by Harvey Lee Ross

Pages 6-9

6

There had been no circumstance ever occurred before in Fulton county that caused so much excitement and indignation as the murder of Mrs. Reuben Fenner by her husband and his brother. It was the first murder that took place in the county after the white people had settled it, and the Fenners were the first prisoners that ever occupied the new log jail.

Reuben and Roswell Fenner were both about six feet two inches tall, and were of such dark complexion as to suggest that they were part Indian. It was said by people in Calhoun county, where they came from, that there was Indian blood in them. They settled on the south side of Spoon river near the site of the celebrated Duncan Mills, afterwards erected four miles southwest of Lewistown. They built a log house and lived together alone. After they had lived there some eighteen months a man named Rowley came into the country and settled about a mile from the Fenners. The Rowleys had a daughter about twenty-two years old and a son aged ten or twelve. They had only lived there a few months when Reuben Fenner and Miss Rowley were married. He took her to their joint cabin. It turned out that Reuben was willing that his brother Roswell should share equally with him in his wife’s affections, and that she rebelled with shame and indignation. Then the trouble commenced. She fought for her honor as any noble woman would do, but the poor girl was at the mercy of two heartless giants.

7

Her mother heard that she was sick in bed and went to see her, and the girl told her mother how both the brothers had whipped her and how cruelly they had treated her. The young wife continued to grow worse, and in a few days died. When the word came to Lewistown of her death a great many of the people, both men and women, went down to the Fenner place to attend the funeral. When the people assembled they discovered that the Fenners had made a rough box for a coffin and had put her in it ready for burial. But the men opened the box and took the body out and examined it. They found many black stripes on her limbs and bruises on her body, and they decided that she had come to her death from cruel treatment at the hands of the Fenners. The Fenners were arrested and taken to the Lewistown jail. They had been confined for a couple of months waiting for the circuit court to convene, when one night some of their friends came and assisted them to escape. The jail was built of hewed logs twelve inches square, and a crowbar had been used to pry out the end of one of the logs so that they could crawl out. The next morning an officer went in pursuit of them, but they had gone to their cabin and loaded their goods into canoes and gone down the river, and it was the last that was ever heard of them. It was thought that some of their friends in Calhoun county, where they came from, had come up and liberated them. If they had not escaped it is probable that they would have been hung.

The new jail stood about ten rods south of the place where the old court house was located. At that time school was being taught in the old log court house by Peter Wood. I can remember how the school boys used to go and look through the grates of the jail to see the Fenners when they were there, and how we used to crawl in and out of the hole between the logs which they crept through in escaping. These public buildings in the ‘20s were very primitive buildings that would cause much derision in these days.

Mr. Rowley, the father of the murdered girl, must not be confounded with the Rowley who moved into the settlement some years after, and who also had some daughters. The first Rowley, whose daughter married Fenner, was about fifty years old, and had at some period in his life met with a misfortune that had given him a stiff neck. He could not turn his head in any

8

direction any more than if his neck had been marble. He was at one time the guest of my father during a term of the court. While the Fenners were in jail they explained this circumstance by saying that Rowley had at one time been hung by a mob for horse-stealing, but they took him down before he was quite dead; and that was what had injured his neck. Soon after the Fenners had escaped from jail, Rowley, with his wife and son, left this country. I heard that he had made a solemn vow when the Fenners got away that he would hunt them down and that their lives should pay the penalty for the life of his daughter.

Last week my brother Leonard, of Lewistown, sent me a copy of Chapman’s History of Fulton County. In looking over it I find that the author makes mention of this Fenner case, and says that Judge Stephen Phelps of Lewistown defended him and insisted that according to law and the Scriptures a man had the right to chastise his wife. The writer is evidently in error, for the Fenners escaped and were never tried for their crime; while Judge Phelps was a merchant and did not practice law.

The first lawyers that practiced law is Lewistown were Mr. Caverly of Vandalia, Pew of Springfield, John Bogardus of Peoria and Hugh R. Coulter of Lewistown. W. C. Osborn and William Elliott were the next lawyers who came to Lewistown. Among the first settlers that came to Lewistown were my father’s family, David W. Barnes, John Totten, John Wolcott, Stephen Chase, John Jewell, Peter White, A. M. Williams, Lyman Tracy, David Gallatine, Stephen Dewey, Elijah Wentworth, John Holcomb, Robert Grant, George Matthews, Thomas Covell, Peter Cook and William Higgins. Then came my father’s mother, Abigail Ross, and three brothers, Joseph, Thomas and John, and his two brothers-in-law, Simeon Kelsey (father to Capt. William Phelps’ first wife) and Hugh R. Coulter.

In looking over Chapman’s History of Fulton County I find a great deal of very valuable information in it, and I think he is entitled to the thanks of the people of Fulton county for getting up so good a work. But I have found some errors in it, and some

9

of these I may have occasion to mention as I proceed with my narrative, for what the people want are the real facts. A history that does not contain the truth is no history at all.

There was another remarkable tragedy in the early settlement of the county that caused a great deal of talk and excitement among the people. It was the death of an old gentleman, Peter White. He is mentioned in Chapman’s history as being one of the first petit jurymen chosen in the county. He was murdered, and his son, aged twenty-four, was arrested and charged with the murder. I will give the circumstances of this terrible tragedy in my next letter.

PREV          NEXT