1882 History
Chapter 11 – North Litchfield Township
NORTH LITCHFIELD TOWNSHIP — DESCRIPTION AND TOPOGRAPHY — CHARACTER OF SOIL — EARLY SETTLEMENTS — THE BRIGGS FAMILY — OTHER PIONEERS — THE FIRST PREACHERS AND CHURCHES — SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS — PIONEER INCIDENTS — TAX RECEIPTS, ETC. — EARLY DISEASES AND DEATHS — EFFECTS OF THE WAR, ETC.. ETC
By H. A. Coolidge
This township, lying on the west side of the prairie and much of the timber
is fenced, county, is south of Zanesville, west of Butler, and north of South
Litchfield. The west fork of Shoal Creek passes from north to south through the
east side, and is fringed with timber for nearly a mile on each side. The west
two-thirds of the township are prairie. The west and north portions discharge
their surplus waters through a branch into the creek, while the southwestern
sections send their drainage into the Cahokia, and the southeastern sections lie
on Rocky Branch, an affluent of the west fork of Shoal Creek. For three miles
the Indianapolis & St. Louis railroad divides it from South Litchfield. The
Jacksonville road enters at the northwest corner and leaves it two miles east of
the southwest corner. The St. Louis branch of the Wabash, going north, enters
the township two miles from the county line and leaves it two miles west of the
northeast corner. It thus contains nearly sixteen miles of railroad.
The soil along the creek is white and better for straw grain than for corn. In
the prairie the soil is black, glutinous and deep. The surface in the prairie
region requires artificial drainage, which has been in part supplied by the
construction of railroads, and a more careful attention to the location and
improvement of ordinary highways. In the farms along the timber, rail fences are
the rule; in other and more recently cultivated farms board fences are common,
and many hedges are found. All the prairie and much of the timber is fenced, and
this has led to the adoption of a stock law.
In 1816, Robert Briggs, born east of the Blue Ridge, and emigrating to Ohio en
route to Edwardsville, where he dwelt in the fort, and where children were born
to him, located on Lake Fork in Walshville. He built a cabin and began a farm.
Two years later, the land was bought from under him by Government entry, and Mr.
Briggs, leaving his cribs filled with corn, removed in 1818 to a point nearly a
third of a mile east of Martin Ritchie's house, and began anew. His old
neighbors relieved him of his cribbed corn, and he had no new neighbors in the
modern meaning of the word. A few miles to the north, a family settled a little
later, and five miles to the south were two or three families. The region
abounded in gray wolves, tall, fierce, gaunt fellows, and occasionally a black
one was seen. Muskrats were numerous in the shallow ponds, and skunks were met
everywhere. The few sheep Mr. Briggs owned were penned each night to protect
them from beasts of prey, for black bears and painters were not quite unknown.
Grapes grew in the woods, and "bee trees" yielded their delicious sweets to the
pioneer. Wagons were not in use; in place of them rude ox carts were in general
use, frequently made without iron. Cattle were the exclusively draft animals;
horses were employed only under the saddle, and to plow corn. In dry weather an
ox cart in motion was the equal in noise to a Chinese orchestra. Oxen wrought in
the ordinary yoke, but horses had wooden hames on shuck collars, made by some
neighbors and connected to the whippletree with chains, supported by a strip of
raw hide over the horse's back.
The cattle were natives, small and hardy. A fattened animal which weighed
dressed half a thousand pounds was a monster. The horses were usually about
fifteen hands high, and of light weight. In a few years after Mr. Briggs'
settlement, the Archy stock was introduced from North Carolina and was highly
esteemed for the saddle. All travel was on horseback, and a steed, sure-footed,
hardy, and with a swift, easy pace, was a possession keenly appreciated. Swine
of the baser breed prevailed. They were not inclined to take on flesh, were
fleet of foot and insatiable in appetite, and pugnacious. The few sheep were
kept for the wool. Quail and gray squirrels and wild turkeys, water fowl and
herds of deer, made the country a valuable game region. Of song birds the
pioneers do not speak; they came in with the cessation of the annual burning of
the prairie, and the appearance of orchards and trees around human habitations.
For several years Mr. Briggs grew cotton for home clothing. When picked, it was
ginned by hand, and then prepared on hand cards in the house for the spinning
wheel. Sometimes wool was mingled with the "batts" for spinning. The cotton was
carded, spun, wove and dyed at home, and the cloth fashioned into garments by
the housewife's shears and needle. Nearly every home contained a spinning wheel
and loom and a variety of saddles. The children tasted neither tea nor coffee.
Sassafras tea or crust coffee does not tempt a healthy or a capricious thirst.
The johnny cake board was as necessary in a well regulated family as knives and
forks, and the corn meal was brought from Elm Point or the "Pepper Mill." The
meal, wetted with water and salted and baked on a board set sloping before the
fire, and eaten with milk, was a healthful food, and the children throve on it.
The Briggs family went to Old Ripley, in Bond County, for meal, and their meat
was wild game; the forest yielded them grapes and plums; their garden Irish
potatoes and sweet ones. The father tanned each year, imperfectly, leather in a
trough, and from the product, which had the properties of rawhide, he made shoes
for his children. When wet these shoes were a world too wide! When dried on the
feet they shrank until they bound like compresses.
