Effingham County, Illinois - Chapter 9, 1883

RETROSPECTION - MORALIZING ON THE FLIGHT OF TIME - POST OFFICE, TELEGRAPHS, ETC. - THE SINGING AND WRITING MASTEUS - " FLING, DANG. DOODLE, DA" - LITERARY TASTES OF THE COUNTY - EXAMINATION OF A SCHOOLMASTER - THE DUTCHTOWN WAR - A BIT OF CHURCH GOSSIP - VALEDICTORY, ETC.

SIMILAR lamentations have been said or sung of every place and nation under the sun that has risen to wealth and refinement. Simplicity of manners may be a good thing, but, with the increase of wealth, industry and population, it cannot continue as it w-as in earlier times; and to regret when the times and social state have changed is to regret an impossibility. Every stage of society has its good and evil side; and wisdom would seem to consist in endeavoring to make the best of that condition of it under which we live."

It is natural, when age begins to dim the vision, and the twilight is seen in the distance, for man to turn back in memory, and find his pleasures of life in the contemplation of those sunshiny spots of youth, of bounding young hopes and rippling laughter, of joy, and pure and passionate love, when the world was new and life was new and gleeful and gladsome. Time when it was always with the same result - the sweet then, the bitter now. True, the times and manners have changed, but age forgets that it has changed, too. The change in manners are generally a necessity and for the better, while the changes in age are inevitable; they should be, and generally are, for the better, but not always. To shake the head and say, " It was not so when I was a child," is the blessed province and privilege of age. This has passed along with every period and generation for thousands of years, and it will continue, no doubt, indefinitely. It is harmless as any other fiction, except to those who permit themselves to dwell too long upon the dark side of the picture, until they become almost convinced that mankind is rapidly degenerating and civilization is passing away. But in any light, or from any point of view, the fleeting years, the blessed long ago, " the good dames handling the spindle and the flax," is the sweet picture of life that deserves the richest setting, the best light in the favorite family room, and the flrst j)lace in the hearts of all mankind. Yes, good dame, and venerable sire, all is for the best. You are looking upon the same struggle that was present to your grandfathers of many hundreds of years ago - the mighty struggle between truth and error. In this contest there can be but one result, even though, at long stretches of time, error and

seem to prevail and riot in their victorious power, yet in the end it will perish, and truth and right will be corhpletely victorious. This is the order of nature - this is destiny. The victories of error and \vi-ong are temporary in their effects; they pass away and are forgotten; while those of truth endure forever. Governments and nations, creeds and religions, imperial principalities, with their armies like unto the leaves of the forest, have come upon the world, ruled mightily the globe, fretted their brief hour and are gone - gone like the baseless fabric of a vision that leaves not a wrack behind. While truth, in her patient triumphs and discoveries, is perpetual - she alone is immortal. It is not, therefore, best to mourn too much over customs, manners and times that have been and are not, but to remember that in their day they were good, perhaps the best, and to send back the sweet recollections, like radiant siinbeams of joy, when will come, like music over the waters, the echo to the poet's aspiration - " Backward, turn backward, oh, time, in thy fliglit, and make me a child again, just for to-night,"

