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"Let the record be made of the men and things of to-day, lest they pass out of memory to-morrow and are lost. Then perpetuate them not upon wood or stone that crumble to dust, but upon paper, chronicled in picture and in words that endure forever." --Kirkland

History of
History of Grundy County
1877-1878

Robert Cavelier de La Salle was a native of Rouen, born in 1643. The son of a wealthy family, he was well educated, it is believed with the intention of becoming a priest. But the dull routine of a priest's or teacher's life and task illy accorded with his strong personality, pride, will and ambition, and at the age of 23, in the year 1666, he sailed for Canada, to seek fortune in the New World. We find him there as the proprietor of an estate and trading post, near Montreal. In 1669 we find him setting out on an exploring expedition into the Indian country, westward; entering the wilderness he passes from our sight for nearly two years, in which time he discovers the Ohio River, crosses the country until he touches the Illinois River, and returns to Montreal. After some time passed, we find him in the winter of 1679-80 passing down the Illinois River, on his way to Mississippi, which Joliet and Marquette had visited, and they, upon their return to Canada, had ascended the Illinois in 1673, and so passed through this county. We need not follow the wandering or adventures of La Salle further; Parkman has well portrayed these, and to his work we can add nothing. La Salle is due the credit of establishing the first colony upon the Illinois, and through his efforts this country became known. He deserved a better fate than to die, as he did, by the hand of an assassin and villain.

Shaboneh, was in the battle of the Thames - was one of Tecumseh's aids, and near that chieftain when he fell; what he saw here of the pale faces convinced him that they were the destined ruler of the red men; he would not war against destiny; he became the firm friend of the whites ever after, loosing no opportunity to warn them, when danger threatened them, from the Indians. When the tribe went west he remained upon a small farm in Norman township. He died July 17, 1859, at the age of 84 years, honored and respected by all. His remains sleep in the cemetery at Morris, and if ever the spirit of Indian reaches the "happy hunting ground," that of Shaboneh will. We are glad to learn that steps are being taken to raise a monument to the memory of the noble chief. His name and deeds deserve to live to latest times.

Hew out the rock, and rear above his tomb the polished stone, And let it be inscribed thereon, here lies the noblest of God's handiwork. An Honest Man.

Beside him sleeps his squaw, Wiomex Oquawka, who was drowned while crossing the Mazon, Nov. 30, 1864, and his little grand-daughter, Mary Okamo, drowned at the same time. His daughter, Mary, also lies beside the old chief; she died May 14, 1860. He left several other children, but their fate or history I have been unable to learn.

The first funeral was that of his son, William, a lad of 16 years, who died of fever, in the year 1835. The father, after placing the body on a scaffold, out of doors, to prevent dogs or wolves getting to it, left his sick family and walked several miles to get help from the neighbors to bury his son. Three of them, Jacob and Perry A. Claypool and Wm. Robb, returned with him. They found a canoe in Mazon near by and sawed this in two, nailed boards across the end and placed the body in, then covered it, and thus was the first coffin constructed in the county; they dug a grave, and placed a chain around the coffin to "snake" it to its final resting place. The oxen were young and had not been worked for some time - had grown wild - and they made a nearly successful attempt to run away. After considerable effort the coffin reached its destination, and the last rite was rendered the dead child. A strange scene was this pioneer funeral, wanting much of the solemnities that attend the sepulture of today.

The first wedding is believed to be that of James J. Halsey and Nancy Marquiss. The first child born was James B. Hoge, May 6, 1835, and the second was John Claypool.

The second settler was Wm. Hoge, who located on Sec. 25, T. 34, R. 6, in the fall of 1831, and the third is believed to have been Zacariah Walley, who came in 1833. The same year Henry Cryder, Salmon Rutherford, Wm. H. Perkins, Nathaniel H. Tabler and Col. Sayers built each a cabin, but they were not occupied until the succeeding year.

In 1834 there were a number came. James McKeon and John Beard Sr., his father-in-law; A.K. Owens, John Faylor; Geo. W. Armstrong, a Mr. Grove, the family of the Claypools, consisting of Jacob, the father, and Perry A. and L.W., sons; the Collins and Hoge families, J.P. Chapin, Chas. Paver, Jacob Spores, Dr. L.S. Robbins, Datus Kent, David Bunch, Timothy Harrom, James and Wm. Robb, Wm. Brown, Wm. Eubanks, John Snowhill, Jesse Newport, Mr. Adkins, John Hogaboon, John Cragg, Edward Holland, Rodney House, John and Thomas Peacock, all came this year.

In 1835, James and John M. Miller, Richard Griggs, James P. Ewing, John Ridgeway, Sylvester Crook, and many others came. The first dry goods store was opened by Sylvester Crook, the first blacksmith shop by Edward Hollands, and the first shoemaker was James P. Ewing, all in 1835.

Early in the spring of 1834, an old bachelor, James McCarty, took possession of some bottom land near Wauponseh Grove, and formerly occupied by the old chief; here he camped out and raised a crop of corn with a hoe. In the fall he built a cabin of the corn fodder, in which he passed the winter. Whatever became of him is not known. Poor old bachelor! Alone in the western wilderness, around him played the papooses of the red skins, which must have made his dark but doubly drear, by the reflection, that none of his children would ever reap the harvest or inherit the farm he left. In course of time, he must have died - men will - and then no wife to wear black for him, or mourn his untimely taking off; to regret that the poor man could never hoe corn any more, or build another fodder house. Poor old bachelor!

Grundy County was named in honor of Felix Grundy, the Tennessee lawyer. On the 24th of May, 1841, the first election of county officers was held. The only voting place in the county was at Columbus Pinney's tavern, better known as Castle Dangerous, three miles west of Morris; there were, according to the poll list, 148 votes cast; this was a very exciting election, there being numerous candidates in the field. The result of the election was, Isaac Hoge, sheriff, who failed to qualify, and Leander Leclere acted until, at a subsequent election, Wm. E. Armstrong was elected; James Nagle, Clerk of County Commissioners Court; Henry Cryder, Jacob Claypool, and James McKeon, County Commissioners; L.W. Claypool, Recorder; Leander Leclere, Coroner; Joshua Collins, Probate Justice; Sydney Dunton, Treasurer; and Leander Newport, Surveyor. The judges of election were John Beard, Sr., Perry A. Claypool and Salmon Rutherford; the clerks were James Nagle and Leander Leclere. The first permanent post office was established at Morris in 1841; L.W. Claypool was the first postmaster.

The first term of the Circuit Court was held at the log cabin of Mr. Armstrong, in June, 1841. Theophalaus W. Smith, Judge of the 7th Judicial Circuit, presided. There was but one case on the docket and that was dismissed by agreement of parties. The Grand Jury had nothing to investigate and were discharged. Judge Caton held the next term of the Circuit Court, and was succeeded by Richard M. White. There was no jail of any kind in the county until 1846. Jacob Claypool and George H. Kiersted were appointed a committee in Dec., 1845, to prepare plans and specifications and to let the contract for a jail. Their plan was a novel one. It consisted of hole in the ground, 14x14 feet, and 12 feet deep, surmounted by a cabin, the whole to be of hewn timber, floor, sides and top. In the center of the floor of the upper room was a trap door used for ingress and egress; the trap was made of cross bars of iron at right angles, forming a lattice work to admit light, of a mild type, and air. Dominick McGrath was the contractor, at the sum of $202.60.

Mr. Armstrong built the first hotel, on the present site of the Hopkins House. It was called the Grundy Hotel; was burned in the winter of 1851. Mr. Armstrong also erected a frame house upon the corner of the square where the Court House now stands, which was used as a Court House. Mr. Claypool, the Recorder, built a small frame house on the present site of his fine block, west of the Court House, and opened his office there, and thus the county presented the anomalous condition, with full machinery of county government in operation, without a county seat, as the commissioners appointed failed to agree on a suitable location. The act that created the county appointed Rullef S. Durwyea, Ward B. Burnett and Wm. E. Armstrong commissioners, to act in conjunction with the Canal Commissioners, to locate the county seat, and also required it to be located on canal land. The Canal Commissioners were looking solely to the interests of the canal, while the other members of the committee had the interests of the county at heart. In 1842, Isaac N. Morris, of Quincy, Illinois, was appointed to succeed General Thornton as Canal Commissioner, and when the committee met on the 12th of April succeeding his appointment, Mr. Morris cast his vote with that of the county members of the committee, and secured the location of the county seat upon Section 9, Township 33, Range 7. During the delay and disagreement of the committee, a town had been laid off on the Southeast one-fourth of Section 4, and this is now a part of the city. Thus, after so much trouble, was a county seat established and a post office secured. And now behold the County of Grundy organized, with a county seat and all the machinery of a county government in full operation. At the December term of the County Court of 1849, which, in 1845, succeeded the County Commissioners' Court, commissioners were appointed to lay off the county into towns under the township organization. They divided the county into 13 towns, and submitted their report March 2d, 1850. Their report was accepted and adopted, except as regards the name of two of the towns: what is now Erienna was "Fair View" and Goodfarm was "Dover". In 1860 the town of Felix was organized, and named in honor of Felix Grundy, the Tennessee lawyer, for whom the county was named; and thus, although the county contains but 12 Congressional townships, there are 14 towns therein, being as follows: Aux Sauble, Saratoga, Nettle Creek, Erienna, Morris, Felix, Wauponsee, Norman, Vienna, Mazon, Braceville, Greenfield, Goodfarm and Highland.

Illinois, today, ranks fourth in commercial and agricultural importance among the sisterhood of States, and of counties composing her, Grundy county is placed tenth upon a scale of valuation. Grundy county lies in the northeastern part of the State, in the great and fertile valley of the Illinois river, at once in the finest agricultural portion, and also in the richest coal region. Grundy is bounded by Kendall county on the north; by Will and Kankakee on the east; by Livingston south, and by La Salle on the west. Its commercial facilities are unsurpassed, having direct communication by railroad and by water with Chicago, the great market of the West, and also with the Mississippi and the Great West beyond. The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad passes through the northern part of the county, and the Chicago & Alton railroad crosses the southeastern corner, while the Illinois & Michigan Canal passes through the northern part, and the Chicago, Pekin & South Western R. R. crosses near the center of the southern part of the county.

