Alexander County IL Archives History - Books .....Chapter VII The Cairo City And Canal Company 1910
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Book Title: A History Of The City Of Cairo Illiniois

CHAPTER VII

THE CAIRO CITY AND CANAL COMPANY-SUCCEEDED BY THE CAIRO CITY PROPERTY

TRUST-CAIRO FROM JUNE 13, 1846, TO DECEMBER 23, 1853



HOLBROOK had taken the lead in everything relating to the organization and

operations of the Cairo City and Canal Company, and now that it could go on no

longer, he took the lead also in its transformation into another company or

concern to take up the work the other had to lay down. He no doubt regretted the

alternative of going on and into utter bankruptcy, or turning over the

enterprise to others; but seeing that it was unavoidable, he accepted the

situation, and, like any other brave-hearted man, sought to make the most

favorable arrangement he could for the old company and its stockholders. Their

enterprise had been a going one for five or six years at most, and the work of

settlement and the change from the old to the new management seem to have

required half of that length of time. There were many interests and persons to

be consulted, both at home and abroad, and for that and many other reasons the

negotiations proceeded slowly. There were creditors of every kind and

description, both secured and unsecured; but as a matter of fact, those actually

and well secured were very few. The first news that the enterprise was in a

failing condition sent down everywhere the values of all kinds of its property.

Its lands, its site for a city, could scarcely have depreciated faster or fallen

lower in value; and had there been no creditors, there is no telling what could

have been done. The geographical position of the place was all that saved the

undertaking from complete destruction. The people interested could not come to

the conclusion that they were wrong and that there was no reasonable chance to

build a city here. At all events, their interests led them to another attempt

under new and what seemed to be more favorable circumstances.



   The nature and terms of the final arrangement are so fully set forth in the

report of the committee of the stockholders of the new enterprise, made

September 29, 1858, parts of which are quoted elsewhere, that we need not refer

to them again.



   The first thing done, in pursuance of the new arrangement, was the

conveyance, June 13, 1846, by the Cairo City and Canal Company of all of its

property and estate to Thomas S. Taylor, of Philadelphia, and Charles Davis, of

New York City, preparatory to the formation of a trust to take charge of the

property and the enterprise as described in the report of September 29, 1858,

above referred to. This deed of June 13, 1846, is recorded in Register Book A,

on pages 123, etc. This deed was followed by the Declaration of Trust of

September 29, 1846, executed by Taylor and Davis, as Trustees, and thirteen

other persons, whose names are as follows: Illinois Exporting Company, J.

Robertson, Richard H. Bayard, James S. Newbold, Herman Cope, T. S. Taylor,

Vincent Eyre, Thomas Barnwall, assignee of Wright and Company, John Hibbert,

Henry Webb, Martha Allinson, James McKillop, and Thomas Lloyd. This Declaration

of Trust is recorded in Book N, on pages 465, etc.



   From the time of the Declaration of Trust, September 29, 1846, to December

23, 1853, the date of the first sales of lots in Cairo by the Trustees, we have

the long period of seven and a quarter years. This delay in offering lots and

lands for sale caused many complaints. The people knew something of the Holbrook

plan in this regard, and it seemed to them the management was going to follow

Holbrook's policy, which was to retain the title to all the real estate and give

only long leases thereof. Concerning this long delay and its effect upon the

people, Addison H. Sanders, in his newspaper, "The Cairo Delta," of September

20, 1849, wrote as follows, under the heading "Cairo— Good Bye To It":



   As we have before remarked, Cairo does not grow any, because no one can buy

or build, the property being in the hands of a company who are not yet prepared

to sell. The stockholders of this company are principally eastern gentlemen, and

the company decidedly American and represented by Charles Davis, of New York,

and Thomas Taylor, of Philadelphia, who hold the property in trust. We came to

Cairo under the belief that the property would have been offered for sale last

fall or spring. We believe that operations or improvements will be commenced

next spring but can no longer await an uncertainty. If we were sure the property

would then be offered for sale, no inducement could be,offered enticing enough

to urge our removal from Cairo, because we believe, we know in fact, that when

this property is offered for sale, the lots will be snatched up at high prices

and many of them by men who will guarantee to erect substantial houses on the

property within a given time. From that period may be dated the rapid rise of

Cairo from the village to the great and popular city. In one season the levees

could be put in complete repair, and Cairo thus perfectly protected against

flood, and during the same period, the ground on the inside could be raised for

blocks of houses fronting on the Ohio levee.



