White County, Illinois - Chapter 2: Early Settlement, 1883

Chapter 2: Early Settlement

It is not known with certainty who was the first white man to settle within the present limits of White County; but the earliest date of settlement we can trace i6 1806, when George Bain's father is said to have come here with his family.

Yearby Land

8 the oldest living resident of this county, being a member of the family who settled in the present Emma Township in the year 1809. He was then seven years of age. At that time there were six other families in the county.

Other Early Settlers

In 1808 Peter Kuykendall, from Kentucky, settled on the east side of the " Big Prairie" and raised a crop of " sod corn " the next year, on the farm where S. B. Slocumb has since resided. About the year 1816 Mr. K. sold to Aaron Williams and moved to Missouri. A Mr. Randolph (father of Thomas Randolph) also came to this prairie the same year.

In 1809 Thomas Miller, from Georgia, was living near the Great Wabash, where John Marshall now resides. Thomas Hayes brought the family over the Wabash in a large canoe; and as they passed up to the lake they saw there Mr. Whitnut and his wife gathering cat-tail flag to make a bed. Mr. Miller subsequently moved to the Saline Lick, thence to Shawneetown, and finally to what is now Posey County, Ind., on Big Creek, where he died.

In the same year Daniel McHenry settled on the farm that Mr. G. McHenry has since owned, and lived there until the war of 1812 was over; and about 1820 he moved to the south end of the prairie, where he resided until his death, about 1845. He was a Methodist local preacher, of a fiery disposition, and could not look upon any dark deed with the least degree of allowance.

settled on the place now known as William's Ferry, on the Great Wabash River, and in 1811 he removed to what is now known as the Reuben Tanquary farm. In the sum¬ mer of this year, with the help of the neighbors, he built a horse-mill, where all the settlers ground their corn. Captain Mc¬ Henry served through the war of 1812 as a " Ranger." He was a member of the Convention of 1818 which framed the first Consti¬ tution for the State of Illinois, and was several times elected to the Legislature. He died at Vandalia, while in attendance as a member.

Wm. McHenry was in the wilds of the river bend above Carmi one day with gun in hand, when he espied a bear. Aiming at him, his gun missed fire, and to protect himself against the probable furious onslaught of the enraged beast, he attacked him with a knife, and killed him, without serious injury to himself! A son of Mr. McHenry was killed by the Indians.

Henry Jones and James Garrison, natives of South Carolina, settled in White County in October, 1809, the former on the pond east of Daniel McHenry's, where he lived until his death, and the latter west of the Little Wabash River, opposite the place known as David Burrell's Mill. On the breaking out of the war of 1812, he removed into the "fork " and purchased Bradbury's improve¬ ment, now known as Elam, and lived there until his death.

Before proceeding to name other early settlers, we should give here a more extended notice of Mr. Y. Land. This gentleman is still a resident of Carmi, where he has made it his home for many years. He was born in Pendleton District, now Anderson County, S. C., Aug. 15, 1802, the son of Robert and Lucy (Fike) Land. In the spring of 1809 the family emigrated to Ken¬ tucky, where they raised a farm crop. In August Mr. R. Land and John Reed came to what is now White County, to see the country, and selected places for a home. In September Mr. Land returned and found that Thomas Gray, a native of Virginia, had selected the same place that he had, namely, what was afterward surveyed as the southwest quarter of section 33, township 6 south, range 10 east, now Emma Township. This is about five miles below Carmi, between the Wabash rivers, and two miles south of the present Hawthorne Station. The two went into part¬ nership and built a log cabin, which was immediately occupied by Mr. Gray, and in October Mr. Land with his family moved to this place and commenced to make a home in this howling wilderness.

After about ten months' partnership with Mr. Land, Mr. Gray -old out to him and moved to what is now known as the Bonpas Ferry, where he entered the business of raising hogs. He raised a sufficient number of these to load a small flat-boat, which he ran to New Orleans, the first boat of the kind ever taken down the Wabash. About 1816 Mr. Gray sold his possessions here and went to Kentucky, bought a farm and three negro men, and three years afterward he sold both the land and the negroes for $12,000, returned to Bonpas, where he resided four years, then returned to Kentucky again, and died at or near Louisville. He was a brother of James Gray, of Grayville, who laid out and sold the first lands in that town. The latter settled in Carmi in 1817, where he sold goods three or four years, and then bought a farm of Robert Mc- Marlen, lived there several years, and lastly, in company with his brother-in-law, Robert Walden, he went to Grayville.

