THE WENTWORTHS AND EARLY CHICAGO.—THE KINGSTONS.
—BROTHER LEWIS’ VISIT TO CHICAGO.
 

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In early times two families moved from Lewistown to Chicago—one helping to organize the first Methodist church in that city, and the other the first Presbyterian church there.

Elijah Wentworth and family came from Maine and located first at Vandalia, Ill. In 1823 they moved to Fulton county and settled on a piece of land half a mile north-east of Lewistown adjoining my father’s farm. They had three sons—Hiram, Elijah and George; and four daughters—Lucy, Eliza, Sophia and Susan. They were Methodists, and helped organized the first Methodist church in Fulton county. They were very industrious people. Mr. W. was a shoemaker, and his sons engaged in farming. The mother and her daughters carried on an extensive business in manufacturing buckskin gloves and mittens and buckeye and straw hats. The buckskins they bought of the Indians, who killed the deer and dressed the hides beautifully. The buckeye timber came from the river bottoms. The men prepared that very tough and elastic timber by working it into splits that were braided into very handsome and useful hats. They very much resembled the Panama hats afterwards so generally worn by gentlemen in hot weather. The straw used in making the straw hats was cut with a sickle or reap-hook about the time the grain began to form, because it would toughen better than any other time. The straw was bound into sheafs and laid away for future use. These ladies not only supplied the Lewistown market, but sold gloves and hats at Springfield, Peoria and other distant places. In 1827 Mr.

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Wentworth and family (except for Hiram and Eliza, who were married), moved to Chicago. Eliza married a Peoria merchant named Clark, and one of her daughters became the wife of Edward Sayre, Fulton county’s famous pioneer circuit clerk. The Wentworths started from Lewistown with two two-horse wagons. In 1842 Mr. Wentworth made a trip back into Fulton county to visit his son Hiram. He stopped over night with my mother, then living in Canton, and there told me the story of his moving to Chicago fifteen years before. He said that on his trip north, after he left Canton they did not see any white people until they reached Peoria; and not one from Peoria to Ottawa; and not one from Ottawa to Chicago. They camped out at night and slept in their wagons. With their flint-lock guns they killed all the game they needed, and with the provisions they carried with them they fared well on their journey. When they arrived at Chicago they found some fifty soldiers at Ft. Dearborn and some forty or fifty wigwams scattered down the Chicago river and some on the lake shore. There were five of six stores or trading posts, and their trade was chiefly with the Indians. There were not (in 1827) more than ten or twelve white families in Chicago. Some of the traders had married squaws and were raising big families of half-breeds. Mr. Wentworth said a great deal of land in Chicago, along the river and lake, was low and marshy with numberless muskrat houses scattered about. Mr. Wentworth went back about four miles from the lake and located on a fair eighty-acre tract and improved. His daughters here bought buckskins from the Indians and resumed the manufacture of gloves and mittens. The improvement of Chicago was very slow until in 1830, when emigration began at a lively rate. It was about this time that Mr. Wentworth and family helped to organize the first Methodist church in that city.

Perhaps some of the readers of The Democrat may remember an article that appeared in this paper Feb. 7, 1884. It was an extract from the Northwestern Christian Advocate, stating that Mrs. Lucy Walker Wentworth had died in Chicago, aged eight-four, and that she and her husband were the he founders of

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Methodism in Chicago, and that they had formerly lived in Lewistown. The editor of The Democrat enquired if any of the pioneers remembered the family. I replied at once. It was the same Wentworth family I am now writing about.

I was never able to learn how much the old gentleman got for his eighty-acre farm, now almost in the heart of the city; but he told me that if he had held to it a little longer it would have made him independently rich.

The other family that moved from Lewistown to Chicago, and helped to organize the first Presbyterian church there, were named Kingston. He was an old Scotch Presbyterian. He took an active part in church affairs in Fulton county, and I believe he was a ruling elder in Lewistown. His son John was about my own age. One of his daughters taught in the Sabbath school. Mr. Kingston kept store in a log building that stood on the site of the late Nathan Beadles’ fine residence. The cabin was built by my uncle, Thos. Lee Ross, who carried on the hatter’s trade in it until he went to the lead mines in 1827, when Mr. Kingston took the store. I think Mr. K. went to Chicago about in 1830. In 1832 he came back to Lewistown to settle up some business and stopped at my father’s house. He said he had come from Chicago to Ottawa in a stage, and from there to Havana by a steam-boat. He was very enthusiastic about Chicago’s future and told my father that good lots could then be bought there at from $400 to $600 each, and he urged him to go up and make an investment. But father was then building the Havana Hotel and had a large amount of business on hand, but said he would as soon as possible send Lewis to look at the place. Lewis was then in the Black Hawk war. When he was mustered out he went on to Chicago and spent several days looking over the place. When he came home his report was not favorable. He described the land as resembling that about the mouth of Spoon river and around Thompson’s lake; he said Chicago river was about like the Spoon river and that it overflowed like the Spoon river; that it was swampy country, and that his horse had almost mired down as he rode out to Mr. Wentworth’s; he also told about the muskrat houses, and said (it was in 1833) that there was not a

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house in Chicago that compared in size or finish with the Havana Hotel which my father had just completed. I believe it was the largest house in Illinois at that time. I shall have more to say about the hotel in a future letter.

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