Editor Democrat: I have been a reader of your excellent paper for nearly two years and have greatly enjoyed some of its features. I have been much interested in Lyman O. Tomlinson’s recent letters, especially those giving his recollections of people who lived, and events which long ago occurred on Preston Prairie where I was born.
I may as well say at the outset that I was the first white boy born in Carroll Township. Indeed I have the authority of the late Samuel Preston that I can rightfully claim that distinction. Then Mr. Preston, who was my father’s cousin, was secretary of the Old Settlers’ Association of Carroll County, in the seventies and he several times invited me to attend the annual reunion of the Old Settlers and take part in the exercises. But I was not situated so I could leave my business, however much I would have enjoyed it.
I remember that I once wrote some verses for one of those reunions. Mr. Preston read them and Volney Armour, whom I knew, published them in full in his History of Carroll County a few years later. (Alice Horner’s note: This book may be the one by that title published in 1878 by H. F. Kett & Co. Chicago. The title page shows no author, by Volney Armour is one of the people thanked on the preface page on the other side of the title page. Andrew Downing’s poem "The Pioneers" is printed on pages 305-308)
My father, Heman Downing, settled on the Prairie in 1837 entering government land and building a log cabin on what is now the N. S. Smith place. This cabin supplanted a short time by what was in those days considered a comfortable frame house on a site a few hundred yards nearer the Savanna road. With the exception of two years spent in Mt. Carroll, we lived in that house until the family moved to Princeton, Illinois, starting with teams on my eighteenth birthday, March 11, 1856.
This narration, though, will concern itself with my recollections of persons and happenings prior to that date, for since then, as the Indian girl said of her birthplace, that it was Cape Cod and all along the shore, my abiding place has been in different states, one after another.
Those days in the forties were truly pioneer days. When my father settled in Carroll County there were no railroads in Illinois, in fact the first railroad entering in Chicago was begun in 1847, and the population in 1850 was but 29,269.
I do not think there was any Mt. Carroll until I was five or six years of age and then I heard a neighbor say that Rinewalt and Halderman were building a mill there and that a town would soon grow up around it.
There was no fruit in the country except wild fruit, such as plums, berries, etc., the orchards already planted not having come into bearing. Nearly all our groceries came by steamboat to Savanna, where our trading was done.
At last a store and post office were opened in Mt. Carroll and we heard that the store had a few apples, somehow imported from the East. My brothers and sisters and myself had never seen apples and to gratify our curiosity Father put me on a slow paced horse and sent me with a note to the storekeeper to purchase twenty-five cents worth of apples. I secured four or five small specimens of the fruit, not very palatable I believe. A few years later we would not have looked at such apples.
The country in those days was sparsely settled and many of the settlers endured hardships of pioneer life. It takes time and pluck for even the hardiest yeoman to subdue the wild forces of nature amid such surroundings and evolve from the resources at hand the necessities, to say nothing of the comforts of civilized life. Money was scarce. I think I remember a time when my father did not have a whole dollar in his purse for six months. But the day soon arrived when enough was raised on the farm to supply largely the needs and thereafter we got along very well.
When there was a surplus of wheat raised, it was often hauled to Chicago, the round trip consuming about a week. But the most of our marketable products went to the river for shipment to St. Louis or to Galena where the lead mines were then extensively worked.
There was plenty of game in the country, deer being abundant and easily killed. I remember that one September morning, I stood with my father on the high ground back of our house and we saw quite a large herd of deer moving leisurely southward in search of pastures new. My uncle, Sumner Downing, who had a good rifle, killed four deer in one day, it was said, and I know that choice venison then was no rarity but I never saw any. All the western game birds were plentiful, such as wild geese, ducks, cranes, prairie chickens, and quail. Rabbits and squirrels were abundant and the river and small streams teemed with fish.
I remember that when I was quite small I killed two wild geese at one shot with a single barrel shot gun. Uncle Sumner, whom my youthful imagination invested with all the characteristics of a mighty hunter, saw the deed done and I dragged the two birds to the place where he stood. I am sure I felt as proud of my achievements as Caesar did when he returned from conquering Gaul.
The social pleasures of the neighborhood were few, but they were thoroughly enjoyed and unstinted hospitality prevailed. "The latch string was always out" and the family felt hurt if even a stranger who happened to be in the vicinity did not avail himself of its implied invitation to enter and make himself at home.
Mr. Tomlinson has told you somewhat of the school homes of Preston Prairie, but I think I can perhaps add a little to the enumeration of the teachers as I knew them.