One of the principal objects which Robert Land had in view in coming to Illinois was to get rid of the direct influences of slavery; and to this day his son is a well-known anti-slavery man. He has voted at every presidential election since and including 1824, with one exception (1828), when he was a resident but not a voter in an adjoining county. As a Free-soiler in an early day he felt very lonesome in this county, but in the course of time he found com¬ pany in his views, who indeed were heartily welcomed. That company has so increased as to carry the nation for the last twentytwo years.

In January, 1850, he commenced the dry-goods business in Carmi, which he carried on till the war of the Rebellion in 1861. In partnership with him were his four sons, at various times and places - David R., George W., John and Robert. George W. died in the army; the other three are now in the hardware business in Carmi. Mr. Land's first wife's maiden name was Catharine Ru¬ pert, and for his second wife he married Mrs. Caroline (Bozeman) Hodge. By his first wife, besides the four sons mentioned, Mr. Land had two daughters, who grew up to years of maturity. By his second wife his children are - Thomas F., Lucy and Lily, all at home and going to school.

county, and died many years ago, a resident here. Mr. Metcalf moved to Logan County, Ill., and died at Lincoln, where his chil¬ dren are now living. Lemuel, who went to California in the spring of 1850 and died on his way home, in the latter part of 1851. His remains were brought home to this county and buried here. Some of his children are now residents of White County. Charlotte, who married Thomas Pumroy and died many years ago, has one daugh¬ ter living in this county. After Mr. Robert Land's settlement in Illinois, one daughter was born, Susan, in March, 1811, who mar¬ ried George McHenry, and is now living on Rock River, in Whiteside County, Ill.

Lemuel Land, the second son of Robert Land, was born in Pen¬ dleton District, now Anderson County, S. C.,in 1806, and was brought by his parents in immigration to this county in 1809. He was reared on the farm, and married Polly Dockery, of Lawrence County, but previously of White County, and after his marriage he settled on the old farm. Religiously, he was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and politically a Whig. He died about 1852, at Lake Providence, on the Mississippi River, in Lou¬ isiana, and his remains were brought home and buried on the old farm, and have been since removed to the graveyard at the church near by. Of his four children, two are living; one, Benjamin, a Methodist minister, has recently gone to Texas, temporarily, for his health.

In 1810 John Hanna, a Pennsylvanian, who had resided some time in Kentucky, settled upon the southwest corner of the Big Prairie, where, during the war of 1812, he built and resided in a block house. He was a Methodist, and at his house wa6 the first preaching in the county. His house was a preaching place as long as he lived. During the war men went to church equipped with gun, tomahawk and knife, so as to be ready for Indian assaults.

Benjamin Mobley came from Kentucky in the summer of 1810, and settled on the quarter section adjoining east of Mr. Land's. Two or three years afterward lie sold out to Joseph Pumroy and moved to the Pond settlement below New Haven, where he died. In immigrating to Illinois he came down Green River and the Ohio and up the Wabash, to what is now New Haven, in a piroque, a large dug-out, or canoe. At this time a Mr. Lisenby lived at the Falls of the Little Wabash, in an Indian hut covered with bark.

Daniel Boultinghouse settled near William's Ferry in 1810, and the next year he moved to what was after him called " Boultinghonse Prairie.''

In the spring of 1811 James Merideth settled upon the place since owned by Samuel Potter, and in the spring of 1812 Messrs. Davis, Dunlap and others located in the same neighborliood;but when the war with Britain commenced they moved down to the prairie for safety. Among those in this latter place was a Mr. Seaborn, who was killed by an Indian. For the particulars of this affair see " War of 1812" in the military chapter.

The first school-house built in the neighborhood was located about 800 yards west of Hanna's, in 1811, and the first school was taught by George Crab. The house had no floor, and the fire was kept in the middle of house area, the smoke passing out through the whole clapboard roof, as there was no chimney or flue. One day, while a little " chap " who wore leather " breeches " was " saying " his lesson, standing between the teacher and the fire, he burnt his leg, whereupon he jumped comically forward, which caused another little urchin to laugh immoderately, and the teacher "took after " him and chased him through the fire barefooted!

In the fall of 1811 Richard Davis and Mr. Dunlap came to what is now White County, and during the following winter gath¬ ered a crop of corn for Robert Land, the latter being an invalid. Mr. Davis was originally from Virginia.