The first school his children attended was in a log schoolhouse, two
miles and a half east of home, and probably in Butler Grove Township. The
second school was taught in the first schoolhouse in the township, a few
rods due north of the home of E. K. Austin. Religious meetings were first
held at private houses, but, when schools were introduced, the school-room
dining the week was the church on Sunday. The first sermon, so far as known,
was perhaps delivered by Bennett Woods, a Hardshell Baptist, of whom our
informant narrates several amusing incidents. The preacher had on one
occasion forgotten his glasses, and when he arose to give out the hymn —
which it was the custom to "deacon" in consequence of the want of hymn books
— he began:
" My eyes are dim; I cannot see, I've left my specs at home."
The leader of the singing immediately raised the tune and the congregation
began to sing ! "Stop, stop! That is not the hymn; I meant to say I forgot
my spectacles and will not read a hymn this morning."
On another occasion a mother was carrying her wailing infant out of the
house to avoid disturbing the congregation. "Sister Sally, if you go out,
you will not hear the sermon." "Yes, I will; I will sit near the house, and
will hear every word." In a few moments Mr. Woods went to an open window,
and thrusting out his head and shoulders continued his discourse, in order
that "Sister Sally" should not lose the benefit of it.
The first church in the township was erected near the southeast corner of
the west half of the northwest corner of Section 33, or just west of State
street, and half a mile north of the Indianapolis & St. Louis railroad. It
was used jointly by the Lutherans and Presbyterians. This is the popular
opinion which has found a place in local histories, but a log church near
Honey Bend was built many years earlier, which long since decayed to a ruin,
but the site can be identified just over the line in Zanesville Township.
Near it several hundred Indians were encamped in huts of pawpaw. The
unwelcome visitors were energetically pressed to move on, and their shelters
perished by natural decay. This church belonged to the Hardshell Baptists —
a sect which believes in unsalaried preachers and in paying their debts. The
second religious body was the Williams Society of Methodists near Honey
Bend. William Williams, the founder, is still spoken of as a godly man,
whose piety was ardent and consistent.
Isaiah Hurley was the first school teacher, a mild, inoffensive person. The
Wilkinson boys were his especial tormentors.
The Briggs family at first ate from pewter plates and drank from gourds or
tin cups. The light at evening was the wood fire, or, if there was any
grease to be had, a saucer was filled with it, in which a wick floated.
Hickory bark or dry branches of trees were used as light wood to illuminate
the cabins, and the boys spelled out their bibles or books by their
flickering flame. Sometimes buttonwood balls were gathered, and, when dried,
soaked in fat and lighted. They afforded good light, but were speedily
consumed.
Their earlier neighbors were the Mathews family, living a couple furlongs to
the west. That family went west of the river during the "twenties," leaving
no representative here, but a remembrance older than the oldest living
inhabitant of the township.
About the earliest physician was Dr. Hillis, of Hillsboro, lately deceased.
The people did not "allow" to become ill, and midwives attended to women in
labor.
The scenes of Indian warfare are quite all outside the county, but the early
settlers had seen their portion of these horrors. Robert Briggs' maternal
grandfather, living in the Fort at Edwardsville, rescued a daughter from the
savages, and, while bearing her home to the fort, began bleeding at the nose
and died from loss of blood. Samuel Briggs, the eldest son, born in 1809,
was a soldier in the Black Hawk war, and Stephen R., the second son, born in
1812, was for eleven months a ranger.
As late as 1830, only a few families had settled in the township. Mathews
had removed; Wilkinson and Lockerman remained, and Williams and the Woods
and Ash had located along the Three-Mile Branch.
The polls for the earlier elections were held at "Tennis' School-house" in
Zanesville Township, and when the west side of the county was divided into
three election precincts the polls of Long Branch Precinct, which included
North Litchfield, were opened at John A. Crabtree's house in South
Litchfield. The poll lists contain few names; from a dozen to twenty votes
would be received. As the population of North Litchfield by the last census
was, outside of the city of Litchfield, only 951 on thirty-four square
miles, and contains neither mill nor shop save at Litchfield and Honey Bend,
it is credible that the township attracted population slowly. Nearly all the
people are of Southern birth or origin.
The elder ones still relate many homely incidents of the early days. When a
family arrived and it was understood that they wanted a house, the settlers
assembled, and some cut logs and built the walls, while others split shooks
for the roof, and others hewed puncheons for a floor and another portion
erected the chimney. They did not cease until the house was ready. If the
supply of meal gave out, and high water or the state of the trails prevented
a journey to Old Ripley, corn was bruised in a hollow block of wood with an
iron wedge or a wooden pestle. The finer portions were used for bread, and
the coarser part was converted into hominy. Scant time had the settlers for
social visits, but when one was paid the party came on horseback, the wife
en croupe behind her husband.
An annual visit to Mr. Briggs by Mr. Whiteside, the partisan ranger, well
known for his prowess in Indian warfare, was the signal for renewed confabs
on the incidents of border life. Whiteside, Robert Briggs, Sr., and his son
Samuel were the center of the group, and the children would huddle into the
corner terrified by their tales. Bits of description in their stories were
of high merit for their graphic literalness. What the good wives talked of
is beyond conjecture. He is a bold man who will venture an opinion as to the
topics in a woman's palaver.
