Kendall County, Illinois - Chapter 20: The Governor S Party, 1877

Chapter 20: The Governor S Party

'EARLY all of our early settlers were from the east, but many of them, as we have seen, were from the south. John and Frederick Witherspoon were from North Carolina, and settled in Little Rock. The latter became a Protestant Methodist preacher, and died near Somonauk. The former, after some vears. returned to his southern home, and thereupon the following story is told of him. During the war, Sergeant Geo. Sherman, of Co. K, 12Tth Illinois, while on the celebrated march to the sea, went into a house in North Carolina, with a squad of men, to procure dinner. Several young ladies, daughters of the proprietor, were at home, but they looked with scorn on the blue uniforms of our soldiers and refused to move a finger towards getting dinner. The sergeant remonstrated, pleaded, threatened, but the blooming damsels were firm in their determination and yielded never an inch. If the hungry warriors had been "butternuts," the best the house afforded should be brought out, but to place southern cake and coffee before northern "yanks," never I The Southern heart was fired. Loaves for confederate chivalry, but not one mouldy crumb for the azure-coated children of the North. The ser^^eant was defeated on a field of his own choosing ; yet, no, he had one shot left in the ammunition box, which he suspects will bring the enemy to terms. " Did you ever live in Illinois, ladies ?" '' Yes." " On Fox river ?" '^ Yes." ''And were you acquainted with such and such an one?" "Yes, and are vou from there ?" " You are the daucrhters of John Witherspoon ?" " Yes, but who are you ?" " My name is George Sherman, and these men are your old neighbors, so and so." " Is this possible I" And so the battle was won. Smiles chased away the frowns, and the men gained their dinner.

William Mulkey

was from Ashe county, North Carolina. With a wife and three children in a two-horse wagon he came to Putnam county, Illinois. It was late in the fall, and he was advised not to go up to Fox river then, as no white men were there, so it was said, and provisions were scarce. He therefore hired a house of Isaac Funk, the great land owner, and came up alone and made his claim two miles above John Darnell's, on the opposite side of the timber from his present residence. Having cut five house logs as his sign manual that the property was spoken for, he returned and moved up his family the ensuing spring. Frank Stotts came with him. Frank had several yoke of oxen and a big Pennsylvania wagon, and he did teaming and breaking for all the country. But he was most celebrated as a bee hunter. Never was Frank Stotts so like

Mulkey, Moore, Johnson

Mr. Mulkey soon sold to Moses Inscho, and bought his present place of John C. McKinzie, also from North Carolina. His wife had died of consumption, and was the first one buried in the old cemetery just west of Little Rock village, in 1835. After that he had no more wish to stay in Illinois, and selling his claim to Mulkey he went back desolate to the old home.

Richard Moore made his claim on the other side of Big Rock creek from John and Benjamin Evans. Others came who remained but a short time, and returned or pushed on to other fields, their very names having passed out of rememberance.

Oliver Johnson, of Chatauqua county. New York, arrived October 12th, just in time to attend the funeral of one of William Thurber's children, at Mr. Matlock's. Sermon by Rev. Royal Bullard. Mr. Johnson sheltered his family in Lyman Bristol's log cabin at Yorkville, and while there entertained Rulief Duryea and James Cornell, who were around looking for a location. From the cabin on the hill the country on the Bristol side of the river lay spread out like a panorama before Mr. Johnson's eyes every daj, and there he resolved to settle, making the claim now owned by Price Boyd. His wife, Mrs. Sylvia B. Johnson, was the first white woman on Bristol soil. He built his cabin walls up as high as Mrs. Johnson could reach, and waited until some one looking for land should come along to help him raise the remaining logs.

was Eli Gleason, then unmarried; then followed, in the same year, Alanson Milks, who afterward bought and sold a number of prominent tavern stands ; Josiah Whiteman, who, with his family, was much of the time sick with the ague, and removed to Plainfield ; and wife and child. The latter bought of Mr. House, on the east side of the creek, land now owned by William Leggett. He and Dr. Oliver Corbin, Joseph Gleason, Jeremiah J. Cole, and Mr. Lamb, before their families came out, kept house together in the AuxSable timber, on Matteson's claim, a part of the winter, while getting out losrs for their houses and rails to fence their fields. It is not often that such a notable company of frontiersmen are found together as that season, camped in the far-oif wilds of Seward. In 1836 Matteson met C. E. Ware on the wharf in Detroit, brought him out here, sold to him, and removed to Joliet, where he went on increasing until 1852, when he became Governor of the State of Illinois. Henry Fish, of Joliet, was his wife's little brother, and will not shrink from having it remembered that when a barefooted boy he went after the cows, or drove the oxen many a day. And he doubtless did it well. Dr. Corbin has also acquired a reputation, and J. J. Cole will readily be recognized as a former County Clerk and Treasurer. He and the Gleasons built the first frame house on what is known as " the ridge," a swell of land between the DuPage and the AuxSable. It is some sixty feet high, about a mile wide, and can be traced the whole length of the DuPage river, from its rise in Cook county to its mouth at the Illinois river.

Here and there along its course are views of surpassing beauty, and it was those spots that were selected by the pioneers. The splendid site of Gleason's house, near the south Na-au-say line, is now deserted. All those early comers mentioned were from New York.

Sometime in the summer Frink and Walker started a stage line from Chicago to Galena, crossing the Fox river at Oswego, then called Hudson by the New York settlers. In the fall, the in the county was erected at Pavilion, about eighty rods north of the present Academy. C. B. Alvard was the first teacher. It was a log house, with slabs for benches, and has years ago disappeared.

At this time three families came to Aurora, and built the first cabin in that busy town, on a site by the river, above the present site of the cemetery ; but Waubonsie's claim had not been extinguished, and they removed to Montgomery, then called Graytown, and to Naperville for the winter. One of the families was that of Seth Reed, whose daughter, Mrs. Prentiss, is a resident of Newark. Mrs. Reed made the first flag ever raised in Aurora, July 4, 1836.

In Ottawa there were fourteen houses, six on the north side, and eight on the south, including the old fort with its stockade in front. So it appears in a drawing of the place made by J. M. Roberts, dated March 7th, 1834.