Kendall County, Illinois - Chapter 34: Claim Fights, 1877

Chapter 34: Claim Fights

N Seward, among the settlers of 1843, were R. Bellfield and Edward Jones ; in Na-ausay, R. M. Wheeler, 0. C. Johnson, Geo. Bellfield, Henry Pulver, Mr. Bingham, Mr. Avery, James Brady, Mr. Merritt, Mr. Gould, Charles Suydam, Edward Fogarty, Peter and John VanDyke. The Wheeler family now own one-eighteenth of the town of Na-au-say. Mr. Johnson is a son-in-law. Both he and A. K. Wheeler have been to the Legislature. His first house was a board shanty near the site of his present residence, and there he was obliged to leave his wife and little family while he went to Chicago. Every day the cows had to be fetched from the almost boundless prairie, and every night the wolves drearily howled all about them.

Mr. Jones was direct from Wales, Avith nothing American about him - not even the language. He met Mr. Milks in Chicago with a load of grain, and rode out with him, and that was how it came about that his lot was cast in Kendall county. A bachelor by the name of

The old cemetery on the Austin farm, then Sullivan's, was begun in 1843. Several graves still remain there. Mrs. John Merritt was the first buried there. In the town of Kendall settled S. W. Brown, John Dunn and Chris. Johnson. The latter was from Norwav, and the first Norweigan on the prairie where now there are so many hundreds. In Little Rock, Henry Persons, William Hardy and W. S. Faxon ; in Oswego, Cyrus Cass, John Collins, H. Minard, George Wooley ; in Bristol, William Grimwood, J. C. Scofield ; Lisbon, N. W. Sherrill, G. C. Gaylord, Kirkland and - Baker Knox, and Deacon Beebe. The latter brought out what was at least one of the first pianos in the county, if not the very first. It is an antiquated but sweet sounding little thing, though more valuable for its history and associations than its music, and is now owned by John Codner, of Lisbon.

In Big Grove, David Barrows, Michael Brown, Deacon Gridley and Lot Preshur. Mr. Barrows exchanged property with J. J. Hunt, of Naperville, and lived there two years, but the rest of the time he lived here. Mr. Brown was brought out from Chicago by Josiah Seymour, and on arriving here had but very little money left. He lived for a time on the Isaac Anderson place with Albert P. Brewster, now in Kansas, and Josiah Fosgate, now in Lee county. He hired out at once to go with a threshing machine, and after working a month met with an accident by which he lost a limb. He sue-

Mr. Gridley bought his place of Lewis Robinson, a tailor, and the shop in which he worked is still a part of the dwelling house on the farm. Lot Preshur built Mrs. H. L. Warner's house in Newark. He was a machinist, and soon became well known as a reaper inventor and manufacturer.

as there was another Georgetown in Vermillion county. The petition was presented by Alfred E. Ames, of Boone county, and the Act making the change was passed February 16th, 1843. On January 28th, preceding, a petition was presented by Mr. Bibbins, praying the incorporation of "Newark Academy," but it was referred without reading to the Committee on Banks and Corporations, Murphy, of Cook, chairman, and was there lost. Kendall county had no Representative, but a petition was sent in praying an Act enabling them to elect one. But Mr. Murphy, though he frowned on the Academy, had time to introduce a bill of his own for "An Act to incorporate a joint stock association whose charter shall be irrepealable for five hundred years, and whose duties it shall be to prevent flies from infesting our dairies, defiling our butter, and drowning themselves in our buttermilk," which was read the first and second times by its title, and referred to the Committee on Banks and Corporations.

The Newark Congregational Church

was organized April 9th, by Rev. Alvah Day, with twenty-one members. Among them were T. J. Phillips, Josiah Seymour, Lyman Preston and A. F. Southwick, and their wives. Ole Oleson and Horace Day and wife joined soon after. The pastors succeeding Mr. Day were L. Rood, Romulus Barnes, C. L. Bartlett, James Taylor, George Bassett, Robert Budd, R. Markham, L. Farnham, Mr. Anderson, Mr. Burns and C. B. Curtis. The first meetings were held over Murray's store, in Mrs. Niblo's building, then owned by Mr. Gardner. A gravel meeting house was finished in 1849, which, after eight years' service, was burned down by an accident happening to a traveling exhibition which had been allowed the use of the house for an entertainment. A new house was built and dedicated in 1861. W. C. Willing and wife, then Miss Jennie Fowler, and her brothers Henry and Charles, were members of the church, afterward uniting with the Methodists. Warren F. Day went out from it, now pastor of the Congregational Church at Union City, Michigan.

Newark And Milford Burying Ground

at a public meeting held on the ground. Jesse Jackson, Henry A. Misner and Nathan Aldricli were chosen trustees, and Levi Brainard treasurer and secretary. A movement for the sale of lots to raise money for fencing, had been started in the June previous, and one hundred and sixty-one persons subscribed from fifty cents to twu dollars each. But the sums were not all paid for a long time. The price of a lot and the digging of a grave had for years been one dollar and a half, but after the organization it was raised to two dollars and a half, which many in that day thought a very high price.

