Effingham County, Illinois - Chapter 1, 1883

INTRODUCTORY - THE FIRST PIONEER - GRIFFIN TIPSWORD - HIS SUPERSTITIOUS ECCENTRICITIES - THE FIFTY-ONE FAMILIES - TIMBER AND PRAIRIES - OBSTACLES TO SETTLEMENTWILD BEASTS AND INSECTS - BEN CAMPBELL - MORALIZING ON PIONEER EXPERIENCE - SOME ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS OF CAMPBELL - HIS LAST MARRIAGE AND DEATH - REQUIESCAT IN PACE.

" I stand alone, like some dim shaft which throws Its shadows on the desert waste, while they Who placed it there are gone - or like the tree Spared by the ax upon the mountain's cliff, Whose sap is dull, while it still wears the hue Of life upon its withered limbs."

TO rescue from fast-fading traditions the simple annals of the pioneer people of our county is a pleasing but a laborious task, not so laborious as perplexing, the annoyances arising from there being now no connected record of their official acts and doings. Many of the earliest and most important legal papers are gone beyond recovery; many of them were never put in a more permanent form than mere slips or scraps of unbound sheets of papers, stuck carelessly away, not even marked or filed; some not dated, and others again addressed to no one. Then, in the burning the court house in ISHS. many were consumed or destro3-ed in being removed.

But to meet and converse with the few now living of these earl}' settlers - those who came here as children, or as veiy young men and women, and are now fast approaching or have passed the allotted threescore and ten, stooped with age, venerable patriarchs mosth'. and their white-haired " blessed mothers in Israel," companions and helpmeets - has been the most pleasing task of our life.

To gather up the raveled threads of the strange but simple stories of their lives - now mostly broken threads - to catch these fleeting traditions and fireside histories, and hand them on to posterity, might well be the ambitious labor of any man's life.

The importance thj^t attaches to the lives, character and work of these humble laborers in the cause of humanity and civilization will some daj' be better understood and appreciated than it is now. Thej- will^some time, by the pen of the wise historian, talie their proper place in the list of those immortals who havq helped to make this world wholesome with their toil and their sweat and their blood. Of them all the pioneer was the humblest, but uot the meanest nor the most insignificant. They laid the foundations on which rests the civilization of the Western Hemisphere.«- If the work was done well, then the edifice stands upon an enduring rock; if ill, then upon the sands; and when the winds and the rains beat upon it, it will tremble and fall.

If great and beneficent results - results that endure and bless mankind - are the proper measure of the good men do, then who is there in the world's history that may take their places above these hardy, early pioneers?

To point out the waj', to make possible our present advancing civilization, its cheap and happ}- homes, its cheap food, its arts, sciences, inventions and discoveries, its education, literature, culture, refinement and social life and joj', is to be the trnlj- great bcuefactor of all mankind and for all time. This, indeed, was the great work of these adventurous pioneers.

Grant it, captious friend, that the}' builded wiser than thej' knew; that few, if any of them', ever realized in the dimmest way the transcendant possibilities that rested upon their shoulders. Grant it that, as a rule, their lives were aimless and ambitionless, with little more of hope, or far-reaching purposes, than the savage or the wild beasts that were their neighbors. Yet there stands the supreme fact that they followed their restless impulses, took their lives in their hands, penetrated the desert wilderness, and with a patient energy, resolution and selfsacrifice that stands alone and unparalleled, they worked out their allotted tasks, and to-day we are here in the enjoyment of the fruitage of their labors. -

Should we allow their names and their fame to pass into oblivion and contempt, the act would mark us as the degenerate sons of heroic sires, unworthy the inheritance they gave us.

To say that in this work it is proposed to write the historj', in the broad and large meaning of that word, would be a careless use of language - would be promising more than it is possible for us to do; for history in its true sense is philosophy in its highest type, teaching by example. But to gather such facts, incidents, statistics and circumstances, trifling or important, as are left to us, and place tliem in a durable form, and transmit them, ready to hand, to the future and real historian, is all that one can attempt or hope to do in a manner at all satisfaetorj'. To tell their simple annals in their chronological order, to secure something of the substance ere the shadows wholly fade, IS enough to attempt now.

