St. Clair County was the first organized, and therefore is the oldest county in the state of Illinois. It was named for General St. Clair, who was the governor of the Northwest Territory under President Washington and came to Illinois under his instruction to effect certain changes in the territorial government. The early history of St. Clair County is largely that of the State of Illinois. According to the assertions of early explorers who made extravagant claims in behalf of the countries they represented, Illinois once belonged to Florida, and at another time to Virginia. It was first explored chiefly by the French Jesuit missionaries, and was under French rule until the close of the French and Indian War. It was under British rule from that time till the Revolutionary War. After the establishment of American independence, it became part of the Northwest Territory. When the territory of Indiana was organzied in 1800, it was under control of that government until the Illinois Territory was organized in 1809, the year of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, who afterward had such a large part in the history of the Prairie State. St. Clair County as an organization was already more than a quarter of a century old when Illinois became a state in 1818. The early exploration and settlement of the Illinois country is a romantic story, bound up with missionary enterprise in which the explorers considered themselves real apostles carrying the gospel message to benighted heathens in the western wilderness. In relating the outlines of this interesting story we make no claim of originality but will merely follow the footsteps of those who have gone before and told the story more fully than we have space to tell it here. From the abundance of records of this early period we take only such portions as we judge to be most interesting to the modern reader, and which seem to make the best introduction for the story of the later achievements of the men and women who have lived and wrought as citizens of St. Clair County. We acknowledge our indebtedness to many historians of Illinois, and without mentioning all of them it is only fair to say that we have received special help from Governor Reynolds' "Pioneer History of Illinois," as well as from later writers, such as Mather, Perrin, and others.
In June, 1673, Fathers Marquette and Jolilet started on their canoe voyage down the Mississippi River, during which they passed along the whole western border of of the Illinois country and made landings at various points. . . . These Jesuit missionaries went as far south as Arkansas and from there they retraced their steps, returning to Green Bay in September, having seen vast reaches of new country and having become aware that numerous tribes of Indians, numbering thousands, inhabited these wild regions and furnished a large, tho difficult field for Christian missionary work. Among other explorers of Illinois whose names should be mentioned here are La Salle, whose name has been commemorated by both a county and a city in our state, as well as a prominent street in Chicago; and Tonti, after whom a village in Marion County has been named. LaSalle's explorations include not only the Great Lakes region, but south as far as the Gulf of Mexico. He reached the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682, and having erected there a column, he decorated it with the Arms of France and placed on it the following inscription: "Louis le Grand, Roi de France et de Navarre, Regne; le Neuvieme, April, 1682." Thus France lay claim to the Mississippi Valley, which has been characterized as "The faierest portion of the globe, an empire in extent," stretching from the lakes to the gulf, and from the sources of the Ohio to where the head waters of the Missouri are lost in the wild solitudes of the Rocky Mountains. LaSalle bestowed upon this vast indefinite region the name "Louisiana," in honor of Louis XIV, King of France. In 1680, he built a fort on the Illinois River, not far from the present site of Peoria and called it Creveceur. Two years later he fortified the rocky promontory on the Illinois River, later known as "Starved Rock," and called it Fort St. Louis. He did not establish any permanent settlements in the country but they would not have been possible without his work. The settlements were made later by those for whom he opened the way into the wilderness. He was a man born to command, where he could wield despotic authority, but he did not possess the faculty of winning the love or confidence of his followers. He never was popular with the men under his command, and finally he was shot from an ambush by some of his own men when he was still in the prime of his strength, only forty-three years old. His murderers were not punished, but they themselves were killed soon afterward in a quarrel with other members of the expedition. As early as 1675, Father Marquette carried out his purpose to establish a mission to the Illinois Indians. The pious priest went to the chief town of the tribe, located on the river which bears their name. The was near the present site of the town of Utica, in La Salle County. The priest called it Kaskaskia, a name that was afterward transferred to the southern part of the state and given to the town which became its first capital. He showed the Indians the pictures of the Virgin Mary, established an altar, and said mass. He was received by them as a celestial visitor, and there was great sadness among his savage friends when on account of failing health the old priest felt that he must leave them and return to Green Bay. However he did not live to reach the comparative comfort of the mission station at Green Bay, but perished on the way, tho cared for by his companions to the best of their ability. He did not regret his fate but felt that he had given his life to the cause of the Gospel in heathen lands, and had made an honest effort to carry out "The Great Commission." Other Jesuit priests took his place with the Indians. Toward the close of the century, probably about 1690, the Illinois Indians, on account of the attacks of the warlike Iroquois Indians, were compelled to abandon their village and move southward. The mission, under the charge of the Jesuit Fathers, was moved with them. The new location was a beautiful valley about six miles in width at the confluence of the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers. Between these two rivers, but six miles above their junction, was the site chosen for the new village. Row after row of indian lodges soon covered the plain. A log chapel and a house for the priests were built and inclosed in a neat stockade. French settlers came in and with the help of the Indians the land adjoining the mission was cultivatd. About the same time Father Pinet established a mission along the Tamaroa Indians at Cahokia, about four miles south of the present city of East St. Louis. French settlers also came to this village. Houses were erected and each settler was given a piece of land three hundred feet square. Cahokia became a village of importance and in 1795 was made the county seat of St. Clair County. Many French immigrants were attracted from Canada to the Illinois country and these two new towns, by reports of mild climate and fertile soil. After New Orleans and other French colonies were planted in Louisiana, numbers of settlers came to Kaskaskia and Cahokia by the less laborious route of the Mississippi River. Among the French settlers whose names have been found in the old records at Kaskaskia are the names, Bazyl La Chapelle, Michael Derouse, Jean Baptiste Beauvais, Baptiste Montreal, Boucher de Montbrun, Charles Danie, Francois Charlesville, Antoine Bienvenu, Louis Bruyat, Joseph Paget, Langlois De Lisle, and many others whose names identify their nationality. Before many years had passed, a regular trade was established between "Upper and Lower Louisiana." Cargoes of flour, tallow, bacon, hides and leather were floated down the river to New Orleans where they were shipped to the West Indies or to France. The boatmen brought back sugar, rice, indigo, and other articles manufactured in Europe. By the middle of the eighteenth century, several thousand Frenchmen and their descendants were living on the banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries. Kaskaskia was then the "metropolis of Northern Louisiana." Mather's History of Illinois represents the houses as quaint in appearance and of peculiar construction. In some cases the walls were formed by planting deep in the ground, framework of posts held together by cross strips. The whole was strongly braced at corners. This framework was then filled in with straw and mortar. The walls were then given many coats of white wash, both inside and out. The roof was thatched and quite steep. The floors were of slabs hewn from logs. These dwellings gave the village an air of peace, comfort and contentment, in keeping with the simple lives of the people. . . .
Mather describes the dress of these people as simple and quaint. "Coarse blue shirts were covered with vests and pantaloons of homespun. A long blue coat with pointed hood was a common outdoor garment. Upon hunting expeditions and in winter, coon skin caps and deer skin trousers were worn. The dress of the women was of blue cotton or Spanish cloth, made with a short waist and full skirt. A blue handkerchief was a common head covering for both sexes. Both men and women wore buckskin moccasins, decorated with sheels and beads." Their agricultural activities were quite primitive. Their plows had wooden mold boards and were drawn by oxen. They raised tobacco, hops, oats and wheat. Also they raised corn to feed their stock or to make hominy, but the French did not eat corn bread. Neither do they today, and that is why we had certain "wheatless days" during the World War, in order that the French might have wheat bread. They did not have spinning wheels or looms as did the English who came later. They made butter by beating the cream with a spoon or shaking it in a bottle. Their homely tasks occupied much of their time, but the monotony of life was relieved at times by amusements, holidays, and festivals. These French were by nature a merry people. Both young and middle-aged enjoyed dancing, while the old men and priests looked on with approval. Even the Indians and slaves joined in this simple revelry. As agriculture was the chief occupation of the settlers, some of the young men entered the employ of the fur companies, or on their own account went on long trading expeditions among the Indians who dwelt on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Others found employment in running the flat boats which carried the furs and farm products down the river to New Orleans. The voyage usually required months and was attended by many dangers. Returning upstream the oarsmen were assisted by large sails. When the wind failed, they sometimes walked on the shore and pulled the barge slowly and with great difficulty, so that the upstream voyage was one of exceeding toil. The relations of these French settlers with the Indians by whom they were surrounded was usually friendly. Thus by tact and fair dealing, they escaped the wars and massacres which frequently harassed the settlers on the Atlantic coast. For nearly a century in this Illinois country the white man and the red man, native owner of the soil, dwelt together in peace and confidence with but little civil government and no courts of law. All differences were settled by the leaders of the church. The French seemed to have a genius for friendly dealing with the Indian tribes that was not possessed by the English. In the French and Indian War, the French and the Indians were lined up as allies on one side against the English on the other. The following incident from Reynolds' Pioneer Hisotry illustrates the relations existing between the French and the Indians of the Illinois country. "For a murder that had been committed in a broil, three young Indians were given up by the Illinois chiefs to the newly constituted authority for punishment. The sympathy of the Kaskaskia people, especially the women, was with the Indians, and they desired that they should be received into the true church and publicly baptised before their execution. Accordingly each of the young Indians was adopted by a French woman who gave him a Christian name and was to stand as his godmother during the ceremony of baptism. The entire female population of the town was engaged for a number of days in preparation for the occasions. Needles were plied incessantly and finally the preparations were completed. The evening before the execution was to take place, the Indians escaped, as some believed, thru the assistance of their fair sympathizers. When the danger blew over, the young Indians returned and were permitted to remain unmolested."
The population of Kaskaskia continued to increase and in 1725 it became an incorporated town and was granted special privileges by Louis XV, King of France. Cahokia never became as large a town as Kaskaskia. It was settled by whites about as early, and like the other town, it was first an Indian mission, and afterward French settlers came in and in a few years it was a thriving village. It carried on more commerce with the north, and Kaskaskia more with the south. Being wholly a French town, its growth and prosperity were somewhat checked by the results of the French and Indian War, which caused the French territory to pass to the control of the English. In a work entitled "The State of the European Settlements on the Mississippi," published in London in 1770, the following description is given of Cahokia at the beginning of the Revolutionary War: "The village of Cahokia is generally reckoned fifteen leagues from Fort Chartres and six below the mouth of the Missouri River. It stands near the side of the Mississippi and is marked from the river by an island two leagues long. The village is opposite the center of this island." This town, unlike its old neighbor, is still in existence and lies within the present boundaries of St. Clair County. The name is also borne by a creek which empties into the Mississippi River at East St. Louis; and also by the largest of the mounds left by the Mound Builders. These mounds, many of which are in St. Clair County, are the evidence of the civilization of the people who occupied this country just prior to the Indians. Two distinct races are said to have inhabited the Western Hemisphere before the Indians. The earlier was the more civilized. The ruins of extensive palaces and spacious temples in Mexico and Central America are sufficient proof that they lived in magnificent and populous cities. The second was the Mound Builders, an ingenious and peaceful, tho less civilized race of people who left their mounds in various parts of the United States, but no larger group anywhere than in St. Clair County. The Indians were still less civilized, and following a law of nature, have given place to a more intelligent people who are making better use of the abundant natural resources of this great country. The Indians who occupied this part of the Mississippi Valley belonged to the Algonquin branch of the great Indian family. The Illinois Indians were a confederacy of five tribes, the Tamaroas, Michiganies, Kaskaskias, Cahokias, and Peorias. In 1675, these tribes lived chiefly in the country of the Illinois River. A little later the warlike Iroquois burned their principal town and the tirbes were driven down the Illinois to the Mississippi. The Cahokia and Tamaroa tribes united and had their village at Cahokia. The Michiganies chose a location near Fort Chartres. The efforts of the Jesuits to convert these tribes to Christianity led to the establishmenmt of the French villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia. The Tamaroas at one time had a town at Turkey Hill, which also is in St. Clair County, but were nearly exterminated in a terrific battle with the Shawnees near the eastern limits of what is now Randolph County. At the time of the earliest French settlements, the Illinois Indians numbered about twelve thousand. In revenge for the death of the Chief Pontiac, who was killed by an Illinois Indian at Cahokia in 1765, the Illinois Indians were almost exterminated by the Sacs, Foxes, and Pottawatamies. In the year 1800 they could muster only one hundred and fifty warriers. Their chief was a half breed named Du Quoin who wore a medal that had been presented to him by George Washington. Soon after 1800 Du Quoin and his tribes emigrated to the south-west. In 1850 the last remnant of the once populous tribes which composed the Illinois Indians were in the Indian Territory and numbered in all eighty-four persons.
