Alexander County IL Archives History - Books .....Chapter XXIV Organizers Of The City 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 September 20, 2007, 2:10 pm Book Title: A History Of The City Of Cairo Illiniois CHAPTER XXIV DARIUS B. HOLBROOK, MILES A. GILBERT, SAMUEL STAATS TAYLOR, WILLIAM P. HALLIDAY, HALLIDAY BROTHERS DARIUS BLAKE HOLBROOK.—The second attempt to establish a city here seems to have been begun by Darius Blake Holbrook, of whom we have already frequently spoken. He was not an adventurer, a dreamer, or a man of schemes merely. Force of character, strong will, ceaseless activity and enterprise, initiative, ability to bring others to see things as he saw them, were only some of his remarkable endowments. These characteristics were noticeable at all times. Nothing within the bounds of reason seemed too hard for him. Where others drew back he pushed forward. He had no patience with men who floated with the current. He would take advantage of it if it carried him toward the goal of his plans but if in the other direction, he turned against it and buffeted its waves with a faith and belief that seemed unconquerable. He must have known all about this place or geographical point before he came here. He knew of the attempt and failure of 1818. He knew or soon ascertained who were the owners of the lands between the rivers; for nothing could be safely done without first acquiring good titles to the lands. He knew the low site, the river floods, the abrasions and inroads upon the shores, the need of strong levees and of the clearing off of the dense woods. He knew that while the geographical point was all that could be desired, the proposed city must have a secure foundation, a safe and enduring site. It was more than starting and building a city. A site had to be first provided. But he seems to have firmly believed that he and those associated with him could bring moneyed men to such a belief in the feasibility of the enterprise as would lead them to make all necessary advances of means. It was then as it was in 1818 and is now, a question of money. As the first promoters in 1818 left everything to the control and management of Comegys, so in 1836 to 1846, Holbrook seems to have been invested with unlimited authority. He was said to be not merely the chief representative of the companies but the companies themselves. If such was the case, it must have been due to the very general belief that what he wanted was needed and what he did not want was to be laid aside. He made two or three trips to London, and the great banking house of John Wright & Company became his company's financial representative in that city. These bankers were at the same time the agents of our state for the sale of its canal bonds. Besides Holbrook, there were in London Richard M. Young, then one of our United States senators, and Ex-Governor John Reynolds, agents for the state and arranging with Wright & Company to take charge of the state's bond sales. Daniel Webster was also there, and while there gave his written opinion to Holbrook regarding his company's title to the lands it had mortgaged to the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company to secure the payment of its Cairo bonds. Holbrook did everything, was everywhere, saw everybody, legislators and capitalists and other men of prominence and influence whom he supposed might aid him. He secured in London large sums of money and must have used, here in Cairo, more than a million of dollars. He paid large prices for the lands he bought from the Kaskaskia people or their heirs or grantees. The old record books "D" and "E," of 1836, 1837 and 1838, now at the court-house, show very large sums as the considerations for the various deeds taken by Holbrook. He and his company had great faith in their enterprise, and they determined to obtain titles to the land almost regardless of the price demanded. We cannot go very fully into this matter here, but will hurry on to its close by saying that Holbrook worked on faithfully even after the failure of Wright & Company. He must have known, however, long before the end came that his attempt must meet a fate not wholly unlike that which came to the Kaskaskia people in 1818. The great London bankers had turned against Wright & Company and brought them to bankruptcy, and he knew that if he could not raise money on his Cairo bonds at the outstart in this country, he certainly could not do it now that the whole financial world was in a state of suspense as to what would be the outcome of the monetary depression almost the world over. Holbrook, seeing that he could go no further, set about finding what entirely new arrangements might be made by which he and those associated with him might save something out of the failed enterprise. A number of writers about Cairo have criticized him and some of them very severely. We do not know enough of the facts and circumstances, running through a number of years, to enable us to express a very satisfactory opinion as to those matters about which he was criticized. The work which he had undertaken was difficult in the extreme; but as we have before stated, he seems to have firmly believed that he could accomplish it. After the first two or three years he must have seen more clearly the difficulty of the situation. These called forth only greater efforts on his part; but when it became more and more evident that the situation was growing more and more doubtful, he may have resorted to measures which seemed more or less inconsistent with that straightforward kind of conduct about which all men speak well but which many of them find it exceedingly difficult to follow when overtaken by unexpected embarrassments. Observation shows that most men in times of severe financial trial and when failure seems impending, will turn aside here and there and do this or that and the other thing which they would have before severely criticized. Holbrook was determined that his enterprise should not fail, and it was a long time before he could see anything but success ahead of him. What he did at Washington and Springfield and New York, even as late as 1849, shows that his hope was not entirely gone, although his Cairo City and Canal Company had already sold out to the Cairo City Property Trust. It may not be strictly accurate to speak of Holbrook as having begun the second attempt to start a city here. Breese, Gilbert and Swanwick seem to have first moved in the matter and to have sold to Holbrook, late in 1835 or early in 1836, an interest in their land entries here of August and September, 1835, and this seems to have been the first introduction of Holbrook to the proposed scheme. From that time forward, he became the leading spirit of the enterprise, long drawn out and beset with many difficulties. Nothing shows more clearly Holbrook's influence than the closing months of Senator