Some idea of the changes that have been wrought here the past fifty years may best be had by comparisons of some of those things most familiar to our readers. For instance, the post ofdce is a matter of transcendant concern to all. It would be difficult to think of society at present as without it. It is one of the most imp(;rtant and useful institutions to civilization that is given to us by the Government, and the fact that it is a self-sustaining institution is evidence that, had Government not supplied this want, private enterprise would have done so, and possibly have done it better than Government can, as it has in the express and telegraph departments. At one time, the pony mails passed through the county weekly, when they were permitted by the streams to go through at all. The first Postmaster, Hankins, at one time had received two letters, and this news passed around among the people. The office was in the Postmaster's hat, weighted down by a red bandana. The coming of this mail matter was a sensation. , Fac similes of these old letters, sealed with red wafers, and upon yellowed foolscap paper, and somewhat awkwardly folded, without envelope, would now be interesting to look upon, and the time is not very distant when, framed and hung upon the wall, they would surpass in interest a painting, or the finest steel-plate engraving. The news then traveled, if at all, among the people, much as it had done among their immediate predecessors, the Indians. Not a newspaper, daily, weekly or monthly, at one time came to the people. There are no records by which we can tell how much mail matter now comes daily into the county, but a reference to such facts as can be gleaned from the office in this city may give an approximation thereto. The number of postage stamps sold at this point for the quarter just ended was $917.16. This would indicate the quarterly receipt of about thirty thousand letters - ten thousand per month, or three hundred and thirty daily. In addition to the five county papers with an average circulation of over five hundred each per week, there are distributed here 135 daily parsers 225 weeklies and 100 monthlies. This increase in mail matter is not the proper measure of the growth of population in the county, nor is it a measure of the spread of intelligence or education, it is a mark of the age, an index in the change of the habits of the people, that applies to the whole nation. People now read more than did their forefathers, and the rapid growth of the various issues from the press is another ^remarkable feature of the time. But he is silly who es- timates the increase of value by the increase of quantity. A look at the news depot counters, or in the book stores is enough to readily convince even the skeptical that there is but very little more of the best books and publications read in the county to day than there was fifty years* ago. The insufferable trash comes from the press like snow-flakes, and is no more healthy mental food than are Cobble-stones and rusty nails food for the physical organs. The preacher with his interminable sermons, the lawyer with his gift of gab, the political stump-speaker and the country debating society were once the flowing fountains free to all the world - the great man of all being always the orator, that remarkable production that could talk like an angel even when he could only think as a poll parrot. This phenomenon is now passed or is rapidly passing away. His successor, it appears, is what may well be termed the yellow-back literatui-e of the day. There is no healthier sign of the public sense than the incredulity and humor that plays over the faces of the audience nowadays when the muggy chairman of a political meeting introduces the Hon. Shiggum as " the silvertongued orator," when the said Honorable, fragrant with the fumes of the pot-house, rises and pours forth his incoherent scream of bruised, battered and miu'dered King's English to the gaping groundlings. The phenomenal production of this age is the demagogue - the Hon. Slumscullion, the"silver-tongiied " combination of horse-fiddle, tomtom, huzzy-guzzy and wind-power hewgag - simplicity and soap-locks, wisdom and wind-power, impudence and ignorance. His cotemporary and compeer is the Police Gazette; his fattening food is his fellow-rnortal's ignorance and simplicity. The times and the age call for this strange creatiu'e, and he steps forth, regal in low cunning, mastodonic in cheek. When t.he last of the public teachers - Clay, Douglas and Webster - had passed away and ceased to teach their noble schools, from the rostrum, the Senate, the bar and the stump, the demagogue came to sit in their high chairs, and caw and cackle at the people, and be great - be real buzzards roosting in the dead eagles' nests. Here is a change in the then and now - biit where is the improvement?

There was the singing master then, armed with his tuning-fork and Missouri Harmony, " From Greenland's icy mountains, from India s coral strand. " A mighty man in his day was he - the glass of fashion and the mold of form - the toast of the belles oE the neighborhood, the envy of the swains; and, when he took his position before his class, and struck his fork and gracefully inclined his head to catch the sweet notes of inspiration from it, and broke forth " Do-ra-me- fa-sola! Sing!" his graceful poise as he would beat time for " Pisgah " after the fashion of a battle with mosquitoes, won many stolen glances from swelling young maidens' hearts, as all mouths flew open in unison, and the good old hymn came rasping, jerking along, in every key, tune and time. "Again!" would shout the autocrat master, when it was gone over once, " and every one open his mouth and sing loud," and away go the medley in a noisy race for the grand floui'ish at the end, and then all look meekly up for the teacher s approving smile, which sometimes they got, but much oftener he gave only crushing frowns, as much as to say they hadn't sung loud enough, until he came to the belle of the neighborhood, when his great countenance would relax, and he would smooth his wrinkled brow, smile winsomely and majestically spit at a crack ten feet away, which he never missed. But this wonderful creature has gone - gone like a school-boys tale, and in his musical place did come the jangled, out-of-tune piauo. and the strolling organgrinder, and the patent medicine street operas - music and physic ! 1 et heaven be praised !