Grundy County is today chiefly agricultural, and by a glance at its geological history we can readily understand how this is so. Two-thirds of the county is slightly rolling prairie, and the remainder creek banks, well timbered, and rich river bottoms. The great valley of the Illinois river, once formed the outlet of Lake Michigan. This is apparent, not only from the breadth of the valley, to the formation of which the present stream is entirely inadequate, but also by the depth of the excavations, which extend many feet in hard limestone rock. The valley, moreover, could not have been excavated by any other agency of which we have knowledge, save water; although it may have been greatly enlarged by the joint action of ice and water, perhaps, during a period of submergence, and afterward filled by the artificial material called drift, which now, to a great extent, occupies it. Regarding the formation of the surface soil, we can give no fuller or more complete description that is contained in a report prepared by Prof. Leo Lesquereux, for the geological survey of Illinois concerning the formation of prairies. It is an axiom of general application in geological science, that there is an intimate relation existing between the physical geography, and the geological history, of every portion of the earth's surface. All matter, from the minutest globule revealed to the eye of man by the microscope, to the grandest world which revolves in the regions of space around the great central sun of the universe, is alike subject to the control of unchanging laws, and through these laws, are each and all made subservient to the great end for which they exist.

With these ideas in mind, it is easily understood why the soil of Grundy county so well repays the labor expended upon it. The prairie that constitutes so large a portion of the county is old prairie, and has lain for centuries waiting for man's hand to turn its vast wealth of virgin productiveness to account. We give herewith some statistics from the census returns of 1870. Grundy county contains 275,000 acres of land, comprising twelve townships. Of this there is nearly 200,000 acres improved. The total valuation of the county was $10,628,165. There was raised in the county:

295,971 bushels of corn; 269,332 bushels of oats; 21, 850 bushels of wheat; 4,930 bushels of rye;

774 bushels of barley; 51,451 bushels of potatoes; 37,116 tons of hay; 16,775 pounds of wool;

438,309 pounds of butter; 7,264 head of horses; 6,770 head of milch cows; 3,845 head of sheep;

8,269 head of hogs

The manufacturers of the county employed a capital of $132,300, and the value of their product was $278,598, by no means an inconsiderable item.

Coal Fields

We come next to speak of the coal fields of the county, a full description of which is beyond the limits of this work. The coal measures are the grand repositories of mineral wealth, by far the most important and valuable at present known within the limits of the State. They furnish an inexhaustible store of mineral fuel, in addition to the valuable deposits of iron ore, potter's clay, fire clay and building stone, which abound in the same localities. The coal bearing strata of Illinois covers more than two-thirds of the entire surface of the State, comprising a larger area of coal lands than can be found within the boundaries of any other State in the Union. Yet it is by no means certain that coal seams of sufficient thickness to be worked with profit can be found everywhere within this area. Throughout Grundy county, so far as demonstrated, the measures contain a single seam, averaging about three feet in thickness, and varying in depth from 30 to 160 feet. This seam furnishes one of the best, if not the best, quality of coal to be found in Northern Illinois. It is very bright, hard and compact; quite free from pyrites, fracture partly conchoidal, layers thick and intersected by thin vertical plates of carbonate of lime, furnishing a fine quality of steam and grate coal, which is largely in demand in Chicago. Engineers using this coal assert it equal to any in use. Its proximity to Chicago renders this seam doubly important, as this is probably the nearest point where workable coal of this quality can be found on any direct line of railroad communicating with that city. Another advantage possessed by this county is that the coal strata is so near the surface that the coal can be taken out at comparatively small cost. When we contemplate this immense deposit and attempt to realize its immense value, we may be excused for indulging in what, to the non-speculative mind, appears a vision. Taking the usual mining estimate of the productive capacity of a coal seam, which gives one million tons of coal to the square mile for every workable foot in thickness, we find that a seam three feet in thickness, the average thickness of the beds underlying Grundy County, would be estimated to yield three million tons of coal to every square mile or section of land under which it extends.

The coal beds are usually underlaid by a bed of fire clay which varies in thickness from a few inches to ten and twelve feet. This was undoubtedly the soil and sub-soil on which grew the vegetation that formed the coal, and it is often penetrated by the rootlets of the ancient carboniferous trees, whose trunks and branches have contributed to form the coal. As this clay is often quite pure, it forms a valuable material for the manufacture of fire-brick and pottery, and is sometimes fully equal in value to the coal seam which it underlies. The best fire clay contains from 60 to 70 percent of silica, from 25 to 35 percent of alumina, sometimes 1 or 2 percent of oxyde of iron __ime or magnesia, and from 5 to 10 percent of water. There are several large brickyards in the county using both the clay that overlies the coal beds and also that from beneath, and an excellent quality of brick can be produced. There are also beds of potter's clay in the county, and some years ago there was a large establishment engaged in the manufacture of domestic earthenware, drain tile and sewer pipe.

Building Stone

We come now to speak of the supply of stone in the county.  For some time it was supposed that Grundy county was lacking in any reliable stone for building purposes, but recent developments have disproved this, and shown that there are inexhaustible quantities of the very best quality. It was supposed that the sandstone all belonged to the St. Peter's strata, but the Aux Sauble stone is clearly of different composition, and has evidently been thrown up between the coal and limestone. It lies upon the northern edge of the coal fields, dips southward and passes under the coal south of the river, and is the No. 7 sandstone of Bradley & Worthen. It contains many spherical concretions, large and small, and very few fossils, yet both Bradley & Worthen are in error regarding this as a building stone, as they condemn it, whereas it has proved most satisfactory as such. In 1845, while taking soundings for the foundations of the canal aqueduct across the Aux Sauble, this stone was observed and commented upon by Mr. Thomas Henry, the engineer in charge of the prospecting party, he remarked to the men with him, that some younger man than himself would realize a fortune out of that stone. Mr. M. Haley, one of the party hearing the remark, cherished the idea, and the present indications are that Henry was indeed a prophet. The stone remained untouched until after the great Chicago fire of 1871, when it was demonstrated so forcibly, that some other material than limestone must be found for building purposes that would resist the action of fire. A company was formed, known as Sherman, Haley & Co., and work commenced upon this strata of stone at Kankakee. A small opening was made upon the Aux Sauble by McNellis, Adams & Hamlin, in the summer of 1872. The Kankakee stone was found to contain too much oxyde of iron for building purposes, as it discolored the stone upon exposure to the atmosphere, and the quarries were abandoned. The company broke up, and Mr. Haley took the machinery and moved it to Aux Sauble; formed a new company, Reed, White, McMeekan & Haley, and began to develop the McNellis quarry. The stone is overlaid by thin shale, intermixed with boulders, large and small, to a depth of some ten feet. These occur occasionally in the ledges. There are now two quarries in active operation. The McNellis, of which Mr. M. Haley is lessee, and another upon the west side of the Aux Sauble creek, worked by Earnshaw & Co.

Some magnificent stone has been taken out, and they can be obtained of almost any dimensions five feet in thickness.  The stone is soft when taken from the quarries, but gradually hardens, until it is almost impossible to work it. The first building of any importance erected from the Aux Sauble stone, was what is known as White's building, in Chicago, upon Fifth avenue, opposite the "Times" building. Many other buildings were afterward erected, among them the county jail, and Morris High School building.

The fire properties of this stone have been known for the past thirty years. It was used in erecting the first cupola in Joliet, and also in Morris, but the chief objection to its use in furnaces was the difficulty of shaping it into brick. This has, by the discovery of Mr. Haley, been entirely overcome. He found that after the stone was crushed and simply wet with water, making a mortar, that it possessed adhesive qualities of superior strength, and would resist a heat of 6,000 degrees. In April, 1877, Mr. Haley introduced this new cement to the Iron and Steel Mills of Joliet, where it proved a complete success. Mr. Haley has received a patent upon the application of this cement, and is introducing it to take the place of fire brick everywhere, which it will soon supercede, as it can be supplied at one-fourth their cost. The analysis of the stone gives: Silica, 70 to 88 ½ per cent; alumina, 6 to 12 percent; mica, 2 to 6 per cent; oxyde of iron ½ to 2 ½ percent; and from a trace to 3 percent of lime. This, it will be seen, is a much higher percentage of the elements necessary to resist heat than the best fire clay gives, and experience demonstrates that the operation of crushing and mixing the cement adds to its fire qualities. The limestone from the Waters' quarry, in Saratoga township, furnishes a good quality of lime when burned, and also a good building stone. The depth of the Aux Sauble quarries is from 25 to 40 feet, and the thickness of the workable seams from 20 to 30 feet. That the development of these quarries is bound to effect a revolution in building material, lining of furnaces, and all places where the ordinary fire-brick are used, is clearly evident, and this new element, with her immense coal fields and rich agricultural lands, will rank Grundy county soon much higher than tenth, in scale of valuation of counties, the position she now occupies.

Geology

Morris stands above a vast forest of the carboniferous age. The graceful Lepidodendron, the giant Ulodendron, the Sigilaria, and the ancient fern, grew, invigorated by the warm, moist, and winterless climate. Covering the earth for miles, here grew the Calamites, and many others flourished, and no doubt animal life also flourished.  Many very fine specimens have been collected and preserved. Chief among these is the collection of Mr. P.A. Armstrong. A few years ago Mr. Armstrong obtained a giant specimen, the largest in the world. It was of the Ulodendron family, and was traced nearly eighty feet, and fifty-five feet taken out. This was from Buck's coal shaft, and was found thirty feet below the surface. He also obtained large numbers of fine specimens of Lepidoadendrons, Sigilaria, Stigmaria and Caulopter. Mr. Armstrong has deposited many fine specimens in the museum at Springfield, and has one of the finest private collections in the State.

At a point some four miles southeast of Morris, upon Mazon Creek, at the out-crop of the coal measures, the stream has cut through the soapstone, or shale. Here are found deposits of ironstone nodules, which, being opened, are found to contain impressions of all the varieties of fossils that have ever been found in any other county, together with about one hundred varieties new to the scientific world. That is, without doubt, the richest field of fossil botany in the world. Among them are found large numbers of stones containing the remains of animal matter, among which are fish, worms and beetles, and two fine specimens of Salamanders.

Source: Lawrence & Thompson's Grundy County Directory, 1877-1878

History of Grundy County

Before History Was Written In Illinois

More than eighty years ago, when Illinois was not much more than entering her second decade as a State; when the United States was still on the sunny side of her half century of individual history the sun smiled down and the rains shed their grateful moisture upon that section of land later to be known as Grundy County, just as today. Then, however, there was but little to differentiate it from other hunting lands of the Indians, except, that within the warm bosom of Dame Nature lay potent riches to be acquired in later years by those venturesome enough to first brave the dangers of the wilderness, and in modern times to apply science and machinery to their work. Here, in this section roamed the Indians, one of whom will ever be held in affectionate remembrance in Grundy County because of his humanity and generosity, the deeply wronged, and yet much beloved Shabbona.

