Crawford-Clark County IL Archives History - Books .....Chapter III 1883
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Book Title: HISTORY OF CRAWFORD AND CLARK COUNTIES, ILLINOIS

CHAPTER III.
By W. H. Perrin.

SETTLEMENT OF THE COUNTY BY WHITE PEOPLE—THE EARLY FRENCH EXPLORERS— THEIR CLAIM
TO ILLINOIS—GEN. CLARK'S EXPEDITION TO KASKASKIA—EMIGRANTS FROM THE STATES—FORT
LAMOTTE AND THE RANGERS— THE CULLOMS AND OTHER PIONEERS—THE HUTSON FAMILY—THEIR
MURDER BY INDIANS—PIONEER LIFE—HARDSHIPS AND DANGERS OF THE WILDERNESS, ETC.

* As some lone wanderer o'er this weary world
Oft sits him down beneath some friendly shade,
And backward casts a long and lingering look 
O'er the rough journey he has thus far made
So should we pause-"

AS the Indians succeeded the Mound Builders in this territory, so the
Anglo-Saxons followed close in the footsteps of the retreating savages. The
first white people who laid claim to the country now embraced in the State of
Illinois were subjects of vine-clad France. The interest which attaches to all
that is connected with the explorations and discoveries of the early French
travelers in the Northwest but increases with the rolling years. A little more
than two centuries ago, such men as Marquette, La Salle, Joliet, De Frontenac,
Hennepin, the Chevalier de Trull, Charlevoix, and other Frenchmen, traversed the
territory now embraced in the great State of Illinois, and made settlements
along the Mississippi, Illinois and Wabash Rivers. Upon many trees and stones
were to be seen the impress of the fleur de lis of France, and Kaskaskia,
Cahokia and Vincennes became enterprising French towns, surrounded by
flourishing settlements. The sainted Marquette discovered the "Great Father of
Waters," and spent years of toil and labor and privation in explorations, and in
christianizing the natives, then laid down his life, with no kind hand to
"smooth his dying pillow," other than his faithful Indian converts. La Salle
penetrated to the mouth of the Mississippi, and there, on the shores of the
Mexican Gulf, after planting the royal standard of France, and claiming the
country in the name of his king, was basely and treacherously murdered by his
own followers.

   For almost a hundred years (from 1680) this country was under French
dominion. But in the great struggle between France and England, known in our
history as the "old French and Indian War," it was wrested from France, and at
the treaty of Paris, February 16, 1763, she relinquished to England all the
territory she claimed east of the Mississippi River, from its source to Bayou
Iberville; and "the Illinois country" passed to the ownership of Great Britain.
Less than a quarter of a century passed, however, and England was dispossessed
of it by her naughty child, who had grown somewhat unfilial. In 1778, Gen.
George Rogers Clark, a Revolutionary officer of bravery and renown, with a
handful of the ragged soldiers of freedom, under commission from the governor of
Virginia, conquered the country, and the banner of the thirteen colonies floated
in the breeze for the first time on the banks of the Mississippi. Thus in the
natural course of events, the lilies of France drooped and wilted before the
majestic tread of the British lion, who, in his turn, quailed and cowered
beneath the scream of the American eagle. The conquest of Gen. Clark made
Illinois a county of Virginia, and wrested it forever from foreign rule. This
acquisition of territory brought many adventurous individuals hither, and
southern Illinois soon became the great center of attraction. But a few years
after Clark captured Vincennes and Kaskaskia, emigrants began to cross the
Wabash, and to contest the red man's title to these fertile lands.

