 
above Niagara Falls, for Lake Erie, of sixty 
tons, being the lirst vessel seen on the North- 
ern lakes. The Griffin was launched and 



made to float on Lake Erie. ' ' On the prow 
of this ship armorial bearings were adorned 
by two griffins as supporters ; " upon her 
deck she carried two brass cannon for defense. 
On the 7th of August, 1679, she spread her 
sails on Lake Erie, whilst on her deck stood 
the brave naval commander La Salle, accom- 
panied by Fathers Hennepin, Ribourde and 
Zenobi, surrounded by a crew of thirty voy- 
ageurs. On leaving, a salute was fired, whose 
echoes were heard to the astonishment of the 
savages, who named the Griffin the " Great 
W T ooden Canoe/' This ship pursued her 
course thTough Lakes Erie, St. Clair and 
Huron to Mackinaw, thence through that 
strait into Lake Michigan, thence to Green 
Bay, where she anchored in safety. The 
Griffin, after being laden with a cargo of 
pultries and furs, was ordered back by La 
Salle to the port from whence she sailed, but 
unfortunately on her return she was wrecked. 
La Salle during the absence of the Griffin 
determined, with fourteen men, to proceed to 
the mouth of the Miamis, now St. Joseph, 
where he built a fort, from which place he 
proceeded to Rock Fort in La Salle County, 
111. La Salle hearing of the disaster and 
wreck of the Griffin, he builds a fort on the 
Illinois River called Creve Cceur (broken 
heart). This brave man, though weighed 
down by misfortune, did not despair. He 
concluded to return to Canada, but before 
leaving sends Father Hennepin, withPiscard, 
Du Gay and Michael Aka. to explore the 
sources of the Upper Mississippi. They 
leave Creve Cceur February '2d, lf>80. float- 
ing down the Illinois River, reaching the 
Mississippi March 8, 1680 : then explored 
this river up to the Falls of St. Anthony; 
from there they penetrated the forests, which 
brought them to the wigwams of the Sioux, 
who detained Father Hennepin and compan- 
ions for a short time in captivity; recover] g 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



their liberties, they returned to Lake Superior 
in November, 1680, thence to Quebec and 
France. During the explorations of Father 
Hennepin, La Salle, with a courage unsur- 
passed, a constitution of iron, returns to 
Canada, a distance of 1,200 miles, his path 
way being through snows, ice and savages 
along the lakes Michigan, Erie and Ontario. 
Reaching Quebec, he finds his business in a 
disastrous condition, his vessels lost, his 
goods seized and his men scattered. Not 
being discouraged, however, he returns to 
his forts in Illinois, which he finds deserted; 
takes new courage; goes to Mackinaw; finds 
his devoted friend Chevalier Tonti in 1681, 
and is found once more on the Illinois River 
to continue the explorations of the Missis- 
sippi, which had been explored by Father 
Marquette to the Arkansas River, and by 
Father Hennepin up to the Falls of St. An- 
thony. La Salle, from Fort Creve Cceur, on 
the Illinois River, with twenty-two French- 
men, amongst whom was Father Zenobi and 
Chevalier Tonti, with eighteen savages and 
two women and three children, float down 
until they reached the Mississippi on Feb- 
ruary 6, 1682. They descend this mighty 
river until they reach its mouth, April 6, 
L682, where they are the 'first to plant the 
cross and the banners of France. La Salle, 
with his companions, ascends the Mississippi 
and returns to his forts on the Illinois; re- 
turns again to Canada and France. 

La Salle is received at the French court 
with enthusiam. The King of France orders 
four vessels well equipped to serve him, un- 
do- Beatigerr, commander of the fleet, to 
proceed to the Gulf of Mexico to discover the 
Balize. Unfortunately for La Salle, he fails 
in discovering it. and they arc thrown into 
the Bay of Matagorda, Texas, where La Salle, 
with liis 280 persona, are abandoned by 
Beaugerr, the commander of the fleet. La 



Salle here builds a fort; then undertakes by 
land to discover the Balize. After many 
hardships he returns to his fort, and acain 
attempts the same object, when ho meets a 
tragical end, being murdered by the desper- 
ate Duhall, one of his men. During the 
voyage of La Salle, Chevalier Tonti, his 
friend had gone down the Mississippi to its 
mouth to meet him. After a long search in 
vain for the fleet, he returned to Rock Fort 
on the Illinois. After the unfortunate death 
of La Salle, great disorder and misfortune 
occurred to his men in Texas. Some wan- 
dered among the jsavages, others were taken 
prisoners, others perished in the woods. 
However, seven bold and brave men of La 
Salle's force determined to return to Illinois, 
headed by Capt. Joutel and the noble Father 
Anatase. After six months of exploration 
through the forest and plain, they cross Red 
River, where they lose one of their comrades. 
They then moved toward the Arkansas 
River, where, to their great joy. they 
reached a French fort, upon which stood a 
large cross, where Couture and Delouny, two 
Frenchmen, had possession, to hold commu- 
nication with La Salle. This brave band, 
with the exception of young Berthelney, pro- 
ceeded up the Mississippi to the Illinois 
forts; from thence to Canada. 

This terminated La Salle's wonderful ex- 
plorations over our vast lakes, groat rivers 
and territory of Texas. He was a man of 
stern integrity, of undoubted activity and 
boldness of character, of an iron constitution, 
entertaining broad views and a chivalry un- 
surpassed in tho Old or New World 

France, as early as possible,' established 
along the lakes permanent settlements. One 
was that df Detroit, which was one of the 
most interesting and loveliest positions, which 
was settled in 1701 by Lamotte de Cardillac 
with KK> Frenchmen. 



