Bureau County, Illinois - Chapter 34, 1885

ODDS AND ENDS - RETROSPECTIVE - PATHS, INDIAN TRAILS AND RAILROADS - BLESSINGS RECEIVED AND EXPECTED - FARMERS AND THEIR FUTURE EDUCATION - THE BUFFALO AND THE INDIAN - NATURAL PLACES FOR GREAT CITIES - DOUGLAS, BREESE AND THE IDEA OF THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD, ETC., ETC.

THE migrating buffalo once made their well beaten paths all over this part of Illinois. They were the real first road engineers, and a most curious thing in the history of this country is that the buffalo and then the Indian following were the unfailing discoverers of the natural sites where were founded all our great cities. They seem to have migrated in the early times from a northwest to a southeasterly course, and upon the great lakes and rivers there were certain points where these animals would annually meet in immense droves, and as it were go into camp for a spell. Their peculiar manner of crossing the great streams, perhaps, first had something to do in fixing this habit. They seemed to understand the topography of the country, and when on their voyage they would meet on the banks of a large river, and after all had gathered at that point for a wide range around, they would, after eating bare the ground in the immediate vicinity of their camp, commence to prepare for the plunge to cross the river. Then they would gather in a close bunch near the bank and move in a circle, and every time they came opposite the water those on the inner circle would press the others a little closer toward the river, and thus around and around, and closer and closer to the water, until finally some would be pushed into the deep water, and then these would turn and boldly face the stream, and start for the other shore, when all would follow. The spots where they would thus bivouac would Become famed places among the Indians, and eventually they followed the buffalo and made their camps and crossings at the same places, and they found in their migration that in passing over the wild country, the buffalo had pointed out the best route and the best crossings of the great rivers. Thus, the cunning of the savage and the instinct of the beasts were really superior to all the skill and science of the world's engineers, in fixing the places that were natural points for a dense population and for great cities; and the history of our country is full of demonstrations of these observations. How many times have skilled engineers come here from Europe and fixed upon certain spots, ignorant of the signs and tokens left us by the buffaloes and Indians, and, therefore, were not guided by them in their selection, and in no single instance was their choice a wise one, but were invariably fruitful sources of failure and bankruptcies to the wealthy corporations or companies that had sent their learned engineers to pilot them to the magical spot. It is enough to verify what we say

There is history then, history that now dug up and elaborated with reference to the marvellous development of this country, reads almost like the finger-boards of destiny, planted along our great national highways, that had its great beginnings in the buffalo paths that once threaded their way over this entire country.

Sac and Fox Trail. - We have already referred to this ancient Indian highway, where it was crossed at right angles by the Peoria and Galena stage route. It entered the county in Mineral, Section 30, and passed through J. G. Reed's farm, and crossed Coal Creek at the railroad crossing west of Sheffield; then through Pond Grove; crossed West Bureau in Section 4; passed through J. Thurston's land; crossed Big Bureau near Elliott's Mill; then through G. H. Bacon's farm, passing a little north of Maiden, through Berlin Center and Lost Grove, and passed out of the county near the southeast corner of Clarion, running nearly straight through the county in a northeasterly direction.

There was another trail passing near Steven's Mill, and passed over the bluff near where the road now runs, and struck the prairie near the present residence of Mrs. Arthur Bryant. Here it branched, one coming toward and through Princeton, and went in a northerly direction until it intersected the Sac and Fox trail near Maiden; the other branch passed through the Musgrove farm, and then by Joel Doolittle's place, and it also intercepted and joined the Fox trail at East Bureau.

Another passed near the old Simon Kinney place, then to Bulbona and Menominee Groves and into the Fox trail near Sheffield. This trail forked, one branch going to the Green River country. And still another trail passed through the county north and south, from the Winnebago Swamps to Peoria.

The Railroads. - The old Illinois Central Railroad, that was commenced under the wild State internal improvement craze, was surveyed through Bureau County in 1839. There was a great deal of work done on this line at that time, but it never proceeded any further than cutting away strips of timber through the timber land, and a cut here and there, and dirt fills at many places. A great many ties were hewn out and piled up in the woods and along the track to rot in silent decay, when the whole scheme exploded. The survey of this old abandoned line entered the county in Westfield, Section 25, and passed out of the county in Section 2, Lamoille, thus making nearly a straight line through the county. As described elsewhere, the end of this mad speculation was wholly demoralizing to the railroad enterprise of the people. The State and whole communities were left bankrupt - stranded upon dirt embankments - that were worse than valueless, because they were enduring monuments of the general grief which came upon nearly one and all of the good people. But in the end the visitation was good and healthful. Like many real and supposed calamities, it distilled into men's minds a more conservative mode of thinking about public affairs. It put them in the complete humor of in future the better to prepare themselves before seriously undertaking any very extravagant enterprises. It put bounds about their hopes and expectations in the near future, and, as a result, they would fully prepare themselves in the future as the first and most important step in the important affairs of life.