Douglas's efforts to obtain the land grant of September 20, 1850, for the Illinois Central Railroad. Douglas knew Holbrook well, and their interviews at Washington and elsewhere left no doubt upon his mind that Holbrook was all the while looking after the interests of Cairo and the railroad enterprise represented by the Great Western Railway charter of March 6, 1843. The legislature at Springfield, at the instance of Holbrook, amended the Great Western charter February 10, 1849, to the great disappointment of Douglas, who, fearing that his own plans might be seriously interfered with, left Washington for Springfield and there addressed the members of the legislature, whom he found more or less disinclined to accept his view of the situation; and there is no telling what shape the matter would have assumed had not Holbrook yielded his personal preferences. He seems to have done so only after obtaining an explicit promise that the act of the legislature incorporating the new central railroad company should contain a clause requiring it to start at and be built from Cairo. He remembered well the great effort made in 1838 to change the southern terminus of the state's central railroad from Cairo to a point near Grand Chain; and he put forth every effort to guard against another attempt of a like nature with the new road; and hence it is recited in the charter of February 10, 1851, that the road should run "from the southern terminus of the Illinois and Michigan canal to a point at the city of Cairo," and again, that it should "run from the city of Cairo to the southern terminus of the Illinois and Michigan canal." We have elsewhere presented somewhat fully the early history of the Illinois Central Railroad, and have shown that it was originally a southern Illinois enterprise, if not in fact a Cairo enterprise. In considering Judge Breese's connection with the great undertaking, Holbrook must not be forgotten; nor should Jenkins, Gilbert and others, who assisted in the great work, although less prominently. As elsewhere stated, the New York and Chicago men did not care much whether the terminus should be at Cairo or fifteen or twenty miles up the Ohio River. It is probable that many of them preferred the Grand Chain location; but Holbrook stood in the way. He had many strong friends, and controlled two or three charters, which Senator Douglas felt should be gotten out of the way before he could rest easy regarding Holbrook and his fertility of expedients. Holbrook told him he would surrender his charters, but only upon condition that it should be plainly expressed in the act incorporating the railroad company that the southern terminus of the railroad should be at the city of Cairo. From January 16, 1836, to February 10, 1851, we have the period of something over fifteen years, during all of which Holbrook never swerved an inch in his devotion to the city of Cairo. The very best years of his life he had put into his attempt to establish it; and if we follow along and note with some care the steps marked out plainly from 1836 to this time, we must readily agree that the Cairo of to-day owes its existence more to Darius Blake Holbrook than to any other man. The following short sketch of her father was furnished me by his daughter, Baroness Caroline Holbrook Von Roques. "Darius Blake Holbrook was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The Holbrooks were from Shropshire, England. His mother was a Ridgeway. Pier family came to the United States in 1628. Richard Ridgeway was the brother of Sir Thomas Ridgeway, the first Earl of Londonderry, 1622, which title lapsed and passed to the Tempests, on failure of male heirs in England. The Ridgeways came to the United States on the ship Jacob and Mary in November, 1679. They landed in the Delaware River and settled in Springfield township, Burlington County, New Jersey. "He was a prominent man in the city of New York for many years, and had great ability and large personal influence with all with whom he was associated. Besides his work in establishing the city of Cairo, Illinois, and in securing the great land grant for the Illinois Central Railroad, he was associated with Cyrus W. Field in laying the first Atlantic cable. He died in New York City, January 22, 1858. His wife was Elizabeth Thurston Ingraham; and their only child, now Baroness Caroline Holbrook Von Roques, married William Chandler, of the banking house of St. Johns, Powers & Company, of Mobile, Alabama. To them were born Holbrook St. John Chandler, who died in Paris unmarried, and Florence Elizabeth Chandler, who married James Maybrick in St. James, Picadilly, London, and whose children are James C. Maybrick and Gladys Maybrick." MILES A. GILBERT.—Miles A. Gilbert was born in Hartford, Connecticut, January 1, 1810. After he had finished his education in 1829, he went into the wholesale store of Peas & Company in Middletown, Connecticut, where he remained two years. In the autumn of 1831, having an advantageous offer made him, he went to New Orleans as head salesman in a large wholesale dry goods establishment and remained there until May, 1832, when the weather becoming very hot and fearing yellow fever, he purchased a general assortment of goods suitable for the country trade and went to Kaskaskia, where he arrived June 8th, of that year, and where he engaged in merchandising for eleven years, having two stores in the country and one in town. He went east once a year to purchase dry goods and to New Orleans to purchase groceries. On the 17th day of November, 1836, he married Ann Eliza Baker, eldest daughter of the Hon. David J. Baker, senior. In the spring of 1843 he was appointed sole agent of the Cairo City and Canal Company and moved to Cairo in April of that year. During that year he had the cross levee built, which kept out the great flood of 1844. After remaining here for three years, he asked the Trustees to be relieved and some one else appointed in his place. This was promised but not fulfilled for several years. In the spring of 1847, having spent most of the previous fall and winter at Alton with his family, he moved to St. Mary's Landing on the Mississippi, where he owned about three thousand acres of land; and in the latter part of 1848, he had a portion of the same surveyed and laid out in town lots, and called the place "Ste. Mary, Mo." He continued to act as agent for the company, going to Cairo two or three times every month, until finally Samuel Staats Taylor, in April, 1851, was appointed to succeed him as agent. He was an active union man and did much to keep the state of Missouri in the union. In 1866 he was elected county and probate judge of St. Genevieve County and was twice elected thereafter and held that office for the period of twelve years. He died at his home, Oakwood, Ste. Mary, January 21, 1901. In one of the obituary notices in the "Ste. Genevieve Herald" of