The first school on the Prairie of which I have any knowledge was presided over by my aunt, Emerenci Downing, who later was Mrs. Benjamin Day, but I was too young to attend. After we had as teacher, in three or four places which served as school houses, Franklin Langworthy, who went to California during the gold rush in 1849 and upon his return published an interesting book entitled "Scenery of the Plains and Mountains and Mines". Then followed, perhaps not in order here again, but substantially so, Miss Woodruff, who married Mr. M. Dupuis, of Savanna, Miss Chadwick, Joseph C. Thomas, Lewis Chrisman and Stephen Libby. The last named gentleman taught during the winter of 1856 in the school house on the hill just north of Uncle Stephen Kneale’s place. It was the last district school I attended in Carroll county.
Besides myself and my brothers and sisters there were my cousins, Harvey and Norman Downing, William Kneale and his sisters, Addie, Anna, and Maria; Wilson Day and sister Lestina, and Ellen Preston, now Mrs. Harvey Downing. There were also William, James, John, and Mary Petty; Hattie Sandiford, Reuben and James O’Neal; Byron, Milo, Semantha and Alzina Cummings, and others whose names I do not recall.
All of the teachers named were, I believe, painstaking and efficient instructors. Mr. Langworthy was a rather slow and old-fashioned man but a good disciplinarian. A nephew of his, Alfred Hawley, lived with him. Alfred was rather wild and mischievous, sure to play some prank on the teacher or scholars, even before the school was fairly opened in the morning. I know it got to be a saying among the scholars that the first three numbers of the program were prayer, roll call, and lick Alfred. But I do not think that his uncle seriously retarded Alfred’s bodily growth by these punishments.
When I was eight years old, Father moved to Mt. Carroll and followed his trade of carpenter and joiner, the town showing some indications of coming growth. We lived two years in town, the Pattersons carrying on the farm, which was rented to them.
My teachers in town were James Irvine, who kept school in the lower room of the court house, the northeast corner, I think, and Mrs. Gray, wife of Rev. Calvin Gray, who taught a private school in her own home. Among my school mates in Mrs. Gray’s school was David B. Emmert, whom I met in 1861 in Topeka, Kansas where, during the preceding winter, he had been chief clerk of the Kansas State Senate.
I recall that I was present at the first meeting of the citizens to consider the feasibility of establishing a Seminary in Mt. Carroll. The speeches were earnest and enthusiastic. The one made by Lawyer William T. Miller particularly impressed me. Among other things he said: "You may build a railroad into Mt. Carroll from every point of the compass and all of them will not substantially and permanently benefit the town as will the successful establishment and prosperous continuance of the proposed Seminary."
The enterprise "made haste slowly" at first, but at length it was fairly launched with Misses Wood and Gregory at the head of it -- Frances A. Wood and Cinderella M. Gregory.
I attended the fall term of the Seminary in 1855 as did my oldest sister, Angele --boys not then being excluded from its privileges. But I do not think there were more than a dozen of the latter in the school at the time. There were certainly sixty or seventy girls. Among the young men were William T. and Roscoe Frohock, Charles Worthington, two Colehours, and I think, two Rapps, all having their homes in Mt. Carroll. I will not attempt to designate the young ladies in attendance, there being so many of them.
I am sure that I never knew two ladies so admirably equipped for their work as were Misses Wood and Gregory. Miss Wood, who afterwards married Prof. Henry Shimer, possessed administrative ability of the highest orders. About 1878-79 the printing office which I was connected in Boone, Iowa issued "The Oread" for her for two years and my relations with her were always agreeable and satisfactory. Indeed they were such that I have always had ever since the deepest respect for her wonderful executive capacity, while I have held in no lesser degree the warmest regard for her as a woman and friend. I believe she possessed ability enough had opportunity been given her, to properly manage a railroad or any great mercantile or manufacturing interest which is popularly supposed to be entrusted to men only.
Some of her acquaintances said she was inclined to be a little autocratic and preemptory in her dealings with the world and that after marriage the habit was noticeable even in her domestic affairs. The story was told, but I cannot vouch for its truthfulness, that about sunset one summer day, she told the Professor Shimer to hoe the cabbages near the seminary until she called him. He followed orders strictly and about nine o’clock one of the girls looking out of a dormitory window she saw "the man with the hoe" still pursuing his task in the moonlight, headquarters manifestly, had forgotten him, but he would not let a little thing like that swerve him from the line of conjugal obedience.
One of her pupils relates a story which illustrates Mrs. Shimer’s courage and quickness of decision in an emergency. One evening one of the scholars, Miss Peggy Hammond, a large full faced girl, blackened her face and made herself a darkey in appearance and walked among her mates in the dormitory, unrecognized by them and scaring some of them half to death. Mrs. Shimer met her in the hall and not knowing her, surmised she was a colored tramp who had entered the house for burglarious purposes. Instantly the vigilant teacher seized a stick of stove wood and would have brained the suppositious burglar, had not Miss Hammond wisely concluded that the "psychological moment" for retreat had arrived and hurried out of the house via the back stairway to a place of safety.