The story of the French period would not be complete without some account of Fort Chartres, which was the military stronghold of the Mississippi Valley at that time, and was erected on a scale of magnificence unequalled by any other in the new world at that time. It was erected under the supervision of the young Pierre Duque Boisbriant, who came to Kaskaskia in 1718, just a century before Illinois became a state. A site was chosen about twenty miles above Kaskaskia and a mile from the river. Here the soldiers of France cleared the virgin forest, hewed out timber for the walls, and with much toil brought the stone for the foundation from the bluffs four miles away. After two years of labor and at a cost of one million crowns, the fort was completed and named in honor of the Duc de Chartres, son of the regent of France. It immediately became the seat of French military power, and under its protection the village of New Chartres sprang into life. Some time later Philip Renault, secretary of the French Trading Company, came to the fort bringing with him mechanics, slaves, settlers, and miners, for the French expected to find precious ore in the bluffs that lined the Mississipi River. The valley lands between Kaskaskia and Cahokia were cleared and planted to farm crops; and the French villages of St. Phillippe and Prairie du Rocher were founded and grew into thriving settlements. Renault's name was perpetuated in the village named for him, which is now one of the towns of Monroe County, situated on the bluffs not far from Fort Chartres. According to Mather's account, the people of the fort and villages led a merry life. Gay hunting parties issued from the gates of the fort and returned at night laden with the spoils of the chase. Roman Catholic worship was popular and lordly processions of dignified gentlemen and richly dressed ladies marched into the chapel to hear mass. Stately receptions were given where officers in uniforms covered with gold lace danced with ladies robed in velvet and satin. The fashions of Paris were reproduced in this military station on the distant Mississippi. The fame of Fort Chartres spread to every settlement in the new world. It became a common saying of the early day, "All roads lead to Fort Chartres." When France and Spain were at war in Europe, an attack upon the fort was planned by the Spaniards of distant Santa Fe. The soldiers of Spain marched across the mountains of Colorado and the plains of Kansas, but in Missouri they were betrayed and murdered by the Indians who were friendly to the French. In 1750 a new commander, the Chevalier Makarty, was sent to Fort Chartres with orders to reconstruct the fort of stone. Accordingly the wooden walls were torn down and at an incredible expenditure of labor and treasure the new fort was erected. When completed it was the strongest and most pretentious fortress in the new world. We can hardly realize the difficulties attending the building of so great a structure in the heart of the western wilderness. The iron that entered into its structure and the skilled workmen had to be brought from the old world. Wagon roads were built, over which rude oxcarts hauled stones prepared at distant quarries. The walls of the fort were eighteen feet high and inclosed four acres of land. The four bastions of masonry each contained eight embrasures, forty-eight loopholes and a sentry box. Above the arched gateway, fifteen feet in height, was a platform of cut-stone reached by a stairway of nineteen stone steps. Within the walls stood the great stone house, ninety feet long by thirty feet wide, and a guard house, with chapel and rooms for the priests on the second floor. The government house was eight-four by thirty-two feet, with a great stone porch running across the front, and the coach house and pigeon loft near by. The two rows of barracks measure each one hundred and thirty-five feet long by thirty-six in breadth. In one angle of the fort was situated a bake house and a well near by. Apart from the other buildings was located the magazine, a building of stone thirty feet square and thirteen feet high, the roof and door also being made of stone. In after years when the fort was in ruins, it furnished material for the walls and chimneys of many farm houses in the vicinity. Under the brave commandant, Makarty, the soldiers of Fort Chartres issued forth to fight the battles of France and actually fought on many battlefields in the French and Indian War. To the soldiers of Fort Chartres, Washington surrendered at Fort Necessity, and they were present at the overthrow of General Braddock. When Canada was won for the English by General Wolfe, in the famous battle beneath the walls of old Quebec, it was thought that the territory controlled by Fort Chartres might be retained by the French. But by the treaty of 1763, all the French territory of the new world, east of the Mississippi River, was ceded to England. By a secret treaty about the same time, the territory west of the Mississippi was given to Spain. The French commander kept possession of the fort till the arrival of the English, and then in October, 1765, he formally delivered it to the new commander, Captian Thomas Stirling. The French soldiers and even some of the Indians wept as they saw the "Lilies of France" hauled down and the "Cross of St. George" flung to the breeze instead. The little garrison, believing that they would there be upon French soil, withdrew to St. Louis. Some of the French inhabitants, unwilling to dwell in a country ruled by men of a different race and creed, whom they had been taught to hate for generations, sold their possessions and left the country. Others withdrew to the settlements of St. Genevieve and St. Louis on the other side of the Mississippi. Still others went down the river to Natchez, Baton Rouge, or New Orleans.
From October, 1765, Fort Chartres was an English stronghold instead of a French one. The English did not acquire it by conquest on the premises, but by conquests elsewhere. The victories that gave them Fort Chartres were won, some of them, on the other side of the ocean. The colonies of France and England in the new world had merely taken up a quarrel that started in the old, and fought for their respective mother countries. The French had always succeeded better in getting along with the Indians, so they utilized them as allies to a considerable extent. The British called it the French and Indian War because it was waged against the French and Indians. In the period of colonization of the new world, England had acquired control, by right of discovery and settlement, purchase, or other means, of the colonies along the middle and southern Atlantic coast, leaving to the French only those on the far north. But while England was becoming established east of the Alleghenies, the French slipped around behind them, so to speak, coming down from Canada, and took possession of that great fertile region, the Mississippi Valley. This the English never really conquered, but by the treaty of Fontainebleau the French possessions in America, at least all east of the Mississippi River, were ceded to England. Illinois was so remote and insignificant in the eyes of the English that they were slow to take actual possession. The treaty ceding New France to England was signed Feb. 10, 1763, but it was not till October, 1765, that Captain Stirling, with a small force of Royal Highlanders, came to take actual possession of Fort Chartres, which represented the seat of government so far as there was one in the Illinois country.
The French commander, M. St. Ange, promptly surrendered the fort to its new master and retired to St. Louis. It is stated that all the population of Illinois before the cession did not exceed three thousand and it is estimated that at least one third of these left the country on account of the change in government. The mission of St. Sulspice had a plantation at Prairie Dupont, near Cahokia, together with a saw mill and grist mill for grinding corn. They sold out to a Frenchman, M. Gerardine, who remained under the British government, while the people of the mission returned to France. Capt. Stirlling brought with him the proclamation of Gen. Gage, who was Commander-in-chief of all the British forces in North America. It was dated at New York, Dec. 30, 1764, and was a kind of constitution for the government of Illinois. It granted the right of worship to catholics and many other salutary regulations. Capt. Stirling died a short time after he came to Illinois and was succeeded by Major Frazier, and he by Colonel Reed, who was notorious for his military oppressions. In September, 1768, Colonel Reed arrived at Kaskaskia with authority from General Gage and took charge of the government. He established a Court of Justice and appointed seven judges, and arranged that courts should be held once a month. This was the first court of common law established in the Mississippi Valley. In 1765 the Indian Chief Pontiac was assassinated at Cahokia by an Illinois Indian who was supposed to have been hired by the English, who saw that the powerful influence of the great Indian leader was in the way of British progress. Pontiac was a chief of the Ottawas and probably the greatest Indian leader and organizer who ever lived in North America. It is not strange that a modern motor car company should name their car the Pontiac if they believed in its superiority. Pontiac was born and reared near Detroit. It is said that he had some French blood in his veins and was imbued with deadly hostility to the English. He declared before the Great Spirit, the Master of Life, eternal enmity against the English, as Hannibal of old did against the Romans. Both he and Hannibal were fighting in a most holy cause, the defense of their country; but in each case it proved to be a lost cause and the country was wrested from a helpless people by a merciless enemy. After the French had ceded the country to the English and they were making preparations to occupy it with military force from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi, Pontiac saw at once that the Indians must either defend their country or lose it entirely. He saw that the methods of the English in colonizing the country was different from those of the French. The British drove the Indians out of their homes and hunting grounds, while the French merely shared them with the natives and lived in peace with them. His soul, like that of Patrick Henry, was fired with true patriotism and he conceived the idea of uniting all the Indian tribes in the whole country, at least east of the Mississippi, into one great league, an Indian "League of Nations" for the defense of their common country against the encroachments of the English. It was not an idle dream but the most effective combination of the Indian people ever made upon the continent. It seems wonderful how it could have been carried out to the extent that it was, without the means of rapid communication which the organizers of today have at their command. Pontiac was a master spirit among the Indians. He had military experience at Fort Duquense, in Braddock's defeat, and other occasions during the French and Indian War. He visited all the different tribes in the vast territory concerned, reconciled all the old feuds that existed between the tribes, for the sake of their common interest, and told them what he believed was his message of inspiration from the Great Spirit, who had appeared in a dream and said, "Why do you allow these dogs in red coats to enter your country and take the lands I have given to you? Drive them out, and when you are in trouble I will help you." This Indian Bonaparte was well-acquainted with the country and with the Indian character. He had acquired and well deserved the name of "Emperor" among the Indian nations. He knew the leading warriors of the various tribes, and by the sheer force of his genius and personality without educational training, and without even writing, had organized these widely scattered savages into a wonderfully effective machine of destruction to the English. He knew the situation at each of the English forts and devised the plan of attack accordingly, and in some cases he even appointed the individuals who were to lead in carrying out the plan. The general plan was for the Indians to rise and take all the English forts on the same day, some by open attack and others by stratagem. And this was kept a profound secret except in one instance where a squaw divulged it. . . . There were sixteen forts in the whole British territory, all of which were slated for destruction except Niagara, which the Indians considered too strong for their means of attack. All these forts fell according to the plan of Pontiac except three. It is likely that many of the tribes did not learn of Pontiac's death until after the day appointed for the attack. The degree of success attained by this enterprise under the difficult circumstances involved, would seem to entitle Pontiac to a high place in the temple of fame. If he had a Homer to sing his praises for his war-like achievements, his name would be transmitted to posterity with as much honor and glory as any of the heroes of the Trojan War. The Greeks fought to conquer, but Pontiac fought to defend his country. The English feared Napoleon, so they sent him to St. Helena. They feared Pontiac, and they had him shot, by bribing a savage to murder him in the streets of Cahokia.
Thus fell one of nature's noblemen. His bones now rest near the old deserted village. The Northern Indians held him in the highest estimation. They knew their loss was irreparable. His murder so enraged them that they almost exterminated the whole tribe of Illinois Indians, because it was one of their number who did the deed, and thus robbed them of their friend and protector, the Great Pontiac.
An English trader named Hervey was at Mackinaw when that fort was taken and tells how they did it. It was a strong garrison and provided with cannon. The Indians assembled in large numbers and staged a big ball game, of course according to their own ways of playing. It was a game in which many could take part. They said it was to celebrate the birthday of the English king. They played hilariously for a while and the soldiers of the garrison looked on as interested spectators, unsuspicious of anything unusual about to happen. After a while the ball was thrown over the walls of the fort as if by accident. Immediately a large number of the Indians rushed into the fort to recover the ball. After they were once inside they drew forth their concealed weapons and began a fearful massacre in which all the whites in the fort were slain and scalped except a few French. At Detroit, a friendly squaw revealed the plan of Pontiac to the commander, Major Gladwin, so he was on his guard and the stratagem failed. These narratives indicate that the few English settlers in Illinois during the years immediately following the occupation of the country by the British government had to endure conditions which almost amounted to a state of war with the Indians. The pioneer population did not increase much in the fifteen years of English rule. In the Illinois territory it was considerably decreased by reason of so many French leaving to get away from British rule, and at the same time many of the early settlers retreated to the safer regions in the east on account of the hostility of the Indians against the British.
At the time the English troops came to take possession of Fort Chartres, two young officers, one French and the other English, had a misunderstanding, which led to a bitter quarrel. The trouble arose as in the case of the Trojan War, on account of a lady. In this case they did not have ten years of war first and then let Hector and Achilles fight it out individually, but they had the duel first. It occurred early one Sunday morning just outside the fort. They fought with swords and one of them was killed. The other took a hasty departure down the river and was heard from no more. This was probably the first duel fought on Illinois soil. Unfortunately this method of settling differences was resorted to at intervals in subsequent times until the constitution of 1848 went into effect and this prohibited duelling absolutely.