In the year 1814 or 1815, Griffin Tipsword came to this part of Illinois and took up his abode with the Kickapoo Indians. These Indians then occupied what is now parts of Fayette, Shelb}' and Effingham Counties. South of the Kickapoos were the Winnebagoes and Delawares. At that time these Indians were peaceably disposed, and, it seems, were indifferent as to the coming of the lone, straggling, white man.

We make no doubt that Tipsword was the first white man that was ever here. He was a strange compound of white man by birth and Indian Ijy adoption. He was a self-exile from civilization in his native Virginia, and by choice a roving nomad, who sought the solitudes of pathless woods, the dreariness of the desert waste, in exchange for the trammels of civilized society. Of the latter, he could not endure its restraints, and he despised its comforts and pleasures. His soul j-earned for freedom - freedom in its fullest sense, applied to all property, life and everj'thing, here and hereafter. He hunted in the Indian chase, talked in their dialect, danced their dances, and to show how fully he was for, them, with them and of thein, he gave them his oldest sou, who remained with them whoU}' for years, in order that he miglit be fully educated in their ways.

Moses Dotj- was a nephew of Tipsword, and from him and the gnindsous of the old pioneer we learn that he left Virginia in the 3 ear 1812 and came to Southern Illinois, where he remained for two or three years, and then came, witli liis wife and two children, to this part of the State; that he hrst lived in the northwest corner of this county, and in Shelby, and lived and hunted and migrated as far northwest as Quincy, and then would return to this place. The Indians did much the same in following the game and in searching for new and better hunting ground.

For years after he came here he saw no human face except the Indian. His people in Virginia had no word of him for sixteen years after he left them.

In many respects he was a remarkable man. He had gone West, cut loose from kith and kin, and he didn't burn the bridges behind him, because there were none to burn. He was a pioneer, a doctor, a missionar\' preacher, his own bishop, as well as his own committee on ways and means. He hunted, fished, cut bee-trees, and talked with the Indians in their way and fashion. He was as illiterate as they, and he told them In Indian the stor)' of Mount Calvary and the lake of fire and brimstone, and those who had no fears of an angry God had a healthy dread of his unerring ritte. Beneath God's first temples he pointed the way to heaven to these simple savages. In the trackless woods he met the bad Indian and slow him. He was notonlj' a physician for the poor soul, but he was a " medicine man," who could exorcise witches, conjure ghosts, remove "spells," make "silver tea " for cattle sick of the murrain or otherwise bewitched. He regulated the storms, stayed the angry lightning fiashes, and could appease the deep-mouthed thunders as they rolled across the darkened heavens in terrifying peals. He had much to do in his Protean capacity of a hunter, a half savage, a doctor, a preacher, and a pioneer, with no visible means of support except his rifle, and that he lived out u long life (it is supposed over a hundred years) is evidence that he was singularly well adapted to surrounding circumstances.

His family name was Souards. He onlj- called himself Tipsword after he came here. It was only in the latter j-ears of his life that he told any one that he had changed his name. When asktd why he had done so, he would nod his head toward the south, where he had first lived among the Indians, and reply that he did not want to run his " head into the halter." From this and other hints that he gave out in his last years the inference may be drawn that, in his mind, it was much the same whether you saved a savage by preaching or b\- the rifle. He believed it was the Divine economy to save, and in one way or the other he did a livelj' business.

It is not known what particular church ho belonged to - perhaps he did not himself know, but the records leave no doubt it was that broad, liberal Catholic faith and practice that gathered up with as much alacrity the Indian with a bullet hole through his head as the saint with finger nails two or three feet long. He was a well-armed drummer in the golden slipper trade, a "rustler" for the golden stairs.

