Kendall County, Illinois - Chapter 17: Township Pioneers, 1877

Chapter 17: Township Pioneers

|AVID EVANS, from western North Caro- § Una, was the first settler in Little Rock. He had a friend in the army, in the Black Hawk war, who was with his com- ^VsL ' rades, under General Scott, in their cholera-stricken march through northern Kendall. He liked the appearance of the country, and told Mr. Evans where to find the best land in the Fox River Valley. He followed directions, coming up the Illinois river to the Fox, up the Fox to the Big Rock creek, and up the creek two miles and a-half, and made his claim where Noah Evans now lives. There were none to dispute his claim ; no mark of white man's hand was anywhere to be seen. The following spring he brought on his family - wife, two sons and a daughter - and the only surviving son owns and occupies the farm still.

John Darnell

who in 1833 made his claim on the west side of Little Rock creek timber, and built his cabin where his widow, Leah Darnell, still lives. Except at Oswego and Bristol he was the only settler with a family for many miles north of the river. He, too, was from North Carolina, and had been four years in Marshall county, in the same region with the Hollenbacks and Ilavenhills and others. Fort Darnell, in the war of the previous year, was built on his fathers farm, near Magnolia, by running a stockade around his house and well. Three years before, a poor boy by the name of John S. Armstrong, stopped there on his way from Ohio. The good success that has since attended the skill and energy of that same poor boy is too well known to us all to need relating here. It is a pity, however, that he did not locate nearer the borders of Kendall county, that we might legitimately expatiate on the romance of that early journey, and his coming to the Darnell cabin forty-eight years ago.

The news sent back by John Darnell was so encouraging that the ensuing spring his father, Benjamin Darnell, and his brothers, James, Abram, Enoch, Benjamin and Larkin came on. The latter died soon after. James claimed on Big Rock creek, below Evans', and Abram and Enoch by the Fox river timber in Fox township. Other settlers in Little Rock in 1833 were Holland Parsons, William Campbell and Mr. Cox.

The first improved claim in Seward was made in the spring of 1832 by an Irishman by the name of Hugh Walker, an acquaintance of Thomas Covill's of Ottawa.

He built a log hut on the east side of the Aux Sable timber, on land now owned by Mr. House, broke up ten acres and sowed it to wheat, and barring his puncheon door with a basswood back log, hurried over the prairie away from the Indians, and forted at Plainfield. He boarded with a Mr. Fish, and having nothing else wherewith to pay his board bill he turned over to his host his Aux Sable field of wheat, perhaps regarding the danger of harvesting it to be as much as it was worth. But Fish secured the services of the home soldiers and they cut it for him, part standing guard while part reaped the grain. The war closed in time for Mr. Walker to sow his field to winter wheat, but neither did he reap that, for the next spring he sold to of Oneida county, N. Y., who came to Plainfield prospecting, and meeting Mr. Covill, was piloted out to Kendall county. He visited the springs at Plattville first, but finally made his claim on the west bank of the Aux Sable, opposite Walker's. There, a few rods from a beautiful sulphur spring, he built his cabin, hauling the necessary lumber from Plainfield. It contained but one room, the roof leaked, and snakes gathered the crumbs that fell through the wide seams in the floor. But it was a home, though so different from the comfortable surroundings that were left behind ; and not only a home, but a frequent resting place for the traveler, and a beacon light, for persons were so often lost on the prairie that through the whole of the ensuing winter on dark nights Mrs. House kept a candle burning in the west window, - and so level was the prairie, and so

The present residence of J. W. House stands on the site of the old cabin. Mr. House bought out Mr. Walker, and embraced both sides of the creek.

John Shurtliff

made the claim which he still occupies, on the Aux Sable creek, one mile below House's. He came from Vermont to Plainfield with Chester Smith in 1831, and had therefore been two years in the country before he became the second permanent settler in the town of Seward. He hired Peter Specie to break seven acres for him, paying him by driving his breaking team one month. Specie had six or seven yoke of oxen, and did breaking and teaming for the settlers.

Daniel Platt

for $80. Mr. Piatt's ancestors were the founders of the historic town of Plattsburg, N. Y., where the British troops, September 11th, 1814, while resolutely attempting to cross the bridge, were mowed down by the Americans until the river for three-quarters of a mile below was red with blood. He was but a little boy then, but well remembers that terrible battle. He came West with Burnett Miller, his brother-in-law, and Piatt Thorne, following the Sac trail to Ottawa. Having bought his claim he erected a board shanty for his family while he was building a more commodious log cabin, and thus became the first actual settler in the town of Lis- bon. The name Aux Sable means Sandy creek. It was in those days a more pretentious stream than now ; forty years of civilization has tamed its spirit. It was remarkable for springs and ponds, and for abundance of fish. One pond, near the road, on Piatt's premises, was eighty rods long and ten rods wide, and so full of pickerel that in summer when the long grass growing up impeded their progress, they would jump in the canoe. One could go out in the morning and catch enough fish for breakfast in a few minutes. The grass grew as high as one's head, and was three or four feet high over the prairies everywhere. The springs are magnetic. The entire district was probably at one time the bed of a large river which flowed at right angles to the present streams, but parallel with the main bed of the Aux Sable. Obadiah Naden, one mile south, and George Mason, six miles south-east, each have flowing wells. The latter was sinking a tubular well, and when fifty-five feet below the surface water was struck, which flowed over the top, and it has continued to flow ever since. The last of Mr. Piatt's wells was sunk in 1871. They were located by Mr. Harper, a water wizard of Plattville, with a forked apple twig held fork downward under his nose. But how much the twig had to do with it is still undecided. The wells are at the store, house and barn ; the deepest, fifty-one feet; the third, thirty-one feet, and flows unceasingly through a two inch pipe.

Big Grove received several accessions from Oneida county, N. Y. William Perkins, Eben and Levi Hills came at the same time. Eben Hills came overland with the families, while the other men came by water, and selected their claims along by Big Grove, west of Havenhill's. In 1835 Levi Hills rented the tavern stand and one hundred acres of land of Mr. Holderman, and re-let the land to Mr. Perkins. There was a large amount of travel, which had been increasing since 1833, for between Chicago and St. Louis began to run that summer, via Plainfield, Piatt's, Holderman's and Ottawa. J. T. Temple was proprietor of the line. The first stage, with its spanking four horse team, left Chicago July 4th, and was piloted to Ottawa by J. T. Caton, since Judge. This was an important event for the infant settlements, and placed Kendall county at once on one of the national highways. And in the judgment of our fathers, supported by the unasked and often emphatically expressed opinions of travelers, we had as flattering a prospect of becoming great as anything on the lake end of the line.

The village of Naperville, however, had at that time the largest number of inhabitants, and at Hadley, then called O'Plain, in Will county, the Baptist church was organized by Rev. A. B. Freeman, one week before the first organized church in Chicago.