In the fall of 1811 Hugh Collins and Joseph and Nowlin Laue, natives of Tennessee, settled the place since known as the Oliver Wilson farm. Five or six years afterward he sold to Walter Garner. During the war of 1812 he, with others, moved their families into Mr. Land's block-house, for safety. During the day he would go out to hoe his corn, keeping his gun near by on a stump. One day he thought he espied an Indian aiming a gun at him, and he began to run with all his might, but the thought soon occured to him that it might be his own gun he was running away from, which he directly found to be the fact! Mr. Collins, however, was as true a soldier as ever shouldered a gun.

William Shipley settled near where Concord now is, in 1812, and died Feb. 26, 1882, in Carmi. A further sketch of this man is given in the chapter on "Carmi."

James S. Graham, father of Richard S. Graham, settled in Carmi in 1815, and started the first ferry at this point, which he kept up for many years. He also started the first hotel (still

Among the odd specimens ot humanity which have attracted public attention in this county was a colored man, named Free¬ man Jenkins, whose mother had belonged as a slave to James Ratcliff in Kentucky. Poor " Freeman " was scarcely compos mentis , almost devoid of speech except in the use of certain stereotyped phrases of profanity, wore long and misfitted clothes, and was eccentric in many other and undescribable ways. His so¬ journ was mainly in Oarmi, where he settled as early as 1817, or thereabouts, and died in 1867.

Hezekiah Hargrave, brother of Willis Hargrave, was born in Logan County, Ky., in 1798. In 1813 the family removed to Indi¬ ana Territory, and in 1817 the subject of this paragraph came to Carmi, where he went to school until 1820. He then went back to Indiana, but returned to Illinois in 1830, locating in Gallatin County. Most of his active life was spent on a farm, but he has kept store in Carmi, and was superintendent of salt works two or three years. Feb. 29, 1820, he married Caroline Findley, a native of Pennsyl¬ vania, and their children who are at present living are - Margaret, living in Saline County, Ill. ; James, in Gallatin County; Leonard W., in Saline County; Sallie, in Gallatin ; L, D., in Saline; and Lucy, in Eldorado, Saline County. Mr. Hargrave now spends a portion of his time at Robert Stewart's residence.

Jeheil H. Reeves was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., April 19, 1799, and moved to this county in 1818, residing nearly the entire time at Liberty; was the father of thirteen children. He died Feb. 17, 1881.

Jarvis Pierce came to Carmi in 1818, but afterward removed to the vicinity of New Haven, in Gallatin County, where he ulti¬ mately died, leaving a fine farm. In Carmi he was a painter, and a handy man at various occupations. Some of his children are well known in White and Gallatin counties, as the late Jarvis Pierce, Mrs. John Storms, etc. One son, Joseph Pierce by name, died many years ago, on the old farm.

Robert Summers came from Butler County, Ky., in 1818, at the age of nineteen, and settled in Carmi, where he ran a small distil¬ lery on the bank of the river southeast of town, and also assisted

In the spring of 1819 Captain John Haynes settled on section 34, Burnt Prairie Township, where his son, John P., now besides. He was a native of Virginia, but was brought up in Tennessee. In 1882 he raised a company in this county for the Black Hawk war, was elected Captain, and was at the capture ot old Blkck Hawk himself. The Captain was quite a hunter, and in this and Hamil¬ ton counties during his life he killed a total of seventy-nine bears* He raised a family of five sons and six daughters, all of whom have lived to raise families of their own. He died in 1839 and his wife in 1850.

Besides those already mentioned, the most prominent settlers of early day were James Ratcliff, Judge William Wilson, Hon. John M. Robinson, John E. Whiting, William and James Richardson. Daniel Hay, Lowry Hay, B. F. Spilman, Dr. Thomas Shannon, and others, a sketch of whose lives will be found in the chapter on the "Eminent Dead." Also, the various township histories in this vol¬ ume carry the early settlement down to a later period.

1838 found quite an increase in the population of White County. The greater portion of the new comers were from the State of Ten¬ nessee. In nine cases out of ten these new settlers located on Gov¬ ernment land, not being able to purchase a home when the land was subject to entry at $1.25 per acre. The same land to-day is the most valuable in the country.

