by Harvey Lee Ross

Pages 38-41

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I will give a short history of the old Havana Hotel which my father built in Havana in the early pioneer times. It will interest the younger generation of today to know something about the hardships and difficulties the old pioneers had to encounter, and with what fortitude and determination they accomplished whatever they undertook to do .It was certainly a very great undertaking to build such a house at that time. There was no pine lumber to be had nearer than Cincinnati, and the few sawmills that were in the country at that time had been erected on small streams in Fulton county. Therefore most of the sawed lumber used in the hotel was sawed by hand with a whip-saw. When the building was completed it was in all probability the largest building in Illinois and had cost more money than any other one erected at that time in the state. The building of the hotel was commenced in late 1831 and finished in 1833. It combined hotel and store, and both together was eighty feet long by thirty feet in width, with upper and lower porches ten feet wide on each side of the house. The main part of the hotel was four stories high, and the store part two and a half stories. The first story was built of a stone wall twelve inches thick, and the ground floors were laid with stone. The balance of the building

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was of wood. There were two large chimneys, with three fireplaces opening into one and four into the other. All the lumber, stone and lime used in building the house were brought from Fulton county. The sills, posts, joists and all the other large timbers were cut and hewed in the woods. The stone was taken out of a hill in Liverpool township north of Thompson’s lake and carried by boat down the lake and by the Illinois river to Havana. The lime was burned in the same township and hauled by Zenos Herrington to Havana in a truck-wheeled wagon with two yoke of oxen. The truck-wheeled wagon was built without one particle of iron being used in its construction. The wheels and every part were wholly of wood. Mr. Herrington had no need to halloo for the ferry boat when he came to the river at Havana, for the ferryman could hear the creaking of his wagon half a mile away. The timber used in building the hotel was white oak, ash, and black and white walnut. The weatherboarding and shingles were split out of white oak timber and shaved to a proper thickness with a drawing knife. The weatherboarding was four feet long and the shingles twenty-eight inches. The lath was all split out in the woods, and all the doors, windowshashes and mouldings had to be made by hand. The weatherboarding and shingles were made near Lewistown by Jonathan Cadwallader and his sons Isaac and John. They lived in Lewistown. They were Quakers, and did a good, honest, Quaker job. The carpenter work was done by Moses, Lewis and Alexander Freeman and Isaac and Jesse Benson. The mason work was done by Benjamin Hartland, and the painting by Andrew Maxfield. I mention these names because they were old settlers and many of their descendants are still living there. About twenty-five years after the hotel and store were built the big house was destroyed by fire, and was uninsured.

My father kept the store and ran the hotel up to the time of his death in 1837. My mother and brother Lewis administered on his estate. His stock of goods and other personal property were appraised at a little over $9,000, and the administrator’s sale amounted to a little over $10,000. The sale was made on twelve months’ credit, the purchaser giving note drawing twelve per

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cent interest. After my father’s death the store house and hotel were rented out, and the family moved to Canton. In 1840, when I had taken a wife in Canton, I went back to Havana and took charge of the ferry and of the hotel, and ran them for three years. It was during this time that the county of Mason was organized and the county seat located at Havana. There was no court house at that time, and so court was held in the barroom of my hotel, and some of the other rooms were used for jury-rooms. It was there that such men as Abraham Lincoln, John J. Harris, E. D. Baker, H. M. Wead, W. C. Goudy and John P. Boice attended courts and took part in the pioneer law suits. I remember at one of the court terms the afterwards famous Gen. Harding had a narrow escape from death. He was very fond of hunting, and went out one morning to try his luck for a deer. At that time they were very plenty along the Illinois river. He did not have to travel far until he saw a deer, and he drew up his gun and fired at it. But instead of killing the deer the breech-pin flew out of his gun and struck him in the face, making a terrible wound. It was several days before he could be taken home, and he carried the scar until the time of his death. Mr. Lincoln never appeared to care very much about hunting and seldom engaged in that sport. His chief amusement and delight was in telling anecdotes and stories. In the role of story-telling I have never known his equal. His power of mimicry was very great. He could perfectly mimic the Dutchman, the Irishman, or the negro. In the evening after court had adjourned a great crowd would gather around Lincoln in the bar-room to listen to Lincoln’s stories, and he seemed to enjoy to the utmost the peals of laughter that would fill the house. I have heard men say that they have laughed at some of his stories until they had almost shaken their ribs loose. I heard of cases where men have been suffering for years with some bodily ailment and could get no relief, but who, having gone two or three evenings and listened to Lincoln, had laughed all their ailments away and had become well and hearty men, and had given Lincoln the credit of being their healer.

It was during the time that my father was building the Havana Hotel that he had a 200-acre farm fenced and broken up a half

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mile east of Havana, the rails having been made on the banks of Spoon river and boated down that river and across the Illinois.

In 1833, during the Black Hawk war, when so many people were leaving the Military Tract for fear of the Indians, he put his whole force of men to work and built a fort, or block house, at Havana, to be a refuge for the while settlers. The effect of this was to stop the ruinous stampede of people away from Fulton county.

I only speak of these things to show what the old pioneers could accomplish under difficulties when they had a mind to work and accomplish something.*

* Gen. L. F. Ross informs us that three block houses instead of one were built--one on each side of the hotel in Havana, and one on the west bank of the Illinois river and north of Spoon river on the road to Lewistown. Gen. Ross says the people of Fulton county helped to build these houses. The mouth of Spoon river was then directly opposite Havana, and the ferry ran from Havana to the upper side of Spoon river. This large hotel stood on the south side of Market street on the edge of a high bluff overlooking the river. The bluff had been cut down and the site of the hotel is now vacant.