He could doctor the bod}' quite as well as the souls. The prevalent diseases of his daj-, it seems, were witches, spooks, spells and charms. He was as superstitious as his neighbors and quite as illiterate, and yet he must have played man}' tricks upon his savage followers to retain his power over them, and impress and awe them with a dread of his occult powers. His trade was not destroyed by the coming of the first whites and the migration from here of the Indians. lie continued to practice medicine, preach and hunt. He kept sacred Jiis witchballs to the day of his death. These were made of doer's and cow's hair, were large, and held together by a long string. They constituted his materia medica.

Most people then believed implicity in witches and charms; some do now. All diseases were the work of witches, and so it was with their cattle. Ghosts could be seen an}' dark night in passing a grave or a graveyard.

Hunters would sometimes be almost bedeviled out of their lives b}- witches that would appear to them in the woods as a beautiful deer, which would career and gallop around them in eas}- range and j-et, no matter how often he shot, he could not touch them. It came to be well known that a leaden bullet would not touch a witch, but a silver bullet carried death on its wings. When this kind of a ball was fired at a witch deer, if the aim was fatal, the deer would run home, return to its human form, go to bed and die. If the shot was not fatal, the witch would go to bed, be sick a long time, and no visitor would be allowed to see the wound, nor would the attendants tell them the particulars of the ailment.

If cattle were sick, it was the witches and nothing would do them au}- good except " silver tea." This tea was made b}- boiling a silver coin in water for a long time and giving the water to the sick brute.

When people were bewitched, thev would send for Tipsword or take the patient to him. He would doctor them bj' standing over them, moving about in a m3'sterious way his witchballs and muttering a strange guttural jargon, and this was repeated from da}' to day until the witch would fly unseen away in sore agony and distress and the cure was complete.

The good old John Knox, Presbyterian, of Scotland, never had more trouble with witches, or the devil, as he went prowling through the country, in the shape of a snake, a wild boar or some other unknown and unseen wild beast, than did these pioneers and Indians. Men who are now growing old, who were here as children, in the days of unbounded superstition, can yet tell you how they have often sat around the loij fireside and heard the gathered neighbors tell over tiieir soul-harrowing stories of ghosts and witches. Poor, innocent, credulous children, listening, open mouthed, to superstitious fathers and mothers telling frightful stories - stories that would make these youngsters' hair stand out " like quills upon the fretted porcupine." If the story chanced to be too monstrous for even ignorant credulity, then some crooning old granny, well known to the whole neighborhood, was always referred to as a living authority, who had been there and had seen or knew it all.

These ignorant superstitious, sucked by the babes with the milk from the mother's beast, have done far more to beat back the cause of civilization among the common people than could all the swarms of greenhead flies, the murderous Indians, the poisonous snakes and wild beasts, the deadly malaria, disease and poverty. Their tendency was to breed ignorance, to raise up a people that believed enormously, that never questioned, never doubted, but the more impossible the story the more implicitly they believed.

Yet as widespread as were these beliefs in goblins and spells, there are to-day men and women in our county who grew up among such pernicious influences that will tell you of the terrifying beliefs of their childhood and laugh at them. We _note this fact with the greatest satisfaction. By their own strength of mind they have grown away from the faith of their fathers. A hard thing for any one to do - an impossible thing for the weak and slothfulminded to do. An ignorant man of large beliefs rears his child very difl'erently from a man of large mind, or a man who often doubts aud always in^'estigates. The ignorant man takes charge of not only the body of his child which he guides with a rod of iron, but he is equally watchful for its mind aud soul and equally severe with his gibbets, chains and slavery upon the slighest signs of deviation from his precepts. He believes in education, provided the educator he employs is as ignorant and credulous as himself. He believes what his fathers believed, and, by the eternal, his children shall believe as he does. When the world was, or if it shall ever return to this condition of aflairs generally, it will have reached calamities that will surpass all the afflictions of the sword. Are, disease, famines and pestilences.

To some this may be regarded as wandering somewhat from our text, especially our sketch of Griffin Tipsward. It is not. To write the history of the pioneers, it is of the utmost importance to bring prominentl}' forward every circumstance, so tar as the}' can be discovered, that had any marked influence upon the progress of the people. The reader will readilj' perceive that among all the calamities that befel the very earliest settlers and their children, a widespread belief in witches, ghosts, spells and goblins was the greatest of all. Tipsword carried with him to the day of his death many of the customs and characteristics of the Indian. He was always reticent of speech, and a ringing, heart}- laugh - he had forgotton all about it. In approaching a neighbor's house, he would never be seen until standing in the door.