Indian Trails

These Indians left their mark on the land once their own, now passed into white hands, in the trails which for years were the only roads the "pale faces" had after coming to Grundy County. These trails were clearly defined paths about 12 to 18 inches wide, cut into the sod or the prairie. One of these was found on the property that came into the possession of Jacob Claypool. These trails were found following the general course of the county, terminating at what is now Chicago, where the Indians loved to congregate. One was along the north side of the Illinois river between it and what later became the Illinois & Michigan Canal, as far as the five-mile bridge, where it passed north of the line of the canal, but south of the Catholic cemetery, crossing the branches of Nettle Creek near the stone bridge, thence recrossing the canal line near the Peacock bridge, and, passing on the ridge through to the Protestant cemetery, it crossed the Aux Sable below and thence through Dresden, and took its course over the bluffs towards Channahon. Another of these trails was in the bottoms south of the river, crossing the Waupecan creek at the quarter corner of the east line of section 18, in Wauponsee Township, thence running nearly in a straight line, passing 20 rods north of the center of section 17, continuing to Spring Creek, crossing it at its mouth, and thence across the Mazon, on section 16, and up the river to Kankakee, where it crossed that river one half mile above its mouth. There was a trail that skirted the timber on the south side of the Illinois river passing north of sections 4, 32 and 6, entering Wauponsee Township about the center of the west line of the southeast quarter of section 20, continuing thence in a direct line and intersecting the first trail at the crossing of the Mazon river. A "high prairie trail" passed through Holderman's Grove, north of Grundy County, that developed into a very important line of travel.

As the hour hand advanced, however, the destiny that propelled it, brought into this favored section men and women who were to be the formers of the Grundy County of today. Their work and achievements, their hardships and enjoyments, and the intimate particulars of the lives of many, follow in the pages to come. The descendants of some of those pioneers have endeavored to give here a true, although necessarily somewhat brief, history of Grundy County from the day when the first pioneer felled the trees for his cabin, until today, in the flush of twentieth century advancement, when the residents of the county vie with those of every other neighborhood in rendering the world better for their stay in it; their associates happier and their business connections more valuable.

Life Modern Along Every Line

The primitive ox-cart of the pioneer has given way to the high-power 1915 automobile. Scientific methods make agriculture profitable, and the farmers the most important class of men in the country. No longer is it necessary to stumble about with a homemade candle, or even its later substitutes for Grundy County is lighted by electricity. Steam and electric power carry the products of the fertile fields to the markets of the world, and natural resources are being transferred into the gold of the realm.

It is not necessary to say much in an opening chapter where those following have been handled so thoroughly and accurately. The editors have all labored with patriotic love to produce a book that would reflect credit upon their county, and if some have differed in their ideas relative to earlier events, it is because much of the pioneer records of any locality are written only in the hearts and memories of those taking part in the events from day to day, and handed down by "word of mouth" to their descendants.

Original American

The American Indian is the original American. His name was bestowed by Columbus upon the copper-colored natives who eagerly greeted him upon his arrival on the shores of the new world. Of what momentous importance was this first invasion. For countless years the Indian had roamed the great country upon which as far as is known no white foot had been set. His kind possessed the land from the Arctic Ocean on the North to Terra del Fuego on the South, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. No other race ever possessed so mighty an empire, undisturbed by conflicting contestants. Many tribes fought among themselves, but until 1492 they were not disturbed by the invasion of the dominant race.

In that fateful year, three small vessels bore to the shores of the new world the white men, and from then on until today, the Indian has been under subjection. From time to time savage tribes and nations have taken cruel and effective revenge for what they have considered their wrongs, but where once there were hundreds of thousands of them in the United States of America now there are probably not more than a quarter of a million. The annual cost of their maintenance in the United States averages about $9,000,000. There have been some eight or nine regular wars with the Indians in addition to countless local uprisings which have cost heavily in human life and money, but now the Indian seems doomed. A century more of civilization and he will, perhaps, have passed from the face of the globe, living only on the pages of history as a much wronged and misunderstood race.

Illinois Confederation

Much more could be given about the general history of this interesting and fast dying people, but Grundy County is only immediately concerned with the tribes of the Illinois Confederation. Belonging to it were the Tamaroas, Michigamies, Kaskaskias, Cahokias and Peorias. The name Illinois, with its French termination, was taken from the Indian one meaning superior men, and was written-"Leni" and "Illini". This tribe met Marquette, the Jesuit explorer, with the cry: "We are Illini, we are men," in contradistinction to their estimate of their enemy, the Iroquois, whom they regarded as savage beasts. Thus came the name of the great Commonwealth in which Grundy County is found.

As long as the whites were friendly, the Illinois Confederation showed a like spirit, and as early as 1670 the Jesuit missionaries were received kindly, and when Joliet and Marquette returned from exploring the Mississippi in 1673, they were hailed with joy by the Indians who from that day were firm allies of the French. In 1675 Marquette established the mission of the Immaculate Conception near the present site of Utica, and in December, 1679, La Salle found a town of nearly 500 lodges, and on the present site of Peoria, one of about eighty lodges. In that vicinity, La Salle built Fort Crevecoeur. As time went on, however, the hitherto friendly Indians found that the white men were not to be entirely trusted. While many of the leaders were men of high principles, those under them were willing to resort to any means to defraud the simple red men of their furs, and many uprisings occurred that leave horrible shadows of fire and blood upon the pages of those times. With the driving out of the French, came English rule, and in turn, American, and all the while the Indian was used as a cat's-paw in the strife between the white nations.

In 1795, the tribes made their first cession of territory in Illinois, by the Treaty of Greenville, Ohio, of "one piece of land, six miles square, at the mouth of Chicago River, emptying into the southwest end of Lake Michigan, where a fort formerly stood; one piece twelve miles square near the mouth of the Illinois River; and one piece six miles square, at the old Peoria fort and village, near the south end of the Illinois Lake on the said Illinois River." The Government later erected forts at all the points to defend them and preserve the rights secured by this treaty.

In 1803, the Illinois Confederation ceded by the Vincennes treaty, nearly all of southern Illinois to the Government, and a year later the Sacs and Foxes by the St. Louis treaty ceded a vast tract of land lying on both sides of the Mississippi River, extending on the east side from the mouth of the Illinois River to the head of that river and thence to the Wisconsin River. During the year 1816 a treaty was signed with the "united tribes of Ottawas, Chippewas and Pottawatomies" at St. Louis, in which the following appears:-

"Whereas, a serious dispute has for some time existed between the contracting parties relative to the right to a part of the lands ceded to the United States by the tribes of Sacs and Foxes, on the third of November, 1804, and both parties being desirous of preserving a harmonious and friendly intercourse, and of establishing permanent peace and friendship, have for the purpose of removing all difficulties, agreed to the following terms, etc."

The boundaries which were established by these important treaties are the only ones that have found a place upon the published county maps of the State. This territory thus ceded is marked by lines which are drawn from a point on Lake Michigan ten miles both north and south of the mouth of the Chicago River, and follow the general direction of the Desplaines River to a point on Fox River, ten miles from its mouth, and north of the Illinois River, and in a similar manner on the Kankakee River to the south. It will be easily seen from the above that only that part of Grundy County that lies north of the Illinois River is included in this treaty. The remaining portion was obtained from the Pottawatomies by a treaty made in 1818 in which they ceded the greater portion of their remaining possessions in Illinois. Although this territory passed into the hands of the Government the same year that Illinois was made a State, the Indians did not leave at once, but remained for some years, peacefully fishing and hunting, and being on friendly terms with the incoming whites.

Chief Wauponsee

The pioneers who came to Grundy County found members of the Pottawatomie tribe under the supervision of their chiefs, Wauponsee and Shabbona. Quoting from a contemporary historian, a description of these warriors is obtained.

"Wauponsee and his band made their home at one time on the Illinois River near the mouth of Mazon Creek, in Grundy County, but in 1824 they moved to Paw Paw Grove. Wauponsee is represented as a large, muscular man, fully six feet and three inches in height. His head presented an unusual feature for an Indian, being entirely bald save a small scalp lock at the crown. In manner he was markedly reserved and gave frequent evidence, of an untamed savage disposition that needed only an opportunity to lapse into the cruel barbarity of earlier years. He was a war-chief and claimed to be one hundred years old, though this statement was but little credited by the whites. With the rest of his nation he was engaged in the battle of Tippecanoe and other Indian demonstrations in the following years. He is credited by some as being the Waubansee who befriended the family of John Kinzie after the massacre at Fort Dearborn, but while such action, inconsistent as it is with the part he would naturally take in the attack upon the retreating garrison, it is not without parallel in Indian history. However, the strong impression is that these are two individuals. He moved with his band to the government reservations in the 'far west' in 1839, signalizing his departure with a deed of barbarous cruelty that characterizes his memory here. This occurred in October, 1839, and is described by L.W. Claypool who had ample facilities for learning the truth as follows:

"James McKeen, residing on the north bank of the Kankakee River, a mile above the mouth, with a hired man, John Byers, had been burning logs in the afternoon. Some Indians asked the privilege of camping there for the night, which was readily granted. In the evening they gathered into the camp to the number of some fifty, bringing a supply of whlskey. Soon Wauponsee and his family came, having camped the night before near our place (S. W. ½ Sec. 20, 33, 7). My father and I visited his camp as he was leaving in the morning, and curiously observed their preparations for moving. His family consisted of one wife, of middle age, very attentive to his wants, adjusting pillows on his pack-saddle and assisting him on a stump to mount his pony; an old Squaw, a wife evidently not in favor; a son, sixteen or eighteen years old; a son-in-law with wife and two or three children; and two slave squaws, poor, miserable forlorn-looking wretches in every respect. After supper McKeen and Byers went out to the fires where the Indians were having a drunken frolic. On approaching the Indians, they found a crowd of savages about a log heap, with one of the slave squaws lying on the ground near the fire, Wauponsee stooping over her and talking in a low voice. Immediately after, he gave a signal, when the other slave came up, and buried a squaw-ax in the brains of the unfortunate victim. The body was removed to a pile of rails lying near. Being joined by other Indians the orgie was continued far into the night. In the morning the Indians broke camp and went on their way, when McKeen and Byers buried the unfortunate squaw on the banks of the Kankakee."