January 26th, a few days after his death, it is said that Judge Gilbert was a man of clear judgment and of singular justness and fairness in all the relations of life, and was loved by his many friends and respected by all who knew him. To show the relationship between the Gilberts, the Bakers and the Candees, it may be stated that Judge Gilbert's sister, Eunetia, married Stephen S. Candee. They were the parents of Mrs. Anna E. Safford and of Mr. Henry H. Candee, now deceased. We know of no families now in Cairo who have been so long and so prominently connected with our city and its varied interest as these I have just mentioned. I need not say they have ever been held in very high esteem. *I have a number of times herein referred to Cairo as being in its origin largely a Kaskaskia town. Here is another illustration of the fact. In the "History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties," often referred to herein, is a somewhat lengthy biographical sketch of Judge Gilbert; and we take from the same an account of some of the events which took place in 1843, when he was placed in charge of the affairs of the Cairo City and Canal Company, which had then been forced to suspend all its work and operations of every kind. It gives us a clear view of the very unfortunate condition of things which followed the failure of that company. The account is dated May 11, 1883, and is as follows: "The company having failed in the spring of 1843, I was selected as its agent to take charge of all of its property at Cairo. A large number of men were thrown out of employment and were in a wild, ungovernable state of confusion, clamoring for their pay. Many of them wanted me to sell the splendid machinery in the machine and carpenter shops, a building one hundred and fifty by two hundred feet, which was full of the most expensive machinery, most of which was attached to the building. I had no authority to remove the machinery and so told them, and thereupon they made all kinds of threats that they would break into the buildings and take out what they wanted. The leaders went off to gather up their mob forces and I at once secured four or five good laboring men on whom I could rely and barricaded the doors and windows and was ready for them when they returned. I had shot guns and pistols, all I wanted. They first tried the main front door, then the windows, but not successfully. Then they went for ladders, when I went to a window upstairs and told them I was put there to protect the property and protect it I would: and that if they got one piece of it it would be over my dead body; but that if they would wait until matters could be arranged in New York, where the president of the company was raising money to pay off all the laboring men, their interests would be fully protected. I further told them they had no lawful right, or right of any kind, to break in and take any of the property, and that if they injured me, or should kill me in my effort to protect the property, it would be murder. I plead with them to refrain from violence, the evil consequence of which would fall upon themselves, and that if they would go away and be peaceful and quiet they would receive their pay in due time. They went off about a hundred yards and held a consultation, and came back to the charge more furious than before. The building back of the levee was about ten feet above the ground, and in its center was a very large trap door for taking in machinery and lumber and putting out the same. The mob succeeded in breaking this trap door open, and then attempted to boost their men up into the building. I stood over the trap door with a pistol in one hand and a good effective club in the other, and called some of them by name and stated that I did not want to hurt them but that I would kill the first man that put his head above the floor. Several of them put their hands up over the floor and I gave them each a good blow with my club. Finally, after every imaginable way had been tried, they had one man who was somewhat intoxicated agree to get in. He tried it, I warned him, and when his hands came above the floor I hit them a good rap but he did not mind it. They kept pushing him up and I gave him another severe blow. They still kept on forcing him up into the room, when, I renewing my attack upon him with greater force and strength than ever, he called out to them to let him down and out and they did so. They could find no other to take his place, and I had the men with me block up the trap door and further barricade the windows. They came to the charge off and on that whole day. They smashed up the doors and windows but did not succeed in obtaining entrance, and finally after dark went away. I kept watch with my men all the night, and kept guard for many days until the better men of the mob, finding that they were likely to get into great trouble, influenced the others to desist from further attempts." We have elsewhere referred to this incident and experience of the Cairo City and Canal Company, but here we have the account from first hand and from one of the company's leading representatives. SAMUEL STAATS TAYLOR came to Cairo as the agent of the Trustees of the Cairo City Property, April 15, 1851. He remained here until his death at his home in Cairo, May 14, 1896. He was here, therefore, forty-five years. On his arrival he took immediate charge and supervision of all the trust property and continued in its management under the directions of the Trustees until near the time of his death. There were a few changes in the personnel of the Trustees; and in the year 1876 the trust property was sold in proceedings in the United States court at Springfield to foreclose the Hiram Ketchum mortgages given in 1863 and in 1867, and a new trust formed under the name and style of the Cairo Trust Property, and he and Edwin Parsons became the Trustees of the new trust. It is quite impossible to give an account, in any kind of detail, of Col. Taylor's long and hard work during the forty-five years of his stay here. I have called it hard work. It was such work, such care, such management, that had he known what the work would be, its long continuance and its disappointing results, he would not have consented to undertake it. But he and his Trustees and the shareholders, one and all, seemed to have had strong hopes that the third attempt to establish a city here would certainly prove successful. On no other theory can we account for their purchase of the Holbrook interests, and their subsequent endeavor to bring order out of disorder and confusion, and infuse into the public mind the trust and belief so remarkably disappointed twice before. Their undertaking was more than the building of a city. The site it was to occupy was to be protected against the abrading currents of the great rivers and from their overflowing waters. Their very first