  As to the motives which set journeying hither so many people from the States
south of the Ohio, we confess to have been moderately curious, until fully
enlightened by a thorough investigation. Many of them had not reached life's
meridian, but they were men inured to toil and danger. They were hopeful,
courageous, and poor in actual worth, but rich in possibilities; men with iron
nerves, and wills as firm as the historic granite upon which the Pilgrim Fathers
stepped from the deck of the Mayflower, in 1620. Illinois was a territory when
the first settlers came, reposing under the famous ordinance of 1787, and many
of these pioneers have left their record, that they sought homes here because
the land would not be blemished by negro slavery; or, that civil and social
distinctions would be yielded only to those who owned "niggers." A fat soil,
ready for the plow, cheap lands and a temperate climate, were not peculiar to
Illinois, or to Crawford County. For the grand simplicity of their lives and
their sturdy virtue, these early settlers got recognition and fame, as Enoch
Arden did—after death. They had been brought up, many of them, amid "savage
scenes and perils of war," where the veil of the Indian and the howl of the wolf
were the principal music to lull them to sleep in their childhood and youth.

   Such were the men who formed the advance guard—the picket line of the grand
army of emigrants that were to follow, and people and improve the great
northwest. They accomplished the task assigned them, and have passed away. The
last of the old guard are gone, and many of their children, too, have followed
them to that "bourne whence no traveler returns."

   We can not write history as a blind man goes about the streets, feeling his
way with a stick. The facts are transparent, and through them we catch gleams of
other facts, as the raindrop catches light, and the beholder sees the splendor
of the rainbow. We are to speak of common men, whose lot was to plant
civilization here, and who, in doing it, displayed the virtues which render
modern civilization a boast and a blessing. These early times can not be
reproduced by any prose of a historian. They had a thousand years behind them,
and in their little space of time they made greater progress than ten centuries
had witnessed. Theirs was a full life; the work thirty generations had not done,
they did, and the abyss between us of to-day and the men of seventy-five years
ago is wider and more profound than the chasm between 1815 and the battle of
Hastings. They did so much that it is hard to recognize the doers; they had a
genius for doing great things. That olive leaf in the dove's beak perished as do
other leaves, but the story it told is immortal. Of their constancy, one can
judge by the fact that none went back to their ancestral homes. They "builded
wiser than they knew," and the monuments of their energy and perseverance still
stand in perpetuation of their memory.

   The only history worth writing is the history of civilization, of the
processes which made a State. For men are but as coral, feeble, insignificant,
working out of sight, but they transmit some occult quality or power, upheave
society, until from the moral and intellectual plateau rises, as Saul, above his
fellows, a Shakespeare, a Phidias or a Hamilton, the royal interpreters of the
finest sense in poetry, in art and statesmanship. At the last, years color life
more than centuries had, as the sun rises in an instant, though he had been
hours in hastening to this moment.

   The French, as we have shown, were the first white people who possessed this
country. The first regular settlements made in the present county of Crawford,
were in and around Palestine. There is a tradition, that the first settlers
found an old Frenchman named Lamotte, living near the margin of the prairie
which still bears his name. But little, however, is known of him, or his
residence here. One fact there is, which is borne out by the records of the
county, that Lamotte owned considerable lands on this side of the Wabash, but
whether he lived here is by some deemed problematical. As Vincennes was,
however, a French town, from whence many of its people came into Illinois, there
is no just ground for controverting the statement that Lamotte actually lived in
what is now Crawford County, especially when we reflect that Lamotte Prairie,
Lamotte Creek and Fort Lamotte, the latter the site of Palestine, all bear his
name. There were a few French families among the early settlers of the county,
but eventually we believe most of them returned to the east bank of the Wabash^
or removed to Kaskaskia and St. Louis.