Miss Gregory, who became Mrs. Lansing and withdrew from partnership with Mrs. Shimer, was an ideal teacher, devoted to her work, always alive with the desire to secure an appliance or advantage that would forward her pupils in their studies. I have never known a more painstaking instructor than she nor one who brought to her task a finer or better trained intelligence. Were I to name any of my teachers as worthy to be canonized she would be one of the first on the list. I do not say this in disparagement of Mrs. Shimer’s pedagogical powers, but as a pupil I was brought more immediately within the scope of Miss Gregory’s influence, the time and talents of her associates being largely taken up with the business management of the institution.
I am glad and proud to know that the name of one of the notable and capable women of whom I have written, Frances Shimer, is perpetuated in the splendid and progressive school which she so well helped to establish and so successfully conducted for so many years.
When I lived in Mt. Carroll, the weekly or at best the semi-weekly mails came mostly by stage. I remember that I often heard the driver’s horn sound from the hill in what was afterwards called Lowden, as the Galena stage with some times four horses came in sight. It usually had some passengers who desired "to put up" at one of the two taverns, the Mansion House or the O’Brien House as I think it was called. The villagers used to gather at these hostelries to learn from the travelers the latest news from the north, especially from the mines.
One night Father attended a meeting at the court house, called to secure enlistments of men to serve in the Mexican war. When he came home I heard him tell Mother that Sam Jackson, who had worked for us on the farm, had enlisted. I slept very little that night, for I felt that Sam was as good as killed already. But I learned some fifteen years later that even some of the battles were not more hurtful to life and limb than is a French duel, which the insurance companies do not regard as risky. Jackson returned a few months later, not having put foot on Mexican soil. But he secured a government land warrant and located a fine farm in Iowa for his services in Texas.
At the time of which I write, Leonard Gass was Justice of the Peace and John Wilson and William L. Miller the principal attorneys. These two men were usually pitted against each of in the trial of causes both in the justice court and before the higher tribunals. Doctors Abe and John Hostetter and Dr. B. P. Miller were the practicing physicians. I remember also Judge Patch, Judge Bailey and Volney Armour and other lawyers who came later, if I am not at fault in my recollections.
One winter a lyceum was organized and debates held in the court house. Among the speakers I recall C. E. Denio, the "Galena bricklayer" who was then in Carroll, James Farguson and some others. One night Farguson was debating with an Englishman named Knight. I am not sure as to the subject under discussion but Farguson twitted his antagonist of being a "Briton, if not a Hessian, who had probably come to America to rob us of our liberties." Knight retorted hotlyh, acknowledging his English origin but declaring fiercely that he was neither a "Essian" nor a son of a "Essian." Shortly after we moved back to the farm the Mormons who had settled at Navoo began their exodus to Salt Lake City. A good many of them passed through Carroll County, preaching and proselytizing as they went. Two of them preached one Sunday in our "front room." That apartment was used by father for a court room when needed, he being a Justice of the Peace. I remember that these two Mormons did not favorably impress me. They had drummed up the audience, riding over the country for that purpose the previous day. They were ignorant, vulgar braggarts and they made no converts to their faith on Preston Prairie, the people at that date being nearly all New Englanders
Then came the rush to the discovered gold fields of California. Near our house and especially along Cedar Creek, almost every night in the springs of 1849-50 could be seen one or more camps of the gold seekers. Their modes of travel were various; some of the conveyances were unique. There were covered and uncovered wagons and carts, drawn by horses, mules, oxen or cows, men on horseback without other means of transportation, men with gocarts and wheelbarrows and men carrying only a pilgrim’s staff and pack. But all of them were hopeful of winning a fortune as soon as they reached the New Eldorado.
About his time the cholera appeared on the Mississippi river steamboats and sporadically in the towns where the boats touched. One night a sick stranger who had come to Savanna stopped at the house of John O’Neal, our nearest neighbor on the west who kept tavern, Lewis Bliss, our nearest neighbor on the east having quit the business. The man died that night and the doctor pronounced it a case of the cholera. Two of Mr. O’Neal’s family, Lewis O’Neal, a son, and Hugh McGee, a brother of Mrs. O’Neal died of the disease within two or three days. These deaths caused considerable alarm in the neighborhood but luckily the infection did not spread and there were no more cholera cases.
I have been prompted to make this additional contribution to the early history of Carroll county, not only to revive pleasant memories of my friends and associates these days, many of whom have passed away, but also with a view, if possible, to interest and entertain the generation which has succeeded them or are rapidly taking their places in the activities of life.
Lyman O. Tomlinson and others of your readers have kindly expressed the wish that I contribute to your paper more reminiscences of the early Mt. Carroll days. I thought that my recent letter had about expended the panel of interesting ancient, local happenings along the same line -- if I may be permitted to mix my metaphors -- would "make the gruel thinner."
