Alexander County IL Archives History - Books .....Chapter IV The City Of Cairo Of 1818 1910 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/il/ilfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com August 15, 2006, 4:54 am Book Title: A History Of The City Of Cairo Illiniois CHAPTER IV THE CITY OF CAIRO OF l8l8 THE act of Congress of May 18, 1796, provided for the appointment of a surveyor general, and prescribed fully how surveys of the public lands should be made and for the sale thereof at not less than $2.00 an acre. This price continued until its reduction to $1.25 an acre by the act of April 24, 1820, which discontinued sales on credit. Rufus Putnam was the first surveyor general and held the office from 1797 to 1803. Jared Mansfield succeeded him and filled the position from 1803 to 1813. He was succeeded by William Rector, who held the position from 1813 to 1824. In 1807, Mansfield, in pursuance of the said act, contracted with Archie Henry, a deputy surveyor, for the survey of our township Seventeen South, Range One, West of the Third Principal Meridian, and Henry surveyed it that year and reported the acreage at 6288.08 acres or something more than one-fourth of a full township, which contains 23,040 acres. Henry also surveyed the township next north of us and the one east of that, but in the year 1810. It is interesting to look at these old surveys of one hundred years ago as they were then mapped or platted, and to see how the river boundaries now compare with the old river boundaries as then given. William Rector surveyed Township Sixteen, Range Two, West, and he also surveyed and platted those four hundred acre tracts of land on the Mississippi, known long years ago as the Flannary, McElmurry and Standlee tracts. To these tracts of land reference will be more fully made hereafter. THE THIRD PRINCIPAL MERIDIAN.—Our system of land surveys, sometimes called the Rectangular System, was first authorized by an act or ordinance of congress, under the articles of the Confederation, of the date of May 20, 1785. It is not known who planned or devised the system, but the members of the committee which reported the act were Jefferson, Williamson, Howell, Gerry and Reas. The act was amended in some particulars but chiefly by the act of May 18, 1796, which prescribed fully, as above stated, how the surveys of the public lands should be made. Meridian and base lines were established in pursuance of the above acts. The first principal meridian is the dividing-line between Ohio and Indiana; the second starts at the mouth of Little Blue River in Indiana and coincides with longitude 86° 28'; the third starts at the mouth of the Ohio and coincides with longitude 89° 10' 30", and the fourth starts at the mouth of the Illinois River and coincides with longitude 90° 29' 56". This third principal meridian may be said to start at the middle of the Mississippi River and pass northward about six or seven hundred feet east of the Halliday Hotel, leaving probably fifty to seventy-five acres of land lying east of the line and below the Halliday. It crosses the Ohio River, cutting some fifty to seventy-five acres off Kentucky near the Illinois Central railroad bridge; and again crossing the Ohio, it passess a little west of Mound City and on northward, through or near to Carbondale, Centralia, Decatur, Bloomington and Rockford, and reaches the Wisconsin line about eighty miles west of Chicago. This meridian very nearly divides equally the territorial area of the state. The base line from which the townships are numbered north and south passes across the state a few miles south of Centralia. From that line southward and adjoining the meridian on the west are seventeen townships. The seventeenth, or last one, is the one in which the City of Cairo is situated; and from that base line northward and on the same side of the meridian, are forty-six townships, the forty-sixth, or last one, having for its north line the south line of the state of Wisconsin. We thus see that there is, from Cairo to the Wisconsin line, a line of sixty-three townships, each six miles square, making the distance from the center line of the Mississippi River, Cairo's boundary on the south, to the Wisconsin line, three hundred and seventy-eight miles. This is, approximately, the actual distance. Although this township and others were surveyed and platted so early in the last century, the Indian titles had to be extinguished before the lands could be offered for sale. Kaskaskia was made a land office by the act of March 26, 1804. By the treaty of September 25, 1818, made by Governor Ninian Edwards and Augustus Chouteau, with the Kaskaskia tribe of Indians, and also the Peorias, which latter tribe set up claim to the territory or to an interest therein, all Indian rights and titles were relinquished in the territory above described. Among the witnesses to this treaty is the name of Reuben H. Walworth, who afterwards became the great chancellor of the State of New York. By the act of May 10, 1800, sales of public lands were to be made upon the following terms:—One-fourth within forty days, one-fourth within two years, one-fourth within three years, and one-fourth within four years, after the sale or purchase; and in default for one year after the last