Grundy County IL Archives History - Books .....Chapter 16 1882
************************************************
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:
Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com May 4, 2006, 2:57 am

Book Title: History Of Grundy County IL 1882

CHAPTER XVI.*
 
FELIX TOWNSHIP—ITS TOPOGRAPHICAL FEATURES-PIONEERS—FLOODS—SICKNESS—JUGTOWN-THE 
SILENT CITY.

"WHAT'S in a name?" Certainly, not very much when it stands for a designating 
mark only; as country hostlers are wont to chalk numbers on vehicles to 
identify them in the payment of the reckoning. "Infelix" would have been more 
suggestive of impressions derived from an early experience in this section of 
Grundy County; but the early "powers" held Felix Grundy, Tennessee's  
brilliant advocate, in high esteem, and this precinct, the youngest of the 
fourteen, was selected to bear the Christian name of him whom the county 
honored. There was little appropriateness in this selection and the name 
serves rather to emphasize the unpleasant peculiarities of the precinct than 
to do honor to its namesake. This township lies in the eastern tier of the 
county; is bounded on the north by the Illinois River, on the east by Will 
County, on the south by Braceville Township, and on the west by the meandering 
line of the Mazon River and Wauponsee Township. Its outline is quite 
irregular, and measures seven miles in its widest part, and from the most 
northerly point on the river to the southern boundary, it stretches out some 
seven and a half miles. The general surface is low. In the northeast corner 
the high land abuts upon the river, and from this point gradually recedes,

*By J. H. Battle.
 
forming bottom lands, nearly two miles in width in some places; the road which 
follows the general course of the river, marking the general line of the high 
lands. Immediately south of this line the land sinks somewhat into what was 
originally low wet meadows, marked by broken outcroppings of limerock and 
bowlders. On the northern half of sections 9, 10, and 11, is Goose Lake, a 
relic, probably, of the great watercourse that once overflowed this region and 
carried the waters of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. This body of 
water is a sedgy lake of swampy tendencies, measuring some three miles from 
east to west, and little more than a half mile wide. In seasons of high water 
this lake finds an outlet into the Kankakee. South of this is a ridge 
extending east and west through the central part of the township, originally 
covered with a considerable growth of timber; and again, south of this, 
another space of swamp land succeeds, which in turn is bounded on the south by 
a sand ridge. Claypool Run drained this swamp into the Mazon, and more recent 
cultivation has lengthened this run and improved the lands. The natural 
drainage is slight, the various runs finding their way into the Mazon from the 
western end of Goose Lake, and the swamp lands, in the southeast corner, and 
another draining the eastern middle portions of the township into the Kankakee 
River. These runs are but sluggish streams, and scarcely do more than to mark 
the lowest portion of the low grounds. The soil is principally a low wet clay, 
a deposit near the western end of the lake proving admirable material for the 
manufacture of coarse pottery. While a considerable part of the township is 
under a good degree of cultivation, the greater part is devoted to grazing, 
Mr. Holderman giving especial attention to stock raising. Among those earliest 
identified with the interests of this township, was Peter Lampsett. He was 
a "character" in his way and was a relic of that large and at one time 
influential class of pioneers, the Canadian voyageur. He trapped through this 
country as early as 1820, and this location especially suiting his pursuits, 
attracted and held him here long after the rest of his class had moved further 
north. He was known among the earliest settlers as "Specie," a name given him 
by the residents of the county, bcause he invariably refused to accept paper 
money in his dealings. He seems to have accepted this name good-naturedly, and 
his descendants, still found in this region, have adopted it as their 
surname. "Specie Grove" in DeKalb County was named for him, and is likely to 
prove his most enduring monument. He lived on the Mazon, but never owned any 
land there, maintaining a homestead by right of his squatter sovereignty, and 
cultivating only a small patch for gardening purposes. He first discovered 
coal in the county and picking out such as showed itself where the Mazon 
uncovered it, sold it to the blacksmiths of the vicinity. W. A. Holloway came 
into the township from Wauponsee in 1835, bought land on section 12 near where 
the wooden bridge was put across the Mazon. He was not satisfied with the 
country here, however, and in 1840 left this county for Bloomington, Wis.
 Mr. Abram Holderman bought land in the northern part of the township about 
1835. He placed his son Henry on the farm, but he stayed only a year or two 
when he became tired of the place and went further west. Then another son, 
Barton, took possession, but in a short time he left for Missouri in search of 
brighter fortunes, and in 1847 or 1848 Samuel Holderman took possession. He 
found here the materials for building up a fine fortune, and gradually added 
more land to his place until he owned some five thousand acres on which he 
pastured droves of some of the finest cattle in the country. This large farm 
has but recently been sold to Mr. Jerry Collins. In 1839, Abram White, from 
the Fox River settlements, Mr. Kelso and Martin Luther, came to the township.