Do fond recollections falter in recalliag that weird magician of the pen, the writingmaster? - the king of the clarified ffoosequill, the master of the pen and pot-hooks, the gifted architect of those inspired flourishes and amazing spread-eagles. He married the belle of the county at the end of his school, and, *' Othello's occupation gone," he quit the trade, and, instead of eagles, has been content to raise and look after barnyard chickens, and play Jumbo for the grandchildren. How are the mighty fallen!

Now, in those days came the great itinerant lecturer on mesmerism and phrenology, and singing geogi-aphy and similar wonders of the age. The lecturer was so prized that often he was prevailed upon to permanently locate in the county and condescendingly accept the best oifice the infatuated people had to bestow. Did the coming of the cook-stove, think you, drive away these noble landmarks (if the primitive days? - that first stove brought to the county by Mr. Johnson, of Freeman ton - such an event as that was! Is it to be wondered at that even the singingmaster saw his glory pale before this new sensation? This cook-stove, it is said, wrecked more ambitions than those of the lecturer, the singing and the writing schoolmaster. A son of the prominent man in the county was courting Johnson's daughter, and was there only a few days after it had been put up. He was up early in the morning and started a fire in it, and soon he smoked every one in the house out of bed and out of doors. He had kindled the fire in the oven, and was wondering what " ailed the creeter!"

good old fashions, and the " infairs," where are they? The wedding was at the bride's, and the " infair" was a kind of wedding No. 2, at the house of the groom's parents. Both were to eat, drink, dance and be merry. Two days and two nights, with often a long horseback ride in the meantime, and the frolicking and dancing went on. Terpsichore! what dancing! Not your dreamy waltz of this day and age; not the bounding polka, the delightful schottische, or any of the other modern, fashionable di'eam- walks; but the one-eyed fiddler, keeping time with his foot, and to the inspiriting tune of the "Arkansaw Traveler," or the "Lightning Jig," the merry dancers raced over the floor in that good old walk- talk-ginger- blue style of hoe down that filled with joy their innocent hearts, and their legs with soreness and pain. But the Virginia reel, the hoe-down, the jig and the "infair " are gone, and their places are taken by the rather tamo wedding tour and the published list of presents from friends and foes - a singular combination of pleasure and profit.*

They had the " young man of the period " in those good old days. Behold him! the happy j)ossessor of a pacing Ijorse, a new saddle, with its stitched flowers, a red blank-

*An illustration of the ancient irrepreseible propetisity for frolicking and fnn. of whicli no circunistancea could deprive them, ia well given liy an anecdote that the writer lias heard related and acted out by one of the l>P8t mimics and story-tellers that ever set the tables or the parlor in a roar over delicious wit and inimitable story-telling. It is impossible to write it out and do justice to the original; the types cannot act - iitimicking the intonations, the song, the dancing, the expressions of face and movements of the whole person, as he could, and hence in the telling hero the story will lose much of its rich savor.

Upon one occasion the youngsters were gathered in goodly force at a farmhouse, where the boys and girls had bad a "bee" of some kind during the day, and when supper was over preparations for the dance soon developed the fact that no violin could be had. This shocking intelligence soon spread gloom where before was only fun and joyous anticipations. The young lady of the house determined to entertain her guests, bid them take jiarlners for the dance, and she would sing and dance and "call" at tlie same time. In a trice the lloor was tilled, and "on went the dance, with no sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet" - fiddle or no fiddle. It would be pomelhing as follows : et, and ribbons on the head-stall of the bridle. He would unhitch his pacer from the plow by the middle of the Saturday afternoon, and dress up, in his broad-brimmed, new, h imemade, oat-straw hat, and, with cinnamonscented bear's oil on his long, flowing locks, which are carefvilly combed and tucked under behind, much white shirt front, a rather short vest, with only the lower button fastened, a pair of ready-rtiade nankeen breeches, with straps at the bottom, drawn tight at the waist, and no suspenders, a bulging white roll between the vest and pantaloons, pumps and yarn socks nn his feet, and a scissor-tailed coat, too small in every way, completed the gorgeous attire of this neighborhood phenomenon, as he swaggered in his walk, or rolled lollingly about in his saddle - the - he - darling, the daisy! We sing his praise - hail and ' farewell! Drop a tear to his dear memory.