   It is not known with perfect certainty at the present day, who was the first
actual settler from the States to locate within the present limits of the
county. The first deed recorded in the clerk's office is dated December 10,
1816, and is from John Dunlap, of Edwards County, to Samuel Harris, but it is
beyond dispute that there was a considerable settlement here several years prior
to that time. The following families, so far as we can learn, were among the
first settlers: The Eatons, Van Winkles, McGaheys, Kitchells, Woodworths,
Culloms, Woods, Isaac Hutson, Dr. Hill, the Lagows, Brimberrys, Wilsons,
Waldrops, Piersons, Houstons, Kennedys and the Newlins. The Eatons are believed
to have been here as early as 1809, and very generally admitted to have been the
first actual settlers though no one can definitely settle the point now. There
were Benjamin, Joseph, John, Stephen and Richard Eaton. They were genuine
pioneers and frontiersmen, and were in the fort at Palestine. They disagreed
with some of the other inmates of the fort, withdrew from it and built another
fort at some distance, which received the name of Fort Foot, in consequence of
the fact that the Eatons possessed extraordinarily large feet. The McGaheys
(Allen and David) are supposed to have come to the country in 1809 or perhaps in
1810; Dan and Green Van Winkle also came about 1810; the Woods in 1811, and
Hutson in 1812. Isaac, Joseph and William Pierson came perhaps the same year.
The others mentioned all came in early—prior to 1818, and several of them became
prominent in the history of the county, as more particularly detailed in other
chapters of this volume. Woodworth was the second sheriff of the county; the
McGaheys served in the legislature and in other positions, while the Lagows and
Houstons were also active citizens, as elsewhere noticed. The Kitchells were
perhaps the most prominent among the early families in the county. The names of
Joseph and Wickliffe Kitchell are not only connected with the history of this
county, but with that of the State. They were from Virginia and possessed much
of the social qualities and cordiality of manners characteristic of the old
Virginia type of gentleman. As Attorney-General of the State, in the State
Senate and legislature, and in the land office, they left their impress. More
will be said of them in connection with the court and bar.

   Edward N. Cullom, next to the Kitchells, was one of the most prominent of the
early settlers, and has a son, Leonard D. Cullom, still living in Lawrenceville,
Ill. Mr. Cullom landed at Palestine November 25, 1814, or rather at Fort
Lamotte, where Palestine now stands. We are informed by Mr. Leonard Cullom, whom
we visited at his home in Lawrenceville, that when his father's family arrived
at Fort Lamotte, there were then within its protecting walls twenty-six
families, and ninety rangers, who were stationed there for the purpose of
guarding these isolated settlers. This blockhouse or fort had been erected here
about the commencement of the war of 1812, and the rangers quartered in it were
under the command of Capt. Pierce Andrew, a frontier officer. Mr. Cullom now
only remembers, among those living in the fort, the following families: Isaac
and Samuel Brimberry, Thomas and James Kennedy, the Eatons, the Shaws, Joseph
Waldrop and two sons—William and John—the Garrards, the Woods, David Shook and a
man named Harding. The latter was "skin dresser," and a rather disagreeable man
in his family. Mr. Cullom calls to mind a circumstance in which Harding figured
conspicuously, in the days when they were "forted." Harding, for whipping his
wife, was taken by the rangers and shut up in his "skin-house," a house where he
was in the habit of smoking and drying his skins, and put through much the same
process for indulging in such family pastimes.

   Edward N. Cullom came from Wayne County, Ky., making the trip in wagons, the
principal mode of transportation at that time. He raised a number of stalwart
sons, some of whom were prominent men as well as their father in the county.
They were Francis, William, Leonard D., Edward N., Thomas F., and George W.
Leonard was 14 years old when his father came to the county, and George W. was
the only one of his sons born in the new home.

   Mr. Cullom was a man of considerable prominence in the county, and served in
a number of responsible positions. When he came here he bought the land on which
the fort stood (including the improvement on it) for $4.16 per acre. The
improvement had been made by Brimberry. He bought and entered other lands until
he owned several thousand acres. The first summer Cullom raised a large crop of
corn, and the winter following he loaded a flat boat with corn, and took it to
New Orleans. It was the first boat that ever went out of the Wabash River from
the Illinois side. He paid $150 for the boat, and at New Orleans, sold it and
the cargo for $1,300 in money; then made his way home overland through the
"Indian Nation," as it was then known. His money was in two $500 "post notes,"
as they were called, or bank drafts, and the remainder in specie. That was an
enormous sum of money for those days, and Cullom was considered a very rich man.
He laid it out mostly in lands, and became one of the largest land owners in
Southern Illinois. In later years, however, he lost the large part of it by
going the security of others, and died comparatively a poor man.

