About 7 miles east of Mason City is a small town (350 people) called New Holland. I drove there this morning from my undisclosed overnight location, then walked back to the Mason—Logan County line to begin my walk.
New Holland is home to the Taloma Farmer’s Grain Company, and right now in the midst of the corn harvest, corn is arriving by semi, by gravity wagon, by straight truck, and so on. The hauler drives onto the scales, then on to the unloading area, where a moisture probe takes random samples of the load. Then the golden corn pours out into the system that will auger it up to the dryers and eventually into a storage bin.
I can’t look at those elevators without thinking of the recent disaster—a tragic, heart-stopping elevator accident that occurred just weeks ago in my home town of Mount Carroll, Illinois. Two young men lost their lives, and a third young man narrowly escaped with his life, when all 3 disappeared beneath the corn in a million-bushel bin.
All grain bins are potential death traps, and those who work in them shouldn’t even think of venturing in without a proper mask or breathing device and without a safety harness and a safety line, none of which those young people had.
I’ve been trying to calculate my mileage since Day 1 of my walk by entering the junction of Broadway and U.S. 24 (in Quincy) into my Garmin GPS, but that is a problematic way of determining miles traveled. For one thing, the GPS chooses a route that may not be the one I traveled. For another, as my route moves north and south along the way, strange anomalies crop up in the GPS calculations.
For instance yesterday I walked to what I had determined to be the 100-mile mark, but after walking quite a few miles beyond that point, the GPS said I was 102 miles from my start point. Obviously, as one would expect, the GPS figures the distance back to Quincy from one’s present location. I had already decided to not count the detours into towns off the main route, but I am now stymied as to the most accurate way to reckon how far I’ve come.
Of course this is all academic. Lord willing, I’ll make it across the state regardless of the data generated by my GPS, and I’ll walk a certain number of miles, whether they are registered or not. I want a GPS like the ones I see on the CSI TV shows. The lab techs just touch the screen a couple of times, and the GPS provides a record of everywhere it’s been, and when it went there. I’ve had several GPS units and GPS programs for my computers, but I’ve never had one that would do precisely that. Maybe I can send my GPS to one of the crime labs and ask the forensic techs there to retrace my route.
Despite my Angst, I continue to be slightly ahead of schedule, but I’ve decided to do my best to stick to the itinerary listed in my flyer and by my press releases. That has me walking into Lincoln tomorrow morning and walking across Lincoln on Thursday. I’ll probably be beyond Lincoln by the end of Thursday, but I probably won’t be all the way to Beason until some time on Friday as planned.
As I was unloading my bike in New Holland, a lady came out of the bank building. She said she had seen me with a flag on my bike, and she just had to ask what I was doing. She was Nancy Otto, bank employee, who proved a font of information about the history of New Holland. Though I am indebted to her for much of the information I’m sharing here, any errors of fact are my own.
Volunteer Fire Department Memorial in New Holland
I am also grateful to Lawrence B. Stringer, who has written a detailed history of New Holland, which you can consult online at http://history.rays-place.com/il/logan-new-holland.htm if you don’t want to take my word for it.
My walk into New Holland took me across Prairie Creek, just east of the Logan County line. North of the highway, the creek seems to meander where it will, but once it flows south of the highway, it has been canalized, with a high levee on each side. That work must have been done before the more restrictive laws concerning the straightening of creeks in Illinois.
When a creek is straightened, the water tends to cut the channel deeper, and that new characteristic changes the very nature of the stream. On the north side of the highway, someone had dumped rip rap into a few small gullies on the outside bank of a turn in the stream in an apparent effort to slow the erosion of that side of the stream. That same bank had considerable sand deposits.
Nancy Otto grew up in Middletown and later lived in New Holland. She’s now a resident of Lincoln. After my ride north and west, back to the county line, and my walk back into New Holland, I went into the bank building to ask Nancy some questions about the town.
Two early settlers, Henry Niewold and Oliver Holland, merged their last names to come up with the name New Holland. Thomas G. Gardner surveyed the town, which initially comprised four blocks. Other early settlers were Jacob Bolinger, A. M. Caidwell, Adam Wenzell, and J. W. Wurtzbaugh, who platted a further 20 blocks in the town.
The first building in the town was the house built by William Towberman. Randolph & Company built the first general store, and William Towberman built his own store soon after. In 1875, M. R. Laforge built a grain elevator at the staggering cost in that day of $6,000.
Inn 1885 and 1887, a series of disastrous fires wiped out much of the town, but the tenacious settlers rebuilt. In 1910 yet another fire destroyed the D. H. Curry and Company elevator. By 1904, a local telephone company was organized, and residents had phone service available through the New Holland Telephone Company. The town was not incorporated until 1897.
The present bank is still at its original location, though it began life inside a general store. It is, however, in the same building where it began its life.
William Scully came to Logan County from Ireland in the 1850s. It is believed that at one time he owned more land in the United States than anyone else. A May 30, 2008 article in the Lincoln Courier (http://www.lincolncourier.com/news/x1644563963/Logan-County-land-heir-Scully-dies) tells some of the family history in the context of the death of William’s grandson Michael John Scully.