important contracts related directly to the construction of levees to keep out the high waters and to securing the banks upon which the levees stood. It does not now seem that they ever contemplated gradually filling the town to high-water mark instead of inclosing a large district of country with levees and protecting the same from the cutting of the rivers. They expected the town would grow rapidly and that all their lands would be needed to supply the demand for town lots. Hence they, from the very first, economized space, and made their lots 25 by 100 feet only, and their streets 50 and 60 feet in width, with a few exceptions, and dispensed with alleys altogether. The Trustees and the stockholders must have looked upon Col. Taylor as the man for the place and the undertaking; and he must have known that his selection indicated what they expected of him. He came in the faith and belief that their and his work was reasonably practicable and promising of success, whatever else it had been in 1818 and in 1836. They and he well knew of the former failures and the causes thereof. These must have afforded no inconsiderable light in deciding in favor of the third attempt or venture. Their eyes were fully open to the geography and topography of the situation. One thing only was required, and that was money. Men to plan and manage the enterprise and use wisely the funds provided were within easy reach, comparatively. They could not have been blinded by the shining of the outlook. The experiences of their predecessors were sufficient to temper any exuberance of spirit and to indicate what errors and mistakes were to be avoided. Col. Taylor came here as the representative of a new company. It was not a corporation but a land trust; but for all practical purposes it was a corporation, a foreign corporation. It owned or controlled almost every acre of land from the junction of the two rivers to an east and west line north of Cache River. These lands amounted to 9732 acres. Eastern men, under the lead of Senator Douglas, had procured their charter of February 10, 1851, for their Illinois Central Railroad. This was but two months before the arrival of Col. Taylor at Cairo. The road was this time certainly to be built, and as in former cases, it was to be built to a point at the city of Cairo. This requirement of the charter, therefore, at once brought the railroad company and the Trustees together to negotiate as to the terms upon which the company might enter Cairo and establish its southern terminal facilities. Col. Taylor had been here less than three months when the contract of June 11, 1851, was entered into by the railroad company and the Trustees. A supplemental contract was made by the same parties May 31, 1855, to make clearer some of the provisions of the first contract, and to provide for other features of the situation not before considered. We recite these matters and things here to show the importance of the situation with which Col. Taylor was expected to deal. He was on the ground and soon came to know more than any one else about the needs of the Trustees and of the land enterprise in which they had embarked. The Trustees needed their city site protected from floods; so also did the railroad company; but the latter needed lands and rights-of-way and could not build upon the natural surface but upon earth embankments only; and hence it was naturally provided that the embankment should extend around the city and be and become protective levees upon which the railroad company's tracks should be placed and its trains run. Wide embankments were not needed for railroad purposes but were for protection against the rivers; and hence the embankments were to be eighty feet wide on the top and sufficiently high to keep out the highest known waters in the rivers. These contracts are not recorded, for what reason I do not know, but they have been printed in three or four editions of our city ordinance books, commencing with that of 1872. Col. Taylor, time and time again, complained of the failure of the railroad company to observe the requirements of these contracts, and he carefully kept an account of its shortcomings and made a record of the moneys he had to spend to make good what it should have done. In the course of time, the Trustees sued the company in the United States Court at Springfield to recover what they claimed to be due from the company. Whether or not it was so intended, the suit, it seems, became much like a suit to obtain a proper construction of a contract. One important branch of the controversy related to the duty to protect the site of the city or the river banks, where the levees were, or were to be, from abrasion and destruction. The railroad company said its duty was to build the levees, but that under the contracts the Trustees were to maintain the site or foundations upon which the levees were, or were to be built. We cannot pursue this matter further than to say that July 18, 1872, the long pending suit was compromised by a release of the railroad company from the two contracts and its conveyance back to the Trustees of its 100-foot strip of ground around the city and the payment to the Trustees of $80,000.00. (See book No. 7, page 287, in the recorder's office.) With this exception and possibly one or two others, the Trustees and the railroad company have been in accord,—too much so, some have thought, for the good of the city. Col. Taylor's supervision here extended for many years to levee building and repairing, to river bank protection, to clearing off the dense woods which everywhere covered their extended acreage, to laying out, surveying and platting the town itself, a most difficult undertaking,—to fixing the prices of lots and lands and making sales thereof, to wharf construction and the collection of wharfage, to preparing as best he could, with the means at his command, for river floods, and to looking after the health of the city and largely to the general welfare and government of the people. The town or city was in large measure the town and city of the Trustees, and his duty extended almost to everything that in any way related to them or to the people of the community. To attend to and properly supervise all these divers matters and things and report them annually and fully to the Trustees and stockholders a thousand miles away, was, as we have already said, hard work and labor. Most men would have fled from such exacting duties, but Col. Taylor performed them very faithfully for forty years. But Col. Taylor's faithful service extended, in one or two respects, beyond reasonable bounds. The alternative could have been loss of position only, which could never have been a very great loss to him. The Trustees seldom, if ever, required him to do anything which he personally thought he ought not to do. Let us explain: It was to be expected that the Trustees would