by Harvey Lee Ross

Pages 1-5.

PIONEER JOURNEY FROM NEW YORK TO ILLINOIS.—THE
PIROGUE OF THE EARLY SETTLER.—DR. DAVISON, THE
"HERMIT," THE FIRST SETTLER.

Oakland, Cal., May 18, 1897.

Mr. W. T. Davidson:

I received your letter asking me to write for The Fulton Democrat a series of sketches on the early settlement of Fulton county. I have received similar requests from some of my relatives and old friends. There are no people in the wide world that I have as great a regard for as the people of Illinois, and no people for whom I feel the love and affection that goes from my heart to the pioneer of Fulton county. It was there that I spent the greater part of my boyhood and manhood; it was there where five of my children was born and raised, and where man of my relatives now live. There is such a warm place in my heart for the old settlers of Fulton county that it will be a pleasure for me to write these sketches. I hope they will add something to their knowledge and pleasure.

But in going into the early history of the county I will be compelled to allude very often to some of my relatives who were prominent as early settlers.

So I will commence with my father, Ossian M. Ross, who with my mother, my brother Lewis, my sister Harriet and myself moved from Seneca county, New York, and settled on the

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quarter section of land just north of the present city of Lewistown in April, 1821.

My father was an officer in the war of 1812, and drew a half section of land; he settled upon one of the quarters and on the other quarters he laid out the present city of Lewistown.

The family left New York in the fall of 1819 and went to Pittsburg, Pa., where he bought a small keel boat on which he loaded his household goods and other properties, and went down the Ohio river to its conjunction with the Mississippi river where Cairo now stands. Here the boat was frozen up in the ice, and we remained prisoners there until the next spring. Then we went up the Mississippi river to where the city of Alton now stands. There we left the boat and went back into the country about ten miles, near the town of Edwardsville, where my father rented a farm. He bought some horses, cows and other stock, and during the summer of 1821 raised a good crop. After the crops had been secured we went back to Alton where the keel boat had been left in charge of the ferryman, and loaded upon the boat all our household goods and family, and started up river to our future home. Our hired men drove the wagon and stock across the country. Before we started into the wildness of Fulton county my father went to St. Louis and laid in a supply of such articles as he thought we would need in our wilderness home. Among the other things was a good supply of flour and salt, guns and ammunition. He also bought a surveyor’s compass and chain. He went to the surveyor general’s office in St. Louis and got a sectional map of the Military Tract, which embraced all the land lying between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and extended as far north as to include Bureau and Henry counties. He also got from the surveyor’s office a copy of the field notes of the survey of the Military Tract that was made about three years before. These field notes were of very great importance to him and to many other early settlers in the county, as they enabled them to locate their lands by means of well established township and section corners, all ready described in these field notes. Without them it would have been impossible for the people to have accurately located their land.

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The little keel boat that we came up the river in was propelled by a sail when the wind was fair, and at other times by oars and poles. We were two weeks coming from Alton to the mouth of Spoon river at Havana, and the team and stock that were driven across the country arrived a few days later. We ran the boat up Spoon river to where John Eveland was living. He had settled there a year before.

My father on examining his map found that his land was about six miles north of Mr. Eveland’s place. He took some of his men, and with his compass chain and field notes he had no trouble in locating his land. The family staid on the boat until the team and stock arrived, and then we all moved onto our land. Father selected the quarter section north of Lewistown for our home, and built a log house on the east side of a little creek that ran through the land and near to a fine, large spring of water. The location was some sixty rods northeast from Major Walker’s present residence. We lived there four years, and then built another log house where Major Walker now lives. We staid there until the fall of 1828, and then moved to Havana. Three yeas after my father sold the farm to Mahlon Winans, my mother’s brother, for $1000.

The only white inhabitant in that part of the country at that time was John Eveland, who lived on the north side of Spoon river about a mile above where Waterford now stands, and Dr. W. T. Davison, who lived on the south side of the river a little higher up. Mr. Eveland had a large family of nine or ten children, part of them grown. They had some twenty acres in cultivation, and were engaged in raising stock. They had come into this country from Calhoun county, making the trip up the Illinois and Spoon rivers, partly by land and partly by water. Before leaving Calhoun county they constructed a large pirogue (a large canoe). It was hewed out of a large cottonwood tree. The length of the boat was forty feet, and was about four feet wide. It was run by sail and also by oars. On this craft they shipped their hogs and part of their goods. These were the first hogs that were ever brought to Fulton county and were all of a red color.

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This pirogue is entitled to more particular attention, because it was put to many uses of convenience and utility among the early settlers. It was the first craft used to carry people across the Illinois river at the mouth of Spoon river, and it was the craft that the Phelpses used in shipping their first stock of goods from St. Louis to Lewistown, and this was the first stock of goods ever brought to Fulton county. This pirogue was also put in use by the early settlers to run down Spoon river to the Illinois river, and thence down the Illinois river to the mouth of the Sangamon river, and thence up the Sangamon to Sangamontown, where there was a water-mill to which our people took their grain to be ground into bread-stuff. A great skill had been used in digging out and constructing this pirogue. For years it took the place of the magnificent steamboat and railway trains that later generations employed.

John Eveland built a mill run by horse power where he settled on Spoon river which was the first mill built and operated in the county of Fulton. Some four or five years after he came to the county he moved and settled five miles southeast of Canton, and there built another horse mill.

Dr. Davison, who had settled on the south side of Spoon river a little west of the Eveland place, lived alone and was called "The Hermit." I could never learn where he came from nor when he settled in Fulton county. He had a good, comfortable cabin and a bearing peach orchard, which showed he had lived there for several years. He was doubtless the first settler in this part of Illinois.

The next settlers that settled in that country were two brothers named Reuben and Roswell Fenner. They were both single men, and had come from Calhoun county upon the Illinois river in canoes and settled on the south side of the Spoon river about two miles above Waterford. About a year after they settled there, Reuben, the oldest, was married to a Miss Rowley, whose father was a newcomer there. These two Fenners were the first persons ever incarcerated in the Lewistown jail, and it was for the crime of whipping to death of Reuben’s wife, the particulars of which I will give in my next communication.

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In 1822 a great many people began to move to Fulton county, but most of them came over from Sangamon county. They had come from eastern and southern states with the intention of settling in the Military Tract, but the country was full of Indians—indeed they could be counted by the thousands. The Sangamon river was about the dividing line between the white settlers and the Indians; so these men were afraid to venture over. But after Mr. Eveland and my father and a few other families had lived among the Indians a year or two and none of them had been butchered or scalped the people began to come to the county in droves. The first settlements were made about Lewistown and Waterford.

In my next letter I will give the names of some of the other pioneers and will also tell what the Fenner boys whipped Mrs. Reuben Fenner to death for, and how they broke jail and got away, and of the excitement that it caused throughout the county.

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