The literary life of the young county was almost nil. At first there were no men hereof either taste or cultivation in that line, nor were there facilities for the cultivation of this in the rising generation. The ' Life of Gen. Francis Marion," a copy of Josephus, the Bible, and a volume or two of dull sermons, were pretty much the sum total of the county's literature. Veiy few of the young formed in their young days the habit of much reading. They had been trained to work patiently upon their little truck-patch farms, and they were eager hunters amid plenteous game. They used long rifles, and they only rarely wasted their ammunition upon anything smaller than wild turkeys. They knew nothing of the modern breech-loading shot guns and pointer dogs, and shooting the prairie chicken, quail and snipe on the wing, as is now the hunter's method.

to the crusades of the Old World. Time was reckoned by an event like this. There was a fascination in the saw-dust, as well as the smell of the animals, and the playfiil monkeys, and selah! there was the clown! There is a tradition that his same old jokes were new then, but this may well be doubted. The story is not reasonable, for did not prehistoric man, as well as we, want to know before he went to a circus just where each joke came in, in order that he could prepare himself to laugh again at the right moment? The tires of the memories of the first circus never paled until that transcendant event of the hanging of Ogle at Vandalia in 1842. We will never forget how an old lady exultantly told how she had walked thirty miles, carrying her six-months-old child every step of the way. She concluded the story by pointing out her son, and we confess the great, beefy 220-pounder did not give evidences that his early education had been wholly ethereal and spirituelle. '

An itinerant preacher once saw here an opening for his talents as school teacher. He duly made application for the place, and the learned pundits of the county were called upon to examine him. He knew nothing of grammar, geography or arithmetic, but opened the eyes of the committee by informing them, with great gusto, that he could count a flock of flying geese faster, he reckoned, than any man of his size in the county. A book was handed him to read. Then, indeed, did his countenance glow with pleasure. " Oh, yes, I kin read! " was his unctuous exclamation. And with a great parade and a loud voice, he read: " Two great criin-peeti-tors Han-i-bawl and Ski-pee-o wag-godwar in Af-ry-key," etc. " Oh, I kin read!'' exulted the would-be teacher. Amid roars of laughter, the examination concluded with the reading of the sentence, " Darest thou.

Cassius, swim with me to yonder point? aocoutered as I was," etc. The reader must imagine for himself how the pedagogue pronounced the word " acuoutered."

In 1855 occurred what has since been a standing coanty joke, and has gone by the name of the " Dutchtown War." It was the outcrop of that Know-Nothing craze that ran over the entire country, commencing in 1854, and swept like a plague infection or a prairie lire over State after State, and that culminated in the Presidential election of 1856, when, more suddenly than it had risen, it expired. The Know-Nothing jjarty had for its cardinal political idea opposition to foreigners, and blazoned upon its banners were: "Put none but Americans on guard." It is said the woods of Effingham were full of these deluded statesmen. They met in secret byplaces and took oaths, and had secret grips, and signs, and pass-words, and what stories they must have stuffed each other with at these meetings of the fell purposes and designs of the foreigners. Certainly nothing short of this could have so worked upon ignorant minds and made in our county a little army of Quixotes, to go forth to battle, not with the windmills, but with the wind organ of the Teutopolis Church.

