The Deed-Slingers of Rock Island
County
by Alexandra
Benedict, Geneseo, IL
The story of Rock Island City was
presented by Alexandra Benedict at the Illinois History Symposium in
December, 2001, and published in the Rock Island County Historical
Society Newsletter, October, 2002 Used with permission of Alexandra
Benedict and the Rock Island County
Historical Society (off-site link)
Three chopping, cabin building pioneers are staple images of
Illinois history, but Rock Island City was planned by deed-slinging
lawyers. What's more, the original Rock Island faced the Rock River,
not the Mississippi. A Pittsburgh was to rise just west of Black
Hawk State Park.
In 1836, a young lawyer trotted intot he country on his horse
Sweepstakes. Levi C. Turner was determined to make his fortune and
had alrady married the boss' daughter. Despite months of planning,
the trip started badly. He bacame ill in the muddy vilage of Toledo
and had to be dragged back to the home of a friend near Detroit on a
lumber sled. His man Collins stayed with him; his brothers-in-law,
George and William Campbell, forged ahead on family business.
Recovered by April, 1836, Turner packed his India rubber rainsuit,
bedroll, and gun and left Oakland County, Michigan, on horseback for
Chicago.
The thirty-year-old Dartmouth graduate slept out his last of
several nights on an Indiana beach, brushed off, and trotted into
Chicago to meet Gurdon S. Hubbard, fur trader and a founding father
of the Midwest's premier city-to-be. Turner had money; he bought
$89,000 worth of Chicago lots for himself and leading men of Otsego
County, New York, from Hubbard. Hubbard would later claim he also
loaned Turner $20,000 to buy Rock Island City.
The law had prepared Turner for dealing with businessmen, but his
contracts with Hubbard dragged him into a financial wrestling match.
Turner's backers in Cooperstown, New York, were corporate lawyers,
but Hubbard had started work for Astor at sixteen and could be as
tough.
In 1836, Hubbard was interested in the value that the infant
Illinois-Michigan Canal was adding to city lots in Chicago. The Rock
Island idea of digging a canal from the Rock River to the
Mississippi River appealed to him. Why not advance the young
Easterner a few dollars and see if the townsite he proposed to buy
from George Davenport on the Rock River would take shape? After all,
Illinois land prices were rising "like magick."
If all the pieces of the plan fell into place, a city would rise
on the banks of the Rock. Boats would steam up from St. Louis, swing
east up the Rock River, lock throught the government canal proposed
for Vandruffs Island, and do business at Rock Island City. Then it
was up river past now Colona through the never dug Mississippi-Rock
River Canal to Campbell's Island.
It was a plan for bringing the coal of Rock Island County and the
lead of Jo Daviess County together while avoiding the treacherous
fourteen mile stretch of rapids from the island of Rock Island to
LeClaire.
By June, Levi C. Turner was back in Chicago, this time with wife,
Julia, probate judge William Campbell, prosecutor Eben Morehouse,
and Richard Fenimore Cooper, lawyer and nephew of the world-famous
novelist. They attended the great Chicago land auctions and jounced
off to Galena in a covered wagon where Campbell-Morehouse interests
owned a store and worked lead.
After the steamboat trip from Galena, George and Margaret
Davenport's newly built two story house on Rock Island was a haven
to Julia and Mrs. Morehouse. William Dickson, too, must have enjoyed
the well-appointed comfort of the Davenport home where they blended
the two deals for Sauk-E-Nauk. Davenport had promised half of the
former Indian village's land to Dickson for $15,000 earlier that
spring. However, in Chicago a mutual friend, Hiram Norcross of
Monmouth, had introduced Turner to Dickson during the land auctions.
Since Dickson and Julia Turner were also second cousins, they
decided to combine forces and approach Davenport as a team for the
full 3/4 of the site he was willing and able to sell.
The deal was struck on July 1, 1836, and William Dickson, later
founder of Milan, Levi Crosby Turner, and Richard Fenimore Cooper
became owners of Black Hawk's famous town of Sauk-E-Nauk along with
George Davenport. The thrill oozed away in the land market meltdown
of 1837.
Between July, 1836, and February, 1837, Turner sold shares in the
concept of the town to eight men, one of them the famous Daniel
Webster. All of Turner's and Webster's money people were buying
heavily throughout the Old Northwest. The crash halted the 'go
ahead' that kept the money in motion, and Rock Island City and both
Rock River canals were dropped like hot potatoes.
Hubbard and Turner, Dickson and Turner, and many others were
about to spend twenty years in court while the disputed land covered
its warrior graves with grass. Meanwhile Stephenson on the
Mississippi slipped in and renamed itself Rock Island.