"The prevailing opinion here as to the reason for the deed was that Wauponsee realized the truth of the old adage 'dead men tell no tales,' and that as their new reservation in the West joined that, of the Winnebagos, to which tribe the squaw originally belonged, feared that her relatives might be moved to avenge her ill treatment received at his hands, so ordered her execution, and thus took a 'bond of fate.' Wauponsee is said to have been killed by a party of the Sacs and Foxes for opposing them in the Black Hawk War. His scalp was taken off, the body mutilated, and left on the prairie to be devoured by wolves."

Chief Shabbona

The same historian gives the following description of Shabbona, which is worthy of quoting.

"Shabbona, who shares with Shakespeare the distinction of having his named spelled in an endless number of ways, was born of Ottawa parents, on the Kankakee River in Will County, about 1775. In his youth he married the daughter of a Pottawatomie chief, who had his village on the Illinois River, a short distance above the mouth of the Fox River. Here, at the death of Spotka, his father-in-law, he succeeded to the chieftainship of the band, which soon sought a more salubrious spot, and settled in De Kalb County, where he was found by the early settlers. Shabbona seems to have lacked none of those qualities which were required to command the respect and confidence of his band and yet he was possessed of rare discernment and decision of character, which led him early to see that war with the whites was hopeless, and that the only hope of the savage was to make the best terms possible with the inevitable. To this policy, he was one of the first of his people to give earnest support, and once committed to this line of action, he allowed no influence, however strong, to swerve him from it for a moment.

"He was easily influenced by the eloquence of Tecumseh, and became an ardent admirer and devoted personal attendant of that celebrated warrior. He was absent from the battle of Tippecanoe with Tecumseh, and returned only to hear of the massacre at Fort Dearborn, and to assist in the defense of Kinzie the following night. Believing that his nation would join the British in the War of 1812 he joined his hero warrior and acted as aid to Tecumseh until the latter was killed. In the general pacification of the tribes after this war, Shabbona seems to have imbibed his peace policy, to which he ever afterward adhered. While not gifted as an orator, his reputation for honesty, fidelity to his nation and good judgment, gave him a wide influence among the more warlike of his people, and in 1827, he rendered valuable service to the whites in dissuading the Pottawatomie nation from joining the Winnebago war. In 1832, when Black Hawk strove to unite the Indian nation, in a combined attack upon the whites, he met a fatal obstacle in the influence of Shabbona for peace. Notwithstanding every influence and inducement brought to bear upon him, the 'white man's friend' stood firm, and was largely influential in bringing the aid of the Pottawatomies to the white forces. Subsequently, when Black Hawk was betrayed into hostilities, and the news of the Indians' first blow and success reached him, he sent his son and nephew in different directions, while he went in still another, to warn the settlers of the impending danger, thus saving the lives of many of the isolated settlements, a service for which he suffered the loss of his son and nephew at the hands of the enraged Sacs and Foxes years afterwards. In the military operations which followed, with Wauponsee, 'Billy Caldwell' and a considerable number of warriors, he enlisted with the army under General Atkinson, who at once placed him in command of the Indian contingent. After performing valued service, he retired with his band at the close of the war, to his village in De Kalb County, where they remained to the date of their removal to the West in 1836.

"In consideration of his services the National Government, beside many other tokens of esteem, reserved a tract of land for his use at Shabbona Grove, and granted him a pension of $200 per annum. In the summer of 1836, however the Indian agent notified him that his band must go to the lands assigned them in the West; as none but himself and family could remain on the reservation. Much as he regretted to leave the scenes of his manhood, about which gathered his dearest memories, he could not consent to a separation from his band, so in September, the whole band came to Main Bureau Creek, and camping at the crossing of the Peoria and Galena road, they remained here about six weeks hunting and fishing. The Government proposed to bear the expense of their removal as in the case of other tribes, but Shabbona, rejecting the offer, set out one October day with his band of about 142 souls and 160 ponies for their lands in western Kansas. Not long after this the Government moved the Sacs and Foxes from the reservations in Iowa to lands adjoining the Pottawatomies. These tribes entertained the bitterest hostility against Shabbona for the part he took in the Black Hawk War, and Neopope, a chief of these tribes, had sworn to accomplish the destruction of the 'white man's friend' together with his son and nephew.

"ln the fall of 1837, Shabbona, with his son and nephew and a few hunters, went out on the plains to hunt buffalo, when, without the slightest apprehension of danger they found themselves attacked by a band of the Sacs. Shabbona, with his son Smoke and four hunters escaped, but knowing that a relentless Nemesis was on his track, he left his band and returned with his family to his reservation in De Kalb County; this consisted of 1,280 acres, most of which was fine timberland. A clause of the treaty conveyed this, and other reservations granted them in fee simple, but the U.S. Senate struck out this clause making the property only a reservation. This fact escaped the notice of Shabbona, and in 1845 he sold the larger part of his land and returned to Kansas to visit his band. It was soon discovered by designing persons that this transfer was illegal, and on the strength of representations made at Washington, the authorities declared the reservation vacant and the transfer void. On his return in 1851, he found his whole property sequestered and himself homeless. This grove had been his home for nearly fifty years; here he had made the grave of his first squaw and two papooses, and here he had expected to lay his own bones. It was natural that he should feel a deep sense of injury at this ungrateful requital of devotion to the white race; but this was a new generation, the reservation had been technically abandoned and none were greatly wronged save the Indian, who had not yet excited the romantic or humanitarian interest of a later day, and broken-hearted he went out to a retired place to implore the Great Spirit, alter the fashion of his tribe.

"The case excited the interest of his early friends, who purchased a small tract of improved land, with house, outbuildings and fencing, situated on the bank of the Illinois near Seneca in Grundy County. Here he lived in a wigwam, his family occupying the house until his death at the age of eighty-four, on July 17, 1859. His remains were laid to rest in lot 29, block 7, in the Morris Cemetery with elaborate ceremony and grateful regard of the whole county. Here rest also eight of his family, five of whom were his children or grand-children. Shortly after his death his family removed to their nation in the West, and while his land is held by the County Court in trust for the benefit of his heirs there is no monument to mark the memory of one whom General Cass once introduced to a distinguished audience at Washington as, 'Shabbona, the greatest red man of the West'. His grandson Smoke is supposed to be acting chief of his nation."

Portrait Of Shabonna

Although no monument had yet been raised to the memory of this Indian chief, there is a fine, life size portrait of him in the Court House at Morris, Ill., representing him standing, arrayed in a dress coat which was presented him at Washington. With it he wears characteristic Indian finery, which adds to his imposing appearance.

Indian Relics

In relation to Indian relics, this same historian has to say:

"An Indian relic which has given rise to many conjectures, is a cedar pole about six inches in diameter at the base, and from twenty to twenty-five feet in height standing in the center of the largest of the ancient mounds found in Morris. The pole stands at the lower end of Wauponsee Street, its base protected by a close fitting piece of flagging, and surrounded by an iron fence. The universal respect on the part of the citizens for this monument of the past is, however, its surest protection. None of the Indians with whom the early settlers came in contact could give satisfactory accounts of its erection (indeed they did not claim to know), until the engineers who surveyed the line of the canal made some investigations in this mound. Some members of the party made some unauthorized explorations, and were rewarded by the discovery of some interesting Indian remains. The engineering party was subsequently joined by an Indian named Clark, who evidently belonged to the extinct Illinois nation, and of him Mr. A.J. Matthewson, the engineer in charge, obtained much valuable information, which he embodied in a letter to L.W. Claypool, of Morris. By permission, the portion bearing upon matters of interest to this county is given as follows:

"Yes, the bones dug up at the cedar pole belonged to Nucquette, a celebrated chief who was killed upon the ground and buried in a dug out - a kind of rude trough which our boys found in 1837, and from which they took the bones, a bit of red rust which had once been a knife blade, and circular ornaments in silver. His squaw, who died years afterward, lay beside him, her blanket intact, with a profusion of silver brooches and silver rings with green glass sets, upon the bones of two or three fingers of each hand. The threads of the blanket would crumble upon touch, and yet the teeth and hair seemed nearly perfect. The pole, a red cedar, was very old, full of curious cuts and marks, giving in a rude way, as Clark said, the exploits of Nucquette. This brute had a story of his cruelties noted upon that pole, but the poor slave of a squaw lay there without a word being said of her. She was laid in her blanket-nothing more.

"I had found a curious mound at the west side of a small grove, north of the old river stage road and a little west of south from Seneca, and upon asking Clark about the stones carelessly thrown about it he said: "Oh yes, that was a very bad Indian! Steal horses. They killed him; put him in this old mound by himself," and then when any Indian passed the mound he felt bound to show his contempt for the outcast who would not, or did not take scalps but horses (he was a horse fancier), and before reaching the place they would pick up finger stones and cast them, upon the mound and spit upon it, showing their utter contempt for his want of good taste while living."

"Clark said Nucquette was killed in battle - that the fight began at Blue Island. The Illinois tribe retreated, and again had a fight three miles east of Joliet, at a village on the north bank of Hickory Creek, where Oakwood Cemetery now is, a retreat and a hard fight at Nettle Creek (Morris), the Indian name for which has escaped me; then a retreat and pursuit as far as Starved Rock, where Clark gave a description of the siege and the daring conduct of the devoted band, rushing up to the very edge of the cliff to challenge the foe to combat. Of course, these were the acts of a few men in a desperate situation, but when relating these things, the eyes of Clark, usually mild enough, would assume a ferocious appearance quite shocking. He was evidently a friend of the weaker party. He gave also the exploits of a very few who escaped down the Illinois River in a skiff and were pursued for days, though finally escaping. Those left upon Starved Rock generally perished. In regard to the cedar pole, Clark told me the tribe or some of them came at times, as late as 1837-8, to replace the white flag upon the pole, when the winds had blown it away. Our men went on the sly to dig about the cedar pole in the mound, and upon their return to camp were told decidedly to go back and fix the mound and the pole, and to leave everything as they found it, or there would be trouble; that the savages were then about, and that they would miss their top-knots by delay. I went back with them to see the order executed, and it was. We had no trouble with the Indians on account of the act."