Logan County historian Paul Beaver has written a book called William Scully and the Scully Estates of Logan County, Illinois. Nancy Otto first told me about the remarkable Scullys and their pervasive influence on Logan County and New Holland.
Michael’s mother Violet donated 175 acres of land to start the Kickapoo Creek Park, and she donated more land and money later on. She personally did lots of work on the park, which is named for her. The Lincoln College land where the wooly mammoth tusk was found (it’s on display at the college’s McKinsty Library) was also a gift from Violet Sculley.
Logan County
Logan County itself did not come into existence until 1839, when the Illinois Legislature voted to create three new counties out of part of Sangamon County. Abraham Lincoln had a lot to do with the county’s creation. He had done a lot of surveying in the area as assistant surveyor under John Calhoun, and he was chair of the Legislature’s committee on counties. When Lincoln reported the bill to establish three new counties, Calhoun suggested the matter be referred to a special committee of 5 lawmakers for further study. Lincoln was appointed the chairman of that special committee.
It was also Lincoln who suggested naming the county after Dr. John Logan, state representative from Jackson County. Dr. Logan was the father of John A. Logan, who would become a successful Union commander during the Civil War. He would later serve as U.S. senator from Illinois. General Logan is perhaps most well known as founder of our Memorial Day, a national holiday, though not recognized by several southern states.
The very earliest white visitors to what was to become Logan County are believed to have been captives of the Kickapoo Indians. A somewhat garbled University of Illinois Web site (http://libsysdigi.library.uiuc.edu/OCA/Books2008-08/americanaerialco/americanaerialco08drur/americanaerialco08drur_djvu.txt) says this about that:
When a white mother and three of her small children were captured by a roving band of Indians in Kentucky and transported northward into future Illinois, they unwittingly became the first white people to set foot on the soil of what became Logan County, It was in the year 1790, when this part of America was the Northwest Territory, that Mrs. James Gilham, Sr. and her three small children were captured by some Kickapoos who had invaded Kentucky. Her husband was absent at the time, working in his cornfields.
The mother and her children were forced to march some three or four hundred miles through Illinois until the party arrived at a large Kickapoo town on Salt Creek, just northeast of what became Elkhart, Logan County. After an extensive search through the wilderness, James Gilham found his wife and children, and the family thereafter settled in Illinois, but not in Logan County.
According to the same Web site, the next group of whites to pass through the territory were also involved in Native American affairs. In 1812, Illinois territorial governor Ninian Edwards (March 17, 1775 – July 20, 1833: a native of Maryland, and the only person to hold the office of territorial governor in Illinois) organized a militia unit to pursue a “band of hostile Indians” that he himself led up an Indian path, passing “east of Elkhart Grove, crossing Salt Creek not far from the present city of Lincoln, and thence in a northward direction.” One of the militiamen, John Reynolds, would later serve as governor of the state of Illinois, and would author a book called History of Illinois.
The militia pursued the natives to an Indian village near present-day Peoria. The place was essentially deserted, but they killed on Indian man whom they took to be making hostile gestures. At that point, the militia returned to Edwardsville. The most lasting contribution made by this militia company seems to have been that the route they followed would come to be known as the Edwards Trace.
Native Americans continued to work toward homeland security, but with diminishing results. Still, they seem for a time to have kept the pesky whites out of much of what is now Central Illinois. In 1918, the Central Illinois made a treaty with the whites and agreed to yield their territory in exchange for $2000 in silver yearly for the next 15 years. They agreed to give up “all that scope of country south of the Kankakee River, east of the Illinois River, and north of a line drawn from the mouth of the Illinois to the Wabash.”
That treaty opened the area to more settlement. By 1836, all Kickapoo Indians seem to have left the area in question. I haven’t discovered whether the whites kept their end of the bargain (the promised payment), which should have been ongoing through 1833, but as a consolation prize, the natives got lots of creeks, towns, parks, and roads named after their tribe.
The first permanent settlers in Logan County include husband and wife James and Betsey Chapman, Betsey’s brother Richard Latham, her dad James Latham, and one of Latham’s relatives, Ebenezer Bribers. Robert Latham, brother to Betsey and Richard, would later be a founder of Lincoln, Illinois.
This family came from Kentucky and settled at Elkhart Grove in the spring of 1819, while the area was still a part of a much larger Bond County. The family squatted until the federal land office opened in Springfield in 1823. Soon after, they entered claims for their tracts of land, and in 1824, James Latham entered more than 600 acres. Just a few years later, son Richard entered a large parcel of land on the south slope of Elkhart Hill, the only real hill in that part of Illinois.
James would go on to be the first probate justice of the peace in the new Sangamon County, formed out of Bond County. In 1825, President John Quincy Adams, for whom both Quincy, Illinois, and Adams County, Illinois are named, appointed James Indian agent at Fort Clark, which was a U.S. military establishment at the site of the future Peoria, Illinois.