In the spring of 1772 the Mississippi River, as if to avenge the defeat of the French, overflowed its banks and swept in a mighty flood across the bottom lands. The fort had been built a mile from the shore, but the raging river came after it and the western wall crumbled into the swirling water. The place was now abandoned and the British moved their military stores to the fort opposite Kaskaskia, which was named in honor of the British commander in America, Fort Gage. Kaskaskia continued to be the center of British power and influence until the entire territory passed to the Americans thru the successful expedition of conquest by Col. George Rogers Clarke in 1778. Thus Illinois and St. Clair County were under British rule for a period of fifteen years, from 1763 to 1778. The policy of the English government was to prevent colonists from settling in the newly acquired territory. They desired to turn the vast region into a hunting ground where only British agents could purchase the large quantitites of furs that were annually sold by the Indians. In a proclamation dated Oct. 7, 1763, King George forbade "making any purchases or settlements whatever, or taking possession of any lands beyond the sources of any rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the north or northwest." This policy would have made a perpetual wilderness of a vast region unsurpassed for fertility. However, in violation of the King's proclamation, the British governors permitted companies to purchase lands from the Indians. The Illinois Land Company, composed of English traders and merchants, obtained two vast tracts of land from an Indian council, representing the Kaskaskias, Peorias, and Cahokias, held at Kaskaskia on July 5, 1773. The deed, signed by ten chiefs, each making his mark, gave the white men an immense tract of land embracing many counties of Illinois according to their present boundaries. The consideration paid for this princely domain was, "Two hundred fifty blankets, two hundred sixty stroudes, three hundred fifty shirts, one hundred fifty pairs of stroud and half-thick stockings, one hundred fifty breech cloths, five hundred pounds of gun powder, one thousand pounds of lead, one gross knives, thirty pounds vermillion, two thousand gunflints, two hundred pounds brass kettles, two thousand pounds tobacco, three dozen gilt looking glasses, one gross gunworms, two gross awls, one gross fire steels, sixteen dozen of gartering, ten thousand pounds of flour, five hundred bushels of indian corn, twelve horses, twelve horned cattle, twenty bushels salt, twenty guns, and five shillings in money."
This deed was recorded in the office of a notary public at Kaskaskia, September 2, 1773. This is merely a sample of many such deeds made in this period, and but for the establishing of an independent government by the colonists, the titles might have been sustained by the British government. Colonel Wilkins, a British commander at Kaskaskia, made many grants of Indian lands to his friends. One of these grants, consisting of thirty thousand acres, came into the possession of John Edgar, a British officer who had come to Kaskaskia to engage in mercantile business. This grant was afterward confirmed by Congress and made Mr. Edgar the richest land owner in Illinois and the possessor or a large part of what was afterward Edgar County.
The Illinois Country was a part of the British possessions in America from the time of the treaty of Fountainebleau in 1763 until, as a result of the Revolutionary War, the American colonies wrested from Great Britain all the Americana territory she possessed south of the Great Lakes. The transfer of the Illinois country from British to American control occurred 1778, after only fifteen years of British rule, as a result of the expedition of Colonel George Rogers Clarke. It seems appropriate here to give a brief account of this remarkable achievement, condensed from the various histories of those times. The British garrison at Kaskaskia, or Fort Gage, which had been the military stronghold instead of Fort Chartres since 1772, was probably withdrawn early in the war because the soldiers were needed elsewhere. The place was left in charge of a commandant with perhaps a few soldiers for body servants. Illinois was so remote from the theatre of action and means of communication so imperfect that the people of these villages were but little disturbed by the rumors of war that occasionally came from the Atlantic coast. The French inhabitants were in sympathy with the Americans rather than the English, but probably understood very imperfectly the nature of the struggle. According to the theory of the Colonial Government at Philadelphia, Illinois was under the jurisdiction of Virginia. Colonel George Rogers Clarke, who had visited Kentucky in 1775, first saw the great advantage of having the Illinois settlements actually in the hands of the Americans.
So he visited Patrick Henry, then Governor of Virginia, and laid before him a plan for the capture and possession of these colonies. The Governor was pleased with the idea and gave Clarke authority to raise seven companies of men with which to carry out this bold project. However he succeeded in enlisting only four companies, which were commanded by Captains Montgomery, Bowman, Helm, and Harrod. With these men Clarke started for the west. At Corn Island, opposite Louisville on the Ohio, he announced his destination to his men. At the mouth of the Tennessee River they encountered a man who had recently visited Kaskaskia. He told them that the commander at that place was a French Canadian named Rocheblave, that he kept what few soldiers he had well drilled and sentinels posted to watch for the "Long Knives," as the Virginians were called, of whom the inhabitants were in mortal terror. Securing his boats at Fort Massacre, afterwards called Massac, he undertook the journey across the country, one hundred and twenty miles, to Kaskaskia. It was a difficult march thru an unbroken wilderness. On the afternoon of July 4, 1778, the exhaused band of invaders came to the vicinity of Kaskaskia, and concealed themselves in the hills east of the town. After dark Clarke called his men together and laid his plans before them. He divided them into three divisions, two of which were to take the town, entering from different directions, while the third, under Clarke himself, was to take the Fort. The plan worked out perfectly. Kaskaskia was at that time a village of abouty two hundred and fifty houses. The British commander last in charge had instilled in the minds of the people the idea that the Virginians, otherwise the "Long Knives," were a ferocious band of murderers, plundering houses, slaughtering women and children, and committing acts of greatest atrocity. Clarke determined to take advantage of this and frighten them into submission without resistance. He and his men affected an entrance into the fort without diffculty. The other parties entered the town at opposite sides at a given signal, and with terrible noises and hideous shouts aroused the sleeping inhabitants who shrieked in their alarm, "The Long Knives! The Long Knives are here!" The panic stricken townsmen delivered up their arms and the victory was accomplished without shedding a drop of blood. Rocheblave, the British commandant, was unaware of the presence of the enemy until an officer entered his bed chamber and claimed him as a prisoner. The next day Clarke withdrew his forces from the town and sternly forbade all communication between it and his soldiers. Also some of the principal officers and citizens were put in irons. The terror now reached its height. A deputation consisting of the priest and several elderly men of the village called on Clarke and humbly requested permission to assemble in the church and take leave of each other and commend their future lives to the protection of a merciful God, since they expected to be separated, perhaps never to meet again. Clarke gruffly granted the privilege. The whole population convened at the church and after remaining together a long time, the priest and a few others agaiin waited on the commander of the American forces, presenting thanks for the privilege they had enjoyed and desiring to know what fate awaited them. Clarke now determined to lift them from their despair and win their gratitude by a show of mercy. "What!" said he, "Do you take us for savages? Do you think Americans will strip women and children and take bread from their mouths? My countrymen disdain to make war on helpless innocents." He further reminded them that the King of France, their former ruler, was the ally of the Americans and was now fighting their battles. He told them to choose whichever side they preferred and they should be respected in their liberty of choice and in their rights of property. The revulsion of feeling was complete. The good news spread rapidly throughout the village. The church bell rang a merry peal and the delighted inhabitants gathered at the chapel where thanks were offered to God for their happy and unexpected deliverance. The loyalty of the inhabitants was assured and ever after they remained faithful to the American cause. The French inhabitants of Kaskaskia never did admire the English and so were readily reconciled to a change of government.
In October, 1778, the Virginia Assembly erected the conquered territory into the "County of Illinois." This new county embraced all the territory north-west of the Ohio, and five large states have since been formed from it. Colonel Clarke was appointed military commander of all the western territory, both north and south of the Ohio, and Colonel John Todd, one of Clarke's soldiers, who had been the next man after Clarke to enter Fort Gage, was made Lieutenant-Commandant of Illinois. In the spring of 1779 Colonel Todd visited Kaskaskia and made arrangements for the organization of a temporary government. Many of the French inhabitants of St. Phillippe, Prairie Du Rocher, and the other villages willingly took the oath of allegiance to Virginia. Colonel Todd was killed in the famous battle of Blue Licks in Kentucky, August, 1782, and Timothy de Montbrun, a Frenchman, succeeded him as commandant of the Illinois County. Of his administration but little is known. Colonel Clarke's further achievement, marching across Illinois, fording swollen streams, suffering from the cold and other hardships, besieging and capturing Vincennes for the Americans is a story that is well told by Theodore Roosevelt in "The Winning of the West."
Illinois did not long remain a county of Virginia. The several states agreed on adoption of the Articles of Confederation, to cede all their claims to western lands to the general government. Virginia executed her deed of cession March 1, 1784. This left Illinois a part of the Northwest Territory, which by the ordinance of 1787 was organized into one district for purposes of government and General Arthur St. Clair was selected by Congress as the governor. Marietta, Ohio was the seat of government. In the year 1790 Governor St. Clair organized the first county in the Illinois country and named it after himself. We quote a portion of his proclamation, which shows the original boundaries of this county.
"Know ye that, it appearing to me to
be necessary for the purposes above mentioned, a county should be immediately
laid out, I have ordained and ordered, and by these presents do ordain and order
that all and singular, the lands lying and being within the following
boundaries, namely: Beginning at the mouth of the Little Michilliakinack River,
running thence southerly in a direct line to the mouth of the little river above
Fort Massac upon the Ohio River; thence with the said river to its junction with
the Mississippi; thence up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Illinois River,
and so up the Illinois River to the place of beginning, with all the adjacent
islands of said rivers, Illinois and Mississippi; shall be a county and the same
is hereby erected into a county, named and hereafter to be called the County of
St. Clair, and the said County of St. Clair shall have and enjoy all and
singular the jurisdiction, rights, privileges, and immunities whatsoever to a
county belonging and pertaining and which any other county that may hereafter be
erected and laid out shall or ought to enjoy conformably to the ordinance of
Congress before mentioned. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and
caused the sale of the territory to be affixed this 27th day of April in the
fourteenth year of the Independence of the United States, and in the year of our
Lord, 1790.
Arthur St. Clair
Countersigned by His Excellency's Command.
Winthrop Sargent, Secretary"
These bounaries made the original St. Clair County include about two-thirds of the State of Illinois, but with a population of only a few thousand, both whites and Indians. In the year 1795, Governor St. Clair divided the county into two. All south of a line running thru the New Design settlement, which is in the present county of Monroe, was erected into the County of Randolph. It was so named in honor of Edmund Randolph, of Virginia. This division left Kaskaskia the original county seat in the new county of Randolph, and Cahokia became the new county seat of St. Clair. It remained there until it was moved to Belleville in 1814. Up to the time when it fell into the hands of the Americans, thru the conquest by Colonel Clarke, it was inhabited almost solely by French people or the native Indians. In fact it was a sort of "New France" being set up in the Illinois wilderness. In the main, the settlers lived on friendly terms with the Indians. They frequently mingled with them, not only in their hunting enterprises, but sometimes in a social way many of them were quite at home beside the Indian camp fire. They adopted many of the native modes of life, imitated his dress in some particulars, and some of the settlers even took wives from among the dusky squaws of the aborigines, and married them according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, which thru its missionaries wielded a strong influence upon the native tribes. The record of the "Salem Witchcraft" in 1692 is a sort of blot on American history. An echo of it appears about a century later out in the Mississippi Valley. In Cahokia about the year 1790 superstition got the upper hand of reason and several negroes were put to death for this imaginary offense. An African slave called Moreau was hung for this crime on a tree not far southeast of the village. It is stated that he said that he "poisoned his master but his mistress was too strong" for his powers of necromancy. Another slave, Emanuel, was shot at Cahokia for the same reason. An old woman named Jeannette was believed to have power to destroy persons and property by her incantations. The children as well as many grown up people were terrified at her approach. And all this within the present bounds of St. Clair County.
The old French records contain some interesting data concerning some of the early citizens of both Cahokia and Kaskaskia who were prominent in the community in their day. They are entitled to a place in this record because they were citizens of St. Clair County.
Charles Gratiot was born in Switzerland of a Huguenot family, educated in London, went to Canada at the age of eighteen, and in 1774 came to the Illinois country to make his fortune. He soon became the master spirit in commerce thruout a vast region of country. He was the John Wanamaker of the Illinois country in that early day. His trade employed a large capital and extended over several of the states of the Mississippi Valley. He had stores at both Kaskaskia and Cahokia, but his grand depot of trade for many years was at the latter place. Altho he had been educated in England, yet he was born in the country of William Tell, and the spirit of freedom was the great passion of his life. When George Rogers Clarke undertook the conquest of the Illinois country for the cause of the American colonies, Gratiot supported him to the full extent of his vast fortune; and without his aid it is doubtful whether Clarke's enterprise would have succeeded. He used many thousands of dollars in purchasing supplies for the partriot army. He made this sacrifice voluntarily and the government failed to reimburse him for the expenditure, but under the protection of the new government he was able to accumulate a new fortune. His joy at seeing the colonists free was his most satisfactory reward for the thousands he invested in the enterprise. In the year 1781 he married the sister of Pierre Choteau, one of the founders of St. Louis. After his marriage he made his home in St. Louis and died there in 1817. A street in St. Louis bears his name.
Another was Dominique Ducherme, a French-Canadian, who made his home at Cahokia at intervals. He possessed great influence with the Indian tribes. It was he who led the famous attempt to capture St. Louis in 1780. It was then a Spanish trading post. His enmity was aroused against the Spanish because a party of Spanish soldiers from the garrison of St. Louis had captured and confiscated a boat load of goods which he was carrying up the Missouri River to trade with the Indians.
Another was Julien Dubuque, after whom the city of Dubuque, Iowa was named, and near which he was buried. He purchased a tract of land from the Indians extending eighteen miles along the Mississippi and nine miles back from the river. It was supposed to contain valuable lead mines. It made him seem to be a large land owner with a holding of one hundred and sixty-two square miles, but later governments were organized and his claim was not recognized.