He lived here a long time after the sparse settlements of whites had come and the Indian had gone. When the Indians first went awa}', it was not fleeing from the pale faces, but following the game. The}- would, for some years, annually return, and often Tipsward would go with them and not return for a year or more.

On one occasion, after the whites had settled in Shelby and Fayette Counties, the Indians warned them to leave in three days, or they would massacre all in the country between Shelbyville, by w.ay of Vandalia, to St. Louis. The warning came like a death knell to the poor defenseless whites - they were terrorstricken. Three days was too short a time in which to get away, yet it was too long a time to await in dread horror the cruel torture and death that they well knew that the red devils had in store for them. In the calmness that comes of despair, they talked over the situation. A few, but very few, gathered their little families and fled, but the majority could only make a feeble attempt to put themselves upon the best defense of their household gods that they could. They had hoped at first that Tipsword could intercede for them, but when appealed to he could give them no hope, as he, too, was in the list of warned. On the afternoon of the third and last day the Indians held a general pow-wow in the woods, and Tipsword attended it as a spectator. He had friends among the chiefs and braves, and he had no doubt talked as much as he dared to them, and told them the certain consequences that would follow a general massacre of the whites. The first speakers urged that they adjourn the meeting, paint themselves, and at early dark commence the bloody work, and allow no pale face to escape. These sentiments met the approving grunts of the braves. But late in the evening better informed Indians talked. They told their people that, while it was true they had it in their power to murder the whites, but suppose they did, would not the word go to the people of the States, and would not an army, numbering as the leaves of the forest, come here and kill every Indian in the Territory. Such representations soon turned the attention of the Indians to questions of their own safety, and they determined to postpone the massacre.

Isaac Tipsword married Nancj' Stanberry, and their children - Isaac, Ashby, Sallie, Ruth, Thomas, Martha. Marion, John, William, Rebecca and Mellissa - all married, and have reared large families.

Thomas Tipsword was the father of Albert, Jonathan, Isaac, Jackson, Millie, Lydia, Mary and Bell, and from these there is another extensive branch of the family.

From the above it will be seen that the Tipswords were pioneers and the sons and daughters of pioneers. They seemed to realize that the great want of a new country is people, and unflinchingly they responded to their country's call.

Of all the men now living we believe that Dr. John O. Scott was the first to kindle a camp fire within the confines of our county. There were a few who had been here before him, but none of them are now living.

Fifty-seven years ago, 1825, Mr, Scott, in company with a man named Elliott, and his wife, traveled through this county on their way, moving from Wayne to Shelby County. They camped near Blue Point. In passing the timber at the head of Brockett's Creek, a smoke was seen curling, up from a camp fire, a clearing, or a wooden chimney. Mr. Elliott, who had made the trip through here before, told him that it was smoke from the cabin or clearing of a man's place named Fancher. This was Isaac Fancher. That Fancher was here then is strouglj- corroborated by the oft-repeated statements of Ben. Campbell to his stepson, Thomas Andrews, that when he (Campbell) came here in 182G he found the Fancher family here ; that he stopped with them for several weeks, and they put in their time hunting bee-trees, of which they found a great many. Campbell also stated that he tliought the Fulfers were here when he came, or that they came soon after.

Fancher and Fulfer in 1834-35 moved away from here into Coles County, where they died yeai'S ago. With the exception of Mr. Scott, these, the earliest of the pioneers in our county, are all gone - sleeping peacefully in their unmarked graves.

In 1831, Jacob Slover, Isaac Slover, John Gallant, William Gallant, Seymour Powell. Thomas Loy, William J. Hankins, the Hutchisons, and John Galloway, the fiddler.