Mr. Tomlinson is right in his conclusion that the briefer our sojourn is in a given place, the more precisely we are able to fix in after life the date of any transaction which occurred during that period. Our recollections are not jumbled, as they are apt to be when we have been life long residents of a single spot. The reason is obvious--there are not so many of them to jumble and thus they are the more clearly silhouetted against the background of the departed years.
But having no memoranda of any part of the tittle-tattle that follows, I shall not attempt, where events are recorded to give them in chronological order. I can only say that they belong to the decade bounded by the years 1840-1856--unless my memory has played me an "Irish trick."
In those early days there were many devastating prairie fires, but the denizens of Preston Prairie suffered only slightly from them. We managed in most cases to suppress them easily, whipping them out with brush cut from nearby timber or hazel-brush. I recall that only once did any of the fences get on fire, but there were times when the red battalions of flames swept widely over the prairie to the southward, especially at night.
The settlers were few and the roads generally bad. I do not believe that any bog in Ireland was ever worse than a quagmire in the road running north and south between our house and the home of Lewis Bliss. Horses and wagons often got mired down there and Father and his hired man sometimes spent hours helping pry them out of the mud. The boys, had our parents allowed it, I am sure could have learned the whole vocabulary of "cuss words" from the luckless travelers who stuck in that terrible hole.
A good many oxen were used in farm work, sometimes even being made to haul the family barouche--a lumber wagon--to and from meetings on Sunday when there was preaching in the neighborhood. We had a pair of steers bought of Alex Jackson, who lived on Straddle Creek, as Carroll Creek was then called. These steers had been trained by the Jacksons that they were wonders of docility and obedience. When hitched to a wagon they would not let a horse team pass them on the road nor were there any horse teams they were following that they would not pass if told to do so. My brother, Edwin, was usually with me and all we had to do was to yell like Comanches to make our team hurriedly describe a hyperbolic curve around their rivals. At an opportune moment they bellowed like bulls of Basham, generally frightening the horses out of the road and slipped ahead of them.
But as my friend, Mr. Tomlinson says of the North Pole: "It is a long distance from locomotion with oxen up through the line of stage coaches, railroads, bicycles and automobiles, to airships." However, we "old uns" who still remember have seen all of them, except a safe and sane airship. But that is coming soon, if Professor Baldwin, Count Zeppelin, Wright Brothers and others do not all break their necks in the meantime. We shall then, I presume, all have an aerial "runabout", move in "higher circles", and perhaps now and then "speed merrily along the milky way."
In the time of which I write, weddings in our community were not merely episodes, they were events of moment, magnitude. Frequently the neighbors, wishing to add to the felicity (?) Of the happy pair, gave them a charivari, that made the woods and valleys ring with seemingly every sound accordant and discordant, that could be produced. When very young I was an auditor and later, when under my very nose I began to descry a few fussy premonitions of a mustache, I became a participant in some of these festivities.
"Father" John Irvine was one of Mt. Carroll’s pioneer preachers. He often officiated as minister in the neighboring school houses. This story is told of him: One Sunday morning before beginning his services he unwrapped his Bible and laid it on the desk before him. Then opening another package, containing his hymn book, as he supposed, its contents fell apart, and the astonished congregation beheld all the cards of a "full deck" spread out on the floor before him. This visibly flustered the old preacher, but he quickly recovered himself and said "I shall reprimand my son, John, when I get home."
But I must stay my hand. I will, however, in closing, say that these hastily gathered recollections remind me again what a grand old State that Illinois is. I do not believe any of her sons ever abate a jot of their loyalty to her, however far they may wander from their ancestral homes. On Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1908 our local Illinois society held its annual reunion. Over two hundred people were present; and all of them came from the Garden State, and had a right to be there. We had a fine picnic. One incident was notable; Mr. W. A. Giles, a wealthy Chicago man, who has his winter home in Phoenix, was one of the speakers. He appeared on the platform wearing upon his head the very hat that Abraham Lincoln wore at his first inauguration--the hat that Douglas kindly held in his hand during the whole of the address delivered by his successful rival. The proof showing its identity has never been questioned. It was given by President Lincoln to an old friend and school mate, Dr. Samuel Long, of Danville, Illinois, and that gentleman was appointed United States Consul to Sandwich Islands, and now the property of Dr. Long’s daughter, Mrs. Kennedy, who lives in Phoenix.
Cordially yours,
Andrew Downing
The above letters were written in August 1908 by Andrew Downing, and were reprinted in the Mirror-Democrat in 1930, under the same column heading as The History of Carroll County, Illinois by Samuel Preston. Andrew Downing and Samuel Preston were second cousins. Andrew Downing’s grandfather was Abner Downing, who was married to Emerancia Preston. Emerancia Preston was a sister of Samuel Preston’s father, also named Samuel Preston.
