FIRST SETTLEMENTS

Mr. James Ryason, the first settler in the township, was an Ohioan. In 1827, leaving his wife and child with his father-in-law, lie started from Edgar county, Illinois, intending to take a flat-boat load of whisky to New Orleans, by way of the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Before he reached there, on learning the state of the market, pulled oars for Galena, Illinois. Here he disposed of his load, worked in the mines, and not striking a bonanza, he abandoned his prospect, loaded his canoe with lead and hides and sailed down the river for Oquawka. Landing at Oquawka, he began looking out a site for a wood yard. It was located on N. of N.W. 4 Sec. 2, which he afterward improved, and built, in the fall of 1828, the first house in the township, two miles south and one-half mile east of Oquawka, and a quarter from main Henderson creek. The cabin was built near his present house, and made of hewed logs covered with clapboards ; the floor was of hewed logs ; the chimney of sticks and clay. It was a single room and one story high.

What caused him to select this piece of land was on account of a fine spring of water at the foot of the bluffs on this land ; not preempting as much as he expected he was getting, he subsequently bought a tract lying east of his would be choice. This land he preempted and bought of the government when it came into market. At one time he came near losing it. He proved his preemption before the magistrate, and sent it to the land office. at Quincy to have it recorded, but the land agent neglected to record it. Just as Mr. Ryason was recovering from an illness he heard that one of his neighbors, who knew that his preemption had not been recorded, was then on his way to Quincy to preempt his land. Notwithstanding his convalescence, he borrowed a horse, and, after riding nearly the whole of the following night, succeeded in reaching Quincy ere his would be neighbor and land jumper, and preventing him from filing his fraudulent preemption title. .

During the winter of 1828 everything in the way of eatables, especially pork, which was part of their living, was very scarce in the Yellow Bank settlement from which Mr. Ryason obtained his food. It was during one of the coldest spells of that winter he went over to a settlement on Drown creek to engage some pork from that settle­ment. On his way back he got lost ; night coming on, had to tie his horse in the woods and walk around all night to keep from freezing. He went back with team to help Stephenson over with the pork. While going over with Stephenson he became separated from him, and was compelled again to stay in the timber all night, without anything to eat or but scant wrappings to keep him comfortable from the excessive cold.

When he preempted his land he said he could carry all the property he had on his back, and (lid not have twenty-five cents in his pocket. He worked at rail-making at fifty cents a thousand, to obtain money to keep him and family and make some improvement on his place. He made all the rails to fence his place by moonshine. He also chopped wood during the winter of 1828-9 for a living. Following the putting in of and tending of a small crop of corn, he started back in August for his wife and child with an ox team, which he borrowed of his brother in Fulton county.

He returned in November with his family to the little log cabin which was to be their future home, and the first one in the township, and among the very first in the county.

Mr. Ryason claims to be the first agricultural settler in Henderson county.

During the winter of 1829 the only food they had was bread, meat and potatoes. For a bushel of meal he had to work two days. While on his journey after his family, he traded a rifle for four hogs, which were to be fatted and ready for him when lie called for them in the fall. When he went after his hogs he found them too fat to drive, so he was compelled to butcher them there and haul the pork home after­ ward. As he had no cow, and thinking lie could do with less meat if he had one, he traded one hundred pounds of this meat to Jerry Smith for a cow. Some time following this bargain he bought a young heifer, and from these succeeded in getting a start in cattle.

He bought a couple of hogs from Mr. Richey, and captured some wild ones on shares with him. His excellent prospect for raising hogs was set at naught when the Indians came in and drove off or killed all but four of them. Some of his neighbors, through a mistake, drove off two of these so he could not find them, leaving only two for his winter's meat.

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Among the first settlers were the Jameson and Short families, who settled in the northeast part of the township. In the fall of 1829, James, William R. and John C., sons of Samuel Jameson, came and settled in this county. Calvin (John C.) settled on the N. 4 of Sec. 1, which was bought of Thomas Richey and designed for the family, where the father, Samuel Jameson, spent the remainder of his days. William R. settled on section 12, and also James, where the latter died. William Jameson raised a crop of wheat the next summer. He sowed " a half bushel and a half peck" to the acre, and raised thirty-three bushels to the acre. which would be fifty-two bushels to one bushel of seed. He sowed nine acres, and reaped from it 297 bushels of good wheat. Calvin and James cropped together, and raised fifteen acres of corn, twelve of which was sod, a first-rate yield. The second year's crop was still better, the yield of which was about sixty bushels per acre.

The remainder of the Jameson and Short families, consisting of Samuel Jameson and his wife, three children, Joseph H., Nathan and Elizabeth, his two step-sons, Abner and Gabriel R. Short, in September, 1830, left Perry county, Indiana, for Henderson county, Illinois. They brought one wagon and team, two yoke of oxen and one span of horses. They drove cattle and sheep, and Mrs. Jameson rode all the way on horseback. Mr. Jameson and most of the family, after they had gotten in what is now Henderson county, got lost after night in trying to find the road to his sons'. They hallooed for considerable length of time, when friends, hearing them, came and directed them to their destination. The balance of the family remained on the prairie for the night, near James McDill's place.

