Fulton County IL Archives News.....A Rambler's Notes January 10, 1907
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Mike Dayton mmmlllddd2002@yahoo.com June 25, 2006, 5:49 am

Canton Weekly Register January 10, 1907
CANTON WEEKLY REGISTER       January 10, 1907

A RAMBLER’S NOTES

In speaking of the early settlers of Fulton County some time ago Samuel Laird,
Joshua Township Pioneer, said in substance that they were a strong, rugged, warm
hearted people and that they kept everlastingly at their jobs of building new
homes and developing the country. "The men," he observed, "were whole men with
the bark on, and the women were full-blooded, strong and courageous, and were
well qualified for the arduous duties they were compelled to perform. They
endured with their husbands all the hardships and labor of frontier life without
a murmur. They had their trials, misfortunes, adventures and privations, but
they were made of the right kind of stuff and bore all uncomplainingly."

While the pioneers were hardy and brave, they had much to contend with, and no
doubt many were the dark forebodings that crept into their minds as they
contemplated their situation in a vast wilderness surrounded by wild animals and
wild men. The Indians were still here when many of them came in the ‘20s and
some of them participated in the Black Hawk War in 1831-32. In their rude cabins
they lived along the streams and in the belts of timber, with the chilling winds
of winter sweeping down upon them. Often their food supply was limited, and in
the fall of the year many of them were afflicted with the chills and fever, but
they lived through it all. Where they saw a wilderness we see today large, well
cultivated, productive farms, beautiful grounds, cities, towns, schools and
colleges. There is not a trace of the hunting grounds and camping places of the
Indians, but in every direction are evidences of wealth, comfort and luxury.

"The changes that are written on every hand are most wonderful," said Mrs. Amy
(Tatum) Cluts of Buckheart Twp., whose life record is presented this week. "The
cabin built by my father in 1832 is all that is left of the old landmarks on the
farm to remind us of the days of long ago. It is a sort of link connecting the
past with the present. My father, Mathew Tatum, was a pioneer and came here when
the wild whoop of the Indian rent the air, and the howl of the wolf was still
heard in the land. And only think of it! A little over 50 years ago people lived
in log huts, wore homespun clothing which they manufactured, cut and made
themselves. The country was wild and but sparsely settled. Now look about you
and see how great the transformation. By incessant toil the pioneers and their
children have made this country great. The men and women who went through the
experiences of pioneer life may have had old-fogy ideas and old-fogy ways, but
they have changed our wild lands into productive and fruitful fields and gardens
and have peopled every section of the country with intelligent and enterprising
citizens.

"I am the daughter of a pioneer and can recall the time when children were
destitute of shoes until Christmas, and some of them all winter. We children had
no clothing except what was carded, spun, woven and made into garments by our
families.

"Churches, at first we had none. Many families were afflicted with sickness
incident to all new countries.

"We had when I was a girl few of the luxuries of life and some people lived for
weeks upon hominy and venison when Father first settled on this place.

"I was born in the cabin which still stands on the old Tatum homestead, on the
29th day of March 1840, daughter of Mathew and Lydia (Dollar) Tatum, and am a
sister of John G. Tatum who lives here with me. I was reared to womanhood right
here on this farm and have been a resident of Fulton County all my life—nearly
67 years. For my parental history the reader is referred to the sketch of John
G. Tatum published in last week’s Register. I have not witnessed the entire
growth and development of this section of the county, but I have witnessed much
of it. My girlhood was passed in attendance at the pioneer schools and in
assisting my mother in household duties. I remember that Thos. Kirkpatrick
taught several terms of school at the old Tatum schoolhouse. Harriet McCleary,
Harvey Montanya, Margaret, Mary J. and Samuel Taylor were all old time teachers.
Perry Blair was my last teacher. I was a regular attendant at school and some of
my old schoolmates who still survive are Mrs. Eliza Putnam, Frank Moran, James
and John McCleary, and my sister Mrs. Sarah J. Shields of Los Angeles California.

"Oh yes, we have lived to see a flourishing and prospering community of people
where my parents found a wilderness. We were comfortably housed for years in
that old cabin down there. I can recall the time when the country was in a wild
condition and showed but little indication of its present advanced state of
development. I have often heard my parents speak of the first cabin erected on
their place in 1830. A part of the chimney of this hut was made of earth and
sticks and the floor of puncheons.