Here were the fifty-one families that were here prior to February 15, 1831 - the date of the act of the Legislature organizing the county. Why did they come? What was it that stopped here this meager stream of emigration and fixed them permanently in this place? What i was there here to tempt and lure them to brave all, endure all, and cause them to fix here the nucleus around which all this present people, and their wealth and enjoyment has gathered? True, they could not see the toils anrl danger that lurked unseen upon every hand, j'et there was much to repel them that the}' could see, enough, one would think, to have settled the question, and forever have prevented them from tlj-ing in the face of dangers that they knew not of

We can imagine nothing more dreary, lonesome or depressing than was the face of this boundless waste of cheerless solitude, where had sat through the ages silence and desolation. These vast prairie seas, with their long reaches of desert waste, their flat surface covered with tall, dank grass, often as high as a man's head on horseback. In the autumn when this grass became sear, it was burned, and the smoke from these fires filled the atmosphere for hundreds of miles with smoke that darkened the face of day and hung like mourning drapery upon the horizon. The prairies were wet, flat and marsh}'. Waters standing a goodly portion of the year on, perhaps, two-third's of the soil's surface. When the grass was freshly burned the weary eye 'could find no relief in tiie vast expanse save the crawfish chimneys that thickly dotted the face of nature. The water lay mostly where it fell, and could escape only by evaporation, and from this cause it is believed the rainfall then was greater than now. Kecalling these daj'S when monotonous solitude was all that was here, is to modern people but ringing the changes on the story of the " Lost Mariner," when the poet tells us he was

The forests consisted of tall trees with no undergrowth of brush or vines. The annual fires that swept through them had done the work of the forester well It cleared awa}' the debris, burned most of the fallen trees, and trimmed smooth the sprouts and had trained the limbs not to grow out near the ground. You could ride anywhere through the woods, or, for that matter, drive a wagon with nearly the same ease that you could in an orchard. People now express great surprise that the pioneers alwaj's settled in the timber, or close upon the edge of it ; and as a rule the first selections were the poorest land. There were good reasons for their acts. The face of the country was imraensel}' different then from now. Thej- were compelled to hunt out, first, for a spring where they could get water. The}- could find these anddr}' land only in the woods. They were, too, a people who knew little or nothing about the prairie. It was not then possible for man to live upon these treeless marshes, pools and bogs, fit only for the home of the " green heads," the poisonous insects, amphibious snakes and the more deadl}' malaria. The prairies were then mere lagoons filled with rotting grass and death, that was carried awaj' by the unobstructed winds to poison the pure air of heaven. Tliere was very little chance for the water to drain off the land, the topography of the country then being such as to hold it in its naturally formed basins. Mr. Joshua Bradley suggested to the writer the most plausible theory as to how these prairie basins were formed. His idea was that when the tall grass was burned, the fire that ti-aveled with the wind, burned everything as it went, but tiiat which burned against the wind traveled slowly and burned the grass at the roots always first, and when a strong wind prevailed it would carry the long stalks of this burned off grass into the burnt places and leave it there. In the spring the heavy rains would cause the water to float these off and they would lodge at points until they were piled there in great quantities, and in the long course of time they thus received accretions until the waters were held back, sod formed on the embankment and complete natural dams were made and a basin formed. It was the cows of the pioneers that first made beaten paths as they traveled to water or to the " late burns" to graze the tender and nutritious grasses, and these paths were the lead-way for the water to follow, and as the cows killed the sod the water could cut its own ditch, so stream was added to stream until strength was accumulated, and in the years the prairie swamps became comparatively drj', rich land.

As gi'eat and numerous as were these obstacles that confronted the pioneer, they were not all. The hostile and treacherous savage was here. Jlilk-sick laj- in wait for man and beast along nearlj' all the streams in the southern part of the couutj". The horrible malaria freighted the air, as it floated out from its noisome lurking places, with its deadly poison. Howling and always hungrj- wolves, both prairie and timber wolves, made night hideous with their howls, and the blood-curdling scream of the soft-footed panther added a terrible

'^warning to that of the wolves, that there was little hope of ever having any domestic animals here. The "green-head flies," in countless billions and as ravenous and voracious as the migrating ants of Africa, held undisputed possession of the prairies always during the hot summer months. Their business hours were between sunrise and sunset. And in a very short time the}' could kill a horse or a cow. The " green-head" alone made the prairies

(wholly uninhabitable. Here, too, were all manner of beasts that devastate the poultry j-ards and break the good housewoman's heart in the destruction of chickens, geese and turkeys. Such, indeed, were the surroundings that poultry, sheep, hogs, calves, and, in fact, most of domestic animals would have been secure only in a fire and burglar proof safe, with a time lock to do duty while the household slept.