Stephen Short, a brother of Gabrel and Abner, preceded them and built a pole cabin on the N. E. of Sec. 1, in which the family were to live temporarily. After the corn was planted they cultivated it with a single shovel and horse. The corn was not pulled until after a three-foot snow had fallen, but they were glad to have corn to pull in the snow. They gathered and hauled it home on a sled with an ox team.

Food being quite scarce when they first came, they lived on venison, wild ducks and turkeys, until the pork, which they traded for on their way to the settlement, came. During the winter they ground corn in a hand mill, the meal of which they made into bread. The bread was made with salt and water. Goods and groceries were hauled from St. Louis that winter, and they paid $16 per barrel for all the salt they used.

Mr. Joseph De Hague, a Frenchman by birth and a sailor by occupation, was born about 1796 and died in 1856, making him sixty years of age at his death. He went to sea at the age of fifteen, and at which life he lived until he was twenty-four, when he gave up a sailor's life, went to Terre Haute, Indiana, from there to . Edgar county, Illinois, where he married Mary Laswell. Afterward he went to Galena, Illinois, leaving his family with his wife's father, where he was engaged in mining for awhile. From there he, with James Ryason, came to Oquawka. After running on the river for a few years he took up a claim and settled and built on section 33 in 1832. De Hague's cabin was like most of the cabins in those times, a one story hewed-log cabin, hewed puncheons for floor, roof made of clapboards, stick chimney laid up with clay, the back wall of which was made by laying up a frame on the outside as high as needed, and one of the same height on the inside ; this frame then allowed to dry, when the inside frame was burned out, leaving a solid, hard clay wall. He brought his family, consisting of his wife and two children, from Edgar county, with James Ryason, to Fulton county, where he stayed two years. Came to this county and rented a place one season, previous to pre­empting. Though he built on section 33, he farmed on section 34. He broke and cultivated thirty acres on the I. J. Brooks farm. After De Hague remained at the old place a few years he sold out to I. J. Brooks in the year of 1837, built a double-hewed log house in the Mississippi bottom, in. township 9, range 5, where he kept tavern, making money quite fast, and where he lived until his death. His remains were buried in the cemetery on the bluff, in township 9, range 5, where his wife and several children were buried.

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Mr. Right Lynn, one of the early settlers, settled on the south bank of South Henderson Creek, on the N.W. 4 of Sec. 10, in. the limits of the present town of Gladstone, in about the year 1833. The primitive log cabin was built in the same lot in which the residence of his son now stands. Mr. Lynn was much better off financially than most of his cotemporaries, he having about $1,300 in money when he came. In the spring of 1833 he, with his brother, went to St. Louis, where he bought two yoke of cattle. To get some trunks home which he had there he put them on a forked pole, and hitching the oxen to it, hauled his trunks all the way from St. Louis to his home in Henderson county. His brother, who had accompanied him there, left him and went east. W hen he began farming he used a mold-board plow ; after the scouring plow came into use he got one of the first of them. He farmed without horses until 1856, and these came from Connecti­ cut. He tilled but few acres at first. He possessed a wagon which was a decided improvement over the forked stick which he used coming from St. Louis. It was a wagon which he himself made, the wheels of which were made by sawing off the ends of logs, and he called it his truck wagon.

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William Russell, of Sangamon county, Illinois, with nine children in his family, settled on Sec. 24, T. 10, R. 5, in the spring of 1831, and there resided until the year 1849, when the father and part of the family removed to Iowa.

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In the spring of 1829, John Campbell with his wife and nine children, emigrated from Scott county, Indiana, and settled in close where South Henderson church now stands. Here they raised a small crop of corn, and the next year moved to Shokokon. He died in 1867. and she in 1851. Their son, Richey Campbell, is now a worthy citizen of Biggsville township, and a consistent member of the United Presbyterian church.

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Lucius Cook emigrated from the State of New Jersey with his family in 1834. He drove his team through to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he put them and family on a boat, and going down the Ohio and up the Mississippi rivers, they landed at Warsaw, from which place they traveled the balance of the way by land to Henderson county. They first went into a small cabin built by Right Lynn on Sec. 10, on the north bank of South Henderson creek. Cook built a cabin afterward on the S.W. 4 of Sec. 15, where he lived until he died. He, like many other settlers, came here with limited means. He only had one team and $10 in money. He moved into the cabin ere it was completed, cold weather set in, and while the cabin was yet uncovered a young pioneer made himself known, who was afterward known as John Cook and who still lives on the home place.

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Mr. J. S. Mitchel, who lives near Gladstone, came from Pennsylvania in 1839. He first stopped at Warsaw, Illinois, and went from there to the vicinity of Terre Haute, this county. He was county recorder in 1848. He served as a teacher for several years in Hancock and Henderson counties. In the year 1849 he settled on the S.W. 4 of Sec. 16. There was an old log cabin on the place when he bought it, and was one of the best of those days. This quaint old cabin, with its shingle roof and stone and brick chimney, still remains to remind the present generation of what their fathers and mothers had to live in when they were children.

 

History of Mercer and Henderson Counties.

 

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Illinois Ancestors