have litigation of greater or less importance. They were non-residents and citizens of New York and Philadelphia; and when they were sued they uniformly removed the case to the United States Circuit Court at Springfield. Col. Taylor was here and had charge generally of the situation, including the litigation, and when it became necessary to remove a case from a state to a Federal court, he generally made the requisite affidavits and executed the other necessary papers. Until 1888, if the suit involved as much as $500.00, a removal could be had. In that year the amount was increased to $2000.00. This uniform custom of the Trustees gained them no favor with the people of Cairo. But on the contrary, it removed the Trustees farther from the people of the town and separated the latter farther from Col. Taylor, although a resident and citizen with them. From 1851 to 1864, Col. Taylor had been a resident of Cairo and a citizen of the state and had been town Trustee for the two years' term of the town's existence and mayor of Cairo six several times; but in the year 1864 he changed his citizenship from Illinois to Missouri and took up his residence in St. Louis. Scarcely any one knew this. He and his family remained here at his residence on Washington Avenue and Sixth Street and afterwards on Washington Avenue and Twenty-Eighth Street. He had no home or residence in St. Louis, but claimed to have a room or rooms at the Southern Hotel. This change in citizenship was due, no doubt, to a desire to render better service to the trust in respect to litigation. Under the city acts of incorporation of 1857 and I867, and the amendment of 1868, none of the higher officers of the city were required to be citizens or residents of Illinois. Col. Taylor no doubt supervised this feature of the enactments. No change came until the city became incorporated under the general act of April 10, 1872, for the incorporation of cities and villages, which was in January, 1873. We refer to this here for the purpose of accounting in some degree for the increasing want of sympathy and co-operation between the people of the town and the Trustees and their representative. Something of this kind had no doubt come over from the Holbrook administration. It seems to have had a steady growth until there arose in the city two parties, the one the Taylor party and the other the anti-Taylor party. It made its appearance, in a small way, almost as far back as 1851, the year Col. Taylor came here. It arose chiefly from the first efforts of the Trustees to control the wharf and collect wharfage from all water craft of every description. There were all kinds of boats at the landing, flat boats, keel boats, trading boats and steamboats, and many of the Cairo people were largely interested in the business done on the rivers. This state of feeling between the people and the Trustees is further seen in the charge Col. Taylor made against the four other town Trustees in 1856, which was that it was their custom to hold meetings and transact town business without letting him know anything about the meetings. And so the little breach widened more and more, until in the year 1864 the people put up David J. Baker for mayor against Col. Taylor, who had been elected mayor six several times, beginning with 1857. H. Watson Webb was elected mayor in 1863 without opposition. Judge Baker's father was David J. Baker, senior, who was a very able man, lawyer and judge and had long been a man of the Trustees' own right hand; and it was hardly to be supposed that David J. Baker, junior, also an able man and a lawyer, would yield to entreaties to make the race for mayor against Col. Taylor, who up to that time had been very successful in vanquishing his opponents. Judge Baker made the race, however, which he would not have done had he not known of the very strong feeling against the Trustees and their Cairo policies. It was a heated contest, such as never had occurred before in Cairo and probably not since. In a vote of 734, Judge Baker received a majority of 26 votes. Even at this time, you will find a few men in Cairo who can tell all about that city election. It was a kind of landmark, a fixed date from and to which many things were referred or calculated. It was at this time that Col. Taylor changed his citizenship from Illinois to Missouri. There were no politics in this situation of things in the city. It was a Taylor party and an anti-Taylor party. Col. Taylor was on the ground and was regarded as representing, in the highest degree and in every sense, the Trustees and their management. There was something of a personal nature in it, arising from the belief that Col. Taylor entered heartily into the plans of the Trustees and had just as little sympathy for the people as the Trustees themselves, the one in Philadelphia and the other in New York. Since that election there has never been another at which there was such a drawing of the Taylor and the anti-Taylor line; but the Trustees are still with us, with a change of name and some changes in interest. Many years ago the city began to pass out of their hands and to enter upon self-control. It is a better state of things, and it would no doubt have been better had it commenced earlier. It may be thought that I have devoted too much space to these matters. But I reply that few towns or cities in the country have been so peculiarly situated as Cairo. About this 1 need only refer to the chapter on Cairo in "Servitude to Land Companies." It may be also very properly remarked that the Trustees, and Col. Taylor as their immediate and most important representative, became to the people of Cairo public men or officials whose acts and doings in very many respects affected the general public interests. The people were here and interested in the city and its growth and prosperity, and they believed the Trustees could do more than all others for the city which they had started out to build. Persons bearing such relations to public interests cannot reasonably expect the same exemption from comment and criticism as may one whose interests and duties are wholly personal or individual. The part}' spirit, so long existing in the city, was of such nature and extent that to omit reference to it in a history of the city could scarcely be justified. It was talked of and written about here at home and in other parts of the country, and the town was spoken of frequently as owned and controlled by a few persons, and they living at a distance. It was a custom of the people of the place to notice somewThat carefully whether the new arrivals in the city for residence here would ally themselves with the one or the other party. And as still further showing what the condition of things was in this respect it may be stated that an election of no kind could be held without this spirit openly making its appearance. In these more modern times we