30 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



The discovery and possession of Mobile, 
Biloxi and Dauphin Islands induced the 
French to search for the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi River, formerly discovered by La 
Salle. Lemoine D'Iberville, a naval officer 
of talent and great experience, discovered the 
Balize, on the 2d of March, 1699 ; proceeded 
lip this river and took possession of the coun- 
try known as Louisiana. D'Iberville re- 
turned immediately to France to announce 
this glorious news. Bienville, his brother, 
was left to take charge of Louisiana during 
his absence. D'Iberville returned, when Bien- 
ville and St. Denis, with a force, was or- 
dered to explore Red River, and thence to 
the borders of Mexico. La Harpe also as- 
cended Red River in 1719 ; built a fort called 
Carlotte ; also took possession of the Arkan- 
sas River ; afterward floated down this river 
in pirogues, finding on its banks many thriv- 
ing Indian villages. France, in September, 
1712, by letters patent, granted Louisiana to 
Crozas, a wealthy Frenchman, who relin- 
quished his rights and power in 1717 to the 
Company of the West, established by the no- 
torious banker, John Law. Under a fever of 
great speculations, great efforts were made to 
advance the population and wealth of Louis- 
iana. New Orleans was mapped out in 1718, 
and became the important city of Lower and 
Upper Louisiana. The charter and privileges 
of "Company of the West," after its total 
failure, was resigned to the crown of France 
in 1731. The country embracing Louisiana 
was populated by numerous tribes of savages. 
One of these tribes was known as the Natchez, 
located on a high bluff, in the midst of a 
glorious climate, about three hundred miles 
above New Orleans on the river bank. The 
Natchez had erected a remarkable temple, 
where they invoked the " Great Spirit," which 
was decorated with various idols molded from 
clay baked in the sun. In this temple burned 



a living fire, where the bones of the brave 
were burned. Near it, on a high mound, 
the chief of the nation, called the Sun, re- 
sided, where the warriors chanted their war 
songs and held their great council fires. The 
Natchez had shown great hospitality to the 
French. The Governor of Louisiana built a 
fort near them in 1714, called Fort Rosalie. 
Chopart, afterward commander of this fort, 
ill-treated them, and unjustly demanded a 
part of their villages. This unjust demand 
so outraged their feelings, that the Natchez, 
in their anger, lifted up the bloody tomahawk, 
headed by the " Great Sun," attacked Fort 
Rosalie November 28, 1729, and massacred 
every Frenchman in the fort and the vicinity. 
During these bloody scenes, the chief, amid 
this carnage, stood calm and unmoved, while 
Chopart' s head and that of his officers and 
soldiers were thrown at his feet, forming a 
pyramid of human heads. This caused a 
bloody war, which, after many battles fought, 
terminated in the total destruction of the 
Natchez nation. In these struggles, the chief 
and his four hundred braves were made prison- 
ers, and afterward inhumanly sold as slaves 
in St. Domingo. 

The French declared war in 1736 against 
the Chickasaws, a war-like tribe that inhab- 
ited the Southern States. Bienville, com- 
mander of the French, ordered a re-union of 
the troops to assemble on the 10th of May, 
1736, on the Tombigbee River. The gallant 
D'Artaquette, from Fort Chartres, and the 
brave Vincennes from the Wabash River, 
with a thousand warriors, were at their post 
in time, but were forced into battle on the 
20th of May without the assistance of the 
other troops, were defeated and massacred. 
Bienville shortly afterward, on the 27th of 
May, 1736, failed in his assault upon the 
Chickasaw forts on the Tombigbee, where 
the English flag waved, and was forced to 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



31 



retreat with the loss of his cannons, which 
forced him to return to New Orleans. In 
1740, the French built a fort at the month 
of the St. Francois River, ami moved their 
troops in Fort Assumption, near Memphis, 
where peace was concluded with the Chicka- 
saws. 

The oldest permanent settlement on the 
Mississippi was Kaskaskia. first visited by 
Father Gravier, date unknown: but he was 
in Illinois in 1693. He was succeeded by 
Fathers Pinet and Binetan. l'inet became 
the founder of Cahokia, where he erected a 
chapel, and a goodly number <>f savages as- 
sembled to attend the great feast. Father 
Gabriel, who had chanted mass through 
Canada, officiated at Cahokia and Kaskaskia 
in 1711. The missionaries in 1721 established 
a college and monastery at Kaskaskia; Fort 
Chartres, in Illinois, was built in 1720, be- 
came an important post for the security of 
the French, and a great protection for the 
commerce on the Missi-sippi. " The Com- 
pany of the West " sent an expedition under 
Le Sieur to "Upper Louisiana about 1720 in 
search of precious metals, and proceeded up 
as far as St. Croix and St. Peter's Rivers, 
where a fort was built, which had to be 
abandoned owing to tbe hostilities of the 
savages. 

The French as early as 1 7' >~i. ascended tho 
Missouri River to open traffic with the Mis 
souris and to take possession of the country. 
M. Dutism, from New Orleans, with a force, 
arrived in Saline River, below Ste. Gene- 
vieve, moved westward to the Osage River, 
then beyond this about 150 miles, where he 
found two large villages located in line prai- 
ries abounding with wild game and buffalo. 