The Indians

When these hardy pioneers settled* in this wilderness, infested by 6avage beasts and treacherous Indians, no person now living can scarcely imagine the tedious lonesomeness that reigned about them for many, many long years. The Indians in this vicinity, however, who were of the Shawnee, Piankeshaw and Pottawato. unie tribes, were not troublesome until the war of 1812, when they committed such depredations as are elsewhere related in this vol¬ ume. They left after that war, for points further west, and after¬ ward returned only occasionally to their old hunting grounds in this region, for a number of years, and then ceased altogether to appear.

First Land Entries

The citizens of White County scarcely know what troubles have been experienced with " patents " and land titles elsewhere in the West, especially in military tracts, where many a " squatter " would settle and make a comfortable home and enjoy it for ten or twenty years, and then lose it all, or nearly all, when the old " patent" came along! original land titles have been kept clear in this section, and very little land, if any, has been improved under a mistake by

Old 8Ettlbb6 Association

The resident pioneers of White County are much older than their association. It is as late as the present year (1882), when the first mQve was made for the organization of the old settlers into a society, for the preservation of early history and the pleasure of rehearsing the scenes of pioneer life in this Western wilderness. The lively Thomas L. Joy, of the CarmiT'tm^was especially active in stirring up this noble movement. He prepared and distributed the following circular :

Old Settlers9 Reunion

Dear Sir: - Aa m&ny of the old settlers of this county have ex¬ pressed a desire for the organization of an " Old Settlers9 Associa¬ tion," to the end that the old people may at a stated period each year meet together, compare notes and talk over old times, it has been thought best that a meeting to perfect such organization should be called to meet in this city on the fourth day of July, 1882;

The managers of the proposed celebration on that day have gen¬ erously offered us the use of the amphitheater at the fair grounds, in which to meet; and the undersigned have been appointed a com¬ mittee of arrangements to issue call, etc.

You are respectfully invited to be present and bring your family and friends, and are requested to invite all other old settlers to use their efforts to make our first meeting a success.

The meeting will be called to order at 1 p. m., immediately after dinner, when the necessary officers will be chosen to perfect an organization.

A large number of old settlers responded to the call to come for¬ ward on the Fourth and assist in the organization of a society. It was not expected that much more would be done than to enter into a preliminary arrangement by which a more complete reunion would take place next year, and each succeeding year. All that was necessary to set the ball in motion was done on Tuesday. Next year the society will hold its first regular anniversary, after which there will be no difficulty in keeping up the organization. The meeting on Tuesday was addressed by Dr. Daniel Berry in the splendid speech of welcome which we publish below. After he had concluded, the following officers were elected : President, R. S. Graham; Vice-President, J. M. Pomeroy; Secretary, S. Cochran. Executive Committee: Gray Township, George Pope; Philips, Solomon Charles; Hawthorne, Arthur Harsha; Emma, Joseph Garrison; Heralds Prairie, Jonathan Dagley; Indian Creek, Cap¬ tain Porter; Enfield, Patrick Dolan; Mill Shoals, J. H. Fraser; Burnt Prairie, Adam Hunsinger; Carmi, F. J. Foster.

Address Of Daniel Berry

" Friends and Fellow Citizens - Old Settlers of White County: - It falls to my lot to have the pleasant duty ot greeting you here to¬ day. In behalf of the citizens of the city of Carmi, I therefore ex¬ tend to you a cordial, heartfelt welcome to your lot and share in this celebration. We welcome you as the advance guard of the vast crowd of contented, good-natured people you see here on this occasion. We welcome you as the pioneers who made possible the thousands of pleasant happy homes of to-day. We welcome you as the brawny, muscular men, who first let in the light on the tens of thousands of acres now groaning under the heavy load of a boun¬ tiful harvest. We welcome you as the men of brains, whose influ¬ ence caused this county to be dotted over with churches and schoolhouses. We welcome you as the lovers of law and order, whose example has made our county the abiding place of peace-loving citizens. We welcome you in the name of that grand, free-hearted, open-handed, old-time hospitality which you so generously ex¬ tended to the wayfarer and the stranger, thus causing the name of your county to be spoken with joy and gladness by people living far beyond your borders. We welcome you in the name of your children, who thank you for all these blessings, and are proud of you as fathers and mothers.