William Arundel was an Irishman by birth, who came to Cahokia in 1783. He was well-educated and among the old records of St. Clair and Randolph Counties his excellent hand writing frequently appears. He and Mrs. Thomas Brady were said to be the only persons not French who lived in Cahokia until after the Revolutionary War.
William Morrison came to Illinois from Philadelphia in 1790. He located in Kaskaskia, which at that time was the county seat of St. Clair County. He was one of the most influential characters in the country at that early day. He was what is called a self-made man. Like a few other prominent leaders, he never went thru the drudgery of acquiring a scholastic education, but his natural talents were of a high order and he studied in "Nature's great academy" and became eminent in the circles in which he moved, whether in society or in business. He was ambitious and enterprising and succeeded in acquiring large possessions, both in land and merchandise. His commercial activities extended from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains, and from Prairie Du Chien to New Orleans. About 1800 he established a store in Cahokia and placed it in charge of an eccentric Irishman named William Atchison. This store manager, by reason of the excessively high prices he asked for his goods, acquired in derision the nickname "Chape Wollie," which clung to him as long as he remained in the business. One of the stories told of this Irishman is that when Rev. Benjamin Young was a Methodist circuit rider in this region, "Chape Wollie" invited him to preach in his store. It turned out that Mr. Young had a very small congregation. Atchison tried to explain why his French neighbors did not attend the meeting. "For my part," said he, "I would walk miles, thru briars and Hell, to hear such a sermon as that ye prached; but these blarsted French love dancing better nor preaching. And Misther Young, couldn't ye stay with us tonight and go to the ball this avening?" But the Methodist preacher very courteously declined Mr. Atchison's invitation to stay for the dancing party on Sunday evening. In 1801 Morrison built a fine stone house in Kaskaskia, which at that time was the finest residence in the country. He lived in it in princely style, and with his family displayed the generous hospitality and elegant bearing of a well-bred gentleman. He was exemplary in his morals and never indulged in light and frivolous amusements. Gambling and drunkenness he abhorred. Horce-racing was the most popular amusement of that day and it is said that he used to sometimes bet a suit of clothes on a horse just for the sake of sociability, but he cared little whether he lost or won. Reynolds describes his personal appearance as dignified and prepossessing. Energy and zest were discernible in his walk and all his actions. He made it a matter of principle to dress well, with taste and even elegance. He often said that a man sometimes made a fortune by a decent appearance. He was always extremely gallant and polite to his ladies. He always claimed that intelligent and correct female society was a very great influence for the control of human conduct and for the promotion of morals and religion. He always showed a high moral character, but toward the close of his life he became interested in religion and joined the Roman Catholic Church. He died in 1837 and was buried in the old graveyard at Kaskaskia.
William Morrison's brother, Robert, came west some years later. His wife was one of the most remarkable women who lived in Illinois. She came of a wealthy and cultured family in Baltimore. Nature gave her a romantic turn of mind and for this reason she accompanied her brother, Colonel Donaldson, to St. Louis in 1805. He was a commissioner to investigate land titles. Here she met and married Robert Morrison, after which her home was in Kaskaskia. She was well-educated, a class scholar, and possessed great energy of mind. Her delight was in the field of poetry. Her verses were considered by critics to be far above medium, and many of them belonged in the higher order of poetry. She translated the Psalms of David into English verse; and she wrote for the scientific publications of Mr. Walsh in Philadelphia. Her pen was never idle. Her contributions to periodicals were numerous and highly prized. Her assistance was frequently enlisted by the politicians of the day, and at the request of her political friends, she formulated many memorials and petitions to Congress and to the President, all of which were chaste and classic in their composition and at the same time sound in their appeal to the government. For this class of writing she was very popular with her western friends. She lived to an advanced age and died at Belleville in 1843. She left three sons, all of whom became prominent lawyers.
Another remarkable
woman came to Cahokia about the year 1770. She was born of French parents at St.
Joseph on Lake Michigan. Her maiden name was La Flamme. Her first husband's name
was St. Ange. He died after a few years and she married Monsieur La Compt, a
French-Canadian, at Cahokia, in 1780. From this marriage proceeded one of the
largest French families in Illinois. This female pioneer had the courage and
energy of a heroine. She was also blessed with an extraordinary physical
constitution. She was scarcely ever sick, tho often exposed in travelling or
otherwise to the inclemency of the weather and other hardships which are the
common lot of pioneers. After the death of her second husband, she seemed to
come into unusual prominence and was one of the most influential women in all
the Illinois country. She was exceedingly popular with the Indians. They were
her neighbors and friends. She knew the language of many of the tribes. By wise
and careful dealings with these wild men, and by sage counsel to promote their
interests, she acquired a great influence over the Pottawatamies, Kickapoos, and
other Indian nations. In the early American settlements from 1781 down to the
peace in 1795, this lady prevented many an Indian attack on the white
population. The Indians often became hostile to the French during the
Revolutionary War on account of the intrigues of the English since the French
had joined Clarke in the conquest of the British garrisons of the west. On many
occasions this lady was awakened in the dead hours of the night, by her Indian
friends among the hostile warriors, informing her of the intended attack, that
she might leave Cahokia. The following account given by Governor Reynolds is a
good example of the way she warded off Indian raids. One night after receiving a
warning she started out to meet some hundreds of warriors who were camped near
the Quentine mound at the foot of the bluff near the present French Village.
Some of her friends took her on horseback to a point near the Indian camp; then
she dismissed her company and proceeded on foot to the Indian camp. No one knew
the Indian character better than she. A woman on foot and alone approaching
several hundred armed warriors produced a sympathy which she followed up with
wise counsels which were well-nigh irresistible to the Indians who had such a
high opinion of her wisdom and friendship. Early the next morning she was seen
escorting a band of warriors into the village where the men of the town had
their fire arms all ready for defense. But now the program was changed from war
to peace. The red paint of the Indians was removed and they were painted black
to indicate their repentance for the hostile intentions they had entertained in
their minds against the friends of Mrs. La Compt. Then the Indians were feasted
in the village for days in celebration of the averted warfare. After one of
these reconciliations, they would remain peaceful for a good while. Mrs. La
Compt's life lasted far beyond the usual span. She died in Cahokia in 1843, at
the age of one hundred and nine years. Governor Reynolds says he knew this lady
personally, and ventures the opinion that her unusual health and longevity was
the result of her hardy and frugal mode of living. He thinks the health of more
people is injured by walking on fine carpets between the piano and the air-tight
stove than by walking on ice and snow in the open air.
Another prominent
woman was Madame Beaulieu. She was a native of Illinois, born at St. Phillippe,
a village near Fort Chartres. Her father was an officer in the French troops
named Chouvin. He later settled at Cahokia where his daughter married. Before
that, however, she went to Canada and secured a medical education. She was the
first woman doctor in Illinois. She was a devout Roman Catholic.
Nicholas Jarrot came to Cahokia in 1794, where he resided all the rest of his life. He was a man of intense activity and industry. He came to Cahokia without means, but obtained a small supply of Indian goods and became a trader. In this business he succeeded in amassing a large fortune. Every year he sent a boat load of goods to the upper Mississippi, where such things as the natives needed were bartered for furs and pelts at an immense profit to the trader. He also kept a retail store at Cahokia. For many years he held the offices of Justice of the Peace and Judge of the County Court. He erected in Cahokia a brick house, which, when built, was one of the finest in Illinois. He was a strict and zealous member of the Roman Catholilc Church. He died in 1828 and was buried in the old grave yard at Cahokia.
In the year 1793 John Hays became a citizen of Cahokia. He was born in New York City in 1770; and while still a young man entered the Indian trade in the Northwest. At one time he and two Canadians were caught in a severe snowstorm on the prairie and were compelled to lie in the snow for three days, with only their blankets for shelter and a little dried meat for food. This is an illustration of what men could endure in those times. After he settled at Cahokia he was both a trader and a farmer. For many years he held the office of postmaster, with no profit to himself, but merely to accommodate his neighbors. In 1798 Governor St. Clair appointed him Sheriff of St. Clair County, which office he held until 1818, when the state government was organized.
Another prominent citizen, whose name was similar but not the same, was John Hay. He was born in Detroit in 1769 and came to Cahokia in 1793. His father was the last British governor of Upper Canada, and his mother was a lady of French descent, a native of Detroit. In 1797 he married Miss Margret Pouport, a beautiful young Creole of Cahokia. Gen. Arthur St. Clair, then governor of the Northwest Territory, commissioned him Clerk of the Court of Quarter Sessions, Clerk of the Court oif Common Pleas, Clerk of the Orphans' Court, and Treasurer of the County of St. Clair. He held these four positions at the same time. He was also at different times Notary Public, Justice of the Peace, Probate Judge, and Recorder. He retained the confidence of the people in a rare degree and remained in office thru successive changes of administration till his death. When the county seat was moved to Belleville in 1814, it was a severe blow to Mr. Hay and his family. His duties demanded his presence at the county seat, and yet he was reluctant to leave the French people at Cahokia, to whom he was attached by many years of warm friendship.
Jean Francois Perry was born in Lyons, France, of a wealthy and aristocratic family, received a liberal classic education, and studied and practiced law in his own country. The French Revolution caused his emigration to America. He formed a partnership with another Frenchman, M. Claudius, to carry on mercantile business, and the two started from Philadelphia for the west. They reached Cahokia and soon after settled at Prairie Du Pont. A few years later Claudius was killed by accident and Perry bought the old mill site on the Prairie Du Pont creek and built a new mill which he carried on with profit. Near the mill was his dwelling. In the year 1794 he married the beautiful daughter of Jean Saucier, of Cahokia. In a few years he amassed a large fortune. He carried on both the mill and the store, but perhaps the greater part of his fortune was acquired through profitable land speculations. He was a man of unostentatious manners and lived and dressed in true democratic style. He paid due regard to economy and yet displayed much hospitality in the entertainment of all classes of people. He was held in high esteem in the community. He was proficient in the use of both the French and English languages and served as Justice of the Peace during almost the whole period of his life after coming to Illinois.
Philip Creamer settled a short distance east of Prairie Du Pont in the year 1805. He was born in Maryland and learned the trade of gunsmith at Harper's Ferry. He had unusual mechanical genius. In those times it was a proverb among the settlers, "He is as sure as a Creamer lock." He lived to a good old age.
The earliest settlements of the country were so thoroughly French that up to the beginning of the nineteenth century only one American settlement was to be found within the limits of the present St. Clair County. This was the Turkey Hill colony, numbering about twenty people. A little later a number of American families settled in Ridge Prairie, west of O'Fallon. Soon the log cabin of the pioneer made its appearance beyond Silver Creek and in a few years more every part of the county was brought under the domain of the adventurous frontiersman. It seems appropriate to mention some of these valiant leaders who did their share in taking the country for civilization. Turkey Hill is a beautiful eminence a few miles southeast of Belleville. Tradition says that the Tamaroa Indians once had a large town on this hill, and that the Great Spirit sent an old Indian, a wise and good man, with seeds of all good vegetables, such as corn, beans, peas, and potatoes, and that he taught the Indians how to plant them. He also advised them to be peaceful and never to go to war. As long as this counsel was followed, the Tamaroas did well and were a happy and prosperous people. But at last they disregarded the sage instruction and disaster followed.
William Scott, the first American settler in Turkey Hill, was born in Virginia of Irish parents, in the year 1745. He grew up and was married in his native state. All his children, six sons and one daughter, were born in Virginia. He then moved to Kentucky, and in 1797 he moved with his family to Illinois and became a permanent resident. The family included, besides his six sons, his daughter, Elizabeth and son-in-law, Franklin Jarvis. They made the journey by wagon from Fort Massac on the Ohio River to the New Design settlement, where they arrived late in the fall. About Christmas they located at Turkey Hill and made the beginning of what afterward became a prosperous community of white people. Scott located several claims in the present counties of Monroe and St. Clair, one of which included Turkey Hill, where he established his home. Jarvis, the son-in-law settled a little further north, at the foot of the hill. At the time the Scotts came to Turkey Hill the Indians were numerous in the vicinity. Some of them hunted and lived near him for most of the year, but exhibited only a friendly spirit. The Kickapoos were the nearest neighbors. Mr. Scott's large family of sons were of assistance in enabling him to sustain himself in a location so far in advance of other white settlers. Eventually they all married and settled in the neighborhood and the family resided together for many years in that part of the county. He was known far and near as "Turkey Hill Scott." He was a man of high character, and for many years a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He possessed sound judgment and much practical experience, and was ambitious for neither wealth nor worldly distinction. He served some years as Justice of the Peace. Toward the close of his life, after the business of making a living ceased to occupy so much of his time, he turned his attention to books and study and passed his advanced years in the pleasures of meditation and reflection. He was intelligent and communicative, and was fond of discoursing on philosophical subjects. He died in Shiloh Valley in the year 1828, at the age of eight-four. His sons became useful citizens, and many of his descendants still reside in the county.