The galinipers, the mosquitos, the wood ticks, chiggers and lizzards, with "yaller jackets," bumble-bees and hornets and poisonous insects were here and everjwhere and all hungry or angry at the approaching pioneers.

The bald eagle, flanked by the hawks and egg devouring crows, screamed his defiance at civilization and swooped down upon the poultry, the pigs and the lambs in the sheep-fold. Here, too, was the snake - spotted with deadly beauty - but for snake stories, go to any of the old settlers, especialh- A. G. Hughes. For our part we are like Washington's hatchet, I'd rather tell ten thousand lies than cut down a cherry-tree."

When all these things are considered, and when it is further remembered that these earliest pioneers were truly strangers in a strange land, with no aids of machinery or mechanical contrivances to help them, except their rifle, and wife and little ones ; no doctors, no medicine, no mills, no stores, no markets, no anything but appalling difficulties, is it not indeed a wonder that any one ever came here, or stayed after he did come, or lived to perpetuate his race and name.

We have named the people that were here prior to 1831. They were in settlements, in Blue Point, on Fulfer Creek, the Wabash River, Brockett's Creek, and Union Township. The earliest and largest of these settlements were the neighbors of Thomas I- Brockett. While this was 3-et a part of Fayette County, a voting precinct was formed, the voting place generally at Thomas I. Brockett's house, but one year it was held at the house of James Turner. The last election had there while it was Faj-ette County, there were, we are told, thirteen votes, solid for Andy Jackson ; we do not doubt it.

In this effort at pen pictures of the early settlers and the countj- when first the}' came, whenever we have found a stronglj' marked characteristic pioneer, we have told all we could learn of his leading traits, and tried to give the reader as perfect a drawing as we could as to what manner of man he was. In this connection we deem it not inappropriate to close this chapter with a short sketch of Ben Campbell,

Since the memorable days of '49, when the discovery of gold on the Pacific slope set all the world agog, the pioneers, the men who skirt the outer confines of civilization on this continent, have entirely changed in their characteristics. They are now perhaps the most cosmopolitan people in the world, and we incline to the belief that the old Californians are the best practically educated people in the world, for they were suddenly gathered together in large numbers, representing every civilized people of the globe - many of the half civilized, and even ^ome of the totally barbarous. This heterogeneous gathering of such varieties of people resulted in the world's wonder of a public school. It rapidly educated men as they had never before been taught. It was not perfect in its moral symmetry, but it was wholly powerful in its rough strength, vigor and swiftness. It taught not of books, but of the mental and pliysical laws - the only fountain of real knowledge - of commerce, of cunning craft - it was iron to the nerves and a sleepless energy to the resolution. This was its field of labor - its free university. Here every people, every national prejudice, all the marked characteristics of men met its opposite, where there was no law to restrain or govern either, except that public judgment that was crystallized into a resistless force in this witches' caldron. This wonderful alembic, where were fused normal and abnormal humanities, thoughts, false educations, prejudices, and pagan follies into a molten stream that glowed and scorched ignorance along its way as the volcanic eruption does the debris in its pathway. It was the uutrammeled school of attrition of every variety of mind with mind - the rough diamond that gleams and dazzles with beauty only when rubbed with diamond dust. The best school in the world for a thorough, practical education. Universal education - we mean real education and not " learned ignorance '' as Locke has aptly called it - is a leveler of the human mind. It's like the struggle for life, where only "the fittest survive" and the unfit perish. But its tendency is to lift up the average, to better mankind, to evolve the truth, and mercilessly gibbet ingrained ignorance and superstitious follies.