often hear it enjoined upon the business and leading men in the community to get together; but in Cairo for three or four decades such an expression was never heard. The one party generally felt too strong to talk about such a thing, and the other was never in a sufficiently good humor to mention the matter. It was not a feud,—no, not at all; but it is expressing the thing rather mildly to say that it was a constant state of strained relations. Col. Taylor was never a man of the people. His birth, his training, his tastes, his life, were away from and in a sense above them. They looked upon him as without sympathy for them and as caring nothing for their interests. His life here seemed in keeping with his claim of citizenship elsewhere. There were exhibited all those appearances of foreign landlords; for such were the actual relations of the Trustees to the people. Col. Taylor's manner and carriage all indicated, perhaps too much but yet naturally, that he dwelt apart and not among the people, who thought he ought to be more of a servant to them and less of a lord over them. They would have welcomed his advances, but none seem ever to have been made. He did not seem to know this because he did not feel it. It was out of keeping with his strong nature, which did not appear to need those associations and that friendly social intercourse which most men desire and seek. While the policies of the Trustees may not always have been what the interest of the city and the people at large required or needed or thought they needed, Col. Taylor himself was ever watchful of the interest of the town and its peculiar site and situation. Under his administration of the trust, for he seemed to administer it, no one ever tinkered with the levees. To him they were as the very life of the city. He had gone through all the trying experiences of river floods, beginning with 1858, and knew far better than any one else what the levees meant to the city; and no one could remove a shovel of earth from them or excavate an inch near these city life securities or dream of piercing through them with any kind of an opening, without the most formal permission, signed, sealed and delivered beforehand. And when any levee was to be pierced or cut anywhere or for any purpose, the engineers were examined, cross-examined and minutely instructed, and supplementing it all we would see him personally present to make sure all was going on just right. This is a fair illustration of the attention he gave to everything he had in hand which was of any consequence. We have often heard of men who in a marked degree attracted the attention of others when appearing in public. Col. Taylor was such a man. No one could meet or see him without at once feeling that he was in the presence of a strong, not to say great, character. His stature, his mould, his brow, his eye, his steady look and expression, in a word, his commanding presence, told, plainer than words could tell, that here nature had been lavish of her splendid gifts. And is it strange that here in this small city one should be found so much above most men? Why not? Greatness such as that to which I have referred is not geographical. Is it true that almost all men of great character and spirit at last find life a. disappointment? Col. Taylor did. The hope that brought him here and kept him here so long and until it was too late to look or go elsewhere, failed him at last. He had spent many years in the service of the United States Bank at Philadelphia in times as stirring as any that have ever occurred in the history of the country, some years in New York, some years also in Chicago, and his coming here to take charge of almost a barren situation or site upon which to build a city must have arisen from a belief that there were great things before him. Some persons may disagree with me, but Col. Taylor was a great man and could never, in his maturer or later years, have felt that he had come into his own or had in a large measure made out of his life what he had hoped. He lived in some respects a far-off life, if we may be allowed such an expression. He may have been happier than he seemed; but it may well be doubted that, could the offer have been made, he would have chosen to live over again the same life. That, too, is not strange; for the number is not large that would so choose. The following is from the biographical notices of officers and graduates of Rutgers College, deceased during the year ending June, 1896: "Samuel Staats Taylor was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, November 18, 1811, and died at his home in Cairo, Illinois, on May 14, 1896. His father's name was Augustus FitzRandolph Taylor, an eminent physician of that place. His grandfather, John Taylor, was Professor of Languages in Queen's College at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War and recruited a company from among the students, which he led to the field. The original ancestor of the family came to America from England with Sir George Cartwright in 1640, and settled the province of New Jersey. His mother's name was Catharine Schuyler Neilson, daughter of Colonel John Neilson, a native of New Brunswick. "He graduated in 1829 with the second honor of his class. From an early period of his life he was designed by his parents for the legal profession, his own inclination tending in the same direction. He read law in the city of New York with an older brother, John N. Taylor, and was admitted to the bar as an attorney at the age of twenty-one, and three years later he was admitted to the higher degree of counselor, and was considered one of the most promising and brilliant lawyers of the period. His career at the bar, however, was short. In 1836 he accepted a confidential position as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the United States Bank of Philadelphia, a position of great responsibility, which he retained until the memorable failure of that corporation in 1841. He was then appointed by the trustees to assist in winding up the complicated affairs of the company. In this capacity he operated until 1851, having supreme control of the interests of his employers in the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri and Iowa, and transacting all the business incident to the most gigantic enterprise of the kind in the nation and requiring executive talent and ability of the very highest order. In April, 1851, he removed to Cairo, where he assumed charge of the Cairo city property, and in 1861 was made a Trustee of the property by the stockholders, which relation he sustained till his death. He was elected the first mayor under the charter of 1857, and was re-elected to this position for five consecutive terms. From 1865 till 1875 he was president of the Cairo and St. Louis Railroad Company, was a director of the City National Bank since 1865, and, in fact, was identified with every interest of the city after his arrival there." WILLIAM PARKER HALLIDAY.