Joseph Scott, one of the sons of William, began the manufacture of powder in the year 1809, four miles and a half east of Belleville. For many years he furnished the best powder made in the west. He supplied the rangers in the War of 1812. He procured the nitre which he used in its manufacture from the caves on the Gasconade River in Missouri. He spent much time during the winter months exploring that country, then filled with Indians, with Joseph Dixon as his sole companion. The next year, after William Scott and family started the Turkey Hill settlement, Hosea Rigg, Samuel Shook, and some others joined them there. By 1800 there were about twenty persons living in the settlement.
Hosea Rigg came from Kentucky and settled first in the American Bottom in 1796. But after two years he moved to Turkey Hill. He was born in West Virginia in 1760 and had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War. He was deeply interested in Methodism. He was an exhorter and later a local preacher in the Methodist Church. In 1803 he went to Kentucky to attend the Western Conference and solicit a preacher for the Illinois country. Rev. Benjamin Young was sent. Rigg lived in St. Clair County until his death in October, 1841, at eighty-one years of age. At that time he was said to be the oldest man in the county. Among the other American settlers were Samuel Shook, George Stout, Moses and Jacob Short, and Joseph Carr.
The Shook family was from Virginia. They located about a mile from the home of William Scott. Samuel Shook was a good farmer and a useful citizen. He died in the year 1827.
The Short brothers were sons of John Short, who came from Kentucky and died soon after settling in Illinois. Jacob Short was a man of some influence. He was captain of a company of rangers during the War of 1812, and was also elected to the Legislature under the territorial government. In his later years he moved to Morgan County. Moses Short for a number of years held the office of Justice of the Peace, and also served against the Indians in his brother's company of rangers. He is said to have built the first hand mill in that part of the country.
The Carr family, Joseph, Henry, Conrad, and Abner, settled in Turkey Hill Prairie, two or three miles to the southeast of the original settlement, in 1803. They were from Virginia, and before coming to this locality had lived for a time in the New Design settlement in Monroe County. Joseph Carr died in the year 1817 and his sons lived in the same neighborhood for many years after.
David Phillips became a resident of the county in the year 1803. He was born in Orange County, North Carolina, in 1755. After serving thru the Revolutionary War, he moved with his family to Kentucky in the year 1800. After three years he emigrated to Illinois and settled on Richland Creek, a short distance south of the present city of Belleville. He was a natural mechanic and possessed great genius for working in wood. It was said that he could make anything that was to be made of wood from a "fiddle" to a farm wagon. He supplied his neighbors with furniture and implements of many kinds. A chair made by him over a century ago is still in the possession of one of his descendants now living in Belleville.
In the year 1806 the settlements were increased by the arrival of the families of Elijah Rittenhouse, Isaac Quick, and John Woods. The Rittenhouse family settled on Turkey Hill, which up to that time had been occupied only by William Scott. There were four sons in the family, Cornelius, Peter, William, and Elijah. The elder Rittenhouse entertained the idea that his location would be an ideal place for the county seat when its removal from Cahokia was agitated. He laid out his farm in town lots and invited the cooperation of the county authorities, but eventually the site of Belleville was chosen instead. He served as constable and was a good and loyal citizen.
Isaac Quick had a son, Moses, who was an enterprising young man. In company with Major Jacob Short he built a flat boat, below the present town of New Athens, which was loaded with beef cattle and successfully floated down to New Orleans. This is said to have been the first flat boat that ever navigated the Okaw River.
John Woods and John Jarvis, a brother of Franklin Jarvis, both settled in the Turkey Hill community, in the year 1806. After that year there were no considerable additions to the settlement for some time. It was considered one of the best in the country and was generally composed of good, honest and industrious citizens. The Scott family was connected with the Methodist Church, while the Shorts and Carrs were Baptists. Baptist meetings were held one month at the home of Squire Moses Short, and the next at Joseph Carr's house. One of the earliest Baptist preachers was the Rev. Joseph Chance.
In the years 1801 and 1802, settlements were made southwest of Belleville by John Teter, Abraham Eyman, William Miller, Martin Randleman, and Daniel Stookey. The founders of this colony were of Pennsylvania Dutch descent, and were industrious, moral upright citizens. Stookey and Eyman, in company with some others, came to Illinois in 1796 to explore that country, with a view to selecting a future location for their families. Traversing the country in the vicinity of the present city of Belleville, Stookey and Eyman selected the locations where afterward they settled in the prairie west and southwest of Belleville. Abraham Eyman brought his family to Illinois the next year. He first lived in the American Bottom, near Piggott's Station, then moved to New Design, and in the spring of the year 1801 settled four miles west of Belleville. He was a good citizen and once represented the county in the Legislature. He died in the neighborhood where he settled. He was preceded a few months by John Teter, who had a house already built when Eyman arrived. Teter once served as County Commissioner. Daniel Stookey, who was a brother-in-law of Eyman, came to the county in 1802 and settled on what is now the Stookey farm, two miles west of Belleville. He died in 1835, leaving nine children.
John Primm, a native of Stafford County, Virginia, came to Illinois in the year 1803, and about a year afterward settled seven miles west of Belleville. In 1817 he moved to a new location three miles southwest of the county seat. He died in 1836, at the age of eighty-seven. For a time he carried the mail between Cahokia and Edwardsville. In August, 1814, one of his sons, while carrying mail from Cahokia to Clinton Hill, was struck by lightening in the Derush hollow. He and his horse were both instantly killed. His body was burnt black by the electricity. Mr. Primm had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War and was present at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. During the latter part of his life he received a Federal pension. The year 1822 was marked by general prosperity of the colonists in Illinois. Accessions were made to the population and new settlements were formed.
Prominent among the pioneers
was the Ogle family. Captain Joseph Ogle was born in Virginia in 1741. He
commanded a company of Virginia troops during the Revolutionary War, holding his
commission from Governor Patrick Henry. He came to Illinois in 1785 and first
settled in what is now Monroe County. In 1802 he moved to Ridge Prairie and
located a short distance west of where O'Fallon now stands. He is said to have
been the first Methodist in Illinois. During the early years of his residence
here he took part in several Indian fights. In May, 1791, John Dempsey was
attacked by the Indians, but escaped. Captain Ogle and his son, Benjamin, were
two of the eight who went in pursuit of the Indians. The others were Captian
Nathaniel Hull, James Lemen, James Ryan, William Bryson, John Porter, and Daniel
Roper. The Indians were double the number of the Whites. A hot battle was fought
in the timber at the big spring in Monroe County, not far east of the road which
ran from Waterloo to Whiteside Station, which was about midway between the
present towns of Waterloo and Columbia. A running fight was kept up till dark,
from tree to tree, the Indians running and the whites pursuing. Five Indians
were killed, but the whites all escaped unharmed. Captain Ogle died on his farm
in Ridge Prairie in 1821, at the age of eighty. He left several children, and
many of his descendants are still in St. Clair County.
Benjamin Ogle, his
oldest son, took part in several of the early Indian contests, in one of which
he was wounded. He lived on a farm near the present town of O'Fallon, and died
at a good old age.
Another son, Joseph, married Lucinda Pulliam, daughter of John Pulliam, in 1804. They lived on a farm east of O'Fallon. He served in the Blackhawk War. In died in 1846.
Still another son, Jacob, married Elizabeth Teter and settled west of O'Fallon. He was a man of considerable intelligence and popularity and served for a number of years as Justice of the Peace. He and the Rev. James Lemen built a mill for grinding wheat and corn. This mill was situated on Ogle's creek, three miles north of O'Fallon and was run by water power. Owing to the scant supply of water, the milling business was carried on for only a short time. Later he had a mill on his farm which was run by horse power.
Of the daughters of Captain Ogle, Nancy married Larkin Rutherford, Prudence was the wife of Peter Casterline, Drusilla married William Porter, Polly became the wife of General James Moore, and Jemima married the Rev. Charles Matheny, a resident of St. Clair County and a member of the Methodist ministry. He afterward moved to Springfield, where he occupied several responsible public positions.
Among the settlers in Ridge Prairie were Robert, Joseph, and James Lemen, sons of the Rev. James Lemen, one of the pioneer Baptist preachers of Illinois.
James Lemen, Senior, was born in Berkley County, Virginia, in the year 1760. He served two years in the war of the Revolution, after which he went to the vicinity of Wheeling, West Virginia, where he married Catharine Ogle, an older daughter of Captain Joseph Ogle. He came to Illinois in 1786, the year after his father-in-law. His trip to the new country was an eventful one. He came down the Ohio River with his family and household goods on a flat boat. One night while the boat was tied to the shore, the river fell consdierably, and the boat lodging on a stump, was overturned and sunk, and thus all his provisions and goods were lost. His oldest son, Robert, then three years old, floated out in the stream on the bed on which he lay. By strenuous effort he was rescued and his life was saved. Notwithstanding this discouraging misfortune, the family proceeded on their journey, and arrived at Kaskaskia, July 10, 1786, and shortly afterward settled at New Design, in the present county of Monroe. In after years he was a citizen of prominence and usefulness. He served in the office of Justice of the Peace and County Judge. He was also a prominent religious leader among the Baptists. His religious labors are referred to elsewhere.
Robert Lemen, the oldest son of James, was reared at New Design. In the year 1805 he married Hester Tolin, and settled in Ridge Prairie, about four miles north of where O'Fallon now is. Under the administration of John Quincy Adams he acted as Marshall for the State of Illinois. He also served as Justice of the Peace. In early times he acted as clerk of the Richland Baptist Church, and he was an original member of the Bethel Church, organized in 1809, of which he was clerk until 1845. He died in 1860.
Rev. Joseph Lemen was born in September, 1785, and was less than a year old when the family came to Illinois. He became a minister of the Baptist Church and settled in Ridge Prairie, north of the site of O'Fallon, and near his brother, Robert. His wife was Mary Kinney, the youngest daughter of Josephy Kinney, and a sister of William Kinney, who was once Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois. It is said that she went to school and learned to read and write after she was married, but these educational effots did not hinder her from rearing a large and respectable family. Joseph Lemen was active in ministerial labors. He travelled over this part of the country extensively, and organized a number of Baptist churches. He died in 1861.
Rev. James Lemen, Jr., was born in the New Design settlement, in 1787, and received a good education for that time, under the instruction of Rev. John Clark, who was one of the most active and useful of the pioneer preachers of Illinois. Mr. Lemen was said to be the first ordained preacher in Illinois, born in the territory. He married Mary Pulliam in 1813, and settled in Ridge Prairie. He was a member of the Territorial Legislature at Kaskaskia, and also filled the same office after the organization of the state government. Twice he was a member of the state senate. He was also a member of the convention which framed the first constitution of the state. He died in February, 1870.
It should be mentioned that one cause of the removal of the Ogle and Lemen families to Illinois was their opposition to slavery. This was also the case with a number of other prominent families of the county who came at a later date. At that early day, half a century before there was any general agitation of the question, they became opposed to the system, liberated their slaves, and moved to a place where they believed they would be forever free from the curse of slavery.
John Pulliam who emigrated to Illinois in 1795 was the head of a large family, many of the descendants of whom are still to be found living in the county. He was born in Virginia and removed to Kentucky immediately after the Revolutionary War, and came to the New Design settlement a few years later. In 1797 he crossed into Missouri and settled at Florissant, west of St. Louis. Two years later he returned to Illinois and lived for a time in the northern part of Randolph county. From there he moved to what is now Monroe county and established a farm home on the Prairie Du Long Creek, in 1802. He sold this farm in 1808 and moved to another location on the Kaskaskia river near the present site of Fayetteville in St. Clair county. Here he finished his varied career and died in the year 1812. His nine children were Robert, Nancy, Elizabeth, John, Lucinda, James, Thomas, Ruth and Mary. Several of these lived and died in St. Clair county. Nancy married William Lot Whitesides, who shortly after 1800 settled three miles each of Belleville. John Pulliam settled near the present city of Belleville at an early day. Lucinda became the wife of Joseph Ogle, son of Captain Joseph Ogle. James Pulliam who was about nine years of age when he came with his family to Illinois, married Judith Whitesides and settled two miles east of Belleville. He was a well-informed man for his day, and an able Baptist preacher. He was liberal in his support to religious and educational institutions. He died in 1854.
Thomas Pulliam became a minister in the Methodist Church, but was also a farmer. He was the founder of the present town of Fayetteville where he was living at the time of his death in 1852. Mary the youngest daughter of John Pulliam was about a year old when she came with the family to Illinois. Her mother died when she was but a child and she was reared by her sister Nancy, the wife of William Lot Whitesides, who lived east of Belleville. In December, 1813, she became the wife of Rev. James Lemen, Jr., previously mentioned. They established their home on Ridge Prairie where she died in 1876 at the age of eighty-one, having spent eighty years of her long life in St. Clair county.