   The following comprises many of the early settlers of the county, though it
is by no means a complete list: Edward N. Cullom and his sons, John Dunlap,
Edward H. Piper, Joseph Malcom, John Malcom, George W. Kinkade, Joseph Cheek,
Isaac Moore, James Gibson, Thomas Gill, John Cowan, Thomas Handy, William
Lockard, John Allison, William Howard, Charles Neely, George Catron, James
Caldwell, James Ray, Isaac Parker, Arthur Jones, James Shaw, Smith Shaw, S. B.
A. Carter, Chester Fitch, David Porter, Jan Martin, J. Gallon, John Garrard,
Chalkey Draper, John Berry, Isaac Gain, George W. Carter, John Mills, William
Hugh Miller, Jacob Blaze, William Y. Hacket, James Gill, Abram Coonrod, William
Lowe, Seth Gard, Peter Keene, Samuel Harris, William Ashbrook, John Gifford,
Asahel Haskins, William Barber, John Small, Thomas Westfall, D. McHenry,
Jonathan Young, E. W. Kellogg, Mark Snipes, Samuel Baldy, John H. Jackson, James
Dolson, Thomas Trimble, David Stewart, Aaron Ball, Henry Gilliam, Daniel Funk,
Enoch Wilhite, Zephaniah Lewis, John Cobb, William Jones, John Sackrider, Jacob
Helpingsteine, George Calhoun, William Highsmith, Jeremiah Coleman, William
McDowell, James Boatwright, Daniel Boatwright, John W. Barlow, Bottsford
Comstock, George Boher, Joel Phelps, Cornelius Taylor, William Gray, George
Wesner, John C. Alexander, William Magill, Benjamin Myers, John Boyd, Asa
Norton, Sewell Goodrich, etc., etc. These pioneers will receive ample notice in
the history of the several townships of the county. The settlement has been
given in this connection in a general way, but in other chapters it will be more
fully noticed. Our aim here has been merely to show the different possessors of
the soil, and the succession in which they followed each other.

  When the first settlements were made in this region, there were still many
Indians roaming through the country, as stated in a previous chapter. They were
generally friendly toward the whites, except for a short period during the war
of 1812, when they became somewhat excited and committed depredations upon the
whites, such as stealing horses and other stock, and in a few instances,
murdering their pale-faced neighbors. The saddest instance of this kind that
ever occurred in what is now Crawford County, was the murder of the Hutson
family, who lived a few miles south from where Hutsonville now stands, and which
was somewhat as follows: Isaac Hutson was a native of Ohio and removed from
Chillicothe in 1811 to Indiana, locating in the present county of Sullivan, and
in what is now Turman Township. Indians were plenty in that region, and some of
them were hostile. A block-house or rude fort was erected in the Turman
settlement for the protection of the few whites then living there. Hutson, one
day, crossed the river and visited the section now known as Lamotte prairie; and
being attracted by its beauty and fertility, resolved to at once move hither.
Accordingly, in the latter part of the winter of 1812 he built a cabin at the
north end of the prairie, to which he moved his family in the spring. A man
named Dixon settled near by, about the same time. Hutson at once began
preparations for a crop. His family consisted of a wife and six children, the
eldest a girl of perhaps sixteen. One day in April, Hutson went to Palestine to
mill, and did not get started for home until nightfall. When about half way to
his cabin, he noticed an unusual light in the direction of it. Fearing the
worst, he threw his sack of meal from his horse and urged him forward at full
speed. Upon nearing his house, his worst fears were realized. His entire family
had been murdered by a band of Indians; and to complete the ruin and desolation,
they had set fire to his dwelling. Frantic with grief and despair, he rode
several times around the ruins, calling wildly the names of his wife and
children. There was no one left to tell the bereaved father how his loved ones
had perished. He could only realize the heart-sickening truth that all had
perished. A few rods from the burning building, lay the body of Dixon, mutilated
almost beyond recognition. His breast had been cut open and his heart taken out
and placed upon a pole which was planted in the ground near by. Satisfying
himself that the havoc was complete, Hutson made his way to Turman's, having
swam the Wabash, which place he reached about midnight.