"When I was a school girl deer, wild turkeys and other game roamed at will
across the thinly settled country. My girlhood and youth were passed amid
primeval surroundings and snakes of different kinds were a common sight. On the
Thompson Laird place southeast of us 274 rattlesnakes were dug from one den and
killed, and near the south bridge over Big Creek as you go into Canton 300
rattlers were killed in one day. The prairie grass was very thick and tall and a
dense forest surrounded our cabin home.

"Both my father and my Uncle James Tatum were well adapted for pioneer life,
being large muscular men with powerful frames. When a mere girl I was initiated
into the hard labors of pioneer life for we all had to work. We were compelled
to put up with numerous inconveniences but finally surrounded ourselves with
many of the comforts of life. I have a vivid recollection of those old days and
the wild condition of Buckheart Twp.

"Linsey gowns were worn for every day, but calico dresses were worn on Sunday.
We dressed more comfortably after the Colton-Piper fulling mill was built in
Canton. Here is a coverlet woven by my grandmother Ruth Dollar over 100 years
ago. It is all wool and is kept as a family relic.

"Yes I have eaten cornbread, hominy and wild meat and honey. We used to have
honey the year around. I have cooked by the old time fireplace, but my parents
purchased a cookstove when I was 10 or 12 years old—first one used in our
neighborhood.

"We made butter to sell as far back as I can remember. The prices we received
for it in early times were from .08 to .12 ½ c in trade. Good cows were worth
only from $8 to $10.

"Many girls in pioneer times performed outdoor work and some of them could swing
an ax with the ease of a veteran lumberman.

"As I stated before I was born in the cabin, and the old Tatum Schoolhouse which
I first attended was a log building with slab benches and other primitive
furnishings; but as I grew older a better building was erected and the
facilities for instruction were greatly improved.

"I remained with my parents until I was 17 years of age, when I married D.W.
Cluts of Putnam Twp., the Rev. John Waggoner officiating. The date was Jan. 22,
1857. The Rev. John Waggoner was a minister of the United Brethren Church,
employed on this circuit. After marriage we located in Knox County were we spent
the first summer. In the fall we returned to Fulton Co. and lived awhile on the
Cyrus Libby place. Later we moved on the Peabody farm, which we rented from the
Hon. Oliver Shepley. There we lived for four years. Finally we settled on the
old Tatum homestead and lived for a time in the cabin in which I was born. In
1863 we built the house in which I now live. We lived on this place until 1868
when we moved below Cuba, where my husband operated a sawmill until 1872, when
we moved back on the old homestead, and I have been here ever since. My husband
died in 1893 and his remains were buried in the Shields Chapel Cemetery.

"The Cluts family came from Pennsylvania to Fulton Co. in the early 50’s. My
late husband was a brother of Benjamin Cluts of Cuba.

"I am the mother of 13 children, 10 of whom are still living: George lives here
with me. Colton and Andrew are deceased. Elijah is a veterinary surgeon in
Canton. John is a resident of Canton. Mrs. Nellie Ward is deceased. James and
Jasper reside in Canton. Mrs. Eva Turner lives in Canton. Joseph is in Selma,
Alabama. Charles is on a farm in Buckheart Township. Grover, the youngest, is at
home. I have 15 grandchildren, five boys, 10 girls.

"I have attended meetings in log buildings, and have been a member of the United
Brethren Church since I was 12 years old.

"In the fall of the year here, in an early day, many people were afflicted with
ague and in many cases the pioneer mothers doctored their own children. Boneset
and pennyroyal tea were some of the simple remedies they used. After you
recovered from a chill you felt languid, stupid and sore, and you didn’t care
much whether you lived or not.

"My husband hunted some and has killed deer and turkeys. I remember seeing deer,
turkeys and wolves and hearing the latter howling at night. Just before the
circular wolf hunt, or ‘round up,’ at Overman’s mound, a report was circulated
that a boy had been torn to pieces by a wolf over on Spoon River. This story was
told, evidently, to get the farmers to turn out and join in the hunt. Fully 50
men passed our place that day. The timber northwest of us was called Wolf Grove.
In that grove some of our folks caught a wolf in a trap once.

"The Rev. Mr. Dark and the Rev. James Tatum were both pioneers, and both regular
Baptist ministers.

"There was but very little money in circulation when I was a girl. Father had a
long money sack, and he put every dollar he got into it and kept it until tax
paying time. Sometimes he would spend a little for postage on letters that came
from other states. Postage on letters was not prepaid then as it is now.

"We had to pay cash for cotton yarn, which was used as the chain for woolen
cloth. Mother sometimes used woolen chain, but cotton was preferable. We raised
our own madder and indigo, made our own soap, and dyed our own garments.