The exact time of the death of Nucquette is not known, but it is generally conceded to have taken place between 1670 and 1700, so that the pole is over 200 years old. It is possible that the Indian Clark confused the history of Nucquette with the campaign of the Pottawatomies against the Illinois to avenge the death of Pontiac. At any rate the cedar pole is so old that there is no authentic record of it, and it is consequently one of the most interesting of the relics the Indians have left of the days when they were all powerful.

Nineteen Indian mounds have been found at Morris, circular in form, and varying in height from 2 and 4 feet to 17 and 80 in diameter at the base. Those of the mounds explored yielded traces of Indian burial, but many of them have been leveled to make way for encroaching civilization. Other mounds were found along the southern bank of the river, and some of them yielded implements of stone, metal and pottery, and evidently were raised by that mysterious people known as the Mound Builders. As to who these people were, and from whence they came, or where they have gone, no really satisfactory answers have been given, athough antiquarians have advanced many plausible theories.

Passing Of The Indian

By the time the pioneers were fairly located in Grundy County, however, the Indians had ceased to be a serious menace. Many lingered for some years and became annoying because of their insistence upon being fed. Some amusing stories are told of demands made by the Red Men upon food stores, especially those cooked by the "white squaws," and more than one settler was amazed and indignant at receiving an offer of a string of ponies for his "squaw" who could prepare particularly toothsome dainties. The Indian has passed from Grundy County. Finis has been written at the close of his history, as soon it will appear to the page given over to his race. His influence remains in the many musical and expressive names to be found all over the county, as elsewhere in the country and the treaties he and his people made with the whites appear on all land transfers.

Old Indian Territory (By Fred S. Johnson)

Grundy County lands were a portion of the tract bought by the Government from the Indians. The first cession of lands from the Red Man included a section, six miles square, at the mouth of the Chicago River; one, twelve miles square, near the mouth of the Illinois River; and one, six miles square, at the old Peoria fort and village. This abandonment was ratified by the treaty of Greenville, Ohio, in 1795. In 1803, the Vincennes treaty secured the Government nearly all of southern Illinois, and the next year the Foxes and Sacs ceded the territory on both sides of the Mississippi River, on the east from the mouth of the Illinois River to the head of that stream, and thence to the Wisconsin River.

Treaties

In 1816, owing to some dispute, a new treaty was signed with the united tribes of Ottawas, Chippewas and Pottawatomies at St. Louis, which ceded territory marked by lines drawn from a point on Lake Michigan ten miles north and south of the mouth of the Chicago River, and following the Desplaines to a point ten miles north of the Illinois on the Fox River, and the same distance on the south to the Kankakee River. By this treaty only the northern half of Grundy County was ceded to the Government, the remaining portion remaining the property of the Pottawatomies, who, however, ceded that also in 1818. Although the Indians had thus parted with their land, they continued to live in Grundy County, hunting and fishing, for years afterward. Those found in Grundy County belonged to the Pottawatomie tribe, and their authoritative representatives were Shabbona and Wauponsee. With the coming of the white men, however, the old Indian mode of life was broken up, as civilization followed close on the footsteps of the dominant race.

The early settlers of Grundy County labored under many disadvantages one of these being the unsatisfactory condition of the lands for a long time and the difficulty attending securing their titles. In 1827 Congress had granted to Illinois aid for the proposed Illinois Canal, the alternate sections lying within the space of five miles on each side of the intended route. In 1829, Illinois selected the odd sections, and in 1830 some lots were brought into the market, but William Hodge was the only one to purchase in Grundy County. His property lay in what is now Nettle Creek Township. Until 1834 the congressional lands were open to pre-emption, and the pioneers who located in Grundy County prior to that date secured all the land to which they were entitled under the laws governing this form of land occupation. These early settlers worked hard to improve their property, and when, in 1835, they found that the land they had been laboring to reclaim from the wilderness was to be sold at public auction without regard to their rights, they were aroused to action. Grundy County, however, was not the only sufferer. Other sections, then included in what was known as La Salle County were in the same predicament. A way out was finally discovered, the plan being that each section appoint a man to bid in the property for the actual settlers, with the agreement that after the sale was made, proper division would be made.

Public Auction Of Improved Land

The sale of land took place at Chicago, and for the first couple of days the sales were conducted from the steps leading into a store on Lake Street. As the mud was deep around this point, the auction was later moved to Garrett's new auction rooms, near South Water Street. So many attended that the above structure broke down, and the sale was completed on South Water Street. The reason for trouble arose from the fact that outside speculators had flocked to Chicago, intending to bid in the partially improved lands and hold them for high prices. The acumen and activity of the actual owners largely frustrated this nefarious scheme, but it is stated that as much as $500,000 was taken out of the city, an immense amount in those days. In August, 1835, the books were opened for entry, and the land speculators found their opportunity, and bought up every available piece of timberland in the northeastern part of Illinois.

First Land Entries

Among the first to enter land in Grundy County may be mentioned the following: James McWilliams, Stephen H. Randall, Benjamin Waite, Simon Waite, John Weldon, P. Lamb, John Weir, Michael Lamb, James M. Adsit, Richard Lamb, William Scully, Lewis T. Jamison, M.G. and J.W. Haymond, John McNellis, Justin Renne, John Walsh, James Glenn, Jacob Griggs, Abraham Holderman, C.H. and H.C. Goold, Jeremiah Crotty, Samuel C. Collins, Thomas R. Greene, Isaac Beebe, Horace and John Moore, Perry A. Armstrong, Edmund D. Taylor, John Lewis, George Schrotberger, Gardner T. Gorham, Rees Ridgeway, Samuel Pickering, Philo Carpenter, John P. Chapin, Horatio G. Loomis, John Peacock, Thomas Peacock, J.L. and W. White, L.W. Claypool, Jacob Claypool, Perry A. Claypool, Wm. Gay, Augustus Garrett, Horatio G. Loomis, Philip Collins, William Hoge, Mahlon P. Wilson, James Leech, John B. F. Russell, Joshua Hoge, Solomon Hoge, Samuel Hoge, Fred Burkhardt, M. Thomas Huff, John C. Baker, Albert L. Vined, John and S. Holderman, Eliza R. Chamberlain, R. Gardner, Samuel S. Randall, Bartholmew McGrath, William H. Perkins, Joshua Collins, Jerry Collins, Nial N. Osborn.

Remarkable Increase In Values

The first lands were sold for $1.25 per acre. This was the usual price for government lands in early days, and while it now seems to have been low, it must be remembered that the property was entirely unimproved, was generally remote from highways and was thus difficult to reach from the outside world. The majority of the settlers commenced at once to develop the property thus secured and their sons continued the work when the fathers retired, and at present much of the Grundy County farm land is held at $200 per acre, while that situated in the towns and cities has reached an almost prohibitive price.

County Surveyors

The Surveyors of Grundy County have been: Leander Newport, 1841-1844; Thomas A. Henry, 1845-1848; Charles Huston, 1849-1851; Thomas A. Henry, 1852-1855; Samuel Ewer, 1856-1858; Nathaniel McBride, 1859-1860; Thomas A. Henry, 1861-1862; Nathaniel McBride, 1863-1870; George H. Kiersted, 1871-1874; Nathaniel McBride, 1875; Edward Sufferin, 1876; Charles Huston, 1877-1883; Nathaniel McBride, 1884-1899; Arthur Parker, 1900-1905; Eugene G. Cryder, 1906-1907; William Harkes, 1908-1911; John Rosendahl, 1912-1914.

Pioneer Cabins

Nevertheless pioneering had many interesting features together with its hardships and fine characteristics were developed. The pioneer and his family lived during their first years in the new county, in a log cabin, crudely put together from logs felled in the nearby forest. Oftentimes these logs came from trees which were hewn down to make a place for the cabin. There, in the deep woods, with the lonesome soughing of the wind through the wide spaces to remind them of their isolated situation, the wife and her children anxiously waited the coming back of the husband and father when he ventured further into the forest in search of game with which to make more nourishing their scanty store of meal. More often than not, especially built at first, the floors of these cabins were made of dirt, and practically all of the furniture was of home manufacture. Railroads were not then built, and transportation across the country in wagons, or by means of the natural waterways, was tiresome and expensive. Therefore as little as possible was brought from the old home to the new, and consequently all that was needed, made from what had formed the household goods brought by such labor and expense, had to be made on the premises. Few of the pioneers had special aptitude for cabinetmaking, so that their attempts at furniture were of necessity rude indeed, but they were thankfully accepted, and the good housewives did the best they could with the chairs, made from tree trunks, tables, of hewn logs, and beds constructed in the following primitive fashion. Two logs were driven in the ground six feet apart and six feet from the wall. From them to the opposite wall a web was woven of grasses, or in rare instances, rope, upon which the straw "ticks" were spread, and on top of them the feather bed. Oftentimes a second bed was made above the first, both being curtained off, or a trundle bed for the children was made to shove in beneath the larger one during the day time. Some families not so thrifty or resourceful, contented themselves with being wrapped in a blanket before the fire, but they were not considered by the better class as taking proper care of their households, when, with a little exertion a satisfactory, even luxurious bed could be provided.

Fireplace Cooking

Dishes and crockery were often lacking, and the housewife of those days was pretty sure to utilize everything she could put her hands on in order to have sufficient articles with which to set her table. She it was who originated the first planked dishes, the same that are now considered a luxury in the most fashionable restaurants in the land. Needing her few kettles for baking bread, as she oftentimes was without an oven, she learned to put her meat and fish as well as her johnny-cake upon slabs of wood and bake in the ashes or before the flames in her fireplace. When she started to bake bread, and what quantities those hardy pioneers could consume, she could not run to the grocer, and there buying a cake of yeast, begin her operations. Her bread making had commenced way back in the old home when she had carefully dried for future consumption some of the airy, beautiful green hop blooms. After her arrival in the new place, her first thought was to commence making her yeast, a little of which when properly fermented sufficed to make a light sponge with either rye, barley or cornmeal, rarely at first of wheat flour. When her loaves were ready for baking she had to place them in open kettles and set them by the fire, piling on the lids glowing coals of wood which had to be replaced every few moments. Some very fortunate women had what was called a Dutch oven, a sheet-iron affair, which could be set in the fireplace and thus heated. Still others acquired in time brick ovens, which were heated thoroughly and the loaves of bread baked on this hot surface cannot be excelled by the latest baking devices of today. The modern housewife with all her many culinary improvements should pause a moment and think of all the back-breaking stooping that was involved in every household operation. No wonder that women of thirty looked old, or that those of forty were ready to retire to the chimney corner.

