Will County IL Archives News....."God's Boundless Garden" - Joliet, Ill. July 23, 1875
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Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com August 23, 2007, 7:40 pm

Evening Courier & Republic [Buffalo NY] July 23, 1875
From Illinois

A Western New Yorker on the Verge of "God's Boundless Garden" - Joliet, Ill., 
as a Manufacturing Centre - Reminiscences of Indian and Border History, &c.

Correspondence of the Courier

Dellwood, Lockport, Will County, Ill., July 15, 1875

We are still lingering in the bowers of Dellwood - a beautiful homestead, with 
its surroundings of breezy groves, rich garden grounds and sunny lawns. Less 
than a bow-shot from the door is a romantic dell through which winds a 
babbling stream that pays tribute to the Aux Plaines. The family, owing to the 
mid-summer heat, often partake of sylvan fare in the shade of wind-swept woods 
that crown the bluff on which the mansion stands. The Aux Plaines is one of 
the constituents of the Illinois, a river of broad expanse that is an affluent 
of the Mississippi, Father of Waters. From my window I catch glimpses of the 
Aux Plaines, here darkened by trees of stately growth on its banks, and there 
flashing in the golden light of a cloudless day.

Dellwood bears Marks of Indian Occupancy

Arrow heads of rare color and material, also other implements of a vanished 
race, once lords of valley and hill, have been presented to us. Four miles 
distant, in the southward direction, is Joliet, the capital of Will county, 
and a city of sixteen thousand inhabitants. There is a state penitentiary with 
its eighteen hundred convicts, many of them engaged in quarrying Lockport 
stone. The entrance to this prison, with its battlements and towers, a friend 
informs us, bears magical resemblance to that of Chester castle in England. We 
have paid a visit to the rolling mill, and extensive works of the "Joliet Iron 
and Steel Company."

Eleven Hundred Operatives are employed, and Bessamer steel rails that are 
manufactured are sent far and wide. An order has just been filled for 
the "Central Pacific," the rails to be shipped direct, without transfer, from 
Joliet to San Francisco. R. H. Terhune informs us that one hundred and seventy 
tons are manufactured daily.

Our friend, O. H. Marshall, Esq., who visited this region more than forty 
years ago, would be surprised to mark such marvelous changes, the result of 
western enterprise, on the site of a town that then could only boast of a mill 
and a dozen houses.

One of the Old Settlers was Hon. John Pearson, who died last month at Danville 
after a brief illness. This distinguished jurist was in our youth a student in 
the law office of the late George Hosmer of Avon, N. Y. He was the first 
circuit judge who ever held court in that county, his circuit embracing most 
of the northern counties of the state, including Chicago. He was a graduate of 
Princeton college, N.J., a man of talent and commanding presence, and wielded 
great influence in shaping the destinies of the state. He was a democrat of 
the old school, and never flinched in his adherence to the principles of 
Jefferson and Jackson. He was known as "Old Heart of Oak," and though advanced 
in years, retained his intellectual and physical powers, in a high degree of 
preservation to the last. It was our intent to visit his hospitable home on 
the banks of the Vermilion, but "God's ways are not as our ways."

We have visited The Joliet Mound, in shape a truncated cone, lying not far 
from the city bounds. We regret to say that this storied landmark of an 
eventful past has been injured in its symmetry by excavations for gravel. The 
mound is composed of sand and gravel on a bed of clay. The supposition of 
scientists is that it was formed by the action of water, though Schoolcraft 
regarded it as the handiwork of the "Mound Builders;" an extinguished race on 
whose history the lamp of conjecture throws no light. On this picturesque 
mound Father Marquette, and Joliet, a French trader, pitched their tents in 
1673.

After the surrender of the northwest territory by the French to the English 
the great chieftain, Pontiac, after a vain struggle with the red coats for the 
hunting grounds of his fathers, left Michigan with the remnant of a once 
powerful tribe, and found a refuge on the banks of the Kankakee, after forming 
an alliance with the Pottawattomies. A conflict arose in reference to the 
right of hunting the buffalo westward of the Illinois. After fierce encounters 
a council was agreed on to bury the hatchet between contending tribes. They 
met at Joliet Mound, and Pontiac, while making a speech, supporting his side 
of the question, was treacherously stabbed and slain by the knife 
of "Kineboo," head chief of the Illini, now an extinguished people. His 
cowardly assassination led to bloody war, and the fearful tragedy of "Starved 
Rock."

We are informed that in 1834 the corpse of an Indian child was found in the 
top of a tree that grew near the spot where the court-house now stands. It was 
placed between rough slabs hollowed out, fastened together and attached to the 
tree by strips of bark.

We have made excursions to pleasant villages in the vicinity; to Lamont, 
Channehon, and Minooca, on the Rock Island road. It is said that in 1818, this 
county numbered two thousand Frenchmen among its inhabitants; now a few names 
of localities (Lamont for instance) alone reminds us of French possession.

The carriage is at the door, and I am off for an airing on the prairie, "God's 
boundless garden." More anon! W. H. C.

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