"James Cluts, who died on the Captain Haacke farm in PutnamTwp, was the father
of my husband and Benjamin Cluts. While he came originally from Pennsylvania, he
came from Ohio to Illinois.

"In weaving linsey, the chain used was linen, and the filling wool. In spite of
the wolves we succeeded in raising sheep and manufactured our own woolen cloth.
Nearly all the cloth in outer garments worn by the men was homemade brown or
blue jeans. If occasionally a young man appeared in a suit of store clothes he
was suspected of having gotten it for a particular occasion which occurs in
nearly every man.

"Wheat bread did not become a common article of food until about the time I was
married. It is true some families used it earlier and it was used by all on
extra occasions, as when the minister called or on Sundays when your friends
came to visit you. ‘Store coffee,’ even during the war, was not generally used
for the simple reason that it could not be had at all times. Rye in some
families was substituted for coffee.

"The plain homemade furniture of the pioneer cabin was as primitive as the
occupants, but the traveler always found a welcome in those rude homes. The
pioneer was not only liberal to his neighbors but would divide his last corn
pone with a stranger, giving the latter the larger half. An opportunity to aid a
needy or sick neighbor was never neglected.

"Our schoolhouses were rude and the information imparted in them was somewhat
meager, but some of the old time teachers were graduates of eastern colleges and
possessed advanced ideas on many subjects.

"There were no railroads in the county until about the time I was married. And
the highways of travel were rough and at times almost impassable. Rude
‘corduroy’ roads were built over the soft marshy places, and we managed to do
what little hauling we had in one way or another.

"The removal of my father from Indiana was made with teams and the greater part,
or all of the way, lay through a wilderness. There were but few families in
Fulton County when he first came here in 1825, and the Indians still lingered
around their old hunting grounds on the Illinois and Spoon Rivers.

"The women in pioneer days worked as well as the men, and carding, knitting,
spinning, and even weaving were common household duties.

"The unremitting care of her household was something wonderful. Just how the
pioneer woman accomplished what she did is beyond the comprehension of the women
of the present day. All or a great part of the fabric to clothe her family was
constructed by her own hands. The great and the small spinning wheels seem
before me now as in girlhood, and I seem to hear their music late at night as in
the days of yore. Often have I dropped off to sleep at ten and eleven o’clock at
night with the music of those wheels ringing in my ears, and it used to seem to
me that Mother’s feet could never get weary. The loom was no less necessary than
the wheel, but not every house in which spinning was done had a loom. But there
were always some in each settlement who besides doing their own weaving did some
for others. Wool was carded and made into rolls with hand cards, and the rolls
were spun into threads on the ‘big wheel’ as we called it. Besides looking after
the household duties, carding, knitting, spinning and weaving, many of the
pioneer women of Fulton County assisted their husbands in clearing the land, and
putting it under tillage. In other words, some of the wives of the early
settlers of the county helped their husbands perform outdoor work during the day
and did their knitting, spinning and even weaving after night. There was no
eight hour law then, nor did ten hours constitute a days work. Many women rose
at four o’clock in the morning and worked till eleven o’clock at night.

"But their toil and privations were not a series of unmitigated suffering. If
both the father and the mother worked hard, they had their seasons of
relaxation, their seasons of enjoyment. They contrived to do something to break
the monotony of their daily life. Log rollings, house raisings, quilting bees
and cornhuskings were among the amusements common in pioneer time, and were
greatly enjoyed by both men and women. What we possessed we obtained by the
hardest of labor and individual exertion, but we enjoyed life as well as people
do now or better.

"My house is here on the old homestead where the days of my life have been
spent. I have tried to attend properly to the duties found in each line of my
work, and have not lived alone for myself but for others. I have tried to be a
benefit to the community in which I have lived so long and have always been
willing to help in forwarding its best interests."

***

Mrs. Cluts is zealous in all good works to promote the religious and social
welfare of her neighborhood. She and her deceased mother have administered to
the afflicted here in pioneer times, doing all they could to ease their distress
and have tenderly assisted in the burial of the dead. They witnessed many sad
scenes with aching hearts. She has been a hard working woman, is an exceedingly
popular person in her old home township, and in the community generally.
Possessing many of the comforts of life, she watches the years as they glide
swiftly by, rounding out her well spent life.

Additional Comments:
I found this article at this web address:
http://www.rootsquest.com/~ranlewis/Canton_Register.html
The author of that site deserves more credit for finding this article than I do.

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