Lack Of Physicians

When sickness fell upon the pioneer family, which it did with terrifying frequency, it was almost impossible to secure a physician, unless one possibly had become a pioneer neighbor himself, and even then his remedial agents and appliances were wholly inadequate to grapple with disease. We are told that the pioneer was healthy and lived through somehow, but did he? Go into any country churchyard where lie those who were the pioneers and read their simple headstones. How many of the little band of brave men and women lived to good old age? How many of their children passed through infancy to childhood and then on into middle age? True more children were born in those days, but there was terrible mortality among infants. Epidemics swept through all these pioneer communities, often wiping out whole families. Cholera, smallpox and the various diseases to which children are particularly prone, were all too frequent visitors. And the Great White Plague! What family was without one or other of its victims? With no real understanding of sanitary requirements, not knowing even of the dangers that lurked in their streams or their surface wells, although in that they were no more ignorant than the rest of the world, the pioneer was not able to protect himself or his loved ones from the ravages of disease, while the exposed conditions of their lives led to the contraction of colds which oftentimes resulted fatally. There were other misfortunes they had to endure, largely from lack of knowledge. When Grundy County was a pioneer region, people in general had not learned how to care for and preserve their teeth, and spectacles for failing sight were but poor affairs, and costly at that. It can be recalled that comparatively few people retained either their teeth or good eyesight after forty, and many failed to retain them after they had passed the quarter of a century milestone.

Thus these pioneers of ours had much to contend with in addition to clearing off the land and making it valuable. Too much honor cannot be paid them and their heroic struggles, all the more because the majority of them went about their tasks cheerfully and happily, and were glad to sacrifice as they did that their children might profit.

Difficult Land Clearing

However, it was no light task they assumed, this clearing of the land. The present generation knows nothing of this back-breaking, heart-wearing work. In the first place none of the pioneers had proper tools or sufficient stock, and from the beginning were thus hampered. They were anxious to get enough seed in as soon as possible so as to provide food, and in order to do this, oftentimes plowed about the stumps of the trees they had felled, not waiting to grub out the stumps. Sometimes these stumps remained in until they rotted away, owing to the farmer's lack of time and strength to get them out. While the decaying wood eventually enriched the land, no satisfactory cultivating could be done as long as the plow was continually blocked by the stumps, yet crops were put in and harvested, because these pioneers had to get along somehow so as to live and provide for their children.

All of the land was not timberland, however; lunch, especially in Grundy County was prairie, and one who knows nothing of conditions in those days wonders why the prairie land was not always chosen. There were a number of reasons. In the first place the pioneer had to secure a place that would give him timber not only for his house, barn and fences, but for fuel as well, and then, too, the timber usually bordered the streams and water was another necessity. However there was another cogent reason. Difficult as it was to put timberland under cultivation, it was even more so to plow up the prairie sod. It has been proven by scientists who have studied these matters carefully that the prairies are great forest spaces whose upper growth has been destroyed by fire or other causes so that only the roots remain, but these are very old, antedating sometimes the mighty forest trees in point of age. Beneath the tough prairie grass of these level spaces is a growth that makes it necessary to use plows specially designed for that purpose. Few of the pioneers had such plows, and for this and other reasons the prairies were developed at a later date than the timberland. When, after countless setbacks, and constant work, the pioneer managed to get enough of his land under cultivation to be able to sell some of his produce, he was confronted by two difficulties: he had no local market and practically no transportation to that of the larger communities. Of course he could haul his grain or drive his stock, but when the state of the roads in those early days is remembered some comprehension may be had of what it meant to sell at Peoria or Chicago.

Prices even in one of the larger places were extremely low. During the latter part of the forties and early fifties, pork was sold so low as to scarcely pay for the hauling, let alone the raising. Grains were all low and vegetables brought no prices, for everyone had a garden and there could be no export on perishable goods because this was long before the refrigerator car. Chickens and eggs were sold for any price offered, no matter how low. Butter was traded for groceries at the corner store, as were eggs, no money changing hands. Fortunately the pioneer could raise much that he required, and went without about all else. The housewife made candles from tallow, cured her own meats, rendered her lard and made her butter. The men folks in spare times hunted for game and honey, the latter furnishing sweetening at a time when sugar was almost priceless. Soap was made at home, as were all the clothing, stockings and caps. Traveling shoemakers went through the country, remaining at a cabin a week to outfit the family with shoes, but oftentimes the pioneer, in the earliest days, managed with moccasins made by deft hands. Money was something so scarce that it was not in general circulation during pioneer days. Barter and exchange prevailed. One pioneer traded his surplus of honey for his neighbor's abundance of "garden sass". A housewife who had turned out more soap than she required, exchanged with her neighbor for candles, of which she had a scanty store. Cheating was unknown, although some were "better hands at a trade" than others. Even in those days when each man ought to have had an equal chance, there were those who knew how to get along, while others who appeared to work as hard fell behind, and oftentimes lost all they had. It has always been this way, and probably will continue to be as long as human nature remains as it is.

Early Schools And Churches

As soon as possible the typical pioneer sought to provide better conditions for his children. He was willing to work, do without and make his own way without educational advantages, but he would not permit his children to do the same. In every community throughout Grundy County long before the county was organized, when everything was still in an unsettled state, there were to be found certain persons a little better educated than their neighbors, gathering the children about them and importing what knowledge they possessed. These were usually the people who managed to have a religious service held in their cabins at odd intervals and from them sprung up the two mighty factors in the development of Grundy County - school and church. In time the fireside schools gave way to one held in a tiny cabin, presided over probably by a young man struggling to secure better educational advantages himself, and in this way eking out existence until he had completed his studies, or by a girl, who, coming from a more settled community to join a relative, taught until some enterprising unmarried pioneer bore her off as his bride. These primitive schools have all passed away. So have the people who once were nobly responsible for them. Many who attended them have also left this world, but out from their simple teachings many a great man developed whose country had to lean upon his wisdom in time of dire peril.

The pioneers of Grundy County suffered much, endured long and prospered in no proportion to their merits, but they laid the foundation of a mighty superstructure that will endure through the ages. From them have sprung those now living who, in turn, will transmit the virtues inculcated by their forebears, and with this all in view, who dare say that the pioneers lived in vain, or that pioneer life was not productive of much that was good and noble although it tried men's souls as by fire.

Scant Mention In History

History teems with the names and exploits of the men who braved the dangers of the wilderness and battled with the hostile and wily Indian to make secure the right to the land they had chosen as a home, but much less is said of the struggles of their women, and yet it was the women who suffered most. Many of those who became pioneers in Grundy County were of gentle blood and had left homes where they had been tenderly cherished and surrounded by comforts and luxuries and thus were but illy prepared for the stern realities which confronted them on the frontier. Although rugged toil and wearying daily routine, aside from positive danger, was their portion, after accompanying their men to the "far west" they were singularly uncomplaining. Their housekeeping was done well although with the most primitive of appliances; they were often hard put to find a variety for their table; they bore their many children without proper medical attention and brought them up wisely and well even when neither school nor church were near enough to lend influence. Where stands a monument of stone to call attention to Pioneer Women?

Although very many of these women paid heavily for their sacrifices, in broken health and in shortened lives, how cheerfully and bravely were these sacrifices made. Not lacking in any of the qualities or talents that make the noble women of Grundy County noticeable today, they gave so lavishly and unselfishly of themselves that their descendants can never rise to greater heights of womanhood, for they were actuated by the spirit of helpfulness that made ministering to others a chosen duty in which there was no thought of any earthly reward. In many almost forgotten burial places stand simple stones on which the inscriptions tell the story of the brief span of life of young wife and mother and the stranger reads of these long ago domestic tragedies with a haunting feeling of injustice done and of pity that pioneering had to claim so many innocent victims. Fortunately there were those of stronger mold who were able to live through the struggles of those early days even into old age. All soldiers of a war do not perish on the battlefield, but enough are stricken to make the sacrifice pitiable.

Busy And Useful Lives

We know that these pioneer women were not idle a moment of their lives. Here indeed were they true helpmeets, and no one was more to be pitied in those early days than the man who did not have either mother, wife or sister to assist him in his work and with helpfulness unfailing give him strength. Industries for the comfort and health of the family were entirely in her hands. She not only attended to her household duties, but she spun and wove both flax and wool, made the cloth thus manufactured into clothes. Stockings, "comforters" and mittens were knit by the busy fingers of the women during the long evenings, their only light oftentimes the flickering fire, or at best that given forth by a home-made tallow "dip." When sickness came into the home circle, it was the housewife who ministered her home-brewed medicines and sat up until either death or returning health made such service unnecessary. The pioneer woman not only ministered to her own, but to neighbors, and her hands prepared the body of the dead for burial, or that of the new-born for living. Had it not been for the energy and devotional zeal of the pioneer women churches would not have been established as early by a number of years. In the beginning, services were held in the cabins of the pioneers and the women made welcome, not only the neighbors who, for miles around, came to attend the religious exercises, but the preachers as well taking pride in entertaining them with toothsome meals, the preparation of which, with their few utensils, was a task that would be almost beyond the ordinary present day housewives. When the pioneer women of Grundy County likewise felt that it was necessary for their children to have schools they saw that they were established, working through their less observant men folks for this purpose. With the beginning of agitation against the liquor traffic, these women came solidly to the front, and have ever since been mighty forces against this evil.

Worthy Descendants

In the successors and descendants of these heroic women of Grundy County are found those self reliant, purposeful and effective women of the present day, who are so ably working along progressive lines for the betterment of humanity. Changing conditions have made it unnecessary for them to labor just as their forebears did, but the same uplifting spirit actuates them, and they are fighting the good fight, and will triumph eventually, for they have right on their side, and morality as their watchword.

(The following article is largely a compilation secured through interviews with many of the older residents of Grundy County, and aims, through comment, jest and story, to tell of former days and to tincture the present with a little of the life of the past.)

To recall events covering a period of fifty years - a half century in the life of Grundy County, and to make the narrative true as well as interesting, is no easy nor inconsequent task. It must touch the days of our pioneer grandfathers as sound and stanch a body of men as ever crossed the border line of Illinois; it must recall the days of the fading Indian race here; it will bring sad recollections of the war cloud of 1861, and then will lead into the present paths of peace and plenteousness. There has been much in the unwritten history of old Grundy that, if told, would stir the heart and amuse the enthusiasm of the people in admiration for her quiet heroes, but many of these lives have been so entwined with others that full justice may never be done and it were best to leave undrawn the curtain of the past rather than to cloud the sunlight of the present. There is a touch of sadness in such a retrospect, in the remembrance that so few of the early settlers remain and that even once prominent old family names have no present representatives; but they are not forgotten, and it is a part of a history like the present to perpetuate them.