France and Spain in 1711* were contending 
for dominion west of the Mississippi. Spain 
in 1720 sent from Sante F£ a large caravan 
to make a settlement on the Missouri River, 



the design being to destroy the Missouris, a 
tribe at peace with France. This caravan. 
after traveling and wandering, lost their way, 
and marched into the camp of the Missouris, 
their enemies, where they were all massacred 
except a priest, who, from his dress, was 
considered no warrior. After this expedition 
from Sante F6 npon Missouri, France, under 
M. DeRonrgmeut, with a force, in 1724 as- 
cended the Missouri, established a fort 
on an island above the Osage River, named 
Fort Orleans. This fort was afterward at- 
tacked and its defenders destroyed, and by 
whom was never ascertained. 

The town of St. Genevieve was the first 
settlement west of the Mississippi River, by 
emigrants from Franco and Canada, in the 
year 1735. 

The wars between England and France more 
or less affected the growth of this continent. 
The war in 1689, known as " King William's 
war,'' was concluded by the treaty of Rys- 
wick, 1697; " Queen Anne's war" termin- 
ated by tho treaty of Utrecht in 1713; " King 
George's war " concluded by the treaty of 
Aix la Chapelle in 174S. These wars gave 
England supremacy in the fisheries, the pos- 
session of the bay of Hudson, of Newfound- 
land and all of Nova Scotia. 

The French and Indian wars, between 
1754 and 1763 — tho struggle between En- 
gland and Franco as to their dominion in 
America- -commenced at this period. It was a 
disastrous and bloody war, where both parties 
enlisted hordes of savages to participate in a 
warfare conducted in a disgraceful manner 
to humanity. France at this time had erected 
a chain of forts from Canada to the great 
lakes and along the Mississippi Valley. The 
English controlled the territory occupied by 
her English colonies. The English claimed 
beyond the Alleghany Mountains to the Ohio 
River. The French deemed her right to this 



Si> 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



river indisputable. Virginia bad granted to 
the " Obio Company " an extensive territory 
reaobing to tbe Obio. Dinwiddie, Governor 
of Virginia, through George Washington, 
remonstrated against tbe encroachment of 
tbe French. St. Pierre, the French com- 
mander, received Washington with kindness, 
returned an answer claiming the territory 
which France occupied. Tbe " Ohio Com- 
pany " sent out a party of men to erect a 
fort at the confluence of the Allegheny and 
Monongahela Rivers. These men had hard- 
ly commenced work on this fort when they 
were driven away by the French, who took 
possession and established "Fort du Quesne." 

Washington, with a body of provincials 
from Virginia, marched to the disputed ter- 
ritory, when a party of French under Jumon- 
ville was attacked, and all either killed or 
made prisoners. Washington after this 
erected a fort called Fort Necessity. From 
thence Washington proceeded with 400 men 
toward Fort du Quesne, where, hearing of 
the advance of M. De Villiers with a large 
force, he returned to Fort Necessity, where, 
after a short defense, Washington had to 
capitulate, with the honorable terms of re- 
turning to Virginia. 

On the 4th of July, 1754, the day that 
Fort Necessity surrendered, a convention of 
colonies was held at Albany, N. Y., for a 
union of the colonies proposed by Dr. Ben 
Franklin, adopted by the delegates, but de- 
feated by the English Government. How- 
ever, at this convention, a treaty was made 
between the colonies and the " Five Nations," 
which proved to be of great advantage to En- 
gland. Gen. Braddock, with a force of 
'2,000 soldiers, marched against Fort du 
Quesne. Within seven miles of this fort, he 
was attacked by the French and Indian allies 
and disastrously defeated, when Washington 
covered tbe retreat, and saved the army from 
total destruction. 



Sir William Johnson, with a large force, 
took command of the army at Fort Edward. 
Near this fort, Baron Dieskan and St. Pierre 
attacked Col. Williams and troop, where the 
English were defeated, but Sir Johnson, com- 
ing to the rescue, defeated the French, who 
lost in this battle Dieskan and St. Pierre. 

On August 12, 1756, Marquis Montcalm, 
commander of the French army, attacked Fort 
Ontario, garrisoned by 1,400 troops, who 
capitulated as prisoners of war, with 134 
cannon, several vessels, and a large amount 
of military stores. Montcalm, destroying 
this fort, returned to Canada. 

By the treaty of peace of Aix la Chapelle 
of October, 1748, Arcadia, known as Nova 
Scotia, and Brunswick had been ceded by 
France to England. When tbe war of 1754 
broke out, this territory was occupied by 
numerous French families. England, fear- 
ing their sympathy for France, cruelly con- 
fiscated their property, destroyed their hum- 
ble homes and exiled them to their colonies 
in the utmost poverty and distress. 

In August, 1857, Marquis Montcalm, with 
a large army, marched on Fort William 
Henry, defended by 3,000 English troops. 
The English were defeated and surrendered 
on condition that they might march out of 
the fort with their arms. The savage allies, 
as they marched out in an outrageous man- 
ner, plundered them and massacred some in 
cold blood, notwithstanding the efforts of the 
French officers to prevent them. The mili- 
tary campaign so far had been very disas- 
trous to the English, which created quite a 
sensation in the colonies and in England. 
At this critical period the illustrous Mr. Pitt, 
known as Lord Chatham, was placed at the 
helm of state on account of his talent and 
statesmanship, and he sent a large naval ar- 
mament and numerous troops to protect tbe 
colonies. 

July 8, 1758, Gen. Abercombie, with an 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



33 



army of 15,000, moved on Ticonderoga, de- 
fended Marquis Montcalm. After a great 
struggle the English were defeated with a 
loss of 2,000 dead and wounded. 