The inquisitorial list of questions in the assessor's blanks, prepared in
the early history of the State is inferential evidence as to the condition
of the Illinois homes. But we have seen tax receipts of those relatively
far-off days, in which the taxes on six hundred acres of land were $2.10,
and on eighty acres, 12-1/2 cents, and these receipts were given to early
settlers of North Litchfield and its sister township, South Litchfield. The
wages of a stout, willing boy were a "bit" a day during the summer, and a
good harvest hand was paid as high as half a dollar, or the exact price of a
pound of coffee. ''Hired girls" had not become a class; in case of illness
some young woman would leave home for a few days to care for the afflicted
household, but her services were not rendered for the pay she received. The
discharge of the sacred duty to care for the sick was the motive, and it was
never neglected. The accepted life of a woman was to marry, bear and rear
children, prepare the household food, spin, weave and make the garments for
the family. Her whole life was the grand simple poem of rugged, toilsome
duty bravely and uncomplainingly done. She lived history, and her
descendants write and read it with a proud thrill, such as visits the
pilgrim when at Arlington he stands at the base of the monument which covers
the bones of 4,000 nameless men who gave their blood to preserve their
country. Her work lives, but her name is whispered only in a few homes. Holy
in death, it is too sacred for open speech.
Some of these cheerful dames still live, and seem to regret the times which
will never come again. One of them says the floor of her cabin was so uneven
that she placed rude wedges under her table legs to keep it steady, and when
a heavy rain fell the water which came down the chimney formed a pool in the
depression called a hearth, and she baled out the water with her skillet.
Gourds were used for drinking cups, milk pails, dippers and receptacles for
lard, some of them held half a bushel. When she became the owner of a stone
pitcher, she felt rich, and at the table no person could have a knife and
fork; if he had the former, the latter fell to another, and often the same
knife answered the table needs of two or three.
Until 1828, the whole county voted at Hillsboro, and there was the post
office, store and physician. In 1830, twelve years after its settlement, but
seven families had located in the township — Robert Briggs, Thomas Briggs,
Aaron Roberts, Mathews, Wilkinson and Lockerman, and possibly T. C. Hughes.
A war trail from the timber at the head of the Cahokia to the timber on
Shoal Creek ran along the southeastern sections, and the Indian-fighter,
Whiteside, and his rangers, pursued a band of warriors along this, and
brought on an action near the southeast corner of the southwest quarter of
Section 26. Whiteside, years after the battie, pointed out the site. Flint
arrow-heads and tomahawks have been found there. Tradition has preserved no
details of the fight, save that the savages suffered from the shotguns.
Whitesides was a laborious slayer of Indians, but wrote no detailed history
of his exploits on the trail. The early settlers lived in fear of Indians,
though no incidents are preserved of any outrage here later than 1815.
Bennett Woods settled in the township east of Shoal Creek, and found that in
addition to those previously mentioned, Aaron Roberts had preceded him. Of
this Mr. Roberts, we can learn only that he was a man of great humor, and
was not of kin to John C. or James S. Roberts, long well-known residents of
"Roberts' Settlement," the earlier name of Honey Bend. Thomas C. Hughes
settled in 1829, on the farm now owned by Martin Ritchie. Thomas Briggs, a
brother of Robert Briggs, lived about a mile south of Hughes. The farm
afterward passed into the hands of Samuel Kirkpatrick, brother of the famous
Sheriff.
When 1830 dawned, the settlers lived at the edge of the timber — Bennett
Woods east of the Creek, Aaron Roberts, the third setler, on the creek, and
Mr. Hughes and the two Briggs west of it. Mathews had vanished and there is
no mention of Lockerman or Wilkinson. There were certainly five families,
and possibly seven in the township. Mrs. Bennett Woods died in 1829, and was
the first death. The first marriage was Joshua Martin to Sarah Briggs,
eldest daughter of Robert Briggs. The first sermon was preached at the house
of Bennett Woods, by James Street or Larkin Craig — probably the former.
They belonged to the Missionary Baptists, and their earliest house of
worship was a log chapel, a few rods over the line, on Section 35, in
Zanesville — the venerable John Woods is able to fix its location. This
decaying in 1865, Little Flock Church was built at Honey Bend. The Cherry
Grove Chapel, in Butler Grove, was the primitive church for the Methodists
of several townships. Being near the line, the Methodists had no place of
worship in this township until 1855, when the Hardinsburgh Chapel was drawn
to Litchfield. Some of the early Methodists attended at Asbury Chapel,
Raymond; some at Cherry Grove, in Butler Grove, and some at the Hardinsburgh
Chapel.
The Baptists first attended the log church near J. Woods,' but by the
subdivisions in which that denomination rejoices, there arenow four houses
for their occupation.
The first burial place was the Bennett Wood's Graveyard. There were laid
away Robert Briggs in May, 1857, and his wife in 1850, Mrs. Bennett Woods
and other pioneers. The Crabtree Graveyard was perhaps the second one,
though it is in South Litchfield. We were not curious enough about mortuary
matters to seek to know these things in their grim minuteness. The fact that
a cemetery was found near each church or regular preaching place, points
with great clearness to the fact that no funeral was thought to be properly
conducted without a sermon, and the exposure of the face of the dead for a
last look by the spectators, though the Baptists — almost the sole religious
denomination — discountenanced funeral sermons or mortuary services at a
church. The dead were lovingly borne from the house to the place of burial
and there left to the awful care of the grave.