44 On such an occasion as this, that deals almost wholly with the past - with all our present joy, there is a tinge of sad¬ ness. There are many well-remembered faces, many genial souls who infused life wherever they went, many strong natures whose marked individuality impressed the neighbor¬ hood where they lived. You all know them; they are not with us to-day. They have passed over to the grand majority of the dead. But their influence still lives with us. I often think we do not fully realize and weigh the value of the estimation that is to be placed upon us after we are dead - whether it is to be good or bad, whether we are to be spoken of with blame or praise, whether we are to be thought of as men who did some good in our lives, or as men who had better not have lived at all. In my acquaint¬ ance of twenty-five years in this county, I can mention men and women in every neighborhood, who, to-day, though dead and gone, are still thought of, and pointed to as beacon lights of good influ¬ ence. And, though oftentimes not book learned, yet were they 4 wise as serpents, and harmless as doves,' when it came to a ques¬ tion of the right or wrong of things. Their strong common sense, their honest purpose, their straightforwardness, their unshaken faith in the good of others, whom they regarded as honest as them¬ selves, acted with a peculiar magnetism on the people around them. These men and women were the friends and promoters of churches and schools in the community in which they lived. Go to those places to-day and you shall find that 1 their works do fol¬ low them.' The mantle of their influence has, perhaps, fallen on other shoulders, but it is still there. Happy is that community in which such men and women live. On the other hand, there are some places in the county where the leading men have always been on the side of wrong, disorder and ignorance. Their examples are still felt to-day. I do not care, on such an occasion as this, to speak further about this evil influence; and only allude to it in or¬ der to impress our young men as to the lasting value of a good life now.

"It is a matter of regret that these meetings of the old settlers were not started long ago. Apart from the pleasure it might have given us, there is another reason - we want your histories; we want to know of the incidents and accidents of your lives; we want the story of your labors and your pleasures; we want you to tell us of your trials and triumphs. We want all these as matters of interest for ourselves and for our children. It seems to me it will only make us and our children better contented with our lots, if we could only have a realizing sense of what yours have been.

"With all the hardships you have suffered, with all the priva¬ tions you have endured, with all the labor you have undergone, it has been your great good fortune to live in the golden age of this country. The golden age is always in the past. It is the 4 good old times.' With you it was a time of self-reliance. Your wants were limited by your means to gratify them; and you man¬ aged to live an independent life, nntaxed of all save labor. You built your own houses and barns. You raised your own wool, cotton and flax. You spun and wove them, and I have no doubt felt just as proud in the garments you made as we do in our ^stofre clothes.' Yon tanned your own leather and made your own boots and shoes. You made your own hominy, and gritted your own corn. You thrashed your own wheat, and then ground it with a horse mill, and you felt proud and content, and thought you were * living high 5 if you could have a wheaten flour biscuit for Sunday morning, or when a visitor called to see you. You fatted your hogs in the woods, and when you killed them, you dug a hole in the ground, filled it with water and heated it up with hot rocks to give the hogs a good scald. You killed venison and cured the hams. You lived on the fat of the land so far as game was con¬ cerned, and whatever could be done you did cheerfully and well.

" Yours was a time of good fellowship, when the latch string of your cabin doors hung generously on the outside. It was a time when men for self-protection rallied together and stood shoulder to shoulder. You have lived to see great changes in men, man nere, things, and in the ways of doing things. These latter days hare marked many wonderful events, and he would be an unwise man who should dispute any promise of the future. There is still a grander outlook beyond. With all our great gains, we have had our losses. W ith our present increase in material wealth we have lost much of the old time morality. Grime has increased in a greater ratio than population. With all your early poverty you had ho paupors, made so by vicious and immoral habits. Labor-saving machinery has cheapened what we eat and what we wear; but it has sent the tramp and the vagabond abroad in the land to demand of us that we divide these blessings with him. It is my solemn opinion that in all our progress in many direc¬ tions, we are standing still, or going backward in the most vital and important one. On the sea we have converted the oceans into commonplace ferries, and in the matter of communicat¬ ing thought have ignored them entirely. On the land our speech takes no thought of distance, and over the iron ways of cotnmerce busy traffic and idle pleasure go careering at the rate of ninety miles an hour. We have bred the wool oil the horse, tempered his bones like unto steel, increased his size and speed until he becomes again the marvel of Job. We have bred the bristles off the hog, built him up into a creature of mammoth pro¬ portions and converted him into nothing but an economical ma¬ chine for turning corn into fat. We have bred the horns off the ox and Changed him into a mountain of meat that knows his master's crib better than any ox ever did. But with all breeding, we are not breeding better men and Vomen, and our minds go back to the 'flesh pots' of the past, when in the ' good old times' men were honCet, brave and generous. Though their hands were hardened with toil, yet were they soft as the touch of charity and palsied with- fear at the thought of crime. When the women were beautiful, wise and virtuous, though arrayed in homespun, the work of their own hands, yet were they queens of dignified, generous hospitality, and* angels of mercy to the distressed in their neighborhoods.