August 27, 1758, Coi. Bradstreet with a 
force attacked the French fort, Fort Fronte- 
nac, on Lake Ontario, took it with nine 
armed vessels, sixty cannon and a quantity of 
military stores, whilst Gen. Forbes moved on 
Fort du Quesne, and took it, which fort was 
afterward called Pittsburgh, in honor of Mr. 
Pitt. 

In 1759, the ^French this year evacuated 
Ticonderoga, Crown Point and Niagara. 
Gen. Wolf advanced against Quebec, then 
defended by the gallant Montcalm, where a 
terrible and bloody battle took place between 
the two armies. Gen. Wolf was killed and 
a great number of English officers. When 
the brav" Wolf was told the English were 
victorious, he said, "He died contented." 
Montcalm, when told his wounds were 
mortal, he said, " So much the better, I shall 
not live to see the surrender of Quebec," 
which city surrendered September 18, 1759. 

In 1760, another battle was fought near 
Quebec, which drove the English into their 
fortifications, and were only relieved by the 
English squadron. Montreal still contended 
to the last, when she was compelled to sur- 
render, which gave Canada to the English. 

Treaty of peace, February 10, 1763. By 
this France ceded to England all her posses- 
sions on the St. Lawrence River, all east of 
the Mississippi River, except that portion 
south of Iberville River and west of the Mis 
sissippi. At the same time all ihe territory 
here reserved being west of the Mississippi, 
and the Orleans territory was transferred to 
Spain. France, after all her labors, toil and 
expenditures, and groat loss of life, surren- 
dered to England and Spain her great domain 
in North America. The historv of France, 



embracing a term of 228 years, is replete 
with interest and with thrilling events in 
this country up to 1763. 

The defeats of the French in North Amer- 
ica greatly led to the establishment of the 
United States Government. The accom- 
plishment of such a glorious end was largely 
due to the gallant Frenchmen. As long as 
the anniversary of the American Independ 
ence shall be celebrated, the names of Wash 
ington and Lafayette will ever be remem 
bered by a grateful people. We can but con- 
gratulate ourselves, as citizens of this great 
valley, that owing to the sympathy of France 
and her people under the great Napoleon 
and the immortal Jefferson, that we to-day 
are a portion of this grand republic. 

The downfall of Quebec was the over-' 
throw of French power in North America. 
The French supremacy was only overthrown 
after a long and bloody struggle, and the re- 
coil of the blow that had smitten it down was 
the cause of another struggle more desolat- 
ing and widely extended than the first, but 
ended without accomplishing any political 
results. In this fierce conflict the red man 
became the principal actor, and exhibited a 
degree of sagacity and constancy of purpose 
never before witnessed in the history of his 
warfai-e. The English sent Maj. Robert 
Clark to take possession of the frontier out- 
posts. Tbe approach of Maj. Clark aroiised 
Pontiac, and he boldly demanded to know 
their mission. Pontiac was the Napoleon of 
his race, and suffice it to say here that this 
movement of the British troops resulted in 
his great conspiracy, and the destruction of 
British settlements, and the attack upon De- 
troit. 

On the 13th of August, 1803, the treaty 
of Vincennes, and the additional treaty of 
December 30, 1805, was concluded with the 
Kaskaskias, by which they ceded to the 



34 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



United States, all that tract included within 
a line beginning below the mouth of the Illi- 
nois River, and descending the Mississippi 
to its junction with the Ohio, ascending the 
latter to the Wabash, and from a certain 
point up the Wabash west to the Mississippi, 
embracing the greater part of Southern Illi- 
nois, and including Wayne County. This 
was the act that divested the Indians of their 
title to the lands the people of the county 
now possess.* 

By act of Congress, February 3, 1809, all 
that part of the Indian Territory lying "west 
of the Wabash River, and a direct line drawn 
from the said Wabash River and Post Vin- 
cennes, due north to the territorial line be- 
tween the United States and Canada, should 
constitute Illinois. This, it will be noticed, 
included Wisconsin. It was the separation 
of Illinois from Indiana. This act of separ- 
ating Illinois from Indiana, found a hot 
anti -separation party in Vincennes, the cap- 
ital, and the villages and settlements east of 
that place. The excitement culminated in 
bloodshed; one of the leading men in favor 
of the measure was assassinated in the streets 
of Kaskaskia. The question of separation 
turned upon the ability of the Illinois mem- 
bers of the Legislature, in session in Vin- 
cennes in October, 1S08, to elect a Delegate to 
Congress in place of Benjamin Park, resigned, 
who should be favorable to the division. 
The Illinoisans found a suitable candidate in 
an Indiana member of the House, who was 



•The important historical facts that give an account of the 
acts of Gen. George Rogers Clark, by which all this vast ter- 
ritory was secured to the Tinted States, ami wrested from the 
British crown, are given in the Clay County history, and to 
which the reader iB referred. The reader will there see that the 
territory of Wayne and l lay Counties are historical grounds, 
were the scenes of most important events of the Revolution, and 
that ( ieu. Clark was here fighting out that great war for human 
liberty: that he was one of the greatest men America has pro- 
duced and that the territory of those counties may honor him 
as among their first visitors. 



also Speaker, by the name of Jesse B. Thom- 
as, who, for the sake of going to Congress, 
was ready to violate the sentiments of his 
constituents upon this question. Thomas 
gave a bond that he would procure from Con- 
gress a separation; and he was triumphantly 
elected by a majority of one vote — he voted 
for himself. He was hung in effigy in Vin- 
cennes, but he went to Congress and kept his 
bond and faith with Illinois, and came from 
Congress with a commission in his pocket for 
a federal judgeship in Illinois, and he re- 
moved to the new State, and thus was secured 
our great State and an eminent citizen. 