Among the earliest settlers of the county, though not so early in Felix, was 
John Beard. He was a southerner by birth and early emigrated from Maryland to 
Pennsylvania, thence to Indiana, and later to the mouth of the Au Sable. He 
was a man of about fifty-five years of age when he came to this country, and 
was probably induced to come here by the bright prospect for speculation which 
the canal lands promised. To these early pioneers the lands along the route of 
the proposed canal offered inducements similar to the western lands which now 
lie along the rapidly constructing railroads in the west. The government 
sections were no sooner in the market than they were taken up by settlers and 
speculators, and real estate in this region early rose to fabulous prices for 
the time and place. The lands were known far and near among moneyed men and 
many who had means and a taste for pioneer life, put both funds and personal 
comfort into the speculation. Mr. Beard had a large family, several of his 
children being married, and though there were few considerations urging him at 
his age to take upon himself the further privations of frontier life, he could 
not resist the temptation to try his fortune here. He came overland in a three-
horse wagon, without incident, and settled at the mouth of the Au Sable River 
about 1833. Here he remained one or two years, when he conceived the idea of 
founding a city at the head of the Illinois between the Desplaines and 
Kankakee Rivers. This it was hoped would be the head of navigation, and here, 
situated on a hill with admirable natural advantages, was destined to grow a 
bubble similar in kind to the South Sea and Great Mississippi schemes. In the 
meantime Mr. Beard had been joined at the mouth of the Au Sable by his son-in-
law, James McKean, with his family. They came from Pennsylvania with a wagon 
drawn by three yoke of oxen, and driving several cows and 150 hogs. The 
progress of such a caravan was necessarily slow, making about fifteen miles 
per day. The Indians were found in large numbers all along their journey, but 
always friendly and frequently rendering valuable assistance in getting the 
herd of swine out of the bushes. As it was, some forty were lost on the 
journey, and it is probable that while the "noble red man" would not steal a 
hog before the eyes of the owner, these estrays generally turned up in an 
Indian camp, and furnished a satisfactory meal to the savages. After living at 
the mouth of the Au Sable for several years, McKean joined his father-in-law 
on the Kankakee. Here about 1839, the united families put up a large saw-mill, 
the machinery for which was bought in New York, shipped to Chicago and brought 
thence with infinite trouble to its destined location.

About 1838, William White with two sons, J. L. and William, came from 
Marietta, Ohio, and settled in Felix. Mr. White was a soldier in the war of 
1812, and now draws a pension. He is still a vigorous old veteran of ninety-
four years of age. The early settlers in this township came into close 
relations with the Indians, who were here in considerable numbers. The 
abundance of game attracted them, and the settlers finding them well disposed, 
encouraged their stay by numberless little courtesies. The earliest families 
would have found it quite difficult, if not impossible, to put up their log 
cabins if it had not been for the help of these natives. When hogs or cattle 
strayed, the Indians could always be trusted to give reliable information 
concerning them, and would frequently go long distances to bring them back to 
a favorite white man. McKean seems to have been especially favored in this 
way. It is related that one day he missed some fifty of his large herd of 
swine. On inquiry of the Indians he learned where they were. Finding the hogs 
were his, the natives proposed to go and get them, but wishing to identify 
them himself, they accompanied him and helped to drive the animals home, for 
which assistance McKean gave them one of the animals. Subsequently, when the 
final treaty was made with them, and before their removal, McKean's cabin was 
thronged with Indians, to whom his wife furnished breakfast every morning as 
regularly as to her own family. At the payment of the sum stipulated in the 
treaty, the Indians urged McKean to present his bill for their entertainment, 
but, being satisfied with the return they had made him, he refused altogether. 
Marquis, of Wauponsee, was more willing to do this, and preferred a claim of 
$500, which the Indians, who disliked him very much, refused to acknowledge, 
saying they had paid him for everything they got, and so the commissioners 
allowed him nothing.

Deer, squirrels, otter, raccoons, muskrats, inhabited the woods and marshes, 
while prairie chickens, quails and wolves were found in the open country. Deer 
were unusually plentiful here, and men going out after their cows and taking 
their guns, seldom failed to bring back the hams of a fine animal as trophies 
of their marksmanship. It very early became the habit of the pioneers to take 
only the hams of venison, leaving the rest of the carcass to the wolves and 
dogs, and it was no unusual thing to see twenty-five hams curing in the 
smoking-house at once. This abundance of game was a great relief to many of 
the pioneers. Easy as hogs were kept, and numerous as they became in later 
years, McKean, who kept a large herd, found ample market for all he could 
raise among the farmers in this region. Many who could not buy, lived on this 
abundant game, though it soon became tiresome to the taste and proved a poor 
substitute for beef and pork.