   Hutson was a fine type of the frontiersman. He was above six feet high, a man
of great strength and possessed of extraordinary powers of endurance. He was an
adventurer and knew no law beyond his own will and his own ideas of right.
Having lost all for which he cared to live, he swore revenge; and to this end,
joined the army at Fort Harrison, near where Terre Haute now stands. Shortly
after he had joined the army, one of the sentinels reported that he had seen an
Indian in the grass, some half a mile below the fort. A party was sent out to
reconnoiter, among whom was Hutson. Arrived at the designated spot, it was
discovered that quite a party of savages had been there during the previous
night. The trail led off to a thicket of brush wood a short distance away. The
officer in command rashly determined to make an attack, without any attempt to
discover the exact whereabouts of the enemy, or their number and position.
Hutson was placed in the front, but distrusting the speed and power of his
horse, asked another position. The officer reproached him with cowardice, when
Hutson dashed forward, calling on the men to follow, declaring that he could go
where any one else could, and leaving the officer in the rear. Upon approaching
the wood, they were fired on, and Hutson receiving a ball in the forehead, fell
from his horse dead.

   The name of Hutson is preserved in the beautiful little town of Hutsonville,
and of Hutson Creek, which flows near by where he had reared his lonely cabin.

   Another incident is related of a man named James Beard, being murdered by
Indians in that portion of the county now embraced in Lawrence County, just
about the close of the war of 1812. Beard was plowing in the field one day, and
the Indians having become incensed at him for some cause stole upon him, and
shot him at his plow. Beard, who was a large man, ran to where one Adams, a
nephew, was cutting bushes, and told him he was shot, when Adams,
notwithstanding the giant size of Beard, picked him up and carried him to the
house. A Frenchman named Pierre Devoe, lived near by, and when asked to go and
help guard Beard's house during the night he refused. His wife, a large and
rather masculine looking woman, when her husband refused, declared she would go,
and taking up an ax called out to "Come on," she "was ready." But the Indians
made no further attack on the house.

   Mr. Leonard Cullom relates the following: During the time of "forting" at
Palestine, Isaac Brimberry and Thomas Kennedy, who generally went by the name of
the "Buckeye Coopers," went up to "Africa's Point," as it was called, on the
Wabash, after some timber. They discovered signs of Indians and went back to the
fort and reported the same, when a squad of men was sent out to look after them.
They divided into two parties, one going on in advance and the other acting as a
reserve corps. When near the spot where the signs had been seen, they found a
number of Indian canoes pulled up out of the water. Instead of consolidating
their numbers and proceeding with caution, the foremost party kept on fully
exposed, and were soon fired upon by the savages. Lathrop, Price, and Daniel
Eaton were killed, and Job Eaton and John Waldrop were wounded, but succeeded in
escaping and making their way back to the fort. The "rear guard," when they
heard the firing, instead of going to the assistance of their comrades, "fell
back in good order," and returned to the fort, conscious that discretion was the
better part of valor.

  Such were some of the trials and dangers to which the early settlers were
exposed, in the development of this country. But upon the close of the war of
1812, the savages of southern Illinois buried the hatchet, and peace reigned
among the scattered settlements. Though the savages rose in other sections of
the State, and clouds of war gathered in the horizon, they rolled away without
bursting upon this community. When peace was fully restored to the country in
1815, the population began to rapidly increase in the Wabash Valley, and
gradually to extend out over the country. In subsequent chapters the progress of
these settlements, as we have .already stated, will be fully detailed, together
with all events of interest pertaining to them.