Ben Campbell's pioneer school life was spent in a wholly different one from that just named. The surroundings of the Illinois pioneers differed radically from that of the California " forty-niners." They did not come here in great rushing crowds, but alone or in meager squads, they had abandoned home and the signs of civilization and plunged into the vast solitudes. They settled ilown to live where language was almost a superfluity, and a smile or laugh were as lost arts. These sturdy, lone mariners of the desert were men of action and silence. Not very social in their nature, moody often, almost void of the imaginative faculty, with no longing for the Infinite, and seldom or never looking through nature up to nature's God. They simply whetted their instincts in the struggle for existence, against the wild o-ame, the ferocious beasts and the murderous savage.

Such was Ben Campbell, and he was preeminently one of his kind. A man of tremendous physical organization, with coarse features, a sun-burned skin, that was covered with hair and unsightly " bumps " all over his face ; great scars upon his face and body, especially a frightful scar that ran down the whole left side of his cheek, injuring the muscles of the eye and giving it a strange expression. Sandy, coarse, stubby hair and beard, blue eyes, very large mouth, with thick lips, and teeth double-rowed and so large that ihey looked more like horse's than human teeth. Generally dressed in skins of animals he had slain, except a small, close-fitting red bonnet that was always on his head. Altogether a figure \\iell

While hunting one daj', he met an Indian who had a splendid fresh deer skin on his shoulder. 63* a strange coincidence Campbell had a bright silver half-dollar in his pocket. Campbell much wanted the skin and ^ the other coveted the money. Negotiations resulted, and the hide and half-dollar were placed together on a log, to be fought for by the two men.

Campbell alwaj-s wound up his story b}- stating that for nearly an hour he could not, for the life of him, tell whetiier he was going to get the deer skin or loose tlie half-dollar. But he eventually got it and walked off with his trophy.

At one time he went to Vandalia when the Legislature was in session. On his way he killed a fine fat turke^'-gobbler. This lie negotiated at the hotel for his dinner and horse feed, stipulating that he was to have his dinner earlier than the regular meal and to have some of the turkej-. When he sat down to the table he eat the entire turkey, as well as everything else that was on the table. Mother Maddox, the landlady, declared that she honored the guest that honored the food she put before them b3' eating heartily, and so she extended a life-time invitation to Campbell to always come, and, without money and without turke3's, to eat at her table free.

This story is made the more plausible by another one, that has been vouched for b3' at least one-half of tiie old settlers. A part3' was out camping and hunting. Campbell had with him a favorite and worthless dog of the bench-leg kind - very fat, clumsy and lazy. It was fit for nothing in the chase, so it stayed at the campfire with the cook while its master would be hunting. On one occasion, Campbell had been gone all da3', and when he returned, tired and hungry, he anxiousl3' inquired what luck his companions had had in killing something to eat. To his joy he saw roasting over the fire what he supposed to be an enormousl3- large coon. Now, if there was one thing in the world that Campbell liked best of all, it was a coon, fat and cooked b3' a camp-fire. The coon was soon cooked to a turn, and Campbell's J03', when the otiiers announced that they had had supper, was sincere, for he knew his capacit3', and he wanted enough for himself Without bread, potatoes, coffee* or anything else but coon, he sat down to a repast fit for a king, particularly in quantity, which was much in Campbell's eye. He picked a bone and called his dog, but the dog did not respond. He would pick another bone and whistle again and call his dog; the dog never came, and this went on until every bone was picked. The boys had killed and cooked the dog for a coon.

Like Daniel Boone, he could boast of tasting about ever3-thing he could get hold of in the way of bird or beast in the country. When hungr3', he was willing to tr3-, without prejudice, anything he could get. In this world's wealth he was never able to try a horse, but those who knew him best would not have g.ambled a cent that he would have made a failure here.