The coffin was the handiwork of a home workman; the dead was arrayed in the
chill simplicity of a shroud. It was unknown that a dead person was buried
in the dress worn in life, or in such a dress as living people wear.
The defense of any custom is its utility, and the records of the pulpit
contain little evidence of abiding religious impressions from the funeral
sermons. Perhaps they are the Protestant form of praying for the dead.
The diseases were chiefly fever and chills; at times nearly every home
contained more or less sick members. We have visited neighborhoods in which
every house had its sick inmates. The first physician was Dr. Moore, of
Woodboro, and North Litchfield was the home of no physician until 1854.
In 1832, Israel Fogleman occupied his life-long homestead, though he brought
no wife to his cabin for six years. Peter Blackwelder had settled half a
mile west, and Aaron Kean a couple of miles north. The Striplings were in
the north part of the town, and in 1840 the township contained ten or twelve
families. Alfred Blackwelder settled south of S. A. Paden's. Some children
of the first settlers married and settled near the ancestral home.
The Bandys and Pete Thompson, Jesse and Israel Ash, John C. and James
Roberts, Isaac Weaver, Ahart Pierce, C. W. Sapp and Ralph and Jacob Scherer
and Elihu Boan came, and, in 1850, there was one school-house, near the site
of the brick one, just west of Mr. Austin's. In 1852, the Terre Haute &
Alton railroad was located on the south line of the township, and, with the
laying out of Litchfield and the opening of a market for grain, and the
consequent appreciation of land, a new era dawned. The vacant prairie began
to be fenced and brought into tillage. The salient feature of this decade
was the creation of the village of Litchfield, with a population of 1,500,
many of them of different nationality, and widely differing in manners and
customs. The original settlers were conservative in habits and modes of
thought. Litchfield was a good place to buy and sell in; it was a
convenience; but socially and politically it was looked upon with coldness.
If a Litchfield man wanted a county or town office, he failed to secure it.
When the war was in its earlier stages, various parties proposed to resist
what they erroneously supposed was in contemplation. Their fears were soon
dissipated, and gatherings of armed men at private houses, and armed
sentinels around, were omitted. But men did meet at night for instruction in
the military art, but they soon became ashamed of their untoward zeal, which
had been stimulated by the presence of disloyal refugees from the States in
rebellion. The result was an immediate feeling of unquietness, but no one
imagined that this spasmodic moment of feeling would glut itself in action.
It evaporated in fast riding and loud, boastful talk.
On an evening in February, 1864, three men called at the house of William G.
Porter, five miles north of the city, and knocked for admittance. They said
they were neighbors on their way home, and had broken their wagon, and
desired a hammer and nails to repair the injury. Mr. Porter and his wife
were alone and had retired for the night. He went to the door with the
nails, when he was seized, and a demand made for his money. Mr. Porter
showed fight in his nightdress. One person stood guard and two dealt with
Mr. Porter and his wife. He received a slashing blow from a pistol, which
laid open a long wound, and was shot in the head, the bullet plowing into
the skull, where it remains. Porter made a lively fight, and foiled the
robbers. But help was coming, and the robbers fled. No arrest was made, as
the assailants were masked. Their purpose was simple robbery, and no
political meaning was attached to the affair. But in October of the same
year, three persons, about 7:40 P. M., visited the house of John C. Roberts,
of Honey Bend, on an errand of plunder. Each had two revolvers, and the
family were wholly defenseless. They obtained a gold watch, $150 in money
and the family silver. One of the robbers, being lame, walked on the side of
his foot, and was tracked to Litchfield. Arrests were made, but as they were
refugees from Missouri, a presumptive alibi was made out, and they were
released. There was, in the selection of the family and the undoubted
character of the robbers, a political element in this crime. Thompson
Williams, a half-mile west of Mr. Roberts, was robbed of a gun the same
night, but it was afterward found in a field where the robbers had cast it
away.
These three events comprise the criminal history of North Litchfield for
sixty-four years, for the plundering of chicken roosts and the occasional
relief of a smoke-house, were incidents not unknown in all frontier
settlements, and were accepted at their real significance.
In 1870, the St. Louis Division of the Wabash road was built, and a station
was located at Honey Bend. A town was laid out, and a post office
established, J. E. Hickman, Postmaster, who also opened a store there. The
place has neither passenger nor freight depot, but the shipments of cattle
and grain have been noticed in the decrease of shipments from Litchfield.
The village contains a church, schoolhouse and several shops, and about
twenty neat dwellings.
The adoption of township organization in 1872, and a judicious road law,
have wrought marvelous changes in the condition of the highways. The chief
roads have been ditched and graded. Safe bridges and culverts were placed at
the water courses. Of course taxation increased, and whether the consumption
of iron be the test of civilization or not, no one will deny that increase
in taxation marks the history of our settlements. With the growth of wants
comes a more rapid increase of taxation: and organized and regulated
benevolence and administration of law, have superseded the action of
individuals who took care that no deserving persons suffered for food or
shelter, or set at defiance the laws of mine and thine.
There are now five school districts in the township, all with good houses in
which schools are maintained for at least eight months in the year. For the
convenience of those who had worshiped at Cherry Grove, or Asbury Chapel or
Litchfield, Phillips Chapel, about two miles south of Honey Bend, was
erected in 1872, and this house and the one in the Bend, are the only
religious houses in the township, outside of the city.