   This number of the "Delta" was the last one issued under Sanders'

supervision, and contains his valedictory. He was dissatisfied and greatly

discouraged, so much so that he decided to remove from the town. When he left,

the Trustees had been in charge for three years and yet the people could not

make purchases of real estate. He said, in the extract above given, that he

supposed they would be ready to make sales in the following spring; but it was

not until December 23, 1853, four years later, that they put their lots upon the

market. I have already stated that this long delay may have been due to the

desire of the Trustees to see what was to be done about a railroad. Col. Taylor

had come west and to Chicago in the year 1846. We find his name entered on the

roll of attorneys of the Supreme Court at its April term of that year, at

Ottawa. At the same time the names of General Isham N. Haynie and General Lewis

B. Parsons were entered upon the same roll. From that time on, Col. Taylor was

hard at work in the west and perhaps in the east also for the Trustees and no

doubt chiefly for and on behalf of their railroad enterprise. He had an office

with Mr. Justin Butterfield in Chicago and with him and a number of others a

great deal of work was done in and out of congress to further their plans for a

railroad. The Trustees and shareholders in the Cairo enterprise knew very well

what a railroad meant to them. They knew that from the very beginning in 1835

and 1836, the Cairo scheme was practically one and the same with, or was a part

of, the Central Railroad undertaking. The two had gone along together until the

upper part of the state had become able to sever them; and even then when the

Cairo managers had been pushed aside, they worked on, both in the east and in

the west, in season and out of season, caring only to have the southern terminus

fixed at this point.



   Confirmatory of what we have said above about the delay in offering lots for

sale and the interest the Trustees and shareholders had in the contemplated

railroad, we quote here a paragraph in a lengthy paper written by Col. Taylor

many years before his death. It traces the titles to the Cairo lands and gives

almost every important transaction, with the date thereof, including deeds, acts

of incorporation and other laws from February 25, 1816, to June 30, 1880. The

somewhat lengthy entry under date of May 10, 1876, is as follows:



   The Trustees of the Cairo City Property having expended in making material

improvements about Cairo $1,307,021.42, of which the sum of $184,505.64 was

expended upon the Ohio levee, the sum of $149,973.23 upon the Mississippi levee,

the sum of $70,455.06 upon the protection of the Mississippi River bank, the sum

of $571,534.08 upon general improvements and $330,553.41 upon taxes and

assessments, found themselves unable to pay the loans negotiated in 1863 and

J867, and the mortgages were therefore foreclosed and the property of the trust

sold out to the bond holders. The entire receipts of the Trustees of the Cairo

City Property, from sales, rents, wharfage and all other sources have been used

in improvements and other expenditures at Cairo, except 'what was required to

repay in New York moneys borrowed at the beginning of the trust, about 1848, to

defray expenses connected principally with arrangements and legislation for

procuring from congress the grant of land to the state to build the Illinois

Central Railroad, and for payment of interest on loans negotiated in 1863 and 1867.



   This congressional grant of September 20, 1850, was followed by the

incorporation of the Illinois Central Railroad Company February 10, 1851; and

February 17, 1851, the Holbrook people surrendered all their railroad rights of

every kind to the state in behalf of the new railroad enterprise; and at the end

of two months more, Col. Taylor was in Cairo to take charge and push forward the

matter of starting and building a city. It is thus clearly seen how all these

matters and things fit together and make one and the same scheme. They could

build no town—could not even start one until they knew certainly what could be

told the public at large concerning a railroad. Some preliminary work had been

done in the way of making surveys, plats, drawings, etc., but as for the

platting or mapping for a city or for the sale of lots nothing could be safely

done, except in a very provisional way. The Trustees lost no time in arranging

with the railroad company for terminal facilities in consideration of obtaining

good levees to protect the site from the inroads of the rivers; nor did they

think it wise to offer lots or lands for sale until the levee work was well

under way and assurances given purchasers of the safety of the city's site. We

are thus brought down to December 23, 1853, and are shown that the plan of the

Trustees was never that of the Holbrook management.