Shabbona

The writer finds names and events swarming to memory as personal recollections during a somewhat busy and varied life, and perhaps his earliest memories concern themselves with stories of the famous Indian chief, Shabbona, who was justly known as "the white man's friend." This old chieftain was one of the aids of Chief Tecumseh during the battle of the Thames, and certain incidents of that engagement made him a lifelong friend of his white brothers, whom he frequently saved from death in after years. Probably every resident of the county is familiar with his famous ride, and the Shabbona Memorial Association erected a handsome and massive monument at Morris that the memory of the famous Indian might not die.

Canal Traffic

During the days of passenger traffic on the Illinois & Michigan Canal, by packet boats, the coming and going of these vessels always excited much interest, and were attended by the blowing of an old tin horn, whose raucous voice offended the ears of every one within a mile, or the shooting off of the historic cannon. There was also the old ferry, although, as has been said before, "It didn't always ferry," depending upon the state of the river and of the ferryman. At that time the people had no idea that the Illinois River would become the outlet for the drainage canal, and it is possible, and highly probable, that if they had been asked their opinion they would have objected strenuously to it. That the people of this vicinity now take the great enterprise good-naturedly is shown in the following story, as related by O.J. Nelson. According to Mr. Nelson, during the meeting held by the State Board of Supervisors at Morris, in 1918, Charles F. Hanson, who for twelve years was states attorney for Grundy County, in speaking of Morris and its surroundings, said: "And to the west of you is the historic Illinois and Michigan Canal, and west of that is the Illinois River, both of which carry between their banks the crystal waters of Lake Michigan, together with the compliments of the people of our good sister city, Chicago!"

A sight of our present magnificent courthouse brings vividly back to mind the old, wooden, one-room structure where justice was dispensed in the early days, and the old log jail where the sheriff was compelled to barricade the entrance by piling rails and other obstacles against the door to keep westward movers from breaking in and using the jail for a camping place during cool nights! Although the jail was not often used, newspaper controversy and bad whisky often combined to arouse the fighting blood of some of the more turbulent spirits. Illustrative of this I may relate the following: The late T.W. Hopkins is said to have composed many of the caustic articles printed in the old Yeoman, while Doctor LeRoy was supposed to be the chief editorial writer of the Gazette. Mr. Hopkins conducted a department store at Morris, on the lot just west of the Commercial Hotel, and, like other merchants of the time, sold whisky by the gallon. It may be said, in passing, that they were credited with selling the twenty-five cent, fifty cent, and one dollar liquor out of the same barrel. Mr. Hopkins had some local reputation as a sportsman, and had the finest shotgun in town, said to have cost $100, which, in those days, was considered a vast sum. Serious trouble started when some verses were printed in the Gazette. They ran in some such style as this:

"There's old Hop with his whisky shop, And hundred dollar gun, sir; He's going to shoot LeRoy, he says. Wouldn't you like to see the fun, sir?"

Feeling ran high, and the trouble culminated in a fist fight between Hopkins and LeRoy, in front of what is now the "White Corner," and A.F. Mallory, who was Hopkins' nephew and printer's devil at the Yeoman, sat crying in the office, believing that his uncle was going to die and thus be unable to take him on a cherished trip to Maine.

The publisher of the Gazette, Mr. Ashton, sprang into prominence at the time of the Brady row, and showed himself an excellent sprinter when he captured the man Finlin, who was running for his life. At that time the telegraph and postoffice at Morris, as well as a bookstore, were all kept in the little old building now occupied by Mrs. Ritter, on the west side of the approach of the canal bridge, and all of these offices were conducted by the brother of J.H. Pattison, then (in 1852) a red-headed stripling of eighteen years.

Practical Jokes

Numerous incidents might be related to show how high local feeling ran. The uncertainty of the times made men frequently behave like the veriest boys, and practical joking was often indulged in. In the spring of 1853, one Samuel P. Burgess, who was then head clerk in the Bishop store, was elected town clerk on the democratic ticket after a very close contest. The Yeoman at that time was published by one Watters, locally known as "The Singed Cat." Burgess and his friends celebrated in a manner fitting the occasion, and ended up by carrying a disgraceful old outbuilding from the rear of the old courthouse and placing it snug up against the only outside door of the Yeoman office, which was also Watters' home. The "Singed Cat" happened to be awake, as he generally was, and peeping out through the little dingy window saw the whole performance and those connected with it. When the midnight marauders had gone, he crawled out of the window, summoned his friends, and carried the building into the middle of the street. Then he got busy at his little old press, and got out some bills about a foot square, which he posted on all sides of the little building in the middle of the street, as well as in other conspicuous places about town. The bills read as follows: "Removal. Samuel P. Burgess, the newly-elected town clerk, has moved his office from the rear of the courthouse to Washington street, in front of the Yeoman office."

Great excitement was caused by the arrival of the first railroad train, a construction train over the Rock Island, at Morris. It pulled in at the little plank station, where a platform had been erected to receive it, and this station stood for many years, until replaced by the present one. Until 1857 the people continued to cross the river by ferry, but then a large substantial toll bridge was completed, this being created a free bridge April 4, 1889, and was replaced by the present modern steel structure.

The professions, during the early days, were well represented, but the justice courts were noted more for the assumed dignity that hedged about them, than the legal acquirements of the presiding officers. Grundy, throughout the term of its life, has been a law-abiding community, yet it has had several notorious crimes.

A Few Serious Crimes

On July 27, 1867, Alonzo Tibbetts was lynched. On January 1, 1866, Thomas La Paige was murdered by Joe Tibbetts, brother of Alonzo and Joe was arrested for the crime and proved an alibi and was set free and he was never captured, and the people ostracized the family for the crime, and at a dance at Highland two of Tibbetts' sisters were ignored. This so incensed Alonzo that that night he cut the harness from the farmers' horses and sawed the timbers of a road bridge, so that any one passing over it would be precipitated into the waters below. While no one was hurt, the people determined upon summary justice, and a short time later a band of citizens was organized. The sheriff was sent to the south part of the county, on a false clue as to Joe Tibbetts, and the jail was broken open, Alonzo being taken across the river bridge and hanged to a tree. This tree died soon thereafter and for many years stood a silent spectre, but is now obliterated. Enoch Hopkins, city marshal of Morris, was shot to death in 1876 by Charles Miller, who escaped and was never captured. James Maxwell and John Fitzhugh, the latter a negro, foully murdered Charles Decker, on the west side, and nearly killed his aged mother. The deed was committed in June, 1890, the motive being robbery. For this crime Maxwell was hanged October 17, 1890, while Fitzhugh was sent to the penitentiary for life, and is still there. On Saturday morning, March 13, 1866, a Rock Island passenger train stopped at the Morris depot and when the express car was opened it was found that Kellogg Nichols, the express messenger, had been beaten and shot to death and the safe robbed of thousands of dollars. The robbers made good their escape and $10,000 reward was offered for their capture. A year had almost gone by when the police arrested one Henry Schwartz, a brakeman on that train, and he was brought to Morris January 26, 1887. The next month Watts, the baggageman, was also arrested. These two men were charged with the crime and after a trial of nearly two months were convicted and sent to the penitentiary for life. After a year's confinement Watts died and Schwartz was pardoned by Governor Altgeld.

But to offset any tendency toward crime, Grundy County has ever had a force for education, religion, morality and good citizenship of which it may well be proud. The history of the churches and schools here has been one of steady and consistent advancement. During the early years the gathering together of families to form a religious association was a difficult matter, as the settlements were so widely scattered, but with the growth of population religious denominations began to be well represented. The pioneer ministers, bravely treading the unknown trails, were for the greater part men of homely education and address, but their lack in this way was more than offset by their self-denying labor and intense earnestness. Familiar names among these worthy ministers of God are Adam and Aaron Payne, William Royal, Stephen Beggs and Isaac Scarrett, of whom the last named, a Methodist divine like the others, was the one to solemnize the first marriage ceremony ever conducted in Grundy County - that of James Galloway with Martha Matilda Stype, at the house of Mr. Isaac Hoge. We have here an incident to relate which the reader may find illustrative of the simple and confident faith in which these strong men labored. It was upon the occasion of the first marriage in Greenfield Township, this in June or July, 1851. The worker in the vineyard asked: "Henry, do you love Amanda?" The answer was readily and surely given: "Yes, Sir!" Came the next question: "Amanda, do you love Henry?" And the answer came no less steadily and securely: "Yes!" "Then," said this sincere apostle of his Master, "I pronounce you man and wife by God." Which, we feel confident in stating, made that contract binding.

A Noted Preacher Of Morris

Brought face to face with difficulties, obstacles and perils, these men proved time and again their judgment, capability and courage. Witness the success gained (as well as converts to the faith) by the Rev. W.S. Strong, who came to the then scoffing and practically lawless village of Morris and through the sheer force of his own personality and logic brought his audience to a state of piety and reverence. As related by the Hon. P.A. Armstrong: "A man of giant size, middle aged and with a fine full voice, read his hymn, and asked his congregation to help him sing. All mirth was hushed, and a profound stillness, if not awe, settled over the audience. Indeed, if any there were "who came to scoff" (and doubtless there were many such) 'they remained to pray.' From this time on there were no efforts made to interrupt religious services in Morris.

It is not within the province of the writer to sketch Grundy County's political history. That is treated in another chapter; yet it may be within his jurisdiction to refer to incidents that should be of interest to every Grundy countian. The Hon. Lyman B. Ray, ex-Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, who had the interests of the county deeply imbedded in his heart, wrote the following, in speaking of the birth of the Republican party "back in '56": Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest and grandest characters in all of our history, the man whom Providence placed at the head of our nation in the supreme hour of its destiny. He was the Moses of a new dispensation-called of God to lead, and well did he lead, supported and discouraged by the pioneer Morris paper, and other early papers of the day in Illinois. Like Moses of old, Abraham Lincoln led captives out of the bondage house of their oppression, and, like his great prototype, he was not permitted to see the land of promise. He led the people safely through, but he was hot allowed to guide them across the Jordan, and while a solitary stripe remains in our banner-while a single star is blazoned on the field of blue-so long will the deeds, the heroism, and the loyalty of Abraham Lincoln be told to generations yet to come!"