payment became due, the land was to be sold at public sale, and if less than what was due was bid, the lands were to "revert to the United States." Before the formal and full extinguishment of the Indian titles by the treaty of September 25, 1818, namely, on the 26th and 28th days of July, 1817, John G. Comegys, of Baltimore, purchased at the land office at Kaskaskia, at which Michael Jones and Warren Brown were, respectively, the register and receiver, the South fractional halves of Sections Fourteen and Fifteen, fractional Sections Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four, the North fractional half of Section Twenty-Five, the North half of Section Twenty-Six, and the North East fractional Quarter of Section Twenty-Seven, all in Township Seventeen South, range One West, and all amounting to Eighteen Hundred acres, "or thereabouts." Comegys made the first two payments upon his purchases, and his executors made the third payment, and for default in the making of the last payment, the lands were, no doubt, offered for sale, and for want of purchasers for the amounts due, were forfeited and reverted to the United States. These lands were afterwards, namely, in August and September, 1835, again purchased and patents issued to the purchasers thereof, who were Sidney Breese, Miles A. Gilbert and Thomas Swanwick. Very little is now known concerning the correspondence, the conferences and other negotiations, which led up to the first attempt to establish a city here at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Sufficient, however, is known to authenticate fully the following account of the undertaking. The junction of the two rivers had long been looked upon as a geographical point of very great importance. Its commercial features, great as they were, were regarded as fully equaled by the advantages it possessed for a military post or center, commanding so fully a widely extended country eastward, westward, northward and southward. This was the view taken by the early explorers, and since their time, by every traveler and writer who has spoken or written about the place. The strong and often extravagant language used may be seen by reference to some of the old circulars issued by the proprietors from time to time. It is the language of those whom we, in these modern times, call promoters; but it is the language, also, of a great many men in nowise interested, and whose language the promoters merely quoted. But while the geographical position fully justified all that was said of it, its topographical features were largely the reverse; so much so, indeed, that the local disadvantages seemed to outweigh the advantages of the geographical position. The difficulty was obvious enough; a great central position, great rivers coming together, draining an empire in extent, but almost annually claiming dominion over the intervening land they themselves had created. It was the product or output of the rivers, and very naturally could not anywhere have an elevation above that to which the rivers themselves rose. The commingling waters could lift nothing higher than themselves; but the process had gone on for centuries, and had not the hand of man intervened, it would have gone on, no doubt, until the "made land" would have risen well nigh as high as the high-water mark of recent years, and there would have been little need of protective embankments or levees. There is no telling, of course, what the shifting Mississippi might have done with the site it had so largely created; but excepting that contingency, every overflow would have added to the elevation of the land, and in time the same would' have reached the high-water line of the present annual floods. But it is quite useless to conjecture, for that great river seems now quite as hard for us to know and comprehend as it was for the Indians, who told Joliet and Marquette of the Manitous which here and there infested its waters. The reasons for and against occupying the site were no doubt often considered. They were so equally balanced that nothing was done. But it was not thus to go on always; for the time came when a few men reached a working belief that the advantages overbalanced the disadvantages; and hence we are now brought to the time when the work of establishing a city here was actually entered upon. It seems to have been left to John G. Comegys, from the distant state of Maryland and of the city of Baltimore, to conclude that there was more to justify than to forbid an attempt to start a city at the confluence of the two rivers. He must have been well known in St. Louis, for we find that he was one of the witnesses to the Indian treaty made at St. Louis, in the territory of Louisiana, August 31, 1809. This treaty was signed by Peter Chouteau, and one hundred and ten chiefs and warriors of the Great and Little Osage Nation of Indians. The title of the treaty is in these words. Articles of treaty; made and concluded at Fort Clark, on the right bank of the Missouri, about five miles above Fire Prairie, in the territory of Louisiana, the loth day of November, in the year of our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eight, between Peter Choteau, Esq., agent for the Osage, and specially commissioned and instructed to enter into the same by his excellency, Meriwether Lewis, Governor, and Superintendent of Indian affairs for the territory aforesaid, in behalf of the United States of America, of the one part, and the chiefs and warriors of the Great and Little Osage, for themselves and their nations, respectively, on the other part." We make this quotation chiefly to show that Meriwether Lewis, of the celebrated Lewis & Clark expedition, was no doubt an acquaintance and friend of John G. Comegys. Confirmatory of this is the fact that at the sale of Comegys' personal effects by the executors of his will at Baltimore in 1819, two miniatures were sold, one that of Comegys, and the other having upon it the name "M. Lewis." THE ACT TO INCORPORATE THE CITY AND BANK OF CAIRO.