William Edwards, at the time Chief Jus- 
tice of the Court of Appeals in Kentucky, 
became Governor of the new Territory. John 
Bogle, of the same State, at first received the 
appointment of Governor, but declined the 
office and accepted that of Associate Justice 
of the same court whereof Edwards was 
Chief Justice. 

This brief outline of the history leading up 
to the final organization of the country that 
eventually made us what we are, is given for 
the double purpose of correcting many ma- 
terial facts that have heretofore either not been 
truly set forth or were deliberately falsified, 
and to call the attention of the reader to the 
fact that we are upon grounds that are full 
of history — history more interesting than any 
romance — and that every day is growing in 
interest and importance. 

To some extent we prefer to resume the 
story of the part this locality played in the 
Revolutionary war in our history of Clay 
County, because it was through that county 
the old Vincennes trace was located and it 
was over this route a portion of the Revolu- 
tionary army traveled on its way from Kas- 
kaskia to Vincennes. 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



35 



CHAPTER III. 



THE OLD SETTLERS, WHERE TIIEV WERE FROM, TOGETHER WITH MANY INTERESTING FACTS CON 
CERNING THEM— ISAAC HARRIS, MRS. GOODWIN, COL. SAMUEL LEECH, GEORGE MERRITT. 
"J LCKY" JONES, GEORGE M.C'OU'N, AND MANY OTHERS— RANGERS— JOE BOLTING- 
HOUSE'S AVENGERS— WAYNE COUNTY ORGANIZED MARCH 20, 1819, ETC. 

interested in the movements 



THE " simple annals " of the brave and 
hardy pioneers who came to this portion 
of Illinois to carve out new homes for them- 
selves, and fight it out with the bloody 
savages, the wild beasts and the deadly 
malaria, dates back only seventy years, the 
allotted span of extreme human life, and the 
fleeting years are fast carrying away all liv- 
ing testimony of the earliest settlers, and 
unless we now catch the shadow ere the sub- 
stance wholly fades, and tell the story of the 
most interesting people the country has pro- 
duced, it will soon be forgotten, and the 
world will thus lose a lesson that is worth 
more if fully told than any heritage that we 
can possess. To gather up the threads of 
their eventful lives — mostly broken threads 
now — is both a labor of love, and already a 
difficult task in many respects. The pleasure 
consists in listening to the story of the very 
few now left of those early comers, all of 
whom are venerable men and women now, 
and who were infants then, and the difficulty 
consists in the fact that no person is now 
alive who was then old enough to know and 
see and remember for themselves. Thus we 
are driven to their recollections of the tales 
that were told to them, and to those tradi- 
tion? that have hero and there been preserved 
from the fathers. 

Next in interest to the story of the lives of 
these pioneers is the study of their charac- 
ters. Man's nature is such that he is deeply 



purposes, great 
actions, heroic deeds, sublime sacrifices, the 
loves, the sports and pastimes of those who 
have gone before him. "Whether his fore- 
fathers were wiseor foolish, great and strong, 
or puerile and weak, he wauts to learn all he 
can about them. How they thought and 
what they did — acts and doings that, discon- 
nected from their story, might not only seem 
idle but foolish, are clothed with immense 
interests when they are told of those we love 
and respect — those whose lives were a long 
sacrifice which have produced the ripened 
fruits we now enjoy; and while even one or 
two are yet living who were here and parti- 
cipated to some extent in the stirring long 
ago, the task, so far as they can go in memory, 
is both easy and pleasant, but in a moment, 
and before we have had time to reflect upon 
the loss, they are all gone, and the places 
that knew them so well will know them no 
more forever. Hence the chronicler, who 
puts in a permanent form all these once sup- 
posed trifling details, has performed an in- 
valuable, if not an imperishable service. For 
the proper study of mankind is man. It is 
the great and inexhaustible fountain of 
knowledge, and the " man " that is or should 
be best studied is your own immediate fore- 
fathers or predecessors. To know them well 
is to master all you can really learn of the 
human family. To peer into the complex 
problem of the human race does not so much 



3(5 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



consist in trying to study all of the living 
and the dead, as in mastering, in so far as 
it is possible, the chosen few. 

Gov. Reynolds gives this quaint account 
of himself and the early pioneers: "All spe- 
cies of amusements were indulged in by the 
original inhabitants of Illinois. I do not 
pretend to say that every person was devoted 
to gaming; but it was considered at that day 
both fashionable and honorable to game for 
money; but, as gentlemen, for amusement 
and high and chivalrous sports. In this 
manner a great many gambled. Card play- 
ing was sustained by the highest classes as 
well as the lowest in the country. A person 
who could not or would not play at cards was 
scarcely fit for genteel society. The French 
delighted much in this amusement, which 
gave the card parties much standing and 
popularity with the Americans. The French 
at that time had the ascendency in the coun- 
try, and their manners and habits gave tone 
and character to many such transactions. 
The French masses in early times played 
cards incessantly in the shade of the galleries 
of their houses in the hot summer months. 
They frequently played without betting, but 
at times wagered heavily. Card playing was 
mostly the only gaming the French indulged 
in. The ladies of that day amused them- 
selves often in these games, and as they do 
at this day. At times the Americans, as well 
as the French, bet heavily at cards, although 
they were not considered gamblers. * * 
Shooting matches, with the Americans, were 
great sport. Almost every Saturday in the 
summer, a beef or some other article would 
be shot for in the rural districts, and the 
beef killed and parceled out the same night. 
A keg of whisky was generally packed to 
the shooting match on horseback. Sometimes 
a violin appeared, and stag dances, as they 
were termed, occupied the crowd for hours 