Larken Rutherford was one of the soldiers under Colonel Clark who took part in the conquest of Illinois. He was a large man of athletic frame and was bold and fearless. He returned to Illinois in 1781 in company with James Moore, Shadrach Bond, Robert Kidd and James Garrison. This was the first colony of American families to settle in Illinois. Moore and Rutherford chose a location near Bellefontaine, a short distance southwest of the present town of Waterloo in Monroe county. Bond, Kidd and Garrison settled in the Bottom. Soon after 1800, Rutherford moved to St. Clair county and settled north of Belleville. He was a good citizen and a zealous member of the Baptist Church.
One of the gallant soldiers of Colonel Clark who lived a long and eventful life in Illinois was William Biggs. He was born in Maryland in 1755. At the age of twenty-three, he enlisted as a soldier in the Revolutionary War and became a member of Clark's famous expedition. He was hardy, energetic and brave. He withstood the perils and hairbreadth escapes incident to the Clark campaign with the heroism of a veteran warrior. He received no bounty in land in the grant made to Clark and his soldiers, but later the Congress of the United States, recognizing the valuable services rendered to the colonies by Lieutenant Biggs, granted him in the year 1826 three sections of land. This was tardy justice rendered so late in life that it could be of little use to him for he was then seventy years of age. But it was no doubt a great satisfaction to him that the U.S. Government had finally recognized his eminent service.
Soon after the close of the war he went back to his old home in the east and married a wife who formerly lived in Virginia. Soon after his marriage he, with his two brothers, emigrated to Illnois and settled at Bellefontaine. In the spring of 1788 he and a neighbor named Vallis started one morning on horseback to take a supply of beaver fur which they had caught to Cahokia to market. They were proceeding along the road which is now route three of the Illinois road system, but at that time much of the way was a trail through the wood, tho the main road to Cahokia. When they were near Piggot's Fort in the Bottom, they heard the report of two guns. Biggs supposed the shots to be fired by some hunters, but in a few minutes they saw sixteen Indians armed with guns. Biggs and Vallis immediately whipped up their horses, but it was too late. The Indians fired a volley at them and several of the bullets took effect, tho it might have been expected that both the men and the horses would be killed immediately, yet it did not so happen. Vallis' horse carried him to the Fort with a severe wound of which he died after lingering six weeks. Biggs' horse was shot dead and four bullets went thru the rider's coat but he himself did not receive a single wound. Abandoning his horse and his furs he started to run. But with his winter over coat and boots he was not equipped for racing and the Indians soon caught him and made him prisoner. When Vallis reached the Fort, signal guns were fired to alarm the community, and the Indians hearing it began a hurried march to get away with their prisoner. They started on a run and kept their prisoner going at that gait for five or six miles. They were Kickapoos and started at once for their village called Weastown on the Wabash river, a long distance above Vincennes. They travelled about forty miles the first day and that seems a good record for travellers on foot with no well-established road. They must have passed near where the towns of Belleville and Lebanon are now, but at that time there was not even a settlement at either place. The whole distance was somewhere about three hundred miles but they reached the village in ten days, with their prisoner. One of the Indians tried to kill Biggs, but the others seeming to have in mind a large ransom which they hoped to obtain kept the prisoner safe and killed the Indian who seemed to want to deprive them of the benefit of their successful capture. The Indians were rather severe in their treatment of him and tied him at night so securely that he had no chance of escape. Biggs was a fine specimen of physical manhood and unusually handsome. His manly beauty had its attraction for the feminine portion of this group of untutored savages. He claims that several of the Indian Belles of the Wabash offered him their hearts in wedlock, but he, hoping to return some time to his family remained true to the wife who was suffering the agonies of uncertainty as to the fate of her husband for she only knew that the Indians had carried him off and she had no means of knowing whether he was dead or alive. But he had been in the camp only a short time when negotiations were begun at Vincennes for his ransom. These negotiations were carried on partly by John Rice Jones, who is mentioned elsewhere in this history and was then living at Vincennes. An agreement was finally reached by which the Indians received the equivalent of two hundred and sixty dollars for the freedom of the prisoner, besides which Biggs had to promise thirty-seven dollars more for the means necessary to accomplish the journey back to Bellefontaine. He went down the Wabash in a canoe to the Ohio and thence to the Mississippi and up that river to Kaskaskia, whence he had only a few miles to travel overland to reach his home. His return to his family can better be imagined that described. They had mourned him as dead. At that day there was no way of sending word that he was coming so he walked unannounced one day into this grief-stricken home and brought hope and happiness and restored lasting-good cheer to his loved ones who had been sitting in the shadow of a great sorrow. Years afterward Mr. Biggs wrote an account of his experiences in captivity and had it published in the year 1826. In 1790 when St. Clair county was organized, Governor St. Clair appointed him sheriff, and he held the office for many years, as the records testify. He had received a common school education which had been supplemented by much experience including the dangers of war and pioneer life. He was popular with his fellow citizens and was twice elected to represent St. Clair County in the Legislature of the North West Territory. At the time when he and Shadrach Bond were serving together in Clark's expedition they said in a joke one day that they would like to represent this country in the legislature. Twelve years later their dreams were realized for they were both members of the first General Assembly of the North West Territory. Biggs also served as Justice of the Peace and Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, for many years and made a safe and acceptable officer of Justice. In 1808 he was elected to the Legislature of the Indiana Territory, and helped to secure the division of the Territory which was effected in the following year. In 1812 Biggs was elected to the Legislature of the Illinois Territory and held the office for four years. He made a solid and useful member of the Legislative Body as long as he was a member. Few men have had the good foretune to live in an age when they had so many opportunities to serve their fellow-men as he had. But in all these years of public service he did not allow his private interests to interfere with his duties to his country. He was never wealthy, but possessed only a reasonable competence. Towards the close of his life he engaged in an enterprise of manufacturing salt on Silver Creek within the present limits of Madison county. He died in 1827, at the home of Colonel Judy, aan aged and well-respected pioneer of the first county of the great state of Illinois.
George Blair came to Illinois in 1796. He first lived between the old Whitesides station and the town of Waterloo, in the present county of Monroe, and had a distillery there. He was appointed sheriff of St. Clair county and held that office for several years. In 1802, he moved with his family to the site of the present city of Belleville where he owned two hundred acres of land. On his land the town of Belleville was located in 1814. He is said to have suggested the name Belleville for the new town and county seat. The "Sugar Loaf" tract of land south of Cahokia near the Monroe county line was first improved by George Lunceford and Samuel Judy. Shortly after the year 1800, Judy sold out to Lunceford and went to Madison county where he spent the remainder of his life. The "Sugar Loaf" was a well-known land mark in the early settlement of the country. A small mound rises on top of the rocky bluff. In early times a peach tree stood on the summit of the mound which had the reputation of never failing to bear fruit. Its resemblance to a sugar loaf gives the name to the place. It is about five miles south of Cahokia.
Among the distinguished citizens of St. Clair county in the early days was William Kinney, who was elected Lieutenant-Governor of the state in 1826. He was born in Kentucky in 1781 and in 1793 came with his father Joseph Kinney to the New Design settlement in Monroe county. He was gay and social in his disposition and a leader in the festivities and amusements then common on the frontier. He inherited a strong well-balanced mind and sound judgment. He had a retentive memory and boundless energy and activity, but his opportunities for school training were very limited. It is said that he went to school regularly only three months. After he was married at nineteen, he received private instruction in the common branches from John Messinger. For a short time he attended a school located at the junction of the Collinsville road with the Belleville and Lebanon plank road, which was held in a log house with a wooden chimney without ceiling or windows and without a glass in the house. The floor was of puncheons and the door made of clap boards. With this foundation and a large inheritance of native intelligence and energy, he became a well-informed man and was one of the most influential characters of his day. He possessed a fund of wit, excelled in satire and sarcasm, was always ready with a pertinent and appropriate anecdote, while his sound judgment and accurate knowledge of human nature taught him how to use these gifts in the most effective manner. At the time of his marriage he was practically destitute of worldly goods, and had little disposition to accumulate property. But he soon adopted a more sober and industrious course of conduct. In the year 1803 he settled on a beautiful eminence a few miles northeast of Belleville and devoted himself energetically to the task of improving his farm and making a desirable home. In this undertaking he was ably assisted by his wife, who was an excellent and amiable woman. The surplus produce from his farm he sold in Cahokia or St. Louis. One day a merchant in St. Louis named Von Phul persuaded Kinney to take a few articles of merchandise home with him and try to sell them, promising that if he could not sell them he might return them. After some hesitation Kinney took the goods, consisting of a few bols of cotton cloth which he carried on his horse from St. Louis to his farm. At that time he could barely write, and knew nothing whatever of bookkeeping, but his strong natural talents enabled him him to invent a system of bookkeeping of his own. With this humble beginning he embarked in a prosperous business career, in which he acquired a large fortune. He also traded in lands, as well as in merchandise, and in everything was successful. He erected a comfortable house which was almost always crowded with his friends, and in which he exercised an unsparing hospitality. In 1809 he joined the Baptist Church. He was later authorized to preach the gospel, and became a distinguished and influential Baptist minister. After reaching middle life he entered the field of politics. He was a staunch and uncompromising Democrat, and at all times maintained the doctrines of his party with sincere enthusiasm. He was elected a member of the first general assembly after the organization of the state government and assisted in putting the political machinery of the state in operation. He was several times subsequently chosen to represent St. Clair County in the State Legislature, and always acquitted himself with credit as an efficient business member. In 1826 he was a candidate for Lieutenant-Governor against Samuel H. Thompson, a minister in the Methodist Church. Both candidates were good men, with character above reproach, but Mr. Thompson had scruples about electioneering and refused as a matter of conscience to make any effort to secure votes, therefore the strange result of the election as that Ninian Edwards was elected Governor, as a representative of the Whig party, William Kinney was elected Lieutenant-Governor from the Democratic party. In 1830 Kinney was a candidate for Governor, in opposition to John Reynolds, of Belleville. Both were Democrats, but Kinney was supported by the ultra-Democrats, or followers of Andrew Jackson, while Reynolds was favored by the more conservative elements in the Democratic party, and also received in general the vote of the Whigs, who preferred his election to that of such an uncompromising Democrat as Kinney. The campaign was a spirited one and resulted in the election of Reynolds. During the administration of President Jackson, Mr. Kinney had much political influence in the west, and was regarded as the chief representative in Illinois of the straight-out Jackson party. Toward the close of his life he was appointed Commissioner of Internal Improvements, a position which gave him much trouble and caused serious injury to his private fortune. He died in 1843 on his farm where he had lived for forty years. This place later became the home of Hon. James L. D. Morrison, who erected on it a residence which in grandeur might almost rank with some of the baronial castles of the old world, and called it "Glen Addie." In recent years it has become the property of the Catholic Church, and the commodious buildings and grounds are utilized as an orphanage.
John Messinger, who was an early settler at Clinton Hill, two and a half miles north of Belleville, kept the first post office in the county outside of Cahokia. Messinger was an accomplished surveyor and surveyed a large portion of the land in this and adjoining counties. He was born in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1771. He was raised on a farm and was taught the science and practice of agriculture, and at the same time was able to secure a good education. He was particularly fond of the study of mathematics. In 1783 he removed to Vermont and learned the carpenter's trade and also became a millwright. He had a high degree of energy and activity and much aptitude for mechanical pursuits, but it is said that in his maturer life his chief delight was found in the science of mathematics and the various branches arising out of it. He whole life seemed to be "tinctured with mathematics" and for many years he was believed to be the most profound mathematician and the best land surveyor in Illinois. He came to Kentucky in 1799, and from there to New Design, where he lived a few years and then settled permanently at Clinton Hill. There were few men in the country at that time as well educated as he. He was an excellent English scholar and gave instruction in surveying to a number of young men who had no other opportunity for education in this line. He was one of the surveyors who, in 1806, surveyed this section of the state into townships. He surveyed much of the public domain in both St. Clair and Randolph Counties. He wrote and published in 1821 a book entitled, "A Manual or Hand-Book of Practical Surveying." It is claimed that he taught mathematics in Dr. Peck's Seminary at Rock Spring. In 1815 he was made a deputy under the Surveyor-General of Ohio, with authority to survey the military tract in the forks of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. He did survey much of this tract. Later he was appointed to assist in the survey of the northern limits of this state, and he made a part of the astronomical and mathematical calculations by which the line dividing the states of Illinois and Wisconsin was located. He and Philip Creamer, whose skill as a mechanic has already been referred to, made surveyors' compasses that were as well calculated and as well finished in workmanship as any made in the United States. He did not care to take any part in political affairs, but was several times prevailed upon to represent St. Clair County in the Legislature. He was a member of the convention that met at Kaskaskia and framed the first constitution of Illinois. He was also a member of the first general assembly of this state, which convened in 1818, and on its organization was elected speaker of the House of Representatives. His death occurred in the year 1846. He had no enemies, but a large number of friends mourned his departure.