Railroad affairs lay dormant for ten years, and in the meantime immigrants and wealth were rapidly coming to Illinois. In 1850 Stephen A. Douglas had procured the passage through Congress of the present Illinois Central Kailroad measure, and for the first time in the legislation of the country was inserted in the act the clause giving the alternate sections for six miles on each side of the line to aid in the construction. This munificent donation amounted to about 3,000,000 acres. And in the face of the facts of the great steals that have since occurred, especially of the public domain, this measure was wise and a great public good - the most fruitful and permanent work in the settlement of the great Mississippi Valley. It was freighted with great results to the millions of people now here, and the many more millions to come after us. It was the culmination of a great idea, and, like all great ideas, it was born of no one brain, bat was the work of many and of years of growth. And among the biographers of Judge Breese and S. A. Douglas, we notice that the respective writers are equally emphatic in giving all the credit of fatherhood of the original scheme to whichever one of these men the writer happens to be eulogizing. There is truth and error in all of them. No one ' mind ever yet fully developed any one great idea. Often one mind has contributed a great deal, and the world is then generally ready to credit such person with the whole - not seeing the smaller or more obscure workers and toilers in the great highway of civilization.

on to subscribe stock. Bureau County was asked to subscribe $50,000. Never was the county more thoroughly canvassed on any proposition. Meetings were called and many speeches were made. The great advantages of the road were one side, and the horror of a big debt were the other side of the question. Every schoolhouse was time and again filled with disputants and listeners, and finally around nearly every fireside the matter was talked over and over. When the vote was given, the subscription was defeated. One curious feature of the thing was that Princeton voted in favor of subscribing, and Tiskilwa voted against it, and Princeton

I did not get the road and Tiskilwa did. The road was completed in 1853, and at once took rank as one of the great roads of the State, and yet maintains this place among the roads of the country. The name of the road is the Chicago, Eock Island & Pacific Railroad. Its length of line in Bureau County is 45 miles and 112 feet.

1 The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad was completed through the county in 1854. The entire length of line in the county is 72 miles and 426 feet.

! portion of the county, as follows : The Peoria & Bureau Valley Railroad was built in 1855. This had a line of nearly five miles in the county. The Rushville & Buda Railroad was built in 1870, and there is about seven miles of its track within the county. The Mendota & Prophetstown Railroad was commenced in 1856 and completed in 1870. There were nearly twenty-seven miles in the county. The Kankakee & Pacific Railroad was nearly all graded as early as 1871, and then the work was suspended. This line only touched about three miles of the county. These roads were incorporated into and became a part of the two great lines above named, and instead of six railroads, as the county once had, there are but two. There is a total mileage of railroad track in the county of 117 miles and 538 feet.

These are some of the great things that have come to the good people of Bureau County. "While they are certainly among the greatest, they are not all. Each may bear as its coat of arms the insignia, " E pluribus unum." The good judgment of those who have shaped the destinies of the county can never be too highly commended. Their great aim has been to grow here a great, prosperous and intelligent agricultural people. They wisely did not attempt to force an unnatural growth of those industries that would bring here the class of people that are found in cities with the large factories and foundries. They understood that they could accelerate the growth of wealth here by giving such premiums as would bring such things here. It is a singular comment on the average man, who wants great wealth and that quickly too, that they could withstand these great temptations. But they did, and the fruit of their wisdom is already manifesting itself. They must have fully realized that here is everything to make this some day the richest agricultural spot in the world, and that the happiest and best people that it is possible to grow, is of such agricultural character. The members of such a community, other things being even, are the most intelligent, contented, moral and happy of any people in the world, and if not so now, the day will soon come when they will be. This is not a mere meaningless or groundless assertion, uttered in the spirit of fulsome praise. These assertions are made in the knowledge of the fact that the coming farmers will live the healthiest life, the life of the most elegant leisure, independence, and real manhood of any other class of men. Then, too, the great farmer will give himself, by his daily avocations, the very best education it is possible to obtain. When all its possibilities are developed, there will no longer be such things as the "higher professions," because the farmer will stand upon the highest possible pinnacle. Farming, in its higher development, will give the education that comes of the higher type of scientific education. For here the principles of scientific investigation will ever remain in full play. Even now, in all its phases, it is wholly a scientific process. So far it is the intelligent experimenter that becomes in the end the best and most successful farmer. He does not call his experimental education scientific knowledge. But few realize that such is the fact, even, yet it is absolutely so. The most ignorant farmer can travel all over the country, and as he passes along he can easily tell the soils that are barren from those that are full of rich plant food. He has not learned this by chemical analysis, but by observation and experience. A few already, and in good time all intelligent farmers, will gain a very accurate knowledge of the laws of climate, soils, geology and plant and animal life. Such a man could examine any strange country in the world, and tell exactly its qualities and capabilities; just how any given plant, tree or animal would grow and flourish there. A man thus educated would not have to wear out his life in costly and fruitless experiments before he could know what kind of farming could be made to yield profits in the new land. Something like this is real education, and may answer the demand for those who tell us that their inferior children must content themselves with a little "practical education," while the family genius must be pushed into the realms of classical lore. And thus, in the struggle for life, the " inferiors " finally become the superiors. Here is the inviting field and the glorious opportunity for the farmers. They must make their own education, as they have now ceased to wail, as did their fathers, over the loss of ' ' book larnin," which they saw the lawyer and the parson once proudly wearing, like the waving plumes of the knights of old. Then will the farmer be the educated man in his State and nation, the world's leading factor in that great struggle for existence that is as wide as the earth, and that will endure forever.

The supreme purpose of every rational life is the attainment of the greatest possible benefits and pleasures in this world. And the opposite of this is the other axiomatic truth, that all pains, penalties and Bufferings are the direct or remote offspring of ignorance. Here are the two sources of all pleasures and all pains. And a bountiful nature has furnished the fountains of each with an exhaustless and infinite supply. The wise man in so far as he can, will go to the one; the fool will go to the other and fill himself to bursting. One of the most enduring pleasures in life to every intelligent mind - really, to every tolerably intelligent mind - is the acquisition of new truths of the physical laws of the universe. This, and this only, is real knowledge. All else when called education is misnamed - is an illusion and a snare. The coming farmers will understand this well, and the result of that understanding will be, they will become, not only the best educated people in the world, but the healthiest, happiest and best.