First Newspapers

The first newspaper published in Grundy County, The Grundy Yeoman, dated Morris, Ill., Saturday, August 14, 1852, contains among its first page articles a facetious reference to the nomination of Gen. Franklin Pierce, and also mentions the names of such prominent political notables as John Van Buren, James K. Polk, Gen. Winfield Scott and others. Brilliant writers were not wanting in that day, but their work would probably be severely criticised by those of the present craft, who, whatever their politics would undoubtedly take exception to such an article as appeared under the title of "Loco-Foco Candy-date," in the same number, which has reference to the nomination of General Pierce for the presidency by the New Hampshire national convention. The writer has referred previously to the constant strife waged between rival papers during the early days, but Grundy County had no more bitter struggles than were being waged all over the country. It was, however, one of the most loyal counties in the state, and as early as 1852 the press predicted, in a general way, the struggle that was bound to occur if the southern states persisted in their attitude.

While noting the political happenings of the early days and the days which have since followed, it may be of interest to quote from an article written by E.B. Fletcher of Morris, widely known throughout Grundy and surrounding counties as a newspaper man: ". . . then, too, those "barnstorming" parties, during the campaigns, with Ole Nelson, Will Viner, Louie Thorsen and O.J. Lund as a quartette; the meeting in the has reference to the nomination of General "Hog Run" district, when someone forgot himself and talked for an hour and a half to Uncle John Coyne, while Carter (Judge Orrin J. Carter) was waiting, to that point where patience ceased to be a virtue, to make his maiden speech as a candidate for office. And then, again, where, at the Thumb schoolhouse, somebody confiscated all of Carter's stories."

Civil War Veterans

While the Civil War dragged its slow length along and left woe and despair in every section, Grundy County suffered with the rest, and no memory comes to the writer fraught with more genuine emotion than that evoked when he watched the return of the torn and tattered, wearied and maimed veterans to their homes. The military history tells of their valor, but one less sympathetic than the writer must be called upon to tell of their subsequent lives, stories possessing interest, humor and pathos. Each community has yet its little band of veterans - may they ever be honored as is their due.

While Grundy County's commercial, manufacturing and industrial interests, like those of other flourishing sections, have grown to meet the needs of their community, they have also, in large extent, been the means of creating these needs. Here from the earliest days we find men who, coming here with little more than native talent, have built about them, above them and, so to speak, under them-for a foundation, perhaps-structures which have withstood the force of competition and have made stable the reputation of the county in business circles of the state. However, while talent was never lacking, resources were frequently-in fact, more than frequently, and the wit and capability of the early business venture, here were largely the mediums through which they worked out their success. During the fall of 1845-the same year that Col. William L. Perce and Adam Lamb had each located a small stock of merchandise for the needs of their canal hands-a general store was located in what had been the bar-room of the old Grundy Hotel, which then stood on the site later occupied by the Hopkins House, at Morris. The proprietor was P.A. Armstrong, who purchased his goods from Colonel Perce and Mr. Lamb, and, finding himself cramped for room, built a small store, in which he also conducted the postoffice. Succeeding Mr. Armstrong have come men who have, perhaps, bettered him in achievements, but it is doubtful if any of them have shown more ingenuity. The stories told of this pioneer merchant are many, but we may content ourselves with relating one. Like those hardy commercial ventures in other sections, Mr. Armstrong took the greater part of his pay in produce, and, therefore, was compelled to possess more than ordinary ability as a "trader." It is related that one of his customers was possessed of a team, which Mr. Armstrong coveted greatly. On one of this customer's trips to the merchant's store, Mr. Armstrong succeeded in making him so interested in some goods that he had lately received that the purchaser finally agreed to trade his livestock and wagon for a large amount of merchandise, and after the deal had been consummated, found out that he had nothing with which to haul them back to his homestead, and, therefore, was compelled to rent the team which he had but several minutes before owned, from Mr. Armstrong. We are informed, however, that Mr. Armstrong was lenient in this matter, thus displaying himself possessed of the traits of sterling fellowship which were part and parcel of the pioneers.

Old Prairie Times

The hospitality, generosity and general good-fellowship exhibited by Grundy people have been frequently commented upon-they are proverbial. The reason for their existence is not far to seek. The early days found settlers widely scattered. Naturally, visitors were infrequent and were a welcome addition to such social affairs as the pioneers were able to create. This tended to establish a custom among the people which has been ingrained in their descendants. Hunting and fishing, of course, were among the chief recreations of the early days, and those fortunate in securing the prize trophies were liberally rewarded. Log cabin raisings always attracted a goodly concourse, the Saturday afternoon "scrub" horse race and wrestling match brought its devotees, and the pioneer women indulged in carpet rag, quilting and spinning bees, which generally ended in a dance and there were some famous "fiddlers." With the growth and development of the county these homely amusements were superseded by more modern social activities, but among the older residents of the county there are few who do not look back to the "prairie times" with pleasure and fond regret.

Chicago furnished a market for the early settlers, but transportation facilities were decidedly limited and the men of early Grundy were not inclined (nor are those of today) to devote a great deal of their time to idle pleasure-seeking. With the acquisition of wealth and more leisure, however, Chicago very frequently sees and welcomes Grundy people and probably sells more automobiles to them than to any other section in the state.

The passing years! They have wrought great changes and have brought great accomplishments. They have obliterated old landmarks and in their stead have furnished the creations of modern ingenuity. They have taken away the pioneers, but to succeed them have brought men of strength, force and capability to meet the conditions which confront the world's workers of today. One thing, however, they have not changed, nor is it reasonable to suppose that they ever will; the stanch and loyal citizenship which has made the men and women of the county proud of the region in which their forebears lived their lives, and to the best interests of which they continue to devote themselves.

The First Settler

The first settler of what is now Grundy County was William Marquis, and with his coming began the history of this section treated of at length individually in this work. He was followed by others until, by 1839, there were a sufficient number of settlers to make it seem desirable that a new county be formed.

Grundy and Kendall Counties Pool

At the same time Kendall County was fighting for recognition, and the leaders in both Grundy and Kendall pooled their interests, finally effecting the passage of bills creating the two counties in the general assembly of the state during the winter of 1840-41. The bill creating Grundy County was approved by the Governor on February 17, 1841, and that for creating Kendall County two days later.

AN ACT TO CREATE GRUNDY FROM THE COUNTY OF LA SALLE.

Sec. 1. BE IT ENACTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, REPRESENTED IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. That all tract of country, lying and being in the county of La Salle, in Township 31, 32, 33 and 34, north of Ranges 6, 7 and 8, east of the third principal meridian, shall constitute and form a new county, to be called Grundy.

Sec. 2. An election shall be held at the home of Columbus Pinney on the fourth Monday of May, 1841, for the purpose of electing one sheriff, one recorder, one county surveyor, one probate justice, one country treasurer, and three county commissioners, and one county commissioners' clerk, who shall hold their offices until the next general election of until their successors in office shall be elected and qualified; said election shall be conducted according to the laws regulating elections in this state. Perry A. Claypool, Robert Walker, and John Beard, Sr., shall be the judges of said election, and shall make the returns within five days after such election to the county commissioners' clerk of La Salle County, and the said clerk of said county shall give certificates of election, as in other cases for county officers, and the said county of Grundy shall be organized so soon as the said officers shall be elected and qualified.

Sec. 3. Ward B. Burnett, Rulief S. Duryea and William E. Armstrong is appointed in conjunction with the Commissioners of the Illinois and Michigan Canal to locate the seat of justice of the said County of Grundy.

Sec. 4. It shall be the duty of the said commissioners to located the said seat of justice on the line of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, on canal lands, and they shall set apart for this purpose any quantity of the canal lands not exceeding ten acres, and after doing so shall proceed to lay off the said land as a town site, embracing lots, streets, alleys and a public square, in such manner as they shall deem proper.

Sec. 5. They shall divide the said lots in equal numbers between the state and the said county, and shall allot to the state and the county alternate lots of equal value, or as nearly so as may be practicable.

Sec. 6. It shall be the duty of the Canal Commissioners to require that the said county, and the inhabitants thereof, in their corporate capacity, shall be liable to them for the payment of a sum equal to ten dollars per acre for one-half of the whole quantity of land to be located as aforesaid, upon the payment of which sum the Canal Commissioners shall certify the fact to the Governor, who shall thereupon issue a patent to the county commissioners of said county and their successors in office, for the use of the said county, for that portion of the lots, by number, which shall be allotted to the county: PROVIDED ALWAYS, That the monies to be received by the Canal Commissioners by virtue of this section of this act, shall be applied in aid of the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Sec. 7. The county commissioners shall meet on the second Monday of June next, and appoint one assessor and one collector, and such assessor and collector shall proceed to levy and collect said tax from the taxable inhabitants of said county according to the laws of this state, and said assessment shall be as legal as if the County of Grundy had been organized previous to the first Monday of March, one thousand eight hundred and forty-one.

Sec. 8. The county commissioners shall prepare a place for holding courts in said county until there shall be public buildings erected. The County of Grundy shall be attached to the Ninth Judicial Circuit, and the different times of holding courts shall be appointed by the judge on the above named circuit, so as to hold two terms in each year, all suits commenced in La Salle Circuit Court shall be determined there, although the parties may reside in Grundy County until after the passage of this act, and the election of officers takes place as provided for in this act.

Sec. 9. It shall be the duty of the school commissioners of La Salle County to pay over and cause to be paid over to the school commissioners of Grundy County, as soon as there may be one appointed, all monies, papers, vouchers, etc., that he or they may have belonging to the said County of Grundy.

Approved February 17, 1841.

Selection of County Seat

Grundy County, named for Felix Grundy, the greatest criminal lawyer Tennessee had then known, whose ardent admirer, William E. Armstrong, was father of the bill creating Grundy County, was without a capital until April 12, 1842, when Morris was acknowledged by Isaac N. Morris, Newton Cloud, R. S. Duryea, and William E. Armstrong, although at that time it was known as Grundytown, and Grundyville. The name of Morris was bestowed upon it in honor of Isaac N. Morris, who cast the deciding vote in favor of Grundyville as against Clarkson, situated on section 9, which had never met with great approval on account of its position with relation to the canal. It was at first proposed to call the place Morristown, but as there was already a postoffice by that name, the present name was chosen.

Source: History of Grundy County, Munsell Publishing Company, 1914

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