Higginsville, Illinois

Wallace Sperry (who committed suicide near his liou.se), William and Freeman Smalley, Enoch Oxley, were all living within two miles ot Higginsville. Two miles farther on was the Fairchild neighborhood, and some ways still east of that the Copeland neighborhood, when Samuel Copeland, Mr. Johns, Truax, Humphrey, Oosat and others lived. Jn the southern part of the town were the Howard and Luman neighborhoods.

Passage source: History of Vermilion County, Together with Historic Notes on the Northwest, Gleaned from Early Authors, Old Maps and Manuscripts, Private and Official Correspondence, and Other Authentic, Though, for the Most Part, Out-of-the-way Sources, published 1879.

About onedialf of this township was then timber; some of it. has been made into farms, and timber ha6 grown up where before it was comparatively open. Hunting was the principal business followed. There was not in these parts much of such enterprise as we have since seen. Sickness was terrible. Whole families would be down with sickness at the same time. The ague, the milk sickness, and other diseases that were consequent upon early settlement, were so common that people were broken in spirit, and their energy was sapped. Kees rode as constable in this county twenty-one years. He has had all the experiences of an early officer who had the tracks of horse-thieves to follow in times when the name "horse-thief" carried with it as much opprobrium as "abolitionist." lie taught the first school in this part of the town. It was in a little cabin just southeast of Higginsville that had been abandoned by its builder, and as no certificate was required and no rent to pay, he conceived the idea of putting the vacant cabin to use for a seat of learning. He carried around a subscriptionpaper and got enough subscribed, so that he thought he could live by it, and opened a school. There were few who coul/1 teach it any better than he, and those few would not teach so cheap. There were no other schools in the neighborhood to compare it to, and no big scholars who could "stump the teacher" in " rule of three " or grammar. So he made it go pretty well, and taught two quarters. As a wielder of the gad and rule he had few equals, and no superiors, in the Higginsville of that day. The quarter's schooling was placed at two dollars and a half per scholar. He had eighteen one quarter and twenty-two the other. He received about ten dollars per month and boarded himself. The furniture was primitive. The benches were made out of slabs and rails, and he could hardly afford a blackboard. He used the old United States Spelling-book, English Reader and Testament, and Pike's Arithmetic. Each scholar had a different book, and no one had a full supply. The scholars studied aloud, and the one who made the most noise was understood to be making the best progress. He never heard of a schedule, thinks it would have been a decided improvement. The roll of scholars, as far as he now remembers it, embraced John, Almeda and Rachel Storms, Jennie and William Smalley, three children of Mr. Truax, James, Freeman, Frank and Sabie Smalley, John Smalley's children, Malinda Freeman, and John, David, Moses, Christopher and Thomas Loving. William Loving lived one mile and three-fourths east of Higginsville, where his sons still reside. James Smalley became a minister, drawing his theological as well as his literary learning no doubt from Rees.

Passage source: History of Vermilion County, Together with Historic Notes on the Northwest, Gleaned from Early Authors, Old Maps and Manuscripts, Private and Official Correspondence, and Other Authentic, Though, for the Most Part, Out-of-the-way Sources, published 1879.

Mr. Oxley, about the year 1832, made a tannery east of Higginsville. He had about eighteen vats, using the oak bark, which was very plenty on the trees, but difficult to obtain. This may seem strange, but the reasons for it are plain. Bark will peel only during the summer months, commencing about the time of corn-planting, and sticking fast by about the middle of September. A sudden change in the temperature, such as occurs in September, will stop bark peeling in an hour. The months of the year in which nature allows bark-peeling was an industrious man who could find time between corn-plowing and harvest, or between harvest and threshing, to peel a few cords of bark. Tanners had in those times not sufficient capital to buy sections of timber land, cut off the oak for the bark, and let the land go back. The vast aggregations of capital which are now employed in tanning and leather were then unknown; so Mr. Oxley's speculation, while it did not cost him very much to inaugurate it, never was a great success, because he never was able to drive it very hard. He tanned all kinds of hides, and found a market for his leather in every little shoe-shop in the country around. Rees carried it on for him a while. After him John Hilliard had it three years, after which Mr. Oxle}' took charge of it himself for a while, until 1845, when he sold out the whole concern, with other lands, to J. W. Goodwine, who came in here from Indiana, looking for good land where he could put in his time to good advantage, and fatten his steers, as well as the next man who came.

Passage source: History of Vermilion County, Together with Historic Notes on the Northwest, Gleaned from Early Authors, Old Maps and Manuscripts, Private and Official Correspondence, and Other Authentic, Though, for the Most Part, Out-of-the-way Sources, published 1879.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Blount Township - it names this place 6 more 6 times.