of Menard and Mason Counties
By T.G. Onstott
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CHAPTER XLI Page 373 I think a description of the first hotel in Havana would interest young and old. It stood till 1850. I recollect of being there one Sunday evening with James Covington until 12 o'clock at night. Old man Brown was then keeping the hotel. Brown had some girls which I presume was the reason that we were there. The next morning the hotel went up in flames. I don't know whether Covington and myself were ever charged with setting it on fire or not, but we were there a short time before it burned. Old settlers will remember the tavern. I got possession of a copy of a book published by Harvey L. Ross, who moved to Los Angeles, Cal., about twenty-five years ago, in which he gives a description of the early settlement of Lewistown and Havana and the building of the hotel and the trouble in getting the material on the ground. It will interest the younger generation of today to know something of the hardships the old pioneers had to endure and what fortitude they endured-what they undertook. It was certainly a great undertaking to build such a house at that time. There was no pine lumber nearer than Cincinnati and the few saw mills at that time had been erected on small streams in Fulton county, therefore most of the lumber used in the hotel was sawed by hand with a whip saw. When the building was completed it was in all probability the largest building in Central Illinois and cost more than any other building in the state. The building was commenced late in 1831 and finished in 1833. It combined hotel and store and was eighty feet long and thirty feet wide, with upper and lower story porches ten feet wide on each side of the house. The main part of the hotel was four stories high and the store part two and a half stories high. The first story was built of stone twelve inches thick and also a floor of stone, the balance of the building was wood. There were two large chimneys with three fire places opening into one and four in the other. All the lumber, stone and lime used in building the house was brought from Fulton county. The sills, posts and joists and other large timbers were cut and hewn in the woods. The stone was taken out of a hill in Liverpool township and carried by boat down the river to Havana. The lime was burned in the same township by Zenos Henington and hauled in a truck wheeled wagon to Havana by two yoke of oxen. There was not a particle of iron used in the construction of the wagon. The wheels and every part were wholly wood. Mr. Henington had no need to call for the ferry boat when he came to Havana for the ferryman could hear the creaking of the wagon a half a mile away. The timber used in building the hotel was white oak, ash, black and white walnut. The weather-boarding and shingles were split out of white oak timber and shaved to a proper thickness with a drawing knife. The weather-boarding was four feet long and the shingles twenty-eight inches. The laths were split out in the woods and all the doors, window sashes and mouldings were made by hand. The weather-boarding and shingles were made near Lewistown by Jonathan Cadwalader and his sons, Isaac and John. They were Quakers. The carpenter work was done by Moses Lewis and Alex Freeman and Isaac and Jesse Benson. The mason work was done by Ben Hartlan and the painting by Andrew Mayfield. Their names are mentioned because they were old settlers and their descendants are still living. About twenty-five years the big hotel and store was destroyed by fire and there was no insurance. Walker and Hancock kept the first store there and Hunt and McEndree were in the house when it burned. Ossian Ross kept the store and ran the hotel up to the time of his death in 1837. His wife and Lewis administered on the estate. His stock of goods and personal property was appraised at $9,000 and the sale amounted to $10,000. After the family moved back to Canton in 1840 Harvey L. Ross, having married, took charge of the hotel and ferry and ran them for three years. There was no court house at that time in the county and so court was held in the bar room and some other rooms were used for jury rooms. It was there that such men as Abraham Lincoln, John J. Hardin, Ed Baker, H.M. Weed, W.C. Goudy and J. Boice attended the courts and took part in pioneer law suits. At one time of court Gen. Hardin had a narrow escape from death. He was very fond of hunting and went out one morning to try his luck for deer. At that time there were plenty along the Illinois river. He did not have to travel far until he saw a deer and drew up his gun and fired at it, but instead of killing the deer the breech pin flew out of his gun and struck him in the face making a terrible wound. It was several days before he could be taken home and he carried the scar until his death. Mr. Lincoln never appeared to care very much about hunting and seldom engaged in that sport. His chief amusement and delight was in telling stories and anecdotes. In the role of story telling I never knew his equal. His power of mimicry was very great. He could perfectly mimic a Dutchman, Irishman or Negro. In the evening after court had adjourned a great crowd would gather around Lincoln in the bar room to listen to Lincoln's stories and he seemed to enjoy to the utmost, the peals of laughter that would fill the house. I have heard men say that they had laughed at his stories until they had almost shaken their ribs loose. I heard of cases where men have been suffering for years with some bodily ailments and could get no relief but who have gone a couple of evenings and listened to Lincoln and laughed their ailments away and become hale and hearty men, giving Lincoln credit of being their healer. It was during the time that my father was building the Havana hotel that he had a two hundred acre farm fenced and improved just east of Havana and which is now in the corporate limits of Havana. The rails having been made on the banks of Spoon river and boated down that river and across the Illinois. In 1833 during the Blackhawk war when so many people were leaving the military tract for fear of the Indians he put his whole force at work and built a fort or block house at Havana to be a refuge for the white settlers. The effect was to stop the ruinous stampede of people from Fulton county. Gen. LF. Ross thinks there were three block houses built instead of one; one on each side of the hotel and one on the west side and north of Spoon river. On the road to Lewiston Gen. Ross says that the people of Fulton helped to build those houses. The mouth of Spoon river was then directly opposite Havana and the ferry ran to the upper side of Spoon river. The large hotel stood on the south side of Market street on the edge of a high bluff overlooking the river. The bluff has been cut down and the site of the hotel is now vacant.
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