But there was something to be done beside hunt. This would sustain life, but 
would not subdue the wilderness nor bring in the happy reign of civilization. 
The earliest effort was made to get a crop of corn. The first crop was planted 
by cutting a gash in the inverted sod with an axe, dropping the corn and 
closing it by another blow beside the first. Or it was dropped in every third 
furrow and the sod turned on it; if the corn was so placed as to find the 
space between the furrows, it would find daylight; if not, the result of the 
planting was extremely doubtful. Of course cultivation in this case was 
impossible, and if the squirrels and crows gave the crop an opportunity to 
mature, it generally proved a satisfactory return. At first there was no 
market for the surplus product, and there was only the household and the 
limited amount of stock to provide for. Wheat was not cultivated here to any 
extent; the location was not suited to it, and farmers preferred to buy what 
they needed for their own use, while giving their whole attention to grazing 
and corn. The lack of milling facilities was another inconvenience that 
amounted to a hardship. The nearest place where corn or wheat could be ground 
was at Green's mill, in Dayton. Here, when the roads were passable, the people 
brought their corn or wheat, and waited with such patience as they could 
command until they could be served. This waiting frequently consumed a week, 
and customers of this mill always went prepared to stay until they got 
their "grist," as the journey hither was not one to be undertaken lightly. But 
more discouraging than these were the annual floods which regularly visited 
this township, and brought in their train destruction and disease, harder to 
bear than any amount of difficulties which energy and pluck might surmount.
 
Life, in a new country, is everywhere subjected to the misery of malarious 
diseases. The clearing off of timber or the breaking up of prairie sod, 
involving the rapid decay of large quantities of vegetable matter, gave rise 
to the inevitable miasma, which wrought its sure work upon the human 
system. "Such sickness was generally confined to the last of the summer and 
fall. There was but little sickness in winter except a few lingering fall 
cases that had become chronic; there were but few cases after severe frosts, 
and the spring and early summer were perfectly healthy. It was commonly 
remarked that when the bloom of the resin weed and other yellow flowers 
appeared it was time to look for the ague. The first spring flowers on the 
prairie were mostly pink and white, then followed purple and blue, and about 
the middle of August yellow predominated.

"High water in spring, flooding the bottoms and filling the lagoons and low 
places along the streams, and then drying off with the hot sun of July and 
August, was a fruitful cause of disease, and in such localities it was often 
quite sickly, while the high prairie was comparatively exempt."* Felix was 
especially exposed to these inundations, and hardly a year passed without an 
extensive overflow. The one of 1837 is especially remembered. In the early 
spring of this year, a sudden flood broke up the ice, which, forming a gorge, 
held back the waters until their weight made the ice give way, and the flood 
of water and ice made its way down the Illinois, submerging the islands in its 
course and flooding its banks until even the high-

*Hist. of La Salle County—Baldwin.
 
lands were reached, threatening destruction to homes and stock which were 
supposed to be out of the reach of anything save another deluge. Huge masses 
of ice were lodged upon the banks in every conceivable shape, which, gradually 
melting in the spring suns, kept the soaked earth saturated until the middle 
of summer, when the hot stifling weather of August gave rise to an unusual 
amount of sickness all along the river. "That season, exaggerated and fearful 
stories were sent over the country in relation to the sickness. A 
correspondent of an Eastern paper stated that he saw in a cemetery at La 
Salle, 300 graves that had never been rained on, and that in a new country 
where a settlement was but just commenced. This might have been true, but the 
cemetery belonged to the Catholics, and was the only one this side of Chicago, 
and thousands of men were there at work on the canal, and they nearly all came 
to La Salle for burial; and this was late in the fall when there had been no 
rain for nearly six months."*

Although there was but little to attract emigration to Felix, and later years 
have demonstrated its ineligibility as a site for a city, yet two very 
considerable towns have found a place and varied experience within its limits. 
Jugtown was what its name implies, a place where pottery interests centered. A 
bed of good potter's clay was found near the western end of Goose Lake, and in 
1853, William White, of Chicago, put up the necessary buildings and machinery 
for the manufacture of drain tile especially for the Chicago market. Such clay 
was not to be found

* Baldwin.
 
readily, and there seemed to be a bright prospect for the enterprise. The 
business expanded, some forty or fifty men were employed, and gathering about 
the works with their families made quite a town of their settlement. A great 
difficulty was met at the very outset in the lack of shipping facilities. The 
roads were poor at best, and the product of the works had to be hauled to 
Morris for shipment, though considerable effort was made to utilize the 
Kankakee feeder to obviate this distance. This did not prove successful, and 
the enterprise gradually went to decay, and with the business went the town, 
leaving little but the scarred earth to mark its site.