The Badgleys, who were among the early settlers of St. Clair County, are the descendants of Anthony Badgley, of New Jersey, who later settled in Virginia and died there about 1800. Rev. David Badgley, a Baptist preacher, visited Illinois in 1796. He preached in the New Design settlement and founded there the first Baptist church in Illinois. He also visited Missouri, and on his return from there he preached a sermon from a rock in the Mississippi River, the people gathering to hear him from either shore. This was a most unique way of dispensing the gospel. Returning to Virginia, he gave such a favorable account of the country that his sons and a number of other people decided to emigrate to Illinois. The colony which came to Illinois at that time included a large number of families, among whom were the Teters, Carrs, Millers, Strouds, and Eymans. They floated down the Ohio River from Brownsville, Pennsylvania, to Shawneetown, and thence made their way across the country to Kaskaskia, where they arrived on July 4, 1797. Their journey across Southern Illinois was full of difficulties. Nothing but an Indian trail at that time led from Shawneetown to Kaskaskia. They were compelled to swim streams swollen with recent rains. Their household goods, with the women and children, were ferried over on temporary rafts. No trace of a white man was seen till they reached Kaskaskia. They saw animals running off in the distance which they thought to be buffalo. David Badgley settled in the American Bottom, west of Moredock Lake, in the present county of Monroe, in the year 1797, but after a few years, he moved in 1804 to a place a few miles north of Belleville, where he improved the farm on which he spent the remainder of his life and died December 16, 1824, at the age of seventy-six. Anthony Badgley, a younger brother of David, came with him from Virginia and settled first at New Design, but about the same time that David moved to St. Clair County, he also came and the two brothers settled near each other a few miles north of Belleville, in the year 1804. At that time he built a log house which was for many years a well-known land mark in the country. One of his sons, Hiram, was a soldier in the war of 1812. His son, Simeon, lived on the same farm where his father settled until his death, near the close of the nineteenth century. Aaron Badgley, one of the sons of David, came with the original colony to Illinois in 1797 and settled in Horse Prairie, west of Red Bud. There his wife and two children died. In 1800 he married Catherine Stroud and settled on the bluff south of Waterloo. But in 1804 he moved to the neighborhood of the other Bdgleys, north of Belleville. In 1812 he became a ranger and was an orderly sergeant thru Edward's campaign. On his return he visited Virginia in company with his father, but coming back to Illinois he rejoined the army under Captain Stuntz and served till peace was declared. In 1830 he was chosen Justice of the Peace, and afterwards reelected. He and his son, Adam, hauled the first goods from Belleville to Springfield for Governor Edwards. It was in winter and they were obliged to sleep out on the prairie and came near perishing with cold and exposure. Aaron Badgley died in 1858 at the age of eighty-five. His wife survived him several years and died at ninety-one. His three sons, Elijah, Adam, and Strander all lived to a good old age in St. Clair County. Aaron Badgley's four brothers, Ichabod, David, Job, and Abraham, all sons of Rev. David Badgley, were among the early pioneers of the Illinois country. Ichabod had a farm north of Belleville, and served as Justice of the Peace; David was killed by accident while riding horse back; Job built an ox mill near Unity Church; and Abraham repeatedly held the office of Assessor, Treasurer, and County Commissioner.
Among the early
settlers connected with the development of manufacturing interests in the county
is the Harrison family. Thomas Harrison was born in South Carolina in 1779. His
father emigrated to North Carolina and later came with some others to Illinois,
arriving in July, 1804, and settled about four miles southwest of Belleville.
Here he improved his farm, and in 1813 erected a cotton gin, which was one of
the first in Illinois. It was propelled by horse power. At that time a
considerable amount of cotton was raised in Illinois, but the price became so
low that both the gin and the cotton business were abandoned. It is claimed that
the first cotton gin in the Illinois country was built by James Gilbreath, who
settled on Silver Creek where it is crossed by the road from Belleville to
Shawneetown. Mr. Harrison afterward purchased an ox-tread mill in Belleville;
then built a small steam mill, and then later a larger one which finally burnt,
and with it more than sixty thousand bushels of wheat. It was a heavy loss but
did not discourage him. His unfailing enterprise gave the first impulse of
growth to the milling interests of Belleville, which afterwards became very
important. His descendants are still largely connected with the manufacturing
interests of the town.
A farming community was started near the mouth of
Silver Creek when Abraham Teter, his sister, Mrs. Shook, and Peter Mitchell
settled there in 1804. Mitchell afterwards served as Justice of the Peace and
County Commissioner. Another settlement on Silver Creek was made by the Bradsby
family about three miles north of the present town of Lebanon, at the edge of
the Looking Glass Prairie. Willliam H. Bradsby, the oldest son, came from
Kentucky with two other young men and raised a crop of corn in the spring of
1804 on the land which they entered. The rest of the family followed them from
Kentucky in the fall. Mr. Bradsby taught school for several years. In 1806 he
had a school in the American Bottom, almost west of the present town of
Collinsville. The next year he taught in the Turkey Hill settlement. His two
sons, William H. and James, were in the ranger service during the War of 1812,
and made good soldiers. William H. returned to Kentucky and qualified himself
for the practice of medicine and then came back to Illinois. He was elected to
the Territorial Legislature in 1814. He was a resident of Washington County when
it was organized and filled a number of public offices in that county. Among the
settlers on Silver Creek was Thomas Higgins. His name deserves a place in
history for his heroic adventure with the Indians in 1814 at a block house on
Shoal Creek, about eight miles south of the present town of Greenville. This
story is told in another chapter. Higgins was related to the Bradsbys and
settled near them north of Lebanon on coming to Illinois.
Abraham Varner settled east of Belleville about the year 1804. He established himself in the blacksmithing business on the main road leading from Vincennes to Cahokia and St. Louis. His shop was four miles east of Belleville.
Rison Moore was one of the early settlers and one of the prominent citizens of
St. Clair County in the early day. He was born in Sussex County, Delaware, Nov.
20, 1760. He was the son of Charles and Mary Cooper Moore. At the beginning of
the Revolutionary War, the father and three sons, William, Thomas, and Risdon
enlisted in the colonial service in 1776. Thomas was killed in battle, William
was captured and died on a prison ship at New York, but Risdon went thru the war
unharmed. The father served thru the war and became paymaster before its close.
The Moores had been engaged in the carrying trade on the high seas. Their three
vessels were captured during the war and they were financially ruined. After the
Revolutionary War the family, attracted by the stories of new lands being opened
up in Georgia, sent Risdon on horseback to explore them. The next year, 1790,
the family moved to Hancock County, Georgia, where they remained for twenty-two
years. On his way to Georgia, Risdon had visited the home of a cousin at
Guilford Court House, North Carolina, where he met Anna Dent, daughter of
Colonel William Dent and Virlina Bell, natives of Maryland. In 1790, as the
family were on the way to Georgia to make their home, Risdon Moore and Anna Dent
were united in marriage at Guilford Court House. They reared a family of nine
children. Moore engaged in farming during his twenty-two years' stay in Georgia.
He was quite successful and acquired several large plantations. He was also
active in the political life of Georgia, and served two terms as a member of the
Legislature. He was an ardent opponent of the institution of slavery, and
because he saw no prospect of its abolition at any near date, he decided to
leave his Georgia home and move to some free state. Accordingly, in 1811, he
sent his son to the Northwest Territory to find a suitable home for the family
on free soil. The result of that quest was the determination to locate in the
Illinois Territory, and the son selected the beautiful Shiloh Valley as the most
desirable location. They came to Illinois in the spring of 1812, a company of
thirty-three persons, seventeen white people and sixteen negroes, for they
brought their slaves with them, in order that they might set them free. He
purcahsed land of John Jarvis and settled on the farm four miles east of
Belleville, where he spent the remaining sixteen years of his eventful life. His
death occurred in 1828, when he was seventy years of age. Mr. Moore served two
terms in the Territorial Legislature and three after Illinois became a state.
The enduring services of Mr. Moore to our state relate to the question of
slavery. He opposed it with all his might. The following address to the citizens
was prepared by him and published in 1818. "The undersigned, happening to meet
at the St. Clair Circuit Court, have united in submitting the following address
to the friends of freedom in Illinois: Feeling it a duty to thsoe who are
sincere in their opposition to the toleration of slavery in this territory, to
use all fair and laudable means to effect that object, we therefore beg leave to
present to our fellow-citizens at large the sentiments which prevail in this
section of our country on that subject. In the counties of Madison and St.
Clair, the most populous counties in the territory, a sentiment approaching that
of unanimity against it seems to prevail. It the counties of Bond, Washington,
and Monroe, a similar sentiment seems also to prevail. We are informed that
strong efforts will be made in the convent to give sanction to that deplorable
evil in our state. Lest such should be the result at too late a period for
anything like concert to take place among the friends of freedom in trying to
defeat it; we therefore earnestly solicit all true friends of freedom in every
section of the territory to unite in opposing it, both by the election of a
delegate to Congress who will oppose it, and by forming meetings and preparing
remonstrances to Congress against it. Indeed so important is this question
considered that no exertion of a fair character should be omitted, to defeat the
plan of those who wish either a temporary or unlimited slavery. Let us also
select men to the Legislature who will unite in remonstrating with the general
government against ratifying such a constitution. At a crisis like this,
thinking will not do. Acting is necessary. Signed Risdon Moore, Benjamin Watts,
Jacob Ogle, Joshua Oglesby, William Scott, Sr., William Biggs, George Blair,
Charles Matheny, James Garrettson, William Kinney, from St. Clair County."
Mr. Moore was a man of strong religious faith. He was a Methodist and during his
sixteen years of residence in Illinois was a member of the church at Shiloh,
which was organized five years before he came to Illinois and has maintained a
continuous existence up to the present time. Both he and his wife found their
last resting place in the beautiful Shiloh Cenmetery. In 1925 the Daughters of
the American Revolution erected a tablet to his memory, which was unveiled with
suitable ceremonies and an address by Hon. Charles S. Deneen, who is one of the
direct descendants of this remarkable man.
William Moore ws the eldest son of Risdon and carried on well his father's reputation for service, efficiency, and loyalty. He was a soldier in the Blackhawk War, with the rank of Captain. He also served in the Legislature and was a local preacher in the Methodist Church. When he died in 1849 he was the President of the Board of Trustees of McKendree College. Another son of Risdon Moore was Jonathan, who married Elizabaeth, daughter of George Lunceford, and for some time resided on the "Sugar Loaf" farm, south of Cahokia. In 1833 he purchased his father's farm east of Belleville, and in 1850 he moved to Lebanon. He also served in the Blackhawk War and was an officer in the same company of which his brother was Captain. One of his sons was Colonel Risdon Moore, who was Professor of mathematics in McKendree College at the opening of the Civil War and was the Commander of the McKendree Regiment. A further acount of him is given in the History of McKendree College. One of the daughters of Jonathan Moore, Mrs. Mary Fitzgerald is still living at an advanced age at her home in Lebanon.
Another Risdon Moore, very distantly related, if at all, to the one before mentioned, came to St. Clair County in 1817, and settled in the east side of the county, not far from the other Moores. This family were Baptists, instead of Methodists, and like the others, furnished some of the leaders in the community, both politically and religiously. One of the sons, Atlas Moore, was for many years a Missionary Baptist preacher, while another, Daniel T., represented St. Clair County in the Legislature.
John Beaird was a prominent citizen of Knox County, Tennessee, which county he represented in the Tennessee Legislature. He was usually selected as leader when the community had trouble with the Indians. He was brave, energetic, and a successful Indian fighter. He came with his family to Illinois in 1801 and settled four miles from Kaskaskia. His son, Joseph, lived for some years in Cahokia, and was a member of the Legislature for several terms. The family was related to that of Governor Reynolds, and when John Reynolds, afterward Governor, started out to practice law, he made his home for a time with Joseph Beaird, at Cahokia. William A. Beaird, another son of John Beaird, naturally possessed a good mind, but obstinately refused to get an education or to receive any information thru the medium of books. However, by observation and experience, he did acquire much practical knowledtge. He never married. He served as Sheriff of St. Clair County from 1815 to 1830. He died in Belleville in 1843.
One of the most prominent citizens of St. Clair County for nearly four decades
was Rev. John Mason Peck, who occupied a distinctive position of leadership among
Illinois Baptists. He was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in the year 1778. His
early education was limited. In 1809 he joined the Baptist Church. In 1813 he
was licensed to preach, and a little later ordained to the Baptist ministry. A
few years later he spent a year in a theological seminary at Philadelphia. In
May, 1817, he was chosen a missionary of the General Baptist Convention for the
West. He set out with his family in a one-horse covered wagon, and reached St.
Louis in December of that year. For the next nine years he was an itinerant
missionary ranging thru Missouri and Illinois, residing in St. Louis, then in
St. Charles, and ultimately fixing his home at Rock Spring, in St. Clair County,
Illinois. He was a man of deep convictions and determined disposition. Rev.