   Little was done during this period, as already stated, besides preserving as

best they could what was left over. It was during the latter part of this period

of seven and a quarter years that an attempt was made in the legislature to

incorporate the "Cairo City Property" namely, in the year 1852.



   The first section of the act is in these words:



   Section 1. Be it enacted by the people of the State of Illinois represented

in the General Assembly that Porter William Rawle, Sidney Breese, William R.

Porter, Robert J. Walker, Miles A. Gilbert, David J. Baker, Hamilton Brewer,

Kenneth McKenzie, P. Strachan, Elihu H. Townsend, Darius B. Holbrook, Garret K.

Barry, John A. Willink, Hiram Ketchum, F. R. Sherman, and their associates,

successors and assigns, be and they are hereby made a body corporate and politic

under the name of the Cairo City Property, and by that name and style shall be

and are hereby made capable in law and equity to sue and be sued, plead and be

impleaded, defend and be defended in any court or place whatsoever, to make and

use a common seal, the same to alter and renew at pleasure and by that name and

style be capable in law of contracting and being contracted with, purchasing,

holding and conveying real and personal estate for the purposes and uses of said

corporation, etc., etc.



   This section restricts the right of the company to own real estate to

fractional township seventeen, and, in particular, authorizes them to purchase

and hold those particular tracts of land and the improvements thereon known as

the Cairo City Property and then held and represented by Thomas S. Taylor, of

Philadelphia, and Charles Davis, of New York, as Trustees, and to lay off said

lands into lots for a town to be known as the City of Cairo, whenever a plan of

said city is made. Said section further authorizes the construction of dykes,

canals, levees and embankments for the security and preservation of the city and

lands and all improvements thereon from all and every inundation which can

possibly affect or injure the same. The second section limits the capital stock

to fifty thousand shares of one hundred dollars each and vests the immediate

government and direction of affairs in a board of not less than five trustees.

There are twelve or thirteen sections in the act. The ninth one granted some

favors with regard to taxes. The eleventh section confers the power to adopt

ordinances and regulations in regard to the public health and to make and

collect such charges for dockage and wharfage as the said company may deem

proper, not exceeding the rates established at St. Louis. The twelfth section

seems to authorize the county court of the county to erect another jail, the

same to be within the City of Cairo and to be under the control of the county;

but not at its expense. It seems to be implied that the company created by the

act would pay for the erection of the jail.



   The bill seems to have passed the House of Representatives June 11, 1851. But

when it reached the Senate it was so changed and amended as to be scarcely

recognizable. The whole of section ten, authorizing the company to establish and

maintain ferries, was stricken out. The senator from Johnson County, Major A. J.

Kuykendall, said he would vote for the bill if it could be amended in some

satisfactory way. He did not want to confer upon the company "municipal powers

equal to those exercised by the City of Alton." Senator Odam offered an

amendment requiring the act to be submitted to a vote of the people of the

county. Kuykendall's amendment striking out the provision in regard to

conferring upon the company the powers possessed by the City of Alton and Odam's

amendment requiring the act to be submitted to the voters of the county were

adopted; and thereupon, on motion of Kuykendall, the bill as amended was laid on

the table. On the motion to adopt the above amendments, eighteen senators voted

for them and four against. The eighteen were Cloud, Grass, Gregg, Gridley,

Kuykendall, Lansing, Mateson, Odam, Palmer, Parkes, Plato, Reddick, Stuart,

Talcott, Wallace, Webster, Wood, and Wynn. Those voting the other way were Judd,

Morrison, Osborne, and Richmond. It seems that the bill for an act to

incorporate the City of Cairo, of which we have spoken elsewhere, was pending at

this time and that the same failed of passage because of some peculiar provision

relative to the selection of the first city council and their long term of

office, which was to be five years.



   I would like to devote more space to this period from June 11, 1846, to

December 23, 1853, but I cannot do so. Judging by the attempt of the Trustees,

in 1852, to have the "Cairo City Property" and also the City of Cairo

incorporated and their failure as to both, and judging also by many other

matters and things, it must be inferred that they were, at least in one sense of

the word, feeling their way along. It was not until the Illinois Central

Railroad was well under way of construction that the Trustees and the public

began to feel strong assurance of a prosperous future for the city.





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. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO



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