Kendall County, Illinois - Chapter 21: The Pledge and the Covenant, 1877

Chapter 21: The Pledge and the Covenant

It IS the popular impression that fron- 1 tiersmen are as a class profane and irreligious characters, but this is not true of the great body of our Kendall county forefathers. Some of them were, but more of them were not, and the present religious character of our county is additional proof of this assertion. For it is with places as with men - the after life is shaped very much by the early training. The boy is father to the man. If one inquires into the antecedents of either a pleasant and desirable, or a rough and undesirable neighborhood, he will be likely to find the same characteristics in its first settlers, or in that part of them that gave tone to the society or the settlement. And it is proper that we, who shake the tree our fathers planted, should regard it enough to preserve the record of the planting. The laborers have gone, but their work is our wealth ; the travelers have passed, but their footprints are our heritage.

Temperance Society First Temperance Pledge

drawn up and signed in June, 1834, and contains the names of a large proportion of the settlers then on the ground. The names of the men are signed in one column and the ladies in another, as follows :

For the purpose of promoting the cause of temperance in our vicinity, we pledge ourselves, each to the other, that we will not use ardent spirits of any kind, except in the case of extreme necessity ; nor will we have them used in our employ, nor give them to our work people, or visitors, or others, but will discountenance their use on all proper occasions, both by example and influence.

Four of these signers are still among us : Mr. Ament, in Newark ; Mr. Mason, in Big Grove ; and Dr. Kendall and brother, in Lisbon. Most of them have been dead many years, but so much at least of their works we are glad to have live.

First Sunday School

in the county was organized, and held at Mr. Matlock's, in Pavilion. Almon Ives was Superintendent, and sole teacher, for he formed the school into a class and taught it himself On Sunday afternoons the same children wended their way through the groves and along the Indian trails to the Sunday School, as afterward sat on the split puncheons in the log school house, under the teaching of Mr. Alvard. The following spring another Sunday School W'as organized in Mr. Bullard's house, he becoming Superintendent. This year two churches were organized in the county. The first one was the

Big Grove Congregational Church

The early settlers in that vicinity were largely Congregationalists, and the idea of forming a church for the purpose of watching over each other and for the more regular ministry of the Word, had occurred to more than one, but it was not carried out until Rev. Samuel Gridley came in with his family sometime during the summer. He was from Williamstown, Massachusetts. He called on all the families in the neighborhood, found out how many Congregationalists there were, and appointed a day at Mr. Mason's house. He preached to the assembled company, after which a covenant and articles of faith were adopted, and eighteen persons put their names thereto. Among them were Messrs. Gridley, Mason, Eben and Levi Hills, Gilman and Sylvanus Kendall, and Isaac Whitney, with their wives. The meetings of the little ''church in the wilderness" were held at Mr.

First Religious Meetings

The next two years the meetings were held in the school house in the middle of the grove. Revs. Greenwood, Perry, Benjamin Smith and Calvin Bushnell were the preachers. At the latter's first preaching service, James Codner, of Lisbon, and Mr. Ford, of Chebanse, opened the house and made the fire.

The meeting house was built in 1837. Anthony Litsey gave two acres of land for the site, a few rods northeast of his own dwelling. Others contributed the logs and slabs. Abraham Holderman gave the nails. Everybody helped in some way, whether church members or not, and the work was soon done. The walls were of round logs, and floor boards and shingles were split out with an axe. The seats were rough benches, and the heating apparatus was a brick fireplace. Rev. Calvin Bushnell was the first pastor. Then followed Revs. Smith, Elliott, Stewart, Perry and Loughead. The building was also used as a school house. Among the teachers were Miss Charlotte Wright, of Newark, now Mrs. Hubbard, of Elgin : Lucy Lester ; Miss Whitney, now Mrs. Booth, of Newark; George Norton, of Lisbon ; and William Cody, now of Morris. While Miss Whitney was teaching, her brother. Deacon Whitney, put in a new stove, costing five dollars. The house stood a quarter of a century, and only a few scattering bricks now mark the site of the first church building in Kendall county. Around that spot on Sabbath days strings of ox teams were hitched, and the fathers and grand- fathers of the present generation stood in knots about the door, or seated on the benches within, listened to the preacher's words. On that spot often the Holy Spirit descended, and converts standing upon the puncheon floor related with joy and trembling voices their first Christian experience, so that the gospel aroma going out not only blessed but made famous the entire neighborhood. A young lady from another locality, who w^as engaged to teach there, said she was "going where God was."

