CUMBERLAND COUNTY, ILLINOIS
HISTORY OF EARLY DAYS
This National Road, frequently called
“The Cumberland Road and from which the County was named, was of
immense and immediate importance to that are of the state contiguous to
it, and indeed to all the country further vest. It was built, one might
say, by the inch, as the road was graded up and packed in all low
places and sufficiently wide for two coaches to pass everywhere; the
drainage culverts which were numerous were provided with dressed stone
nicely fitted, cemented and arched; the creeks and rivers were spanned
by enduring bridges built on hued stone piers and abutments erected
with such skill they seemed able to stand for ages. The bridges were
indeed marvelously constructed of timbers and planks which were
pit sawed by manpower, usually of trees standing near by. They were
double tracked and held together with wooden pegs, even the sidings
were held on by wooden pegs not an iron bolt nor banding the structure;
nor a nail unless possible on the roof. So it is not surprising that
when it was finished as far as Vandalia in 1840, where it was stopped,
it had cost the Government nearly several million dollars.
As soon as these events were
accomplished the Government established a land office in Vandalia,
although the State capital had been moved from there to Springfield in
1836 Then the country was thrown open to settlers, and the once for all
Government land was fixed at one dollar and twenty five cents per acre.
About the same time the Congress
passed a law giving to each surviving soldier a Land Warrant for forty
acres of land. These Warrants were full
payment for the amount of any
unoccupied Government land, and were issued to each soldier by name so
that if he did not want to use it himself he would make it transferable
by signing his name on the back of it. The utmost cash value of a forty
acre Warrant was fifty dollars. Nearly all the first settlers had
procured land warrants before starting for the great unknown West
So in 1838 when Phillip Shiplor and
Wm. E. Smith; my father, arrived from Ohio, in what was then and for
several years afterwards, Coles County Illinois, they made their
selections side by side helped each other build Their cabins and then
went to Vandalia and became the first purchasers of land in that
vicinity,. (John Armer was also there about a mile up Cottonwood Creek)
At that time there was much prejudice
against the prairie land, especial1y by persons from the heavily
timbered eastern states where the farms had to be made by grubbing and
clearing off the timber. These people though out the prairie Could not
be productive or there would be timber on them. So for this and other
reasons the cabins were built in the timber and the timber lands were
taken first. Mr. Shiplor’s land was nearly all timber, my father
selected his 160 acres so the east half was in the prairie and the west
half was in timber. His land was about one half mile north of the
National Road and his west line about a quarter of a mile east of the
Cottonwood Creek. Within a few
years several other pieces of land were entered by persons who had
children and in the fall of 1840 they all came together and decided to build a school house. My father
gave a spot of ground near his south-west corner and all necessary
timber and the cabin 12 feet by 16 feet was built in one day. It was
made of round logs, chinked and daubed and covered with clapboards with
logs on top to hold them down. It had a puncheon floor, and benches
were also of puncheons and the door was hung with wooden hinges. This
was the first school house west of Greenup. Although there was not a
legal school district established there, my father taught the school
for three winters, 1840 -’4l -’42. The patrons paid him what they could
spare generally “chips and whetstones”, he said, but as he spent the
time of the recesses and noon hour in riving clapboards from timber
near by for his outbuildings, he did not lose much, it was in this,
school house in 1841 that the first religious meetings were held and
the first Methodist Society organized, with, the following charter
members: Phillip and Nellie Shiplor, Wm. S. and Nancy Smith, Joseph and
Mary Russell, John and Sarah Smith, Mrs. Hamilton, Thomas and Mary
Smith, John Green and his wife, Henry Shiplor and George and Sarah
Smith.
By the year 1844 the school house
before mentioned became too small to accommodate the children who
wanted to attend school and the people who came to the church services.
It was therefore considered advisable to build a meeting house large
enough for both purposes. My father gave a larger pact of land
sufficient for the meeting house and a graveyard also.
The site chosen for the house was
about fifteen rods west from the school house, and it was a really
beautiful one for that purpose; there were large oak trees here and
there with a grassy sward beneath them; the ground sipped down to the
westward into the creek bottom; the front end of the house faced
southward and stood about fifty feet north of the new section line road
which had been opened eastward to Greenup, and to the west across the
Cottonwood Creek and on to where the Morton settlement sprang up
later. It became a very important road joining the east and west
settlements of the county.
When it became known that a meeting
house was to be built there all the men in the settlement, even those
who were not church members came and volunteered to help prepare
the timbers. When a sufficient number of these had been cut and
hewed on two sides and hauled to the place, a day was appointed for,
the erection. That was a great day, an event, the first meeting house
in the western part of the county was to be erected. Men came from far
and near there were twenty three of them and all were enthusiastic to
help in such a good cause.
Four of the most skillful were
selected to carry up the four corners they cut the saddles and shaped
the ends of the logs so that the hewed sides were placed in a vertical
position; other men selected to logs that matched and shoved them up on
skids until the house was about three times the height of an ordinary house, Then the
roof was made and the cracks between the logs were covered with
clapboards and fastened by wood pins; the ‘floor and seats ‘ were at
first made of puncheons and the door hung with wooden hinges; the
pulpit enclosed on three sides Was placed at the further end and
was ascended by three steps. A merchant in Greenup donated enough nails
for the roof, another merchant furnished three windows for each of ‘the
two sides’and a third merchant donated a large box stove and sufficient
pipe to reach through the roof.
When it was finished everyone
praised it saying, “It is about the nicest Meeting House I have ever
seen”.
The Dedication
When everything was ready a.
Methodist Preacher Rev. H.B. Hascombe of. Kentucky was sent for and he
came and conducted the dedication services and named it “The Salem
Meeting House". From that time on regular preaching services were held
once a month by a circuit rider who with the and of other preachers
also held a protracted meeting for two or more weeks once a year. A
Sunday School was established which taught reading, writing and
arithmetic as well as religion On those Sundays when there were no
preaching services a class meeting was held by the leader, Phillip
Shiplor at first, and later by Joseph Russell, When I was a small
boy I
liked to attend these meetings. The men came in earlier than the women,
each dressed in his Sunday best consisting of buckskin pants and vest,
a warmus and a coon-skin cap. As they entered their guns were stacked
in the corners and on them were hung the shot pouches and powder horns.
In-the winter time, as wood was abundant and free, they made a roaring
fire drew the benches around, the big-stove and spent a half hour or
more before meeting time in recounting their adventures during the
previous week and the previous years and how they had shot a deer or a
turkey that morning as they came, or went they, intended to do on
the way home after the meeting. They told many marvelous stories new
ones each Sunday the supply seemed inexhaustible.
The First Death Soon after the
dedication of the house, a day was appointed and the settlers came
together again and grubbed and cleared a part of the graveyard. As the
ground had been donated to the public, there was never a charge for burial lots
and so the yard.was kept in order by these annual volunteer
labors.
The first one to be buried there was
George Smith, aged about about 45 years, whose home was about two miles
northeast of the meeting house. His grave was dug about two hundred
feet north from the building and was to be seen for many years covered
by a rail pen. As there was no preacher near the funeral was
conducted at the side of the grave by the Class leader...........
( This was taken from the
January 8,
1920, issue of The Toledo Democrat. Dr. Clark Smith was born in the
Salem neighborhood, three,miles south and a little east of
Toledo,Cumberland County, Illinois. At this writing he was living
in Berkeley, Calif., as a practicing physician. There was
evidently more of the articles but we were unable to find them)
"Originally transcribed
by Dr. Dick Smith and published in the Cumberland County Historical
Society Quarterly on July 1973 and transcribed here for Genealogy
Trails by Barb Z."