A brick-yard is in operation a mile east of State street, and the margin of
Shoal Creek affords an abundance of compact, crystalized limestone. Burned
into lime it yields a superior article, which has been found especially
useful in building the abutments of bridges and culverts.
The pioneers of sixty years ago are represented by gray-haired men and
faded-tressed women. The ox cart has utterly perished; the wooden plow, the
winning shot, the sheep folds, exist only in imagination. The log cabin has
gone, the flax and cotton fields are no longer tilled, the music of the
spinning wheel and the beat of the loom are silent; sidesaddles are out of
date. And we have written of things which were the familiar sights and
sounds of our youth, that those in the morning of life may learn what was
only sixty years since.
Our rural friends are incredulous as to the wonders of the telephone, and to
the child on our streets to-day, the history we have written will be
incredible: but that it is of modern times we have been speaking, he would
class us among the weather prophets. Evidence wins assent, but experience
commands belief, and we chide not the lad for believing only what is
confined to his own experience, when eminent men contemptuously reject
whatever their poor reason cannot compress or fathom.
We have tried to bring back to the reader the time which is now purely
historical in North Litchfield. The prevailing peace and quiet of the people
have been due to their own strong, simple, sturdy, high hearted characters,
and to the auspicious fact that the law and the customs of their age were on
a level with the average strong working moral quality of the people.
The soil along the creek is white and better for straw grain than for corn. In the prairie the soil is black, glutinous and deep. The surface in the prairie region requires artificial drainage, which has been in part supplied by the construction of railroads, and a more careful attention to the location and improvement of ordinary highways. In the farms along the timber, rail fences are the rule; in other and more recently cultivated farms board fences are common, and many hedges are found. All the prairie and much of the timber is fenced, and this has led to the adoption of a stock law.
In 1816, Robert Briggs, born east of the Blue Ridge, and emigrating to Ohio en route to Edwardsville, where he dwelt in the fort, and where children were born to him, located on Lake Fork in Walshville. He built a cabin and began a farm. Two years later, the land was bought from under him by Government entry, and Mr. Briggs, leaving his cribs filled with corn, removed in 1818 to a point nearly a third of a mile east of Martin Ritchie's house, and began anew. His old neighbors relieved him of his cribbed corn, and he had no new neighbors in the modern meaning of the word. A few miles to the north, a family settled a little later, and five miles to the south were two or three families. The region abounded in gray wolves, tall, fierce, gaunt fellows, and occasionally a black one was seen. Muskrats were numerous in the shallow ponds, and skunks were met everywhere. The few sheep Mr. Briggs owned were penned each night to protect them from beasts of prey, for black bears and painters were not quite unknown. Grapes grew in the woods, and "bee trees" yielded their delicious sweets to the pioneer. Wagons were not in use; in place of them rude ox carts were in general use, frequently made without iron. Cattle were the exclusively draft animals; horses were employed only under the saddle, and to plow corn. In dry weather an ox cart in motion was the equal in noise to a Chinese orchestra. Oxen wrought in the ordinary yoke, but horses had wooden hames on shuck collars, made by some neighbors and connected to the whippletree with chains, supported by a strip of raw hide over the horse's back.
The cattle were natives, small and hardy. A fattened animal which weighed dressed half a thousand pounds was a monster. The horses were usually about fifteen hands high, and of light weight. In a few years after Mr. Briggs' settlement, the Archy stock was introduced from North Carolina and was highly esteemed for the saddle. All travel was on horseback, and a steed, sure-footed, hardy, and with a swift, easy pace, was a possession keenly appreciated. Swine of the baser breed prevailed. They were not inclined to take on flesh, were fleet of foot and insatiable in appetite, and pugnacious. The few sheep were kept for the wool. Quail and gray squirrels and wild turkeys, water fowl and herds of deer, made the country a valuable game region. Of song birds the pioneers do not speak; they came in with the cessation of the annual burning of the prairie, and the appearance of orchards and trees around human habitations.
For several years Mr. Briggs grew cotton for home clothing. When picked, it was ginned by hand, and then prepared on hand cards in the house for the spinning wheel. Sometimes wool was mingled with the "batts" for spinning. The cotton was carded, spun, wove and dyed at home, and the cloth fashioned into garments by the housewife's shears and needle. Nearly every home contained a spinning wheel and loom and a variety of saddles. The children tasted neither tea nor coffee. Sassafras tea or crust coffee does not tempt a healthy or a capricious thirst. The johnny cake board was as necessary in a well regulated family as knives and forks, and the corn meal was brought from Elm Point or the "Pepper Mill." The meal, wetted with water and salted and baked on a board set sloping before the fire, and eaten with milk, was a healthful food, and the children throve on it.
The Briggs family went to Old Ripley, in Bond County, for meal, and their meat was wild game; the forest yielded them grapes and plums; their garden Irish potatoes and sweet ones. The father tanned each year, imperfectly, leather in a trough, and from the product, which had the properties of rawhide, he made shoes for his children. When wet these shoes were a world too wide! When dried on the feet they shrank until they bound like compresses.
" My eyes are dim; I cannot see, I've left my specs at home."
The leader of the singing immediately raised the tune and the congregation began to sing ! "Stop, stop! That is not the hymn; I meant to say I forgot my spectacles and will not read a hymn this morning."
