Stephenson County
Biographies

JAMES TIMMS
Always known as Jimmy, he was born in South Carolina and moved to west Tennessee when he was twelve. When camping one night in the wilderness in a vacant log cabin, Jimmy had to go back over a trail which was only a single wagon path through the trees and undergrowth. He had to find a chain they had lost off the covered wagon. He was alone, it was dark, and he had to go three or more miles before he found it. It was a trip he didn't forget all his life. Now this would be in the year 1814, they reached Memphis, Tennessee, and decided to go on to Manstogwa, New York. Later they came back down the Ohio River through Springfield, Illinois on down to a little place called Cascake Illinois, some fifty miles from St. Louis. There is not a house standing there now.

There he lived till after he was married. Then he and his wife Lucy went up the old Sucker Indian trail. Indians had need of it for many years. Their ponies would go single file North in the Spring, and South in the Fall. It went over the very peak of the hills so other Indians could not ambush them. I was there in 1925 and an old timer showed it to me. For miles I could see the depression it was three feet wide. So Jimmy and his wife must have gone on horse back up to a place where Pearl City, Illinois is now and took a homestead. It is a quarter of a mile East of where the fifty foot high Black Hawk Monument now stands. It marks where Black Hawk made his last stand in Illinois. That is another story and it happened after this.

The Indians liked Jimmy and Lucy. They built a log house. Split logs made the ceiling, the flat side was the second story where they slept. The steps were a straight ladder made of tree limbs, that was their first home. About this time setters were drifting in pretty fast. Some chose to be hostile to the Indians which caused raids for them. They decided to build a fort. The most central location was just a shot away from Jimmy's place and it was easy to get a well there so they had a house raising, stockades and all.

A number of times the cavalry were called out to run the Indians back over the Mississippi into Iowa. The biggest battle the Indians gave in Illinois was there in Kelloggs Grove, less than a mile from Jimmy's place. Here nearly a hundred U.S. soldiers lost their lives and then were buried in hidden graves so the Indians wouldn't know how many they had killed. The captain showed Jimmy where each were buried in case something would happen to him. Old Black Hawk himself made that stand and after that there were only a few hit and run attacks.

Source: By Diane Boand at Find-A-Grave



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