   The Indian troubles were not the only drawbacks met with in the early history
of Crawford County. The settlers were mostly poor, and all had come here with
the desire to better their fortunes. They came with a meager outfit of this
world's goods, expecting to increase their stores and provide a home for their
old age. Some came in frontier wagons drawn by horses or oxen, and some used the
more primitive "pack-horse" as a means of transporting their limited
possessions. The journey was one of toil and privation at best. There were no
well beaten highways, no bridges over the streams, but each emigrant followed
the general trail. If the season was one of much rain, the swamps they were
compelled to cross, were almost impassable; if dry, the roads were rough, and
water scarce. But the emigrant could endure trial, hunger and pain, if a HOME
stood at the end of his journey, beckoning him on. Faith and hope are two
anchors without which the poor mortal would be cheerless indeed on life's pathway.

   Thus the county was settled under difficulties. and amid hardships and
dangers. But the very dangers drew the people closer together, and made them
more dependent upon each other. All lived in a state of comparative social
equality, and the only lines drawn were to separate the very bad from the
general mass. The rich and poor dressed alike; the men generally wearing
hunting-shirts and buckskin pants, and the women attired themselves in coarse
fabrics produced by their own hands. The cabins were furnished in the same style
and simplicity. The bedsteads were home-made and of rude material, and the beds,
usually filled with leaves and grass, by honest toil were rendered

      "Soft as downy pillows are."

   One pot, kettle and frying-pan were the only articles considered
indispensable, and a a [sic] few plates and dishes, upon a shelf in one corner,
was as satisfactory as a cupboard full of china is now, while food was as highly
relished from a slab table as it is in this fast age from one of oiled walnut or
mahogany. It is true they then had but little to eat, but it sustained life. Mr.
Cullom says they often had no bread, and he calls to mind an instance, when his
father's family, who had been without bread for some time, took corn before it
was sufficiently matured to shell from the cob, dried it in the chimney, and
grated it into a coarse meal. From this bread was made, a "shoat" was killed for
the occasion, and with beech bark tea they had quite a feast. A neighbor, who
happened in, was asked to dine with them, and when dinner was concluded he
thanked the Lord that he had had one more good, square meal, but he didn't know
where the next would come from. Mrs. Cullom gave him some meal and a piece of
the shoat to take home with him, and he went away rejoicing.

   But the credit of subduing the wilderness, and planting civilization in the
West, is not the work of man alone. Woman, the help-meet, and guiding spirit of
the sterner sex, nobly did her part in the great work. The "hired girl" had not
then become a class. In case of illness—and there was plenty of it in the early
times—some young woman would leave home for a few days to care for the afflicted
household, but her services were not rendered for the pay she received. The
discharge of the sacred duty to care for the sick was the motive, and it was
never neglected. The accepted life of a woman was to marry, bear and rear
children, prepare the household food, spin, weave and make the garments for the
family. Her whole life was the grand, simple poem of rugged, toilsome duty
bravely and uncomplainingly done. She lived history, and her descendants write
and read it with a proud thrill, such as visits the pilgrim when at Arlington he
stands at the base of the monument which covers the bones of four thousand
nameless men who gave their blood to preserve their country. Her work lives, but
her name is whispered only in a few homes. Holy in death, it is too sacred for
open speech.

   Three quarters of a century has produced marvelous changes, both in country
and society. In the years that have come and gone in quick succession, while the
panorama has been unfolding to view, the verdant wastes of Crawford County have
disappeared, and in their place are productive fields, covered with flocks and
herds, and peopled with twenty thousand civilized and intelligent human beings.
The Indian trail is obliterated by the railway track, and the ox-team and the
"prairie schooner" are displaced by the rushing train. In the grand march of
civilization and improvement, who can tell, or dare predict what the next fifty
years may develop? Within that period it is not impossible that we may be flying
through the air, as we now fly over the country at the heels of the iron horse.



Additional Comments:
Extracted From:

HISTORY OF CRAWFORD AND CLARK COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.
EDITED BY WILLIAM HENRY PERRIN.

ILLUSTRATED

CHICAGO: O. L. BASKIN & CO., HISTORICAL PUBLISHERS,
LAKESIDE BUILDING.
1883.


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