" In 1804, I witnessed a match of shooting 
in the orchard of Gen. Edgar, a short dis- 
tance west of Kaskaskia. It was a match 
between John Smith and Thomas Stubletield, 
and the bet was $100. Smith won the 
wager. A small tricky game for whisky was 
often played in these keg groceries, which 
was called 'finger in danger.' Every one 
that pleased, put his finger down in a ring, 
and then some knowing one counted the fin- 
gers until they counted some number agreed 
on, and the finger at that number when it 
was touched was withdrawn, and so on until 
the last finger in the ring was left, and then 
it had to pay the treat. 

"Aged matrons frequently attended these 
shooting matches with a neat, clean keg of 
metheglin to sell. This drink is made of 
honey and water, with the proper fermenta- 
tion. It is pleasant to drink, and has no 
power in it to intoxicate. The old lady often 
had her sewing or knitting with her, and 
would frequently relate horrid stories of the 
Tories in the Revolution in North Carolina, 
as well as to sell her drink. 

" In the early days of Illinois, horse-racing 
was a kind of mania with almost all people, 
and almost all indulged in it, either by being 
spectators, or engaged in them. The level 
and beautiful prairies seemed to persuade 
this class of amusement." 

The earliest settlement in this portion of 
Illinois it appears was made by Michael 
Sprinkle, the first white man to settle in 
Shawneetown. He was a gunsmith, and the 
Indians had petitioned Gov. Harrison for 
permission for him to reside among them to 
repair their guns, and he fixed his residence 
there in the year 1802. Other people were 
attracted to the locality, mostly on account of 
its convenience to the Salines, and in 1S05 
an unprovoked murder was committed by 
the Indians in the killing of Mr. Duff near 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



the Island Ripples in the Saline Creek, and 
he was buried near the old salt spring. It 
was supposed the Indians wore hired to com- 
mit this murder. Shawneetown was occu- 
pied by a village of the Shawnee Indians for 
many ages, and it was the place where Maj. 
Croghan, the English officer, camped in his 
explorations of the country in 1765. He had 
a battle at this place with the savages. The 
old salt spring is situated about twelve miles 
northwest of Shawneetown, and around it a 
colony commenced to settle about the year 
1805. In 1803, Gov. Harrison had purchased 
of the Indians the salt works and adjoining 
lands, and the same year the Saline was 
leased by Capt. Bell, of Lexington, Ky., and 
this attracted the attention of immigrants. 

The attention of the early pioneers who 
had settled along the Lower Wabash and Ohio 
Rivers was attracted to this portion of Illi- 
nois by some of them passing over what is 
now Wayne County as rangers — those heroic 
men who went out and braved the savage, 
and, at the risk of their lives, protected the 
helpless and scattered families that had vent- 
ured out in the solitary wilds and com- 
menced to build permanent homes. 

The first settler in Wayne County was 
Isaac Harris, and until three months ago, 
when she died, his daughter, Mrs. Betsey 
Goodwin was not only the oldest living in- 
habitant in the county, but the first. She 
came here with her father's family in 1S14, 
she being then ten years old. Her death, in 
September, 1SS3. severed the last link con- 
necting the present with the first settlement 
in the county. Her father, Isaac Harris, 
left his Kentucky home with a few provis- 
ions and cooking utensils packed on horses, 
and followed a dim Indian trail to the terri- 
tory now comprised in Wayne County — then 
a perfect wilderness. Mr. Harris was the 
first white man to settle and build a house 



in our county. The site chosen was a high 
bluff at the edge of the Wabash bottoms, 
nine miles southeast of Fairfield. A large 
spring at the foot of the bluff was doubtless 
an attraction. Thomas Harris, ex-Supervisor 
of Leech Township, now lives on the exact 
site of the first building erected in "Wayne 
County. This first cabin had a dirt floor and 
its size is showu by Mrs. Goodwin's state 
ment as to the carpet used. Four bearskins, 
cut square, filled the cabiu and made a lux- 
urious carpet. The daily food of the pio- 
neers was corn meal, hominy, bear meat, ven- 
ison, honey and sassafras tea. The meal and 
hominy were ground in a mortar made out of 
a stump, a wooden maul attached to a spring 
pole being the pestle. The breadstuff for 
each day was pounded up before breakfast. 
Mrs. Goodwin thinks she has ground over a 
hundred bushels of corn in this way. The 
grist was sieved and the finer portion called 
meal, the coarser hominy. These mortars 
were used for three years. Bear meat was 
plentiful. Mr. Harris killing four or five a 
week. Venison was not a rarity in a house- 
hold where the head of the family has been 
known to kill nineteen deer before breakfast 
as Mr. Harris did. But this was doubtless 
an unusually good morning for deer. Mr. 
Harris' method of bringing home honey when 
out on a hunt was decidedly aboriginal. 
"When he found a bee-tree, he would kill a 
deer, takeoff the skin in a way best suited 
to the use he had for it. till the skin with 
honey, tie up the holes made by the legs and 
neck, throw it across his horse and make his 
way homeward. Honey was so abundant 
that great wooden troughs were provided for it. 
Mrs. Goodwin stated to her friends only a 
short time before her death, that she remem- 
bered man] times of seeing a bandied gal- 
lons of honeyed sweetness in a rude wooden 
trough. When a surplus of honev had been 



38 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



gathered, it was hauled on a sled to Carini 
and sold for 25 cents a gallon. The pioneers' 
luscious bill of fare was served on pewter 
plates, sometimes accompanied by milk poured 
from a gourd, and which had been strained 
through a gourd strainer. 