—Capt. Halliday was so long and so prominent a citizen of Cairo that I may very properly follow the sketches of Holbrook, Gilbert and Taylor with a short sketch of his life. One reason for this is that I have not found in any book or pamphlet any notice of him. I infer this want of reference to him was due to his own choice, insisted upon, no doubt, when solicited for information about himself. There are many men and not a few women, long well known in Cairo about whom I should like to leave here some fitting words of remembrance; but to select them from others, with or without their permission, and say just what the public would expect or desire me to say, would be so difficult an undertaking that I found I could not enter upon it. The few of whom I have spoken have been largely public characters, and concerning them I have felt at liberty to speak somewhat freely, though I hope always candidly, if not always justly. Capt. Halliday was born in Meigs County, Ohio, July 21, 1827. He received such an education as was then generally given boys and young men in the community where the family lived. It was good enough, or supposed to be good enough, for all practical purposes. Wherein it may have been wanting his native talent largely supplied the want. At an early time in life, he sought employment on the Ohio River. He was clerk first and afterwards captain on steamboats navigating that stream. Possessing rare business talents, and the war coming on, he improved the opportunities it afforded to prosecute successful business enterprises, and as a result he became very prosperous. So uniformly were his business ventures successful that in a comparatively short time, his property and means had so accumulated as to greatly reinforce his naturally fine business abilities. Natural talents for business and the possession of means were as leverage to each other, and the increase in wealth was something in the nature of a geometrical progression. To express the above in fewer words, it may be said, Capt. Halliday was first, last and always a business man. His life was devoted to business, that is to the acquisition of money, property, wealth. Naturally this absorbed almost all his time and thoughts. It could not have been otherwise. It was not different with him from others whose chief object and constant aim were the transaction of business. As in other cases and always, one becomes molded into a type, and life is lived on and out in the accomplishment of the same unvarying object or purpose. It is so in everything to which men turn attention. Success, marked success, comes only to those who set but one goal before them. Capt. Halliday may not have said so, may not have thought so, but he had beyond doubt determined early in life to acquire wealth; and to this everything else was made to tend. No mechanism could have worked with greater precision. He was a strong man, a gifted man, and everything in and about him focused upon this one thing, the acquisition of wealth. Just what he expected it to bring him, no one can tell. Perhaps he never thought much about what it would or could afford him. He cared nothing for office, not much for politics, not very much for religious matters, and not much for society. All these were subordinate, some of them very much so. How else could it be? Few men are able to fill many spheres of energy. In proportion as there are many, the success in any one is not often very great. Ordinarily life must be centered upon some one thing, in order to achieve high or great results. To be a statesman, one must study politics; to be a scientist, the most painstaking work for years must be entered upon and unremittingly pursued; to be a professional man of any kind, with hopes for success therein, almost everything else, outside of the chosen profession, must be laid aside. Captain Halliday had no doubt observed this and applied it strictly in the prosecution of his chosen work. In these business times, Capt. Halliday was one of a thousand. His sphere of activity was by no means broad. The small city of his residence and life was not fruitful of opportunities; but he had laid hold of so many branches of business, that combining the same would have put him alongside of many of the great business men in the cities. His whole life was one of practical education. He saw very early the importance of attention to details. He knew better than any one in his employment that if the apparently small things are neglected there will be no large results. He carried on no business about which he did not soon know more than any one else in his service. To him almost all the details of salt making, coal mining and transportation, cotton growing, banking, and many other branches of business were as familiar as are the ordinary details of the simplest business enterprises. He had a few maxims about which he said little, but they were all of a practical and business-like nature. Having come to Cairo before the war, and the war having opened, opportunities multiplied. He improved them, and his success and prosperity were beyond his expectations. As he grew in wealth, he grew even faster in capabilities for management, and hence his spheres and branches of business multiplied and widened. There was little competition in his business enterprises anywhere. This was greatly to his advantage. The little opposition he met with in business did not have the best effect upon him; nor would it have had on any one. He was restive when unexpected obstacles appeared in his way. This was natural. Strong men often fire up when opposition appears. They regard it as useless and intended only to annoy; whereas, they should treat it as the exhibition of the same spirit and prowess they themselves possess and exercise freely. Capt. Halliday acquired large wealth, considering the size of his town and the amount of the business done here. His business, however, represented that of many places. Had he lived in some one of our great cities and taken hold of business as he did here, he would probably have acquired tens of millions, instead of a few here at home. This may be said to be very doubtful; but what he actually did here is a fair indication of what he could and would have done where business transactions of great magnitude were carried on. Capt. Halliday had more than a fair degree of caution. It was not generally known that he ever ventured much, except in some of his earlier operations. If he ever made much or lost considerable in stock or other like transactions in the large cities, few persons were told of it. He always kept his own counsels; and if he seemed at times more ready to let matters get abroad, it was the better to conceal the actual matter in hand. Ambitious as he was to gain wealth and the prominence it is generally