—The incorporators named in this act of the territorial legislature, of January 9, 1818, were John G. Comegys, Thomas H. Harris, Thomas F, Herbert, Charles Slade, Shadrack Bond, Michael Jones, Warren Brown, Edward Humphreys and Charles W. Hunter. Comegys was a resident of Baltimore; Bond, Jones, Brown, and Humphreys, of Kaskaskia; Hunter of St. Louis; and Harris, Herbert and Slade, of Virginia, Harris of Richmond, and Slade and Herbert of Alexandria. We give here short biographical sketches of three or four of these men, commencing with Comegys who seems to have been the leader in the first attempt to establish a city here. John Gleaves Comegys was a native of Kent County, Maryland, across the bay from Baltimore. He was probably of German descent. The family resided near an arm of the bay into which Chester River runs, and in a region called "Quaker Neck." He was a descendant of Cornelius Comegys, who, with his whole family and one Hans Hanson, was naturalized by a special act of the general assembly of Maryland in the year 1672, one year before Joliet and Marquette made their journey down the Mississippi and passed this point the last of June, 1673. He was probably a Quaker in early life. There is nothing in his will to show that he had ever been married. He seems to have come West very early in 1800; for he is shown to have been carrying on business in Baltimore and St. Louis some years before he applied for his Cairo charter in 1818. In a city directory of Baltimore for 1807, we find C. & J. Comegys, Merchants, No. 190 Baltimore Street; and in the directories for 1812, 1814 and 1816, we find Comegys & Falconer, Merchants, at the same number; and in the directories for 1818 and 1819 we find the same firm, Comegys & Falconer, Merchants, No. 8th St. Charles Street. In Billon's Annals of St. Louis, 1804-1821, page 112, under the heading of "Business Notices," the firm name of Falconer & Comegys is given, and it is stated that they had just received, April 19, 1809, a general assortment of merchandise. On page 116, February 22, 1810, it is stated that the firm was closing out; and on page 118, it is further noted that the firm had been dissolved and that the style of the new firm would be J. G. Comegys & Company. Mr. Falconer, of Sixth Street, in our city, now deceased, was, no doubt, of the same family of Falconers of Maryland. The day of his death is not given, but the will bears date January 23, 1819, and was probated February 9th, following. The probate of the will was just one year and a month after the granting of the Cairo charter to him and the other incorporators, January 9, 1818. The incorporators named in the said act of January 9, 1818, lost no time in proceeding with their undertaking; and accordingly, upon the I4th day of that month they made a trust deed conveying to Henry S. Dodge and Elias K. Kane, of Kaskaskia, the same lands precisely as those described in the said act of the 9th of January. The grantors in the deed were Michael Jones, Shadrack Bond and Achsah Bond, his wife, Warren Brown and Edward Humphreys, all of Kaskaskia, in the territory of Illinois, John G. Comegys, of Baltimore. Thomas H. Harris, of Richmond, Virginia, Thomas F. Herbert and Charles Slade, of Alexandria, Virginia, Charles W. Hunter and Martha W. Hunter, his wife, of St. Louis, in the territory of Missouri. (See book A & B, pp. 121 to 126.) The men above named were in and by the said trust deed associated together for the purpose of laying out the City of Cairo, and by the charter were given banking privileges. The deed itself is a very lengthy one. It would require fifteen or twenty pages of this book to give it in full. It seems to have been drawn with great care and with many of the details and repetitions found in the old instruments of a hundred years ago. It conveys the lands above described which are spoken of therein as eighteen hundred acres "or thereabouts," and it recites that the Trustees accepted the trust, which required them to convey to the President and Directors of the Bank of Cairo, provided for in the act of incorporation, so much of the said land as might be required to be divided into lots; and the said President and Directors were required to hold the land so conveyed to them in trust for the purchasers of lots. The incorporators reserved the right to survey and plat so much of the land as they deemed necessary, and the Trustees were to reconvey to them all lands not required to be conveyed to the said President and Board of Directors. An examination of the act of incorporation