Kankakee City was a more pretentious aggregation of houses, though hardly so 
well established in fact. The projected canal was the subject of the most 
absurd speculations. Its leading advocate in Congress, Daniel P. Cook, 
declared in a document addressed to his constituents, "that in less than 
thirty years it would relieve the people from the payment of taxes, and even 
leave a surplus to be applied to other works of public utility." Such 
estimates were industriously circulated by the friends of this great scheme 
among the capitalists of the East, and so little experience was had in such 
matters then, and so prone were people to believe in the existence of an "El 
Dorado" in the little known West, that capital forgot its traditional caution, 
and seemed to struggle to reach its fate. When the government, put up its 
share of these lands for sale there was an excited struggle between the actual 
settlers and the speculators, which resulted in the victory of the settlers 
who secured the land which they had improved, and what they could pay for 
adjoining them. But when these purchasers were satisfied there was a great 
deal of land left which was subsequently picked up by speculators, who held it 
at five and ten dollars per acre. These prices were so high as to discourage 
immigration, and land dealers resorted to every device to stimulate the rage 
for speculation. The infatuation seemed to be contagious; corner lots, claims, 
pre-emptions and floats, were the chief subject of conversation. Mr. Baldwin 
thus describes the situation: "A lodger at any of the rickety hotels at that 
day, would have to sleep in a room containing four or five beds, and from the 
bargains and contracts made by the lodgers before going to sleep, might well 
imagine himself on 'Change, or in Wall street, New York, and his companions 
all millionaires. The writer called at a log cabin toward evening of a rainy 
day, where some half a dozen farmers were assembled, who had evidently engaged 
in high speculation during the day. One of the number, addressing himself to 
me, said, as he slapped his hand very complacently on his thigh; 'I have made 
ten thousand dollars to-day, and I will make twice that to-morrow;' and I 
learned from further conversation with his companions, that he had been the 
least successful one in the company. Towns and villages were laid out at 
almost every crossroad, and some, where there had never been any road. I set 
out some small apple trees on my farm, the only ones to be procured, and stuck 
a stake by each; a stranger coming past, inquired the name of the town I had 
laid out."

Kankakee City was an outgrowth of this speculative mania and was pretentious 
enough to satisfy the most exaggerated announcements. In its palmiest days its 
population did not reach seventy-five souls, yet it had ten public squares, 
with public parks and broad streets enougli to have formed a nucleus for 
another New York City. The plat with its numerous additions covered about two 
thousand acres, and lots were sold at auction in Chicago and New York City, 
and thousands upon thousands of dollars were invested in this midsummer 
night's dream. In all the prominent real estate centers were seen highly 
ornamented plats of this city, beautiful with magnificent buildings, and busy 
with the traffic of capacious warehouses, and crowded steamboat wharves. In 
its early history, Mr. Beard, the projector of this city, was offered $35,000 
for his property, which he rejected. But the crash of 1837 came, and all this 
paper prosperity passed away like morning dew. Emigration almost entirely 
ceased; the work on the canal, which had brought a certain fictitious 
prosperity to this region, barely struggled  on, supported by State scrip. 
Wheat went down from two dollars per bushel to fifty cents; pork from twenty-
five dollars per barrel to one dollar per hundred; corn to ten cents per 
bushel, and all this in depreciated scrip or store goods at a profit of one 
hundred per cent. For many years the large territory embraced in the limits of 
Kankakee City was assessed as lots and thousands of dollars were loaned upon 
this property as security, but the burden became too great and the land was 
finally sold for the accumulated taxes, and whatever titles are now held to 
this property are based upon tax sales. This famous city has long since 
reverted back to rustic uses, and serves the purposes of the farm, none the 
less sedately for having at an early day put on city airs.

NOTE.—The site of Kankakee City, between the forks of the Illinois River, is 
now apart of Au Sable township, being assigned to that township because the 
facilities for crossing the Desplaines River are better than for crossing the 
Kankakee.

Additional Comments:
HISTORY OF GRUNDY COUNTY ILLINOIS; Containing a History from the earliest 
settlement to the present time, embracing its topographical, geological, 
physical and climatic features; its agricultural, railroad interests, etc.; 
giving an account of its aboriginal inhabitants, early settlement by the 
whites, pioneer incidents, its growth, its improvements, organization of the 
County, the judicial history, the business and industries, churches, schools, 
etc.; Biographical Sketches; Portraits of some of the Early Settlers, 
Prominent Men, etc.; ILLUSTRATED. CHICAGO: O. L. BASKIN & CO., HISTORICAL 
PUBLISHERS, Lakeside Building. 1882.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/il/grundy/history/1882/historyo/chapter164nms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/ilfiles/

File size: 22.8 Kb