by Harvey Lee Ross

Pages 26-30

When my father moved to Fulton county he brought with him a man and wife. His name was Jacob Niman. He found them at Edwardsville, where we had spent a year in preparation for coming to our wilderness home. They had walked all the way from Philadelphia, and wanted to go to the Military Tract. My father hired them, and they came with us up the river on the keel boat. Niman was a large, stout Dutchman and a blacksmith by trade. His wife was an Englishwoman, a good cook, an excellent seamstress, and could cut and make any kind of a garment from a pair of buckskin breeches to a lady’s fine dress. In addition to these accomplishments she was a professional midwife. It made her a valuable acquisition to this new settlement, especially as there was not a doctor nearer than Springfield, fifty miles distant. Her services were frequently called for until Dr. Newton came to the county. Niman was a man of rare courage. We had bought of John Eveland a sow and litter of pigs and placed them in a rail pen near our house. One night Niman heard a terrible racket in the pigpen and seizing a handspike he ran out to find a huge panther in the pen trying to kill the pigs. As Niman came up the panther tried to jump out of the pen, but he struck the animal on the head with the handspike and killed it.

Mr. Niman opened the first blacksmith shop in Fulton county. He died about in 1825, and was buried a few rods east of where the old Presbyterian church stood (now the little East school house. His bones are evidently lying in the ground occupied by some of the residents of Ross Place.) So Chapman’s History has made a mistake of ten years in saying that Eastman Call opened

27

the first blacksmith shop in Lewistown. Niman had the first. The second was opened by Harrison Huling who afterwards went to Canton and opened the first blacksmith shop in that town. The third shop was opened by A. W. Williams, and Eastman Call may have come in fourth.

Mrs. Niman lived at my father’s about five years. She was a faithful, good woman. She had left a son in Philadelphia bound out to learn the shoemaker’s trade. He came to see her in 1821 but claimed to be a maker of fine boots and shoes, and was afraid the people of Lewistown would not patronized him very well so he located in Springfield. Before my father went to Havana he deeded to Mrs. Niman a block of lots near where the C. B. & O. depot now stands in Lewistown, and built her a house on the ground. The old inhabitants will remember the noble and kind-hearted old lady, Mrs. Jacob Niman, who was ever ready and willing to minister to the sick and sorrowful.

My father also brought with him from Edwardsville a man named Zweltin, who was a shoemaker, and a carpenter by the name of Enos—both good and reliable men.

One of the notable characters that settled in Lewistown in the early times was Dr. Charles Newton. He came from Green county, Illinois, and located in Lewistown in 1825. He was an Eastern man, had been well educated, and was considered a very good and skillful doctor. He was the only practicing physician in the county for about two years. He practiced all over the county where there was a settlement. He kept no regular office but made his home at my father’s most of the time. He would occasionally take a drinking spree that would last a day or two, but aside from that he was a perfect a gentleman as any person could wish to have at their house. My father first met him at Vandalia and told him that he thought there was a good opening for a doctor in Lewistown. He was a good deal attached to my father, and often said that there was no place that seemed like home except at our house. A year after we moved to Havana Dr. Newton came down to live with us. So he was the first doctor at Lewistown and the first at Havana.

28

While the doctor was living at our house in Havana my mother started me off one day to hunt up a girl to do our housework. I crossed the river and struck off into South Fulton, and every house I came to I enquired for girls. Finally I was directed to an old gentleman who lived down in the edge of Schuyler county, by the name of Louderback, who was said to have four girls. I found the place and told them my business, and the oldest one agreed to go with me. It was a long trip and we did not get home until late at night. The doctor had gone to bed, but he called me to his room and wanted to know what kind of a girl that was that I had brought home. "Do you think," said he, "that she would make the doctor a good wife?" I replied that I thought she would make any man a good wife. So the doctor courted her, and in about three months they were married. Havana was at that time in Tazewell county, and Tremont was the county seat, fifty miles away. So the doctor had to get his license in Lewistown, and employed Esq. J. P. Boice of Lewistown to come down and marry them. As the marriage had to be preformed in the county where the license was issued a crowd of some twenty-five or thirty of us, with Esq. Boice and the bride and groom, rowed out in the Illinois river in a boat until we were past the channel, so as to be in Fulton county, and the ceremony was performed on the boat. There was a young harness maker of Havana in the party who had been paying his attentions to Miss Louderback, and in fact was very much smitten with her, for she was indeed a very handsome and attractive young lady. When Esq. Boice was repeating the marriage ceremony, and came to the place that if any person had any objections why the said parties should not be bound in the holy bonds of matrimony to then let it be known or forever after hold their peace, young Cook, who was sitting on the gunwale of the boat, rose up and said that he objected. The ‘squire asked him what was his objections. He replied that he wanted the young lady himself. Esq. Boice told him that he did not think that was a legal objection, so went on and performed the marriage ceremony. The ferry boat was then rowed back to town, and all went to the Havana Hotel, where a wedding infair

29

was given by the host and hostess, and the table was spread with the best that the country could afford. About three months later the doctor and his wife moved over into South Fulton where he practiced a couple of years, and then they moved up near the town of Cuba. Dr. Newton was appointed surgeon in the Black Hawk war. He was entitled to two servants, and had the right to draw pay for them the same as for himself. When the pay roll was being made out the officers asked the doctor what were the names of his two servants. He had no servants, but in order to draw pay for them he gave the names of George Baker and Truman Phelps. On being asked afterwards why he gave these two names, he said that they had served him more times than any other men he could think of. Each one kept a tavern and a bar, and it was at the bar that they had "served" him so faithfully. Truman Phelps was a very proud man and was terribly cut up at being officially rated as a servant.

Chapman’s History says that Truman Phelps kept the first tavern in Fulton county. This is a mistake. George Baker kept a tavern in the brick house occupied by William Proctor (on the site of the Ewan hardware store), two years before Truman Phelps came to the country. While Dr. Newton was still living with my father in Lewistown word came that the wife of Capt. David Haacke was very sick and for the doctor to come and see her. He lived about six miles north of Lewistown. Big Creek had to be crossed and at that time the waters were high. The doctor had been drinking some that day, and father was afraid for him to go alone; so he sent me along to see that the doctor got through all right. The doctor found his patient a very sick woman. He did the best he could for her, but in a few days she died. Some years after that Capt. Haacke became the owner of one of the finest farms between Canton and Cuba. After the death of Dr. Newton Capt. Haacke married the doctor’s widow, and soon rented out his farm and moved to Canton. The last time I was in Canton, some eighteen years ago, I visited Capt. and Mrs. Haacke at their home, and I think they were the happiest couple I have ever met. So I think Capt. Haacke could agree with me in what I told Dr. Newton the evening that I brought the

30

young lady to the hotel, that "she would make any man a good wife."

PREV          NEXT