On another occasion a mother was carrying her wailing infant out of the house to avoid disturbing the congregation. "Sister Sally, if you go out, you will not hear the sermon." "Yes, I will; I will sit near the house, and will hear every word." In a few moments Mr. Woods went to an open window, and thrusting out his head and shoulders continued his discourse, in order that "Sister Sally" should not lose the benefit of it.
The first church in the township was erected near the southeast corner of the west half of the northwest corner of Section 33, or just west of State street, and half a mile north of the Indianapolis & St. Louis railroad. It was used jointly by the Lutherans and Presbyterians. This is the popular opinion which has found a place in local histories, but a log church near Honey Bend was built many years earlier, which long since decayed to a ruin, but the site can be identified just over the line in Zanesville Township. Near it several hundred Indians were encamped in huts of pawpaw. The unwelcome visitors were energetically pressed to move on, and their shelters perished by natural decay. This church belonged to the Hardshell Baptists — a sect which believes in unsalaried preachers and in paying their debts. The second religious body was the Williams Society of Methodists near Honey Bend. William Williams, the founder, is still spoken of as a godly man, whose piety was ardent and consistent.
Isaiah Hurley was the first school teacher, a mild, inoffensive person. The Wilkinson boys were his especial tormentors.
The Briggs family at first ate from pewter plates and drank from gourds or tin cups. The light at evening was the wood fire, or, if there was any grease to be had, a saucer was filled with it, in which a wick floated. Hickory bark or dry branches of trees were used as light wood to illuminate the cabins, and the boys spelled out their bibles or books by their flickering flame. Sometimes buttonwood balls were gathered, and, when dried, soaked in fat and lighted. They afforded good light, but were speedily consumed.
Their earlier neighbors were the Mathews family, living a couple furlongs to the west. That family went west of the river during the "twenties," leaving no representative here, but a remembrance older than the oldest living inhabitant of the township.
About the earliest physician was Dr. Hillis, of Hillsboro, lately deceased. The people did not "allow" to become ill, and midwives attended to women in labor.
The scenes of Indian warfare are quite all outside the county, but the early settlers had seen their portion of these horrors. Robert Briggs' maternal grandfather, living in the Fort at Edwardsville, rescued a daughter from the savages, and, while bearing her home to the fort, began bleeding at the nose and died from loss of blood. Samuel Briggs, the eldest son, born in 1809, was a soldier in the Black Hawk war, and Stephen R., the second son, born in 1812, was for eleven months a ranger.
As late as 1830, only a few families had settled in the township. Mathews had removed; Wilkinson and Lockerman remained, and Williams and the Woods and Ash had located along the Three-Mile Branch.
The polls for the earlier elections were held at "Tennis' School-house" in Zanesville Township, and when the west side of the county was divided into three election precincts the polls of Long Branch Precinct, which included North Litchfield, were opened at John A. Crabtree's house in South Litchfield. The poll lists contain few names; from a dozen to twenty votes would be received. As the population of North Litchfield by the last census was, outside of the city of Litchfield, only 951 on thirty-four square miles, and contains neither mill nor shop save at Litchfield and Honey Bend, it is credible that the township attracted population slowly. Nearly all the people are of Southern birth or origin.
The elder ones still relate many homely incidents of the early days. When a family arrived and it was understood that they wanted a house, the settlers assembled, and some cut logs and built the walls, while others split shooks for the roof, and others hewed puncheons for a floor and another portion erected the chimney. They did not cease until the house was ready. If the supply of meal gave out, and high water or the state of the trails prevented a journey to Old Ripley, corn was bruised in a hollow block of wood with an iron wedge or a wooden pestle. The finer portions were used for bread, and the coarser part was converted into hominy. Scant time had the settlers for social visits, but when one was paid the party came on horseback, the wife en croupe behind her husband.
An annual visit to Mr. Briggs by Mr. Whiteside, the partisan ranger, well known for his prowess in Indian warfare, was the signal for renewed confabs on the incidents of border life. Whiteside, Robert Briggs, Sr., and his son Samuel were the center of the group, and the children would huddle into the corner terrified by their tales. Bits of description in their stories were of high merit for their graphic literalness. What the good wives talked of is beyond conjecture. He is a bold man who will venture an opinion as to the topics in a woman's palaver.
The inquisitorial list of questions in the assessor's blanks, prepared in the early history of the State is inferential evidence as to the condition of the Illinois homes. But we have seen tax receipts of those relatively far-off days, in which the taxes on six hundred acres of land were $2.10, and on eighty acres, 12-1/2 cents, and these receipts were given to early settlers of North Litchfield and its sister township, South Litchfield. The wages of a stout, willing boy were a "bit" a day during the summer, and a good harvest hand was paid as high as half a dollar, or the exact price of a pound of coffee. ''Hired girls" had not become a class; in case of illness some young woman would leave home for a few days to care for the afflicted household, but her services were not rendered for the pay she received. The discharge of the sacred duty to care for the sick was the motive, and it was never neglected. The accepted life of a woman was to marry, bear and rear children, prepare the household food, spin, weave and make the garments for the family. Her whole life was the grand simple poem of rugged, toilsome duty bravely and uncomplainingly done. She lived history, and her descendants write and read it with a proud thrill, such as visits the pilgrim when at Arlington he stands at the base of the monument which covers the bones of 4,000 nameless men who gave their blood to preserve their country. Her work lives, but her name is whispered only in a few homes. Holy in death, it is too sacred for open speech.