will show how important the banking features of the enterprise were regarded. It was, no doubt, supposed that the bank, by means of the provisions of the trust deed and other securities it might obtain, would be able to raise the necessary funds with which to construct protective embankments and otherwise improve the site of the proposed city. Comegys and the persons associated with him, or some of them, no doubt, visited this point and became more or less familiar with its location and condition. He may have made a trip or two by steamboat from Pittsburg on his way from Baltimore to St. Louis. Steamboats had come into use on the two rivers a few years before that time. He had made many overland trips, no doubt, between Baltimore and St. Louis during the years 1805 to 1818. But whatever knowledge these men may have had of the site here, Comegys seems to have gone to Kas-kaskia, or to have been there, on the 26th and 28th days of July, 1817; for on those days he made the purchase hereinbefore spoken of. He and his associates had made these purchases as the first necessary step in their undertaking to establish a city here. Having obtained the land for a site, they seem to have lost no time in arranging to obtain legislative authority for doing what they could not well do without it. Their headquarters were Kaskaskia, the capital of the territory, and where the territorial legislature was to convene in the December of the year in which these purchases were made, the year 1817. As we have elsewhere already stated, this legislature, on the 9th day of January, 1818, enacted the first law that ever had any special reference to this place or point at the junction of the two rivers. A reference to the prospectus of the proprietors will show that their survey and plat of the city were made as the next and very necessary step in their undertaking. It seems that a Major Duncan did this work for them. The plat or map was lithographed in Baltimore early in 1818, by Cone & Freeman. According to this plat, city lots were offered for sale, if indeed any at all were offered, as recited in the very first lines of the prospectus. The map is an interesting one, indeed. The surveyor and maker of the map no doubt saw the plat and survey made by Arthur Henry in 1807. There may have been, however, another survey by the Government authorities prior to 1818. This is spoken of in one or two places. A copy of the map introduces this chapter. It will be seen that all the streets, except Ohio and Mississippi, run at right angles and are eighty feet wide. The blocks are divided by alleys running North and South; and between Delaware and Carolina Streets is a public square lying one-half north and one-half south of Main Street. There are four markets, each occupying a full block; No. 1, bounded by Boon, Harris, Edward and Hunter; No. 2, by Connecticut, Harris, New York and Hunter; No. 3, by Louisiana, Madison, Indiana and Jefferson, and No. 4, by Connecticut, Madison, Choteau and Jefferson. There are 290 blocks. The blocks fronting on Ohio and Mississippi Streets are not rectangular like the others, but vary in shape and size as those streets follow the river lines. Each block contains sixteen lots, except the blocks between Humphreys and North Streets, which contain twenty lots each. The lots are 66 by 120 feet. There are 4032 lots, and the numbering is from the northwest corner on the Mississippi to the southeast corner on the Ohio. The names and lengths of the streets are as follows: East and West streets:—South, Franklin, Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, Herbert, Brown, Adams, Main, Washington, Jones, Bond, Harris, Hunter, Slade, Humphreys and North. These seventeen East and West streets, running from river to river, vary somewhat in length, the shortest being 6100 feet and the longest, the most southern, 8400 feet. It will be observed that Comegys must have supervised the making of this plat or map; for eight of the streets bear the names of his eight co-incorporators under their act of January 9, 1818, but no street is given his own name. This circumstance exhibits a trait of Comegys' character that speaks for itself. The North and South streets are: Orleans, on the extreme southeast; next, Clay, Clark, Piatt, Howard, Wilt, Choteau, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Delaware, Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, Edwards, Boon, Breckinridge, Pope, Ames, and Short. These thirty North and South streets vary in length from 400 to 10,150 feet. Nine of them in the central part of the town, are each 10,150 feet or almost two miles. Then along the Mississippi River is Mississippi Street, along the Ohio River is Ohio Street, and they with South and North streets make one continuous street around the city of the length of seven miles. Shadrack Bond is, of course, well known as the first Governor of the State, and little need be said of him here. He died at Kaskaskia April 12, 1832, and was there buried; but in 1881, the remains of himself and of his wife were removed to Chester, and the State there erected a monument inscribed as follows: "In memory of Shadrack Bond, The first Governor of the State of Illinois; Born at Fredericktown, Maryland, November 24, A. D. 1778. Died at his residence near