Bears were so bold that have been known to 
come within twenty steps of the house and 
carry off pigs. Their skins were made very 
useful. Mrs. Goodwin said she had made at 
leaBt 500 pairs of bear skin moccasins, and 
could do the work as well as an Indian. They 
were made with the hair on (turned inside), 
and for men, cut about as high as socks; for 
women, about the length of stockings. Mrs. 
Goodwin said she would enjoy wearing a pair 
even in 1880. 

The young ladies of the pioneer period 
wore deer skin dresses. The hair was re- 
moved, and the skin dressed so as to be soft 
and pliable, and when colored red and yellow 
made rather a stylish looking suit. The 
number of " breadths in the skirt " were 
about as few as in the tight-fitting, figure- 
displaying costumes of the super-fashionable 
belles of the present day. The men wore 
leather breeches and jackets. 

In 1880, Mrs. Goodwin related to the ed- 
itor of the Wayne County Press her recol- 
lections of her first calico dress. She said: 
" Daddy loaded a lot of deer skins and veni- 
son hams on a sled, and took 'em to Carmi 
and bought us gals each a calico dress. We 
thought they were powerful nice, and that 
arts nice." The barter was at these prices: 
A pair of venison hams 25 cents, and calico 
30 or 40 cents a yard. A few years later, 
shoes and stockings also became fashionable, 
but they were too highly valued for wearing 
even a whole Sunday. The girls would carry 
them tied up in their handkerchiefs until 
near the church or farmhouse where church 
was held. They would then take a seat on a 



log, don their shoes and stockings, and go 
into the house with as much of a dressed- up 
feeling as a city belle alights from her car- 
riage to enter the opera. Plainness of dress 
was the rule for girls, and wearing of " ruf- 
fles and bobs " to church was not generally 
allowed. 

At the earliest day of Mrs. Goodwin's rec- 
ollection, the Indians seem not to have had 
any permanent village in our county, but 
were frequently camped here in large num- 
bers. Mrs. Goodwin remembered seeing 
about 300 camped near Nathan Atteberry'6 
present home. Once she was so badly fright- 
ened by unexpectedly coming upon an Indi- 
an, that she ran a mile and a half at full 
speed, arriving home almost dead. Her 
father " gathered a parcel of men, and moved 
'em out." Mrs. Goodwin attended the first 
Fourth of July celebration ever held in Wayne 
County sixty-seven years ago. Fairfield 
then consisted of two cabins, and the patri- 
otic observers of the day we celebrate num- 
bered about thirty persons, prominent among 
whom were the Barnhills, Slocumbs, Leech- 
es and Jo Campbell. It was, Mrs. Goodwin 
said, " a sort of pay celebration." The re- 
freshments consisted mainly of a roasted pig 
and blackberry pies — regular " turnovers " — ■ 
baked in a skillet. Sam Leech was the ora- 
tor of the day. Mrs. Goodwin remembers 
that our fellow-citizen, J. W. Barnhill, was 
one of the patriotic pioneers. He was two 
years old, barefooted and wore a home-made 
cotton dress. 

Isaac Harris, the first settler, loved to joke. 
Dick Lock one day wanted some corn fodder 
(blades). Isaac told him to bring his wagon 
and get it. Lock, however, took a rope with 
him, intending to carry a bundle only. As 
he started off, Harris touch a chunk of fire to 
the load. While Lock was wondering how 
he fodder happened to burn up so suddenly. 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



IS 



Harris told him to go get his wagon and come 
for it like a white man. Mr. Harris had a 
pleasant way of dealing with speculators 
who came into the country to buy large 
tracts of land. He was sought as a guide 
and would invariably take the Eastern follows 
through some of the most radically swamp 
land that could be found, and skip the good 
portions. On more than one occasion he 
purposely got lost, and compelled the land 
buyers to sleep a night in the woods, and go 
supperless to bed. 

Isaac and Gilham Harris (brothers), with 
their families, had spent the winters of 1812- 
13 in a camp, near where Nathan Atteborry's 
farm now is, bringing their hogs from their 
home in Big Prairie, White County, on 
account of the superior mast of that locality. 
And in 1814, as stated above, the families 
moved into the county as permanent settlers. 
Aunt Betsey Goodwin was then twelve years 
old, and from an interview with tho old lady in 
1880 by the editor of the Press, we extract 
the following interesting reminiscences: Her 
father, Isaac Harris, built the tirst cabin 
ever erected within the borders of Wayne. 
Mrs. Goodwin was twelve years of age then, 
and has a very distinct remembrance of that 
first low hut, with its dirt floor, carpeted with 
bear skins (and it took only four bears to 
supply the carpet). Mrs. Goodwin is seventy- 
seven years old, and promises fair to live out 
the century. Her mother lived to be ninety- 
one, her grandmother to bo one hundred and 
seven, making a visit to Ireland after her one 
hundredth year. 