The Long Grove Baptist Church

now Pavilion, was organized by Rev. A. B. Freeman, at the house of Almon Ives. There were but six members, viz : Rev. J. F. Tolman, w^ife, son and daughter, and Mr. Ives and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Matlock joined soon after, and several others. In December the church was formally recognized, and Mr. Freeman baptized David Matlock, probably the first convert baptized in Fox river. Some ten years afterward Brother Matlock received a license to preach, and was subsequently ordained near Galena, w^iile employed there in hauling charcoal, and has since made full proof of his ministry. Elder Freeman died within a few wrecks after the organization of the church, and Rev. J. F. Tolman became the first pastor, and continued so for twelve years, receiving but one hundred dollars yearly salary. He was from Needham, Massachusetts, and was descended from genuine Puritan stock. One of his sons is a valued member of the church at Batavia. Another is pastor at Baldwinsville. New York. A third is District Secretary, at Chicago, of the American Baptist Missionary Union, and has himself been a missionary to Burmah. A daughter is Mrs. Prof. Bacon, of Chicago. Mr. Tolman died at Sandwich, March 28th, 1872, aged eio;hty-eight years. He was well known as "Father Tolman." He was succeeded at Pavilion by Rev. Shadrack Walker in 1847, Rev. Ebenezer Scofield in 1848, and Rev. John Young in 1850. Mr. Scofield was ordained there, and was afterwards killed by the cars.

Rev. A. B. Freeman

was one of our pioneer missionaries, and a faithful man. He took cold while returning from Pavilion to Chicago, riding in the rain, lived but a short time, and was buried in the old burying ground, a short distance up the North branch. It was near Archibald Claiborne's brickyard, on the open prairie, with no fence or enclosure of any kind. Mrs. Freeman desired her husband's grave enclosed, and employed S. S. Lathrop, of Bristol, then a carpenter in Chicago, to do the work. The lumber yard was kept by Mr. Carver, a profane man, but when Mr. Lathrop offered to pay for the boards, the other refused, saying : " Take it along ; I guess I can do that much for Elder Freeman." The adjoining grave was that of Mr. Alden, a cousin of B. F. Alden, of Bristol, and as there was lumber enough, the fence was put around both graves. But all was obliterated years ago, and to-day it is impossible to identify the spot. Milwaukee avenue is laid out over the ground.

When the Bristol Baptist church was formed, the members at Pavilion went there, and the latter organization was abandoued. But in a few years it was reorganized, and since then there have been flourishing churches at both points. The meeting house at Pavilion was built ^, in 1850. Rev. William Haigh, afterwards chaplain of the 36th Illinois, and now pastor at Galesburg, was ordained at Pavilion, and became the first pastor after the house was built. He was followed by Mr. Gale, John Newell, R. B. Ashley, A. D. Freeman, Jonas Woodard, J. B. Dibell, John Wilkins, David Matlock, John Hudson, Asa Prescott.

The Methodists

had classes at Bullard's, Millbrook, and Daniel Pearce's, Oswego, but no church organization. This county was included in what was called the Des Plaines Mission. In 1855 it became the Fox river circuit, and Rev. William Roval was transferred to it from the Fort Clark Mission, now Peoria. He formed classes also at Samuel McCarty's Aurora ; Charles Geary's, Wheaton ; Mr. Enoch's, Rockford ; Mr. Mason's, Belvidere ; and at Marengo, Crystal Lake, Dundee, and other points. Mr. Royal was from West Virginia, and was admitted to the Illinois Conference in 1831. In 1834 he held a camp meeting at the Sulphur Springs, then called Debolt's, below Ottawa. He was a faithful preacher, and his name is held in reverence by all who remember him. In 1853 he removed to Oregon for his health. In crossing the plains he would not travel on Sunday, and on that account he was left behind with two other families. But, remarkably enough, they reached their destinations some time before the larger company, and, unlike them, did not lose one thing by the Indians. He died triumphantly September 29th, 1870. His brother, Charles Royal, has a son now living twelve miles south of Morris.

Laying Out Village Of Newark

And so, leaving the temperance pledge and the church covenant to stand guard over the year 1834, we bid it farewell, and pass on to the next.