At the period mentioned, the Germans were progressing with their church edifice, which, at the time of building, was one of the costliest in Southern Illinois, and had commenced the work of putting the organ in its place. Everything that came by railroad for Teutopolis was shipped to Effingham, and transported hence by wagons. The organ pipes were shipped iu boxes, together with many . other church fixtures. In handling them in Effingham, some excited Know- Nothing must have seen them, and he heralded the report that the " Dutch were importing arms." The story traveled far and wide, and, like the legend of the three black crows was magnified with each repetition, imtil it was positively asserted that these people were about to secretly rise and massacre the natives. The great mass of our people paid no heed to these frightful stories, but there were others that were seriously alarmed, or at all events, acted as though they believed all and more, too. The Know-Nothing army was secretly called to arms. There was blood in the moon. The gathering clouds of war lowered upon Effingham, and many an old political veteran of the county (he would deny it all now) who has waxed great and fat upon German votes, snuffed the battle afar off, and in the secret lodges of his Know- Nothing societies, clothed ,hi8 neck with the thunderbolts of war, and hied himself and friends to the army rendezvous, about two miles west of Watson, on Spring Branch, where it passes through James Turner's land. They gathered here to organize an army, attack Teutopolis, and carry away the arms and ammunition of the place as trophies of war. How many of these patriots were there assembled cannot now be told; they are variously estimated at thirty-five, seventy-five, 100 and 150, as it is impossible to find any one who will admit that he was iu that cruel war. Hunting for these old scarred (not scared, please, Rlr. Printer) veterans is much like hunting the home of milk-sickness; it is always in the next township ahead. Whether it was thirty-five or 150, or more or less, they went into camp and commenced the work of organizing an army of invasion. Scouts were sent out, and trusted spies stole into Teutopdlis. In the meantime, that village was quietly plodding along its usual way. unconscious of the commotion the simple organ pipes had created, as they were unconscious of the flaming sword that impended. The gathering hosts and mustering squadrons had moved in mysterious silence. The clank of the wooden shoe of Dutchtown found echo in the whisperings of distress from the army rendezvous, where were cheeks all pale, which, before the war, had blushed at the sight of their ovra corn-fed loveliness. An election was held, which resulted in placing Gen. Morgan Wright in chief command, with some other man, now unknown, as his second. The General thanked the army for the honor and awful dangers and responsibility it had conferred on him; the "long roll" was beaten upon the hastily trumped-up tin pan, that furnished the only martial music these bloody patriots had or needed. With quivering lips and chattering teeth, the army began to " fall in " preparatory to a doublequick charge upon the Teutopolis Church organ. The silence was painful; the strain upon the heroes' nerves was intense, and evidently something must have given way soon, had not, at that moment, come dashing into camp the scouts and spies, and reported the war over - that Dutchtown was peace that the arms imported were organ pipes, and it was all a mistake that those people intended to massacre the entire people of the United States. And presto! camp was broken, white-robed peace spread her wings over the coimty, and "Johnny came marching home." There was great rejoicing at the safe return by the families and friends of these heroes. A great peace ratification meeting was, called, and a wooden sword nearly six feet long was presented, in an eloquent and stirring address by Dr. J. M. Long, to the Commander-in-Chief. When Sam MoflStt, " in thoughts that breathed and words that burned," presented an elegant pop-gun to the second in command. Gorgeously decorated, home-made land warrants were presented in each case where the commander could report any extraordinary acts of bravery. A soldiers' re-union of the noble band of veterans, survivors of the Dutchtown war, is now in order. The people would make suitable provisions for the gathering of these heroes, and what could be more interesting than to again listen to the harrowing stories of camp and field, and see these old veterans once more in life to " shoulder the crutch and show how battles are won?" The Church. - The "voice in the wilderness " was among the early pioneers, calling sinners to repentance, and wi-estling with the awful sins of vanity and the old threestringed cracked fiddle. Fifty years ago, the " good shepherds " were tinged with much of the rigid, dogmatic severity of the old, cruel Kirk-Sessions of a hundred years ago. For some years there were not near so many preachers as counterfeiters in the county. There paucity was, however, atoned for in the stern severity of their precepts. The value of a sermon was measured by its length, and the brimstone oder of the awful thunderbolts that it let fly at the heads of the poor, frightened, credulous congregations. They were God-fearing, good men, who preached without a choir, and a bugle solo in church would have called upon the rocks and mountains to fall upon them. The devil invented the fiddle, and he and his grinning imps were the original first dancers. But few, if any, ministerial scandals marked their humble, sincere, pious lives. They may have been very ignorant, but they were wholly honest and sincerely humble. Generally illiberal and full of severity, and warj^ed and deformed with prejudices, they took up the cross of their Master, seized the sword of Gideon and smote His Satanic Majesty, hip and thigh, wherever they could find him. They would make sparse converts here and there, and the awful fiddle nearly as often seduced them away again iuto the paths of dancing and damnation. How they did launch their fierce and fiery thunderbolts against the vanities of men, and the ribbons, furbelows and jewelry of the women! when there probably was not a bolt of the irreligious ribbon and not $10 worth of pinchbeck jewelry in the county. The Hard-Shells and Methodists were cotemporaneous in their coming here - the Methodists shouting and the Hard-Shells sincfingr their sermons through the nose, and thus, in their different fields of usefulness, they dwelt together in true Christian love and friendship. They vexed not their simple souls with hair-splitting doctrinal points in theology. The force and power of their nasal blast and their sing-song delivery were as battering rams upon the ramparts of the evil one, while they were a sweet lullaby to the troubled soul of the good Christian. This is well illustrated by the anecdote of the wag who had a contention with an old lady in reference to the might and power of a preacher that she was heart-broken over, his going away. The wag was a fine mimic, and had caught the very tone, air and manner of the favorite preacher, and insisted he could preach quite as well as her favorite. He struck an attitude, and, in splendid sing-song, nasal style, told a story of his dog chasing a poor little sickly coon, and grabbing the dear little thing just as it was going into a hollow tree. As the story finished, the good dame was shouting with all her might. When the wasr laughed at her, she excused herself by saying, "Oh, it was that heavenly tone!" The good old dame was right. It was the "heav enly tone " that often did the good work.