Mrs. Goodwin yet thinks that the corn 
meal she ground or pounded in a stump mortar 
was better than that made by the steam mills 
of to-day. It was sifted through a home- 
made seive made by stretching a deer skin, 
tanned with ashes, over a hoop. The holes 
in the sieve were made with a small iron 



instrument heated hot. The smaller the 
iron the finer the meal. That portion of the 
grist which went through the seive was 
called meal — that which remained was used 
as hominy. As civilization advanced, home- 
made horso-hair seives came in fashion. 
Aunt Betsey remembers seeing Granny 
Hooper weave lots of 'em. The dishes 
and spoons used were almost wholly of 
pewter and were sold by peddlers. There 
were no stores in the county, and men 
and women both wore buckskin clothing 
made of deer skins, dressed with deer's 
brains, and colored yellow with hickory bark 
and alum, or red with sassafras. Three ordi- 
nary deer skins made a dres3. Leather 
whangs or homespun flax thread was used in 
making them. No frills, ruffles or diagonal 
pleatings were allowed. 

Clad in a short, red leather dress, and 
wearing a sunbonnet made of homemade cot- 
ton or flax, our hostess, then Miss Betsey 
Harris, must have been an attractive young 
lady when at the age of fourteen, and " wild 
as a deer," she struck the fancy and won the 
affections of Tom Jones, a stout young pio- 
neer in leather breeches and a coonskin cap. 
But the tender feeling was not reciprocated. 
Young Jones tried to make headway in his 
suit by presenting Miss Harris with a pair of 
side combs. She wouldn't take them, and 
Jones tried a flank movement by giving the 
combs to her little brother. But she never 
would wear them. 

While on this subject, we will state that 
many of the pioneers made their own combs. 
An old case knife was converted into a saw. 
and with this rude tool combs of everlasting 
quality were made from cow's horn. Mrs. 
Goodwin's mother wore such a comb of 
Wayne County manufacture for thirty-two 
years, and was buried with it in her hair, v 
a later period. Andrew Wright came from 



40 



HISTOBY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



New Jersey, settled three miles south of 
Fairfield, and added to the scanty revenues 
of his farm by making wooden combs with 
saws especially made for that purpose. 

Mrs. Goodwin's first fine bonnet was bought 
of J. G. Barkley forty- two years ago, when 
he kept store in the north room of Mrs. E. 
Trousdale's residence in Fairfield. This bon- 
net was a palmetto, and was much larger 
than the shaker hoods which were worn a 
dozen or more years ago. 

About this time those enormous tortoise 
shell tuck combs were in fashion — immense 
semi circles, twelve inches in length, and 
with teeth four inches long. They were about 
as large as the bonnets of to-day. 

In those days, Uncle Charley Wood kept 
hotel in a log building just north of the Lang 
Hotel. Hon. I. S. Warmoth made saddles 
and harness in the present residence of A. R. 
Swan, near Thomas L. Cooper's residence. 

Caleb Williams and R. B. Slocumb were 
among the pioneer merchants. After they 
" broke up" no store existed in Fairfield for 
a year or more, and Mrs. Goodwin was com- 
pelled to send to Carmi for a set of cups and 
saucers. A little later, Page came with a 
stock of goods, and the pioneer did not have 
to go thirty miles to make little household 
purchases. 

Tallow candles, made by dipping, were 
first used for illumination. When the iron 
lamp was introduced, with its hook to hang 
on a nail and its sharp point to stick in the 
cracks in the logs, it was deemed a great in- 
vention. When filled with "coon" or bears 
oil it made a splendid light. Candles were 
also sometimes made from beeswax. 

The first school which Mrs. Goodwin at- 
tended was taught by Uncle George Meritt. 
There was not an arithmetic or slate in the 
school room, the studies being confined to 
the Testament and spelling-book. And Mrs. 



Goodwin added, " George was counted a big 
scholar in them days." 

Archy Roberts (grandfather of N. E. Rob- 
erts) was one of the first preachers in this 
part oF the State. He was a Methodist, as 
were most of the early ministers. 

As to weddings in the early times. Mrs. 
Goodsvin said she didn't have much of a 
wedding when she was married to Steven 
Merritt — her first husband. " Daddy cut up 
powerful about it — thought nobody was good 
enough for his gals, and we run off and got 
married." Mr. Harris soon afterward be- 
came reconciled to the match, and gave the 
bride money enough to buy a full set of pew- 
ter dishes. 

Mrs. Goodwin is a very large woman, and 
has been remarkably stout, well fitting her 
for the trials and hardships of a frontier life. 
R. B. Slocumb, many of our readers will re- 
member as a large man, yet Mrs. Goodwin 
one day won a bushel of salt from Mr. Slo- 
cumb by outweighing him, tipping the scales 
at 190 pounds. 

Steven Merritt came to Fairfield one Satur- 
day and won !?10 in a horse-pulling match. 
He bought a hat for himself, a calico dress 
for his wife, and expended the balance of the 
money, $3, in coffee. He got a meal sack 
full, as coffee then sold eighteen or twenty 
pounds to the dollar. Mrs. Merritt had never 
made a cup of coffee, having always used 
milk and sassafras tea, and this big lot of 
coffee was kept lying in the loft of the cabin 
untouched for a year or more, until a Ken- 
tucky cousin visited the family and explained 
to Mrs. Merritt the mysteries of making 
coffee. 

Mrs. Goodwin never seemed to learn to 
appreciate Jinuch of the modern luxuries. 
Even the spring seat in a two-horse wagon 
is an effeminate invention for which she had 
no use. She preferred to take her seat on a 



VSNBH 



HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



41 



quilt or a pile of straw in the bottom of the 
wagon. And this sort of conveyance she 
thought more comfortable than a buggy. 

The comme