" It has been my peculiar good fortune to have been always on good terms with the 'Old Settler.' I have sat at his feet, as it were, and absorbed wisdom. He is a delightful old ' Has Been.' Nothing pleases him so much as to sit around and tell the boys how it was when he was young. Much as we pride ourselves, we have not improved on his manner of telling things, nor on his memory. We have never beaten the jump he made when a boy nor the number of acres of wheat he cradled when a man. When be gets to telling of the old times one feels a sort of regret that he did not live in that far-away time to enjoy it with him. I always felt like being there to see when my old settler friend told me of the time when the wild pigeons flew overhead in such dense clouds that it grew so dark the chickens went to roost. I wanted to be with him, up on the Skillet Fork, when he cut that big tree. You know it was so large, that after he had cut on it two or three days, he concluded he would walk around it to see how big it really was, and was much surprised to find two men at work on the same tree, and they had been cutting a week. I always wanted to see that tree. I wanted to be with him down in Possum, when he was plowing and the lightning struck his horse and plow and melted the trace chains into solid rods, and came ' mighty near' jerking the plow handles out of his hands. And another time when he was plowing corn, he saw the lightning zig zagging down the corn row. I always wanted to see that side step of his to the right, when he pulled his plow out of the way and dodged the fiery ball as it went by kand hit a ' pistol grubbed * white-oak sapling and 'knocked it into bug du8t., But the most delightful thing about this story was the big chunk of information he gave you at its conclusion, ' that you could dodge the zigzag lightning, but it was no use trying to dodge the forked kind.' I always wanted to see that pumpkin, out in Big Prairie, inside of which he found his sow and pigs, after they had been lost six weeks in the winter. I wanted to be with him when he went coon hunting down in the Wabash Bottoms and found a big, hollow sycamore 'plumb full of coon 8,' packed in so solid that when they breathed they forced the tree to crack open an inch or two. I always wanted to see the mast the year when he got his hogs so powerful fat. He was a truthful old settler, and the more he got settled, the more truthful he be¬ came. He said the year of the big mast his hogs got so fat they couldn't see, and he had to saw rings off* a marrow bone and ' prize 9 open the wrinkles of fat around their eyes and put in these bone rings so that the hogs could see out. There was one hog he noticed in particular. This hog had a tail about a foot long, and the fatter the hog grew the shorter became the tail. The fact was, the tail stuck out through the fat like a rat's tail iu an auger hole. Finally, the tail disappeared entirely, and when the hog smothered to death my friend had to probe the hole to the depth of three inches to feel the end of the tail. One feels as though one's life had been almost a failure without a sight of that hog. Whenever after this my truthful friend 'started in* to tell me anything about the old times, I always, felt like clasping my hands and say¬ ing, ' Let us pray,' because 1 knew I should need all the faith I could muster to enable me to swallow and digest what he was going to tell me.