Kaskaskia, April 12, A. D. 1832. In recognition of his valuable public services, this monument was erected by the State A. D. 1883. Governor Bond filled many offices of trust and importance, all with integrity and honor." Governor Ford in his history says:—"Bond was the delegate to Congress, and while there his portrait was painted by Gilbert Stuart. It is now in the Historical Library at Chicago." The picture of Governor Bond found elsewhere is from that painting. Charles Slade was an Englishman, and came with his parents to Alexandria, Virginia. In 1816, he and his brothers, Richard and Thomas, came to Illinois and resided at or near what is now Carlyle, in Clinton County. He became a very prominent man in the politics of the State, and at the election for congressman in August, 1832, was the successful candidate. The opposing candidates were Governor Edwards, Sidney Breese, Charles Dunn, and Henry L. Webb. He took his seat in Congress in December, 1833, and upon its adjournment in March, 1834, after spending some months in the East, started home, but was taken ill of cholera, and died near Vincennes July II, 1834. These few facts are taken from an excellent biographical sketch by Dr. John F. Snyder, of the Illinois State Historical Society. See pages 207 to 210, Publication No. 8, 1903, of the said Society. Michael Jones and Shadrack Bond were, respectively, the Register and Receiver at the Land Office at Kaskaskia, which was established by the act of Congress of March 26, 1804. Jones and E. Backus, the latter of whom was the Receiver there at an early date, passed upon the claims to lands and reported them for confirmation under the act of March 3, 1791. They investigated and reported favorably the claims of the Flannarys, the McElmurrays, and of Standlee to those tracts of land lying on the Mississippi River just below Sante Fe. The surveys are numbered 525, 526, 527, 528, 529, and 684 and the claims 529, 530, 531, 680, 681, and 2564. William Rector made the surveys and this is noted on the government plat of Township Sixteen, South, Three West of the Third Principal Meridian, made in 1810. Jones was adjutant of the Randolph County regiment in the war of 1812, and a member from Gallatin County of the Constitutional Convention that framed our constitution of 1818. He was a member also of the first State Legislature and, it seems, received a vote or two for United States senator. Warren Brown was also a Federal officer of Kaskaskia and a portion of the time the Receiver of Public Moneys there. The will of John G. Comegys recites the payment by Comegys to Brown, as Receiver of Public Moneys, upon his purchases of July 26 and 28, 1817. Edward Humphreys is spoken of by Governor Reynolds as a man of fine education and an excellent teacher. Charles W. Hunter was a resident of St. Louis. He seems to have dealt extensively in lands in southern Illinois, and our records at the court-house, both before and after 1820, show many conveyances to and from him. Of the other two incor-porators, Thomas H. Harris and Thomas F. Herbert, we know very little. They and Slade had resided in Virginia. Elias Kent Kane, one of the two trustees in the trust deed of January 14, 1818, was a native of New York and a graduate of Yale College. From New York he went first to Carthage, Smith County, Tennessee, in 1813, and in the following year he removed to Kaskaskia. He was a member of the convention which framed our constitution of 1818. He is spoken of as the controlling spirit of that body, and it is said that many of its most important provisions and in general, the whole type and character of the instrument were due to him. He was our first Secretary of State, and was appointed by Governor Bond. He was for a time editor and publisher of the Republican Advocate at Kaskaskia. He was twice chosen United States senator and was a member of the senate at the time of the death of our other senator, John McLean, of Shawneetown; and in the congressional debates for the year 1829 will be found his short but very appropriate address upon the death of his colleague, which occurred October 14, 1829. Kane died while senator and at Washington, December n, 1835. Quite a full biographical sketch of him by Col. George W. Smith, of Chicago, is found in the Report of the Illinois State Bar Association for 1895. Many notices of him are also to be found in the publications of the Illinois State Historical Society. Henry S. Dodge, the other trustee or commissioner in the said deed of trust of January 14, 1818, was also a lawyer, and a resident of Kaskaskia and a prominent public man. He was the father of Mrs. Helen K. Dodge Edwards, who was born at Kaskaskia in the year 1819, and who died on the i8th day of March, 1909, in her ninetieth year, at Springfield. She was the widow of Judge Benjamin S. Edwards, a son of Governor Ninian Edwards, who was long one of the most prominent men of Springfield and of the central part of Illinois. Additional Comments: Extracted from: A HISTORY OF THE CITY OF CAIRO ILLINOIS BY JOHN M. LANSDEN WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS CHICAGO R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY 1910 COPYRIGHTED, 1910 BY JOHN M. LANSDEN The Lakeside Press R. R. 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