Justus Bulkley, long a professor in Shurtleff College, in a sketch of Dr. Peck,
characterizes him as follows: "Tall, athletic, bright-eyed, very energetic in
speech and manner, he was a marvel of strength and endurance, possessing
implicit faith in God, fearless self-reliance, and an absolutely invincible
will; so that his very presence was a recognized power and inspiration among
men. When addressing the Illinois Baptist General Convention or any other august
body, John M. Peck might be rung down repeatedly, but he never failed to keep
the floor till he had presented his cause and finished his speech, however long
it might be." In 1820, when the Missionary Board ordered him to move to Fort
Wayne, Indiana, he did not comply, but with his characteristic independence
decided to choose his own field of labor. In April, 1822, he moved to Rock
Spring, where he acquired a considerable tract of land, on which he made his
home for the remainder of his life, and where he died March 15, 1858. He was
buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, in St. Louis. In 1852 he received the degree
of Doctor of Divinity from Harvard College. April 25th, 1829 was the date of the
first issue of "The Pioneer," which was the first religious paper published in
Illinois. This was edited and published by Dr. Peck, at Rock Spring. His
frequent travels over the country brought him into such prominence that he
received many inquiries by letter from persons who proposed to emigrate to the
west and desired definite knowledge of certain localities. To meet this demand
for information he published the "Guide for Emigrants." In 1834 he published the
"Gazeteer of Illinois," in which was contained a concise and accurate
description of each county, town, settlement, stream, and prairie in the state.
He was also the author of several other volumes. All this time he was busy with
his ministerial labors. He was the founder of Rock Srping Seminary, which will
receive more extended notice elsewhere in this volume. He organized Sunday
Schools, established churches, and preached the gospel continually. He was
gifted by nature with a strong and vigorous intellct, and in addition, possessed
an indomitable energy that shrank from no labor. He was admirably fitted for
western pioneer life. He was hardy, self-denying, courageous, and independent.
Few men of his day were more influential in guiding the thoughts and forming the
institutions of the West. He gave his whole power, physical and intellectual, to
his work. His devotion to his work seemed at times to take precedence over
everything else, even his love for his family. A story is told of him to the
effect that having been absent from his family several months while serving as
Secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society in Philadelphia, he
reached home by stage one morning, and unnoticed by any of the family, went into
his study. There he found a great accumulation of letters and papers which the
mail had brought during his absence. He at once became absorbed in their
examination, and late in the afternoon some member of the family was surprised
to find him in his study peering over his papers.
Among the settlers who came
about the time Illinois became a state were the Mitchell brothers, Edward and
Samuel. They were born in Maryland, served in the Revolutionary War, lived in
Virginia for a time and were among the early Methodists of that region. They
both became Methodist preachers. Samuel settled about where Rentchler Station
was afterward located, and Edward at Turkey Hill and lived there till his death
in 1837, at the age of seventy eight. Samuel later moved to Galena and lived to
a good old age. It is said that he still sometimes preached after he was eighty
years old. Three of his sons were preachers. When the brothers came to Illinois
they found religion much neglected, so they, with the help of a few neighbors,
built a house of worship that was used for many years both as a church and a
school house. Here the ordinances of religion were administered without money
and without price. Edward Mitchell brought with him to Illinois his two
sons-in-law, John Henry Dennis and Major Washington West, and a number of negro
slaves, the whole group constituting a colony of fifty-seven people. Dennis
settled in 1883 on a farm three miles south of Belleville. He was a gentleman of
the old school and had obtained a thorough education at Hampden-Sidney College,
in Virginia. He abandoned his farm in 1824 and moved to Belleville. At the
request of Governor Ninian Edwards, a great patron of learning, he engaged in
teaching, to which profession he devoted the remainder of his life. Many of his
pupils attained distinction at the bar and in different walks of life. The
school which he started in Belleville in 1824 was the first in the state in
which there was opportunity for the study of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages
and the higher mathematics. In this it antedated McKendree College by four
years. For a number of years it continued to draw students from St. Louis, and
as far east as the Wabash, but it was only a private school and never became
permanently established. Mr. Dennis later served as County Superintendent of
Schools.
Major West, who settled in what is known as West Prairie, a mile south of Belleville, was the son of Benjamin West, a native of Maryland and for seven years a soldier of the Revolutionary War. After the Revolution the family moved to Virginia. On coming to Illinois, Major West was accompanied by his parents, then nearly eighty years of age. He had acquired his military title by service in the War of 1812. He commanded a company of Virginia troops stationed for a while at Norfolk. He died in 1863, at the age of eighty-five. Several of his descendants have since been prominent citizens of Belleville. Joseph McClintock, a native of Bourbon County, Kentucky, reached St. Clair County with his family, including eight children, in November, 1818. He settled four miles south of Belleville and died there in 1846. Among his sons, William and James have held office in St. Clair County, and were always well-respected citizens. The southeast part of the county was settled in 1810 by the families of Hecox, Stubblefield, Perkins, Beasley, Nat Hill, and James and Reuben Lively. When the Indian troubles began during the War of 1812, they built a block house for protection against the dangers of Indian warfare. Other early settlers in this part of the county, who came about the year 1817 were William Pendleton, Andrew Free, and Isaac Rainey. The Lands, Dials, and Cooks came about the same time. Isaac Rainey laid out the town of Darmstadt, made his home there while he lived and died there in 1871. Jefferson Rainey, born in this county in 1820, was elected to the State Senate in 1875. A number of families came from the East and settled in the county in 1817 and 1818. Among them were those of Caleb Barker, William Fowler, Abel Thompson, Timothy Higgins and Deacon Samuel Smith. Caleb Barker settled in what is now West Belleville, and William Fowler on the east branch of Richland Creek, three miles south of Belleville. He afterward engaged in the carpenter's business and did the wood work for the first brick Court House at Belleville. Later his health failed and he moved to California. Deacon Samuel Smith settled on Richland Creek, and lived and died there, leaving numerous descendants in the county. In the year 1817 the English settlement of Prairie du Long was formed by the families of Bamber, Winstanley, Threlfell, Coop, Newsham, and others. The Woods came to that part of the county in 1806 and the Wildermans in 1808. Samuel Ogle, the father of David and Joseph Ogle, settled in 1819 four miles northwest of Belleville, purchasing an improvement first made by George Blair. The farm which he improved is now along the paved road leading from Belleville to St. Louis. For several years he served as County Commissioner.
When Illinois became a state in 1818 the settlements were still sparse. There were barely forty thousand people in the territory, which was the number necessary for statehood. Indeed, it is claimed that in some cases transients passing thru were counted in order to make up the required number, so anxious were the people for Illinois to become a state. It was not always easy for the immigrants to become acclimatized sufficently to maintain good health in the new country. Many of the people from Virginia and Kentucky had been accustomed to abundance of cold spring water and the invigorating air of the mountains. To them the change to the indifferent water from shallow wells, or sometimes stagnant pools was neither agreeable nor healthful. In summer the suffocating heat, and especially in the American Bottom, the air laden with malaria from the decay of the season's growth of exuberant vegetation caused sickness to hold its enervating sway in almost every household till the frosts of autumn and the snows of winter could restore the conditions of good health. The best physicians had difficulty in dealing successfully with the malarial malady known as "fever and ague." For years parts of Illinois had the reputation of being unhealthy regions.
But later science solved the problem and now malaria is almost unknown, even in the American Bottom. The prairies that were still unsettled were of vast extent, and in the summer season were covered with native prairie grass, which often grew as high as the head of a man on horseback. When the frosts of autumn had followed the bleaching rains and heat of summer, the prairie fire often swept over vast areas with the speed of the wind, leaving them black and desolate. Often the wild animals and sometimes people had their lives endangered by the raging death-dealing prairie fire. But that danger, too, has disappeared. Wild game was still abundant. In fact, some of the early settlers came to the country chiefly that they might enjoy the pleasures of hunting. Altho there were very few, if any, buffaloes east of the Mississippi, bears had not entirely disappeared, and deer sometimes in droves of half a hundred could be seen in the Spring, feeding on the luxuriant wild prairie grass. Wild turkeys were plentiful and grouse or prairie chickens were evident in such countless numbers that when they would fly into the fields of an evening, in lighting or rising they would produce a sound like distant thunder. Also in the autumn wild pigeons in countless myriads would visit the settlements. Sometimes flocks in their flight could be seen extending more than five miles long, as they passed to other feeding grounds or to their nightly roosting places. In those days the settler who was so inclined could easily furnish meat for his table the whole year thru, with no other implement than his gun and a little of his time both used in a way that the modern resident would regard as the finest kind of sport. In fact, the city man of these days has been known to travel thousands of miles and spend hundreds of dollars for the privilege of shooting a single deer or bear and thought it was well worth the outlay. This is merely one of the changes that a century of development has wrought.
Shadrach Bond was born in Frederick
County, Maryland, in the year 1773. He was the son of a pious father who gave
scriptural names to his boys. Shadrach's brothers were named Nicodemus and
Joshua. He was reared on a plantation and educated as a practical farmer, and
farming was his business in life except when he was engaged in public service
for his country. His school training was very limilted, but he was a close
observer and in the school of life he acquired a good knowledge of mankind and
the various springs of human action. In mature age he was an intelligent
practical citizen and servant of his fellow men. Governor Reynolds says of him,
"He was not a lady parlor scholar who read the novels of love-sick swains and
fainting girls, nor did he ever wash his face in cologne water, but he was
nature's nobleman, educated in the wide world of the human family, and his
conscience and sound judgment were his unerring preceptors. The whole creation
should be a man's school house and nature his teacher. Bond studied in this
college and Providence gave him a diploma."
He came to Illinois in 1794 and
lived with his uncle, Shadrach Bond, senior, for some years, and then purchased
a farm for himself in the American Bottom and improved it well. By his example
and influence he was a leader in a movement for the improvement of farming and
social conditions among the farm people, that began about 1800. He labored on
his farm with his own hands, with such help as he could obtain in that early
day. He felt an honest pride in being dependent on no one for support except
Mother Earth and "God that giveth the increase." He spent the happiest part of
his life on the farm. He possessed warm and ardent feelings and when in the
society of his friends around the festive board he was not only happy himself
but made all around him happy also. In personal appearance he was large and
portly, six feet tall and weighed over two hundred pounds, erect and
symmetrical, in manner and bearing noble, dignified, and commanding; his
features were regular but strong and masculine, his hair a glossy jet black, he
had large brilliant hazel eyes, his forehead was prominent and his countenance
indicated superior intellect. Such was the person of "Farmer Bond." In early
life he was a member of the Gernal Assembly of the Indiana Territory, which met
at Vincennes and he was a good, substantial member. In 1812 he was the first
delegate to our national Congress. There he secured the passage of a law to
grant the right of preemption to early settlers so that they might acquire a
clear title to the land they occupied, and thus secure the improvements they had
made upon it. This proved a great stimulus to the settlement of Illinois lands.
When the settlers felt that they could hold the immprovements they made, they
were encouraged to make more. This brought public lands into market and started
a stream of immigration which was strong, deep and constant. It was the keystone
to the arch of prosperity in Illinois. This one achievement entitles Bond to the
lasting gratitude of his fellow-countrymen. He remained in Congress only one
term. In 1814 he was appointed Receiver of Public Moneys at Kaskaskia. He then
moved from his farm in the American Bottom to Kaskaskia and established a farm
near that town. In 1818, when the first state officers were chosen for Illinois,
he was elected Governor without opposition. The office of Governor was
especially important during that first term in the time of transition from
Territorial to State government. He performed the duties of the office in a
satisfactory manner and retired with the good will of the people. Some time
later he was appointed Registrar of the land office at Kaskaskia, in which
office he continued till his death in 1830.
John Edgar was
a native of Ireland and a subject of King George III. In 1776 he was in the
British naval service and commander of a vessel on the Great Lakes. When the
colonies raised their standard of freedom and independence, he was in full
sympathy with them. His own people had chafed under English oppressions. He
could not bring himself to fight for a country which in his heart he despised,
and against a people that he admired and loved. He considered the matter
carefully and made his decision to cast his lot with the Americans. He resigned
from the army of King George, and in 1784 he came to Kaskaskia with a stock of
merchandise and established a store in that town. He lived there almost half a
century, until his death in 1832. He was an active business man, extensively
engaged in land trade, and also in the milling business. He erected a fine flour
mill on the same site on which M. Paget had built one sixty years before. This
mill was a great benefit to the public and very profitable to the proprietor.
Before the year 1800 he manufactured large quantities of flour for the New
Orleans market, which would compare favorably with the flour made on the
Atlantic coast.
Mr. Edgar was the owner of a splendid mansion in Kaskaskia,
where the traveller and the stranger always found a hearty welcome. No one ever
displayed more real hospitality than he did in his home. For many years he was
the wealthiest man in Illinois. He held real estate in many quarters and paid
more taxes than any man in the territory. But with all his wealth he was kind
and benevolent. Nor did it ever change his deportment from that of a true
American gentleman.
He was elected from Illinois as a member of the Legislature of the Northwest Territory. This General Assembly convened at Chilicothe, Ohio, and was held under the administration of Governor Arthur St. Clair. At home he served as Justice of the Peace and Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Edgar County, Illinois was named in his honor.
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