Richard Latham, James’s son, had a very early inn in Logan County, popularly known as “Kentucky House.” It was on Richard’s property on Elkhart Hill. After Richard married Emily Hubbard in 1824, in what would be the first marriage in the future Logan County area, their inn served stagecoach travelers on their version of an early Interstate highway, the road from St. Louis to Springfield, Illinois, and on to Chicago. Such eventually famous people as Abe Lincoln and his friend Dr. John Logan, for whom the county is named, were frequent visitors, as was Illinois territorial governor Ninian Edwards.
So, to get back to a more general history of Logan County, if it’s not already too late, Robert Musick settled on Sugar Creek at a place that became known as “Musick’s on Sugar Creek.” He arrived with wife and 3 small kids in tow within a few months of the Chapman and Latham settlers. Musick’s was in the northeast corner of what would become Logan County’s West Lincoln Townshp. Soon others settled at Musick’s, and a community sprang up, so to speak.
Middletown
Banker Nancy Otto, of the New Holland Bank, encouraged me to visit her home town of Middletown, though it was off my route. I was feeling pretty good, and I considered biking there from New Holland, but better sense prevailed, and the bike and I traveled there by pickup. (It’s about 6 miles south of New Holland.) There’s not much in Middletown any more, and that’s a shame.
Middletown was laid out by Hiram S. Allen, a local land speculator, in 1832, while the area was still part of Sangamon County. It seemed that platting towns and selling lots was nearly a craze at that time, but of all the towns laid out during that early period, only Middletown, Postville (now a part of Lincoln, Illinois), and Mount Pulaski actually survived.
The first lot in Middletown was bought by Hawkins Taylor in 1833, with the deed witnessed by none other than A. Lincoln, who had just come home from his service in the Black Hawk War, during which he served as an elected captain.
Signs in Middletown state that it was on the stage coach road to New Salem and also on the Springfield-to-Galena stage coach road. Both passengers and mail rode the coaches.
Dunlap Inn in Middletown
In June of 1837, Senator Daniel Webster arrived in Middletown on a tour of the Midwest. When the stage coach experienced mechanical trouble just before leaving Middletown, the famous Webster stepped out, but was recognized by townspeople, who soon thronged him. He gratified them by giving a speech. I’m sure that was equivalent to having a famous movie actor stop in a small town today.
Abe Lincoln and Daniel Webster would become personal friends and political allies during Lincoln’s time in Congress.
In 1838, George Dunlap was running the Middletown inn, when Lincoln traveled through from Springfield to the Tazewell Circuit Court, held in Tremont. He also passed by the inn and probably ate and stayed there at some time during his years following the Eighth Judicial Court sessions. It is known that he and his family stayed the night on their way to the River and Harbor Convention held in Chicago in 1848.
Colby Knapp arrived in Middletown in 1836, built and ran the first general store, served as postmaster, and then as township treasurer. Later still he served as a county commissioner and in the state legislature. He moved to Lincoln and served as its mayor beginning in 1869. He lived in Lincoln until his death in 1882.
Monument near Knapp Store
The Knapp Store and Post Office, Now a Museum
Postville
Postville would become the first county seat of Logan County. It was platted in 1835 by one Russell Post, a former East Coast ship's chandler and later Illinois land speculator. James Primm was the first postmaster. He deeded a lot in Lincoln to Abraham Lincoln as collateral for a $400 loan. Dr. John Deskins came to Postville in 1836, and became the town's first physician. He also opened Postville’s first inn. In 1865, Postville was absorbed by the much newer town of Lincoln, which had expanded from a mile to the west.
Burton View, founded in 1909
The last town I passed through before calling it a day was Burton View, whose biggest business is clearly agriculture. Though I stopped and asked some people who work there and some residents of Burton View where it got its name, no one seemed to know. I spoke with Mrs. Fink, whose husband is a U.S. Army veteran, and I asked her to convey my thanks to him for his service.
Blackhawk (Black Hawk), an Aside
The so-called “town lot craze” started in Illinois at about the time the so-called Black Hawk War ended in 1832. Some of that “war” took place near my home town of Mt. Carroll, Illinois, and there is an obscure soft limestone monument to the war in the hinterlands of JoDaviess County, just north of Carroll County, in a little park that is along a back road, and that always has a cable across the driveway into it.
Black Hawk is well-known throughout Northwestern Illinois and Southwestern Wisconsin. There’s a large statue of him along Illinois Route 2, near Byron, Illinois. When I farmed east of Carthage, Illinois, in West-Central Illinois, older local residents swore that Black Hawk had been born just a little south of where I lived, but I never could pin anyone down about precisely where that was.
Because Lincoln is my destination for tomorrow (Day 15, September 15), I walked to within a couple of miles of it, but then rode back to my pickup. I do have a schedule, and I’ve decided that there’s no particular virtue in getting a day ahead of it.
I might add that, though I carried a rain jacket on my luggage rack today, the predicted rain did not fall on me, and for that I am grateful.
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