The following year the contract for fencing was finally let to Samuel Jackson for seventy dollars, and three years after the sexton's tool house was built at a cost of thirty-five dollars. There are at the present time three hundred lot owners whose names are recorded, and there are in the cemetery more than eight hundred distinguishable graves, besides many that have long since been obliterated. Six hundred of the graves are marked by headstones, and five by large monuments.

A burying ground has been a sacred spot ever since Abraham, who could do without a permanent home for himself, but wanted a permanent home for his dead. It is a symbol of Christianity which cares for the dust of our mortality, and calmly opposes the gush of modern religionists about the worthlessness of the body and the beauty of cremation furnaces.

Three schools date from here. The Millington school had for its first teachers : Miss Courtright, Miss Loughead, Miss Ingalls, Annie Sherman, John Todd, Mary Scott, Miss Martindale, Delia Fuller, and Jane Fowler. The first is now Mrs. T. J. Phillips, the last Mrs. W. C. Willing.

The Boomer school, in Bristol, was also built in 1843, the second school house being built in 1855. First teachers : Ann Lowry, Carlton Hunt, Polly Lowry, Gilbert Lester, Rhoda Shaver, Emily Dyer, Aaron Alford,

The Albee school, Oswego, was rebuilt in 1858. Early teachers : Annie Stowell, Henry Chapman, Howell Moffatt, Minnie Graham, Mary Barr, James Coe, Mary A. Thornton, Jane Rosier, Wiltby Thayer, Mary Bruce, and Henry Titsworth. Miss Stowell taught her school in a spare room in Walter Selvey's house, before the school house was built, beginning in 1841.

that raged in 1841 may be given here. The main points were about as follows : Mr. Hutton made his claim where J. J. Griswold's farm now is, near the Rob Roy creek, and after a while left it. Rogers and Eldredge, supposing the claim vacated, went on it ; but Hutton by-and-by sold for a trifle to John Boyd, and he, too, moved on it. Then there was war. There was, perhaps, blame on both sides, but the people generally regarded Boyd as in the wrong, and on the complaint of the other parties took active measures against him. Mr. Griswold was on one quarter, and they put the crops in by a bee, in opposition to Boyd. The latter then moved on the next quarter, which was all timber land, and most of which was claimed by John Wheeler. He was Swiss, and not naturalized, and could not hold in his own name, so Hiram Brown was put on with him. The contest waxed hot. Mr. Boyd's son-in-law, Mr. Throckmorton, a large, muscular man, took an active part in it. His side began cutting timber, whereupon a day was appointed and nearly one hundred men assembled to cut opposition timber. That was a day long remembered. Bad words were used and threats made, but no blood was shed. Mr. Boyd instituted a suit against twenty-one of the opposition, which ran through the Kane county courts for years, and was known as the " Twenty-one suit."

During the early part of 1843 the Miller excitement in regard to the end of the world was at its height. William Miller had fixed on April, 1843, as the time of the end, and there were many believers in his arithmetic in this county. It is no doubt a fact that some of them had their white robes ready made for the occasion, from a wrong interpretation of Rev. 7:9. The clothing of heaven is holiness, spiritual in texture, and not cloth from the Georgia cotton fields. Christ is coming again, " in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven" ; but he, himself, was careful to teach us that " of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels of heaven." And if still we are curious to know, we have his rebuke, that " it is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power." " Watch, for ye know not when the Master cometh."

Ryder Murder Case

Ansel Ryder owned the farm afterward owned by Joel Warner, and now by Elijah Pricket, half a mile south of the village. He and others were in Smith's tavern, in the Barnett block, Newark, when Owen Haymond passed a joke which ofi'ended Ryder. He went home for his rifle and shot Haymond in the door of the tavern, not, however, seriously wounding him. Riding back, he barricaded himself in his house. The neighbors from all about assembled, but he held them at bay most of the night. Finally, Charles McNeil, while unfastening a window, was also shot, which so enraged the crowd that they broke in the door with a log, and arrested him before he could reload his rifle. Mr. McNeil was shot through the chest, so that a silk handkerchief could be drawn through ; he died in a few days. J. S. Cornell was Sheriff, and kept the prisoner up stairs in his house - the yellow house still standing just west of the court house in Yorkville. It was not a very secure jail, and Ryder, thinking he could escape, leaped from the front window and broke his leg. The trial came on at the following spring term of court. Judge Dickey was his leading counsel, and B. F. Fridley prosecuting attorney ; and as the prisoner refused to plead, a plea of " not guilty " was entered for him. At the fall term of court, for some reason, Mr. Fridley refused to prosecute, and the prisoner was discharged, but was again arrested ; and so the case dragged along for three years. The result was that Ryder escaped punishment, went to California, returned, and died in Joliet ; and Judge Dickey took the farm for his fees. From such scenes, it is pleasant to turn to the fact that 1843 was rendered memorable by a powerful revival of religion among the churches, which increased the membership fully one-third. It was a union of utter depression in business, with the most glorious salvation of souls.

Prosperity Returns

sleighing, which lasted without intermission from November to April. It set in cold November 18th, while flowers were yet in bloom, and the ice did not break up until April 9th. On April 7th, the river could be crossed on the ice.