Some of these cheerful dames still live, and seem to regret the times which will never come again. One of them says the floor of her cabin was so uneven that she placed rude wedges under her table legs to keep it steady, and when a heavy rain fell the water which came down the chimney formed a pool in the depression called a hearth, and she baled out the water with her skillet. Gourds were used for drinking cups, milk pails, dippers and receptacles for lard, some of them held half a bushel. When she became the owner of a stone pitcher, she felt rich, and at the table no person could have a knife and fork; if he had the former, the latter fell to another, and often the same knife answered the table needs of two or three.
Until 1828, the whole county voted at Hillsboro, and there was the post office, store and physician. In 1830, twelve years after its settlement, but seven families had located in the township — Robert Briggs, Thomas Briggs, Aaron Roberts, Mathews, Wilkinson and Lockerman, and possibly T. C. Hughes. A war trail from the timber at the head of the Cahokia to the timber on Shoal Creek ran along the southeastern sections, and the Indian-fighter, Whiteside, and his rangers, pursued a band of warriors along this, and brought on an action near the southeast corner of the southwest quarter of Section 26. Whiteside, years after the battie, pointed out the site. Flint arrow-heads and tomahawks have been found there. Tradition has preserved no details of the fight, save that the savages suffered from the shotguns. Whitesides was a laborious slayer of Indians, but wrote no detailed history of his exploits on the trail. The early settlers lived in fear of Indians, though no incidents are preserved of any outrage here later than 1815.
Bennett Woods settled in the township east of Shoal Creek, and found that in addition to those previously mentioned, Aaron Roberts had preceded him. Of this Mr. Roberts, we can learn only that he was a man of great humor, and was not of kin to John C. or James S. Roberts, long well-known residents of "Roberts' Settlement," the earlier name of Honey Bend. Thomas C. Hughes settled in 1829, on the farm now owned by Martin Ritchie. Thomas Briggs, a brother of Robert Briggs, lived about a mile south of Hughes. The farm afterward passed into the hands of Samuel Kirkpatrick, brother of the famous Sheriff.
When 1830 dawned, the settlers lived at the edge of the timber — Bennett Woods east of the Creek, Aaron Roberts, the third setler, on the creek, and Mr. Hughes and the two Briggs west of it. Mathews had vanished and there is no mention of Lockerman or Wilkinson. There were certainly five families, and possibly seven in the township. Mrs. Bennett Woods died in 1829, and was the first death. The first marriage was Joshua Martin to Sarah Briggs, eldest daughter of Robert Briggs. The first sermon was preached at the house of Bennett Woods, by James Street or Larkin Craig — probably the former. They belonged to the Missionary Baptists, and their earliest house of worship was a log chapel, a few rods over the line, on Section 35, in Zanesville — the venerable John Woods is able to fix its location. This decaying in 1865, Little Flock Church was built at Honey Bend. The Cherry Grove Chapel, in Butler Grove, was the primitive church for the Methodists of several townships. Being near the line, the Methodists had no place of worship in this township until 1855, when the Hardinsburgh Chapel was drawn to Litchfield. Some of the early Methodists attended at Asbury Chapel, Raymond; some at Cherry Grove, in Butler Grove, and some at the Hardinsburgh Chapel.
The Baptists first attended the log church near J. Woods,' but by the subdivisions in which that denomination rejoices, there arenow four houses for their occupation.
The first burial place was the Bennett Wood's Graveyard. There were laid away Robert Briggs in May, 1857, and his wife in 1850, Mrs. Bennett Woods and other pioneers. The Crabtree Graveyard was perhaps the second one, though it is in South Litchfield. We were not curious enough about mortuary matters to seek to know these things in their grim minuteness. The fact that a cemetery was found near each church or regular preaching place, points with great clearness to the fact that no funeral was thought to be properly conducted without a sermon, and the exposure of the face of the dead for a last look by the spectators, though the Baptists — almost the sole religious denomination — discountenanced funeral sermons or mortuary services at a church. The dead were lovingly borne from the house to the place of burial and there left to the awful care of the grave.
The coffin was the handiwork of a home workman; the dead was arrayed in the chill simplicity of a shroud. It was unknown that a dead person was buried in the dress worn in life, or in such a dress as living people wear.
The defense of any custom is its utility, and the records of the pulpit contain little evidence of abiding religious impressions from the funeral sermons. Perhaps they are the Protestant form of praying for the dead.
The diseases were chiefly fever and chills; at times nearly every home contained more or less sick members. We have visited neighborhoods in which every house had its sick inmates. The first physician was Dr. Moore, of Woodboro, and North Litchfield was the home of no physician until 1854.
In 1832, Israel Fogleman occupied his life-long homestead, though he brought no wife to his cabin for six years. Peter Blackwelder had settled half a mile west, and Aaron Kean a couple of miles north. The Striplings were in the north part of the town, and in 1840 the township contained ten or twelve families. Alfred Blackwelder settled south of S. A. Paden's. Some children of the first settlers married and settled near the ancestral home.
