of Menard and Mason Counties
By T.G. Onstott
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CHAPTER XLIII Page 395 One of the notable characters that settled in Lewistown was Dr. Chas. Newton familiarly called Dr. Newt. He was an eastern man and was well educated and was considered a very good and skillful doctor. He was the only practicing physician in the county for about two years. He kept no office but made his home with O.M. Ross. He would occasionally take a drinking spree that would last a day or two but aside from this was as perfect a gentleman as any person could wish to have in their house. He was a good deal attached to Ross and often said that there was no place that seemed so much like as Ross'. A year after Dr. Newton came down to live with Ross' he was the first doctor in Lewistown and the first in Havana while living at Ross'. In Havana Harvey's mother started him out to hunt a girl to do the house work. He crossed the river and struck off into south Fulton and every house he struck he inquired for girls and finally he was directed to an old gentleman who lived down in the edge of Schuyler county by the name of Londerbach who was said to have four girls. He found the place and told his business and one of the girls agreed to go. It was a long trip and they did not arrive home till after dark. The doctor had gone to bed but called Harvey to his room and wanted to know what kind of a girl he had brought home. He was told that she was a splendid looking girl. Do you think she would make me a good wife asked he? Harvey told him that he thought she would make nay man a good wife. So the doctor courted her and in three months they were married. Havana was at that time in Tazewell county and Tremont was the county seat fifty miles away, so the doctor got his license at Lewistown and employed Esq. J.P. Boice to come down and marry them, as the marriage had to be performed in the country where the license was procured. A crowd of twenty-five or thirty with Esq. Boice and the bride and groom moved out in the channel of the Illinois river in a boat until they were past the middle of the river so as to be in Fulton county and there was a young harness maker of Havana who had been paying attention to Miss Londerback and in fact was very much smitten with her for she was handsome and attractive. When Esq. Boice was repeating the marriage ceremony and came to the place that if any persons had any objections why said parties should not be bound in the holy bonds of matrimony to let it be known or ever afterward hold their peace, young Cook rose up and said he objected. The squire asked him what his objections were? He replied that he wanted the girl himself. Esq. Boice told him that he did not consider his objection legal and went and finished the ceremony. The ferry boat then rowed back to town where a wedding supper was given by the host and hostess and the table was spread with the best the country could afford. The Indians, at a certain stage of the moon each fall, held a great religious festival on the island just above Havana. It was then heavily timbered and a picturesque spot. The Indians would congregate there by the hundreds, and their religious rites and ceremonies would last four days. They had an abundance of good things to eat and spent their time in singing and dancing. One of their ceremonies was to burn a dog to death. They would select a small white dog and make his feet fast with four wooden pins, which they would drive in the ground and then pile wood and burn over him until he was covered four or five feet deep. They would set fire to the pile and then gather in a ring around it. When the dog commenced to burn he would set up the most terrific and awful howling that was ever heard. His cries would ring through the woods for half a mile. When the dog commenced howling the Indians would set up some doleful, dismal cries and keep it up as long as the dog kept howling. Then followed a war dance that would end the festival. Leonard Ross was present at one time when they made a sacrifice of a little dog. He was only eight years old but when the dog made such a yelping, he wanted to clean out the whole Indian tribe. The mounds above and below Havana show that it was a great resort for the dusky warriors and whether the mounds are the work of their hands or not, they were used as burial places for their tribes.
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