The severity of this early religion had probably this effect: A portion became wild enthusiasts of the church militant, while the others joined, and, after a short trial and sincere endeavor, recklessly threw down all efforts when they discovered they could not live up to the religious enthusiasts' ideal. This would exasperate the good shepherds, while in turn they redoubled their efforts, which only made the estraying lambs kick up their heels the higher and stray farther away where fancied pleasures tempted. There was no control or direction possible for these unbridled theological colts until the church organization came along and they were incorporated into the management and control of cooler and wiser heads.

The Methodist Chiu-ch organization was in Ewington in 1834, and for a short time preaching was at the house of T. J. Gillenwaters, by the Rev. Chamberlain. Afterward, services were held for some time at the court house in Ewington. In 1838, Rev. Hale was the preacher in charge. At the same time in the early day, Bishop Eames, the celebrated Bishop of the Methodist Church, was for a short time stationed at Ewington. Ho was then only a licensed exhorter. The church sometimes had a minister in charge, and sometimes this was divided with some other locality, and the preacher would make visits to the county at stated times. Among others that preached at Ewington are recalled the Rev. William Blundell, of Clark County.

We have now reached the end of the halfcentury story of the people of Eflingham County - especially of the pioneer fathers and mothei's. To the wi'iter, the past sixty days - the time allotted to this work - will ever be among the best recollections of his life. In this labor of love, there is no mixture of pain, conflict or contention, until the moment comes to lay down the pen - to sever an association where friendships have grown sacred - friendships and communings with the living and the dead; to voyage back the little more than fifty years that mark the existence of our county, and make the acquaint- ance of those men and women who were here - simple, restless pioneers - to find here and there, among the humblest of these people, a true and genuine hero and heroine, and introduce them to the world, and pass them on to posterity, is as proud a task, to even the most ambitious, as it has been pleasant to us. Here we have found friendships without alloy - without those clashing interests that so deface often the best of human kind. Such friendships as will remain forever in pui'ity and pleasantness. The brief retrospect will ever come back again, like a genial, pure, warm ray of sunshine, to the abodes of the cheerless, laden with warmth, joy and new life, to a soul fast growing lonely, desolate and sterile.