The Bandys and Pete Thompson, Jesse and Israel Ash, John C. and James Roberts, Isaac Weaver, Ahart Pierce, C. W. Sapp and Ralph and Jacob Scherer and Elihu Boan came, and, in 1850, there was one school-house, near the site of the brick one, just west of Mr. Austin's. In 1852, the Terre Haute & Alton railroad was located on the south line of the township, and, with the laying out of Litchfield and the opening of a market for grain, and the consequent appreciation of land, a new era dawned. The vacant prairie began to be fenced and brought into tillage. The salient feature of this decade was the creation of the village of Litchfield, with a population of 1,500, many of them of different nationality, and widely differing in manners and customs. The original settlers were conservative in habits and modes of thought. Litchfield was a good place to buy and sell in; it was a convenience; but socially and politically it was looked upon with coldness. If a Litchfield man wanted a county or town office, he failed to secure it.
When the war was in its earlier stages, various parties proposed to resist what they erroneously supposed was in contemplation. Their fears were soon dissipated, and gatherings of armed men at private houses, and armed sentinels around, were omitted. But men did meet at night for instruction in the military art, but they soon became ashamed of their untoward zeal, which had been stimulated by the presence of disloyal refugees from the States in rebellion. The result was an immediate feeling of unquietness, but no one imagined that this spasmodic moment of feeling would glut itself in action. It evaporated in fast riding and loud, boastful talk.
On an evening in February, 1864, three men called at the house of William G. Porter, five miles north of the city, and knocked for admittance. They said they were neighbors on their way home, and had broken their wagon, and desired a hammer and nails to repair the injury. Mr. Porter and his wife were alone and had retired for the night. He went to the door with the nails, when he was seized, and a demand made for his money. Mr. Porter showed fight in his nightdress. One person stood guard and two dealt with Mr. Porter and his wife. He received a slashing blow from a pistol, which laid open a long wound, and was shot in the head, the bullet plowing into the skull, where it remains. Porter made a lively fight, and foiled the robbers. But help was coming, and the robbers fled. No arrest was made, as the assailants were masked. Their purpose was simple robbery, and no political meaning was attached to the affair. But in October of the same year, three persons, about 7:40 P. M., visited the house of John C. Roberts, of Honey Bend, on an errand of plunder. Each had two revolvers, and the family were wholly defenseless. They obtained a gold watch, $150 in money and the family silver. One of the robbers, being lame, walked on the side of his foot, and was tracked to Litchfield. Arrests were made, but as they were refugees from Missouri, a presumptive alibi was made out, and they were released. There was, in the selection of the family and the undoubted character of the robbers, a political element in this crime. Thompson Williams, a half-mile west of Mr. Roberts, was robbed of a gun the same night, but it was afterward found in a field where the robbers had cast it away.
These three events comprise the criminal history of North Litchfield for sixty-four years, for the plundering of chicken roosts and the occasional relief of a smoke-house, were incidents not unknown in all frontier settlements, and were accepted at their real significance.
In 1870, the St. Louis Division of the Wabash road was built, and a station was located at Honey Bend. A town was laid out, and a post office established, J. E. Hickman, Postmaster, who also opened a store there. The place has neither passenger nor freight depot, but the shipments of cattle and grain have been noticed in the decrease of shipments from Litchfield. The village contains a church, schoolhouse and several shops, and about twenty neat dwellings.
The adoption of township organization in 1872, and a judicious road law, have wrought marvelous changes in the condition of the highways. The chief roads have been ditched and graded. Safe bridges and culverts were placed at the water courses. Of course taxation increased, and whether the consumption of iron be the test of civilization or not, no one will deny that increase in taxation marks the history of our settlements. With the growth of wants comes a more rapid increase of taxation: and organized and regulated benevolence and administration of law, have superseded the action of individuals who took care that no deserving persons suffered for food or shelter, or set at defiance the laws of mine and thine.
There are now five school districts in the township, all with good houses in which schools are maintained for at least eight months in the year. For the convenience of those who had worshiped at Cherry Grove, or Asbury Chapel or Litchfield, Phillips Chapel, about two miles south of Honey Bend, was erected in 1872, and this house and the one in the Bend, are the only religious houses in the township, outside of the city.
A brick-yard is in operation a mile east of State street, and the margin of Shoal Creek affords an abundance of compact, crystalized limestone. Burned into lime it yields a superior article, which has been found especially useful in building the abutments of bridges and culverts.
The pioneers of sixty years ago are represented by gray-haired men and faded-tressed women. The ox cart has utterly perished; the wooden plow, the winning shot, the sheep folds, exist only in imagination. The log cabin has gone, the flax and cotton fields are no longer tilled, the music of the spinning wheel and the beat of the loom are silent; sidesaddles are out of date. And we have written of things which were the familiar sights and sounds of our youth, that those in the morning of life may learn what was only sixty years since.
Our rural friends are incredulous as to the wonders of the telephone, and to the child on our streets to-day, the history we have written will be incredible: but that it is of modern times we have been speaking, he would class us among the weather prophets. Evidence wins assent, but experience commands belief, and we chide not the lad for believing only what is confined to his own experience, when eminent men contemptuously reject whatever their poor reason cannot compress or fathom.
We have tried to bring back to the reader the time which is now purely historical in North Litchfield. The prevailing peace and quiet of the people have been due to their own strong, simple, sturdy, high hearted characters, and to the auspicious fact that the law and the customs of their age were on a level with the average strong working moral quality of the people.
Extracted 30 Aug 2018 by Norma Hass from History of Bond and Montgomery Counties, Illinois, published in 1882, pages 248-255.
