ALSON STREETER

 

Hon. ALSON J. STREETER, one of Mercer county's most prominent citizens, was born in Rensselaer county, New York, January 18, 1823. His father, Roswell Streeter, was born in Massachusetts in 1799, and his mother, Eleanor Kenyon, was born in Westerly, Rhode Island, August 20, 1798.

There were six sons and two daughters the offspring of this union, of whom the subject of this sketch is the oldest, and the only one living in this county now. His sister, Mrs. Shumway, living in Oxford, Henry county, is the only member of the family living near him. Mr. Streeter came to Illinois in 1836, when only thirteen years old, with his father, who settled at that early day in what is now Lee Centre, Lee county, Illinois. His father died April 11; 1850, in Iowa, en route for California. His mother survived until June 8, 1871, when she died, in the seventy-third year of her age, at her son's residence near New Windsor.

His youth was spent on the farm and in trapping, hunting and fishing, which were his favorite employments at that time and at which he was very successful. The furs and pelts of the wolf; mink, otter, muskrat, etc., being about the only medium of exchange obtainable at that time. He has treasured up many interesting incidents connected with his early pioneer life, when the settlers who had endured the hardships to which they were subjected at that early day were obliged to form societies for mutual protection, to prevent by the force of might the greedy speculator from entering their homes, which the set­tlers could not purchase, there being no mone y in the country with which to buy.

He also relates how they used to burn charcoal and haul it fourteen miles to Grand Du Tour, on Bock river, where one John Deere (now of Moline plow fame) had a blacksmith shop with two forges in it. He would sometimes get fifty cents and sometimes a dollar in cash on his load, the balance would be taken in blacksmith­ing as it was needed. It was when making one of these trips that he first saw a steel plow that would scour, Mr. Deere having just begun. the manufacture of a diamond-shaped steel plow, the only plow then in use having a wooden mold-board, with a piece of iron fastened on the lower edge for a share. Returning home lie reported to his father what he had seen, and they concluded they must have one of the new plows. So, taldng a load of charcoal, he went to the shop and traded for a plow. Repairing to a neighboring sand-bank he hitched his oxen to the plow and drove, while Mr. Deere held the plow, to scour it, not having any implement to grind with at that time.

While living in Lee county lie attended two terms of school in an old log school-house. At the age of twenty-three, with an ardent desire to improve his education and $12 of hard-earned savings in his pocket, he went to Galesburg to attend Knox college. By the industrious use of the frower and knife riving and shaving hard-wood shingles, he maintained himself two and one-half years at school. In 1819 he went overland to California and spent two years in the mines, returning in 1851. In 1853 he went across the plains with a drove of cattle, and repeated the trip again in 1854. On his return from this last trip he bought 240 acres of land in section 11,. Rivoli township, to which lie has continued to add until his farm at present spreads over 3,100 acres, about one-half of which is in pasture at present and on which he raises large numbers of hogs and cattle, having one of the finest herds of thorough­bred short horns in the county.

Farming and stock raising has been his business, and although his private affairs have grown to such large dimensions of late years, he has always kept himself posted on the course of current politics, taking deep interest in everything affecting agriculture and education. Though havinc , business interests that would seem to require all his time, he has always held himself in readiness to serve his neighbors in any position they have called upon him to fill. He has represented his town several years on the board of supervisors. In 1872 he was elected by the cumulative system the minority representative to the state legislature from the twenty-second senatorial district, composed of Knox and Mercer counties, serving two years as a member of the twenty-eighth general assembly to the satisfaction of his constituents and honor to himself Serving on the committee on agriculture and education, he helped to shape all the legislation upon those two subjects, in which he takes so great interest.

A democrat until about 1874, he deemed that neither of the two leading parties was serving the people's interests as it should, and since that time he has identified himself with the national greenback labor union party. Standing for that party as candidate for congress from the tenth congressional district in. 1878, he received over 3,600 votes. Again in 1880, the candidate of the same party for governor of the state, he received 28,808 votes. He is always found on the side of the masses, battling against the encroachments of the great moneyed cor­porations, and believes most firmly in enforcing our railroad and warehouse laws.

He is a member of the Congregational church of New Windsor, and is also a Royal Arch Mason. On his place is one of the curiosities of this section of country : a crows' roost. Near his house is a patch of brush land densely covered with a young growth of black oaks. In this the crows assemble every evening to roost, departing early in the morning on their daily foraging expeditions.His children, in the order of their ages, are : George A., Frank W., Mary, Nellie May, Fannie Rose, Minnie Grace, and Charles Dallas. The four last named are children of his second wife (Susan Menold), to whom he was married in August, 1861. George A. married a daughter of Joshua Goddard, of Viola. Frank W. married a daughter of Samuel Park, near Viola, and now lives on the place, having charge of the farm and stock.

Mary is the wife of Thomas Burling, and lives in Nebraska. Minnie Grace died January 23, 1882, from the effects of diphtheria, deeply mourned by a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. She was a girl of more than ordinary promise, for whom a very brilliant future seemed just opening. February 22, 1882, Nellie May was married to Mr. Frank Crane, of Osco, Henry county, Illinois. Fannie Rose and Charles Dallas are all that remain at home. By energy and perseverance he has wrested from the soil his present ample means, and has earned a justly merited reputation for honor and. probity that is worth more than money or lands. Mr. Streeter resides on his original purchase in section 11, two and one-half miles northwest of the village of New Windsor.

 

 

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