" My friends, these stories were young once; but they have been handled so much that they are getting bald-headed like some of us, and should therefore, be treated with respect and reverence. But the good old times are gone, yet while their memories linger in our fancy, like the tints of a glorious sunset, we have this satis¬ faction: The delightful present is with us, made more enjoyable by your company. And what an active, rushing, roaring present it is. Every dawn ushers insome new wonder - every evening wit¬ nesses the accomplishment of some new fact. Science, art, com¬ merce, religion, general intelligence, literature and a wide-spread desire on the part of all for the common betterment of the lot of all humanity - all these unite and blend their efforts in forming the resplendent bow of promise that spans the present, and the brilliant rosy-tinted future lies before us. To you who stepped over the threshold of manhood fifty or sixty years ago, it must be a source of peculiar gratification to note the difference between then and now. The nursling of a nation, which laid wholly on the east of the Mississippi River, and by far the greater bulk of it east of the Alleghany, has grown to overspread the continent. From a few paltry thousands it now swarms with more than fifty millions. Yet with all this growth and with all this population, it is not, in one sense, so much of a nation as it was in your earlier days. Then it was compact, and had a character all its own. Since then our ma¬ terials to make a nation have come in too fast to be properly blended into distinct national characteristics. We are forming a new nation. The whole thing is an experiment on such a scale as the world never saw before. We are taking in people from every race under heaven ; we are mixing them together in all sorts of conditions and proportions. From the British isles we get the best blood and sinew of the brave English, the thrifty Scot, the laboring, delving Irish and Welsh. From the continent of Europe we get the hardy Swedes, Norwegians, Finns, Laps and other dwellers un¬ der the Arctic Circle. The broad empires of Russia, Austria and Germany; the republics of France, Switzerland, and the kingdoms that lie along the Mediterranean Sea; the principalities of the Rhine and the Danube; the lesser Duchys of Hesse, Saxony, Wurteinburg and Baden, are all pouring into our midst an active, energetic peo¬ ple seeking tree homes. From Africa, India, China, Japan and the islands of the sea we are taking in contributions of people to swell this tidal wave of humanity. What the outcome will be time alone can tell. Our future is not so much a question of education or intelligence as it is a question of race. If there be enough of the Anglo-Saxon leaven to leaven this national lump we are secure. With the Anglo-Saxon element the ' spirit of *76 ' will live, thrive and prosper. This Saxon people is a wonder. It stands at the head and front of all humanity. Its characteristics areso strongly marked that whether conqueror or conquered it swallows up and assimilates into itself the conquered and the conquerors. It has projected itself through the centuries, and like a planet in its orbit has, by its superior attractive force, overcome the lesser nationali¬ ties with which it came in contact and attached them to itself. It stands, as it ever did stand, on the broad basis of freedom and indi¬ vidual independence. Jefferson's immortal declaration has been read in your hearing. My esteemed friend, Mr. Youngblood, has told you in eloquent language of the straggles of the heroes of the Revolutionary war; but grand and towering as these events now ap¬ pear to our conceptions, viewed in the light of their consequences, they were but the direct fruits of centuries of struggle, persistently, bravely, doggedly undergone by this superb Anglo-Saxon people. Jef¬ ferson's axiom, 'All men are created free and endowed with certain in¬ alienable rights,' was the Anglo-Saxon's birthright. Like the heav¬ enly flame of the ancient fire worshipers, this light of freedom was not allowed to die out from among this people. It was enshrined in their hearts and live9. Through all the strange vicissitudes of its national life, this flame still burned. Tyrannical kings did their utmost in their endeavors to stamp it out; arrogant, licentious, proud and bigotted priests attempted to smother it; vicious, turbu¬ lent barons, with petty spite tried to quench it; many times its ray has appeared as only a feint glimmer in the dark pall of smoke that hovered over the martyrs burned for its sake; but, forever, thank God! its expiring gleam was fanned into newer, fresher life by the moans and sighs of the widows and orphans of the victims in its sacrifice. Smoldering and slumbering in the national heart it was fanned into a brighter flame by such brave thinkers as Eras¬ mus and Wycliffe. Tyndal, with his translation of the Bible, placed the fire on every man's own hearthstone. The spoliation of the chbrch by Henry VIII. made its light shine over all England.

Again it faded away, only to burst into a lurid flame in the sacri¬ fice of Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, Rogers and a glorious host of never-to-be-forgotten names; until, finally, the immortal Oliver Cromwell and his compatriots, John Hampden and John Pym, arose and nshered in the dawn that was to herald the glorious sun¬ burst of the Independence of the American colonies. My friends, with such sires and such traditions how can we prove false to the trust, or use unwisely the heritage bequeathed to us I The future will take care of itself if we ean only teach these lessons to our chil - dren. For my part I pin my faith to the preponderance of this noble, enduring Anglo-Saxon element in our civilization. With it as the basis of our Government, the nation bids fair to be liberal, widespread, dominant, proud, generous, imperious and free. Ton old men stand on the mountain-top of yonr experience and the wide horizon of the future lies before you. Tell us, is there any portentious cloud in all that extended view!

"Is it clear in the north? Is itclearin the south! Is.it clear in the east! Is it clear in the west! These are the momentous questions we ask of you as to the future.

"You have nobly done your part in shaping that future for us. For all that we bless and thank you. We can only hope that this legacy you have given us, with all its blessings enlarged, improved aud with just as good prospects of durability, we may be able to passover to our children, when we, in our turn, shall have become old settlers. "