supposed to give, he had seen so many overtaken by calamity, that he seems to have set very definite boundaries to his ventures. I might extend this description of this remarkable man; but however long it might be made, it would all be in further illustration only of those features of his character and life I have above endeavored to set forth. I must be permitted to say here of Capt. Halliday something of what I have elsewhere said of Thomas Wilson. Wilson had fought Taylor and Halliday for many years; but after a long lapse of time, the fires of local election strife began to burn low, and William reached out his strong right hand and took hold of Tom's and the hatchet was buried. Each admired the other for the grit that was in him. Nature had made them giants,—local giants it may be, but nevertheless giants. They would have been that anywhere, I suppose. And so I say of Halliday as I have said of Wilson, that had he obtained or taken the education and training he might have had or taken in early life, the great business world of this great country would everywhere have stopped for a while to note the fact of his death. But it is said, had these two men been trained in college life or something equivalent thereto, if there is any equivalent, they might never have attained to what they did here. This is possible, probably probable. As heretofore stated, this view puts a discount on education of all kinds and everywhere. Had Lincoln, Douglas and Logan been college men, so called, it is altogether probable they never would have become the great public men they were. A very little thing often turns the current of one's life; but how superficial, how illogical, how flimsy is such a line of argument as this against the claims of higher education. Once, when Capt. Halliday returned from Chicago where he had attended a meeting of the board of directors of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, I had a talk with him in his office in the City National Bank. I noted his expression of countenance as he spoke of Stuyvesant Fish, the president of the company, and of his acts and management in their meeting. Especially did he speak of the fact that Fish was a Yale man; and it seemed to me that he thought Fish's college training had been of immense advantage to him. And may he not himself have felt that had he received the training Fish had, he would have felt himself possessed of a strength and confidence that were now beyond his reach. A few years before Mr. Lincoln came very prominently before the country, he went to Cincinnati to assist in the trial of certain insurance cases, on his side of which Edwin M. Stanton was the leading counsel. Stanton's management and exhibition of learning and knowledge were a kind of revelation to the Springfield lawyer, who, when he returned home, spoke of his impressions of the great Pennsylvanian, and of the amazing advantage college life and training gave men, as it seemed to him. Lincoln saw in Stanton what Halliday saw in Fish. But in emphasizing Capt. Halliday's talents and taste for business, I must not be understood as disallowing to him other excellent and great qualities, which often co-exist with close attachment to some one great moving purpose of life. He was, I think, on the right side in all the important moral and charitable questions and enterprises to which his attention was drawn. He did much for the poor of the community, but without ostentation or trumpet-blowing of any kind. Persons who knew him better than I did I am sure will say a great deal more to this effect than I have said. No one went to him for any worthy purpose who was turned away without aid. What he did for the public library, will, in its careful and wise management, live far into the distant future when all of us have gone and most of us have been forgotten. I have spoken of him as a remarkable man; and while his great abilities were devoted so exclusively to the acquisition of wealth, they would, in other conditions and times, have lifted him high above most men in whatever sphere of life they had been exercised. He, like and yet unlike Col. Taylor, was a great man, as little as the world may have known the fact. Greatness of another kind, to which he might have easily attained, would have carried his name far beyond the ordinary boundaries of wealth-giving fame. He seemingly possessed all the elements of a great general, whether in war or in the great business battles of the world. While he knew his limitations better than any one else, yet he could have been placed in few positions where he would not have risen fully to the exacting demands of the hour and achieved victories of lasting renown. THE HALLIDAY BROTHERS.—There were five of them, a somewhat exceptional number: William P. Halliday, Samuel B. Halliday, Edwin W. Halliday, Henry L. Halliday, and Thomas W. Halliday. Of the eldest and the youngest I have elsewhere spoken at some length; of the former, because so prominent in the financial world, and of the latter, because so long in official life. Of them all, I may be permitted to say that while they differed from each other, they all exhibited features of character and conduct that would have given them prominence anywhere in the business world. No doubt in some one or two important respects, each one excelled the others. This was shown in those matters and things to which they gave their chief attention. Speaking of them and their families, so well represented here with us and elsewhere, it can be said that they have always stood for the better things, mot with assumption or pharisaically, but openly and firmly. They pushed their business enterprises with diligence, and had there been more of such men it would have been better for the city and for them also, I have no doubt. It will not detract from them nor from old Scotland, to say they were and are Scotch people, although native Americans. Possibly, this may account somewhat for the solidity of character so uniformly exhibited by them. Of the five brothers, William and Samuel came here before the war; and in 1862, Henry and Thomas came. Major Edwin W. Halliday came here after the close of the war. He is the only brother of the five now living; and I regret to say that he seems to have found it best for the health of Mrs. Halliday to remove to San Diego, where relatives of the family have long resided. In the "Memoirs of the Lower Ohio Valley" are found interesting biographical sketches of Major Edwin W. Halliday and Mr. Henry L. Halliday. There are also therein biographical sketches of Henry E. and Douglas Halliday, sons of Henry L. Halliday, deceased, and of William R. Halliday, a son of Samuel B. Halliday, deceased. The one of Major Halliday contains perhaps more of family history than any of the others. 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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