His capacit3' and love of eating wei-e only equaled by his love for whisky- and fighting. The prospect of a jolly big fight would take him to any part of the world. He was in the Nauvoo war, in the thickest of the fight, and here he got numerous of the scars that he carried to his grave. The ugly scar on his face was made by a man he found chopping in the woods one day. The man was a pioneer, too, who had concluded to stop and build a cabin. Campbell resented this, and leveled his gun at the stranger and ordered him not to trespass on his land. The wary stranger eventually got Campbell to put his gun down and enter into negotiations. He deceived the old hunter, and when he got between him and his gun, he suddenl3' raised his ax and struck a wicked blow at his head. Campbell barely saved his life by

Campbell was a man who was moved in ever}*- thing by his own promptings. He knew little or nothing of the rules of societv, and he cared less. He was an honest man, and as rough of speech as rough could be. He was crabbed, sullen and moody of temperament. A stranger seemed to affect him as a red flag does a mad bull. Such he would generally roughly insult without cause, and while he was slow of speech and his words were few, he could make his taunts sting terriblv. If the stranger, in ignorance of the man, resented the insult, a fight was improvised at once; and in the old style of rough-aiid-tumble-knock-down-and-drag-out, he seldom met his match. Yet, the fight once over, he was ready to drink friends at his victim's expense - get roaring drunk and savagel3' friendly.

He lost his pioneer wife, and after awhile he made up his mind to marr^ again. He had heard of Robert Moore's widow in the northwest part of the county. He had never seen her, but, nothing daunted, he mounted his horse and rode to her house, called her to the door, and as he sat upon his horse, looking closely at the widow, he finallj- informed her that he had come to see her on business - that he wanted to marry her - but thatsAe loouldn't do, and he turned his horse and rode off. He proceeded to another house, where there was also a widow, called her to the door, told her his business, and commanded her to mount behind him and go to the magistrate's and be married. The poor woman remonstrated and begged for time; but with oaths that fairly snapped as he uttered them, he told her to mount, and she mounted, and the cooing doves rode off and were married.

His death, on Christmas Bay, 185G, was much after the manner of his life. He not onl}- died with his boots on, but on horseback. He had been to Freemanton all dav, and in the evening started home -one of the Higgs boys riding behind him. When the horse stopped in front of his cabin door, Campbell made no motion toward dismounting - he was dead.

Bon Campbell has now l)een dead many years, with no lineal descendants surviving him. The above would be an. extravagant drawing of the pioneer generally; yet there is much in it that recalls a type and character of that day. He had been admirably trained, or had trained himself, for his place in life, and in security and content had lived out a long life and filled to fullness his measure of ambition. He knew nothing of romance or sentiment, nothing of a government of rigid laws and stern police regulations. Under these, he could neither have thrived nor lived. He was coarse, rude, ungainlj- and wild, as were his worst surroundings. He was brave, generous and strictly honest. He was illiterate, but not ignorant; but shrewd, active, alert, and rich in animal life and vigor, with the most of his natural faculties cultivated almost to the perfection of the smell of the Siberian bloodhound. Here was marvelous adaptations to extraordinary surroundings. Exactly such as he was he had to be, in order that he might blaze the way into the heart of the wilderness for the coming hosts of civilization.

Rare old Ben Campbell ! Your times and your kind have passed away forever. You lived out j'our allotted term in your own proper and best way. You filled j'our mission in life, and died when it was best 3'ou should. Rest fore%'er in peace! For should you now " revisit the glimpses of the moon," and behold your degenerate successors, with no hunting-grounds, no moccasins, no leather breeches, no flint-lock guns, nor roasted coons, your great heart would wither and decay like a plucked flower. Aye, would not your big heart itself burst asunder upon seeing the men of this day, in plug hats and store clothes, riding in carriages and sleeping-cars, chasing no other game save the meta-

The graves of these earlj' pioneers are unmarked and mostly unknown, and their fast receding memories are unhonored and unsung. They deserve better than this. They deserve better than this from us. They wrought for us the richest and most enduring legacy in all the world. Jlay this poor Uower tlung upon the unknown graves arrest the attention and enlist some mind and pen that can render justice and award a meed of praise to those great lives whose works will ripen into the noblest civilization the world has ever known.