Chapter V: The First Years of Statehood, 1818 to 1830

The Indian and Land Questions.

One of the most important cessions of land in Illinois ever made by the Indians was that made by the Kickapoo in 1819, of the vast region lying north of the parallel of 39—a little north of the mouth of the Illinois River, and southeast of the Illinois River.(324) Settlement had been crowding hard upon this region and many squatters anxiously awaited the survey and sale of the land, especially of that in the famous Sangamon country. In northern Illinois settlement was still retarded by the presence of Indians. In 1825, the Menominee, Kaskaskia, Sauk and Fox, Potawatomi, and Chippewa tribes claimed over 5,314,000 acres of land in Illinois,(325) and there was a licensed Indian trader at Sangamo, one at the saline near the present Danville, and two on Fever River.(326) Two years later there were three such traders at Fever River, and two at Chicago,(327) and in 1827-28 there was one at Fever River with a capital of about $2000.(328) In February, 1829, there were Indian agents at Chicago, Fort Armstrong, Kaskaskia, and Peoria, as well as others near the borders of Illinois.(329) At this time, the Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Kaskaskia, and Winnebago claimed land in the state, although only about 6000 of the more than 25,000 members of these tribes resided in the state. The eight members of the Kaskaskia tribe held a small reservation near the Kaskaskia River. Of the twenty-two hundred members of the Kickapoo tribe, which had relinquished all claim to land east of the Mississippi, about two hundred still lived on the Mackinaw River, but they were expected to move in a few weeks.(330) By a treaty of July 29, 1829, the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi ceded their claims in northern Illinois.(331) There still remained the Winnebago tribe, and not until 1833 was Illinois to be free from Indian claims.(332)

A war with the Winnebago tribe was imminent in 1827. Settlers in the northern part of the state either fled to the southward or collected at such points as Galena or Prairie du Chien. “This was a period of great suffering at Galena. The weather was inclement and two or three thousand persons driven suddenly in, with scant provisions, without ammunition or weapons encamped in the open air, or cloth tents which were but little better, were placed in a very disagreeable and critical position.”(333) The prompt action of Governor Lewis Cass, of Michigan, averted what would in all probability have been a bloody war, if prompt action had not been taken.(334)

To September 30, 1819, the record of land sales in Illinois was as follows:

Acres Unsold. Acres Sold. Price. Shawneetown 4,561,920 562,296 $1,153,897 Kaskaskia 2,188,800 407,027 1,781,773 Edwardsville 2,625,960 394,730 795,531(335)

The balances unpaid by purchasers of public lands steadily increased from 1813 to 1819 until on September 30, 1819, there was due from purchasers of land in the area of the old Northwest Territory nearly ten million dollars.(336) An increase would have resulted merely from an increased sale of public lands under the credit system, but it is also true that the difficulty of collecting the unpaid balances became so great that the government at last abolished the credit system, by the act of April 24, 1820. The act provided that after July 1, 1820, no credit whatever should be given to the purchasers of public lands; that land might be sold in either sections, half-sections, quarter-sections, or eighth-sections; that the minimum price should be reduced from two dollars to one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre; and that reverted lands should be offered at auction before being offered at private sale.(337) At least two of the provisions of this act had long been desired by Illinois in common with other frontier regions: the reduction of the minimum price and the sale in smaller tracts. Under the new law a man with one hundred dollars could buy eighty acres of land, while previously the same man would have had to pay eighty of his one hundred dollars as the first payment on one hundred and sixty acres, the smallest tract then sold. The great danger had been that the second, third, and fourth payments could not be made. In Illinois, before July 1, 1820, there had been sold 1,593,247.53 acres of the public land at an average price of about $2.02 per acre. Some of this reverted from non-payment.(338)

During the third quarter of 1820, all sales in Illinois were at the minimum price and a considerable proportion were of the minimum area. At the same time, some of the land in Ohio, and a very few tracts in Indiana, sold at a higher price, one tract in Ohio, but only one, selling for more than seven dollars per acre.(339) To October 1, 1821, the land-offices in Illinois reported:

Acres Sold. Surveyed, but Unsold. Shawneetown 592,464 2,401,936 Kaskaskia 419,898 1,615,942 Palestine 714 2,880,720 Edwardsville 437,993 2,696,727 Vandalia 7,923 2,545,677

All land in the districts of Shawneetown and Kaskaskia had been surveyed, but the remaining districts were still indefinite on the north.(340) At this time, Illinois money passed in the state at par, and the Bank of Illinois was among those whose notes were received in payment for public lands.(341)

As more and more land was opened to settlement, a new difficulty arose and became increasingly troublesome. All public land was to be entered at the same minimum price, and as a natural result, the poorest land was not taken up and settlement became widely dispersed on the best tracts of land. In December, 1824, the Illinois legislature sent a memorial to Congress portraying the evils of sparse settlement, and asking that land that had been offered for sale for five years or more might be sold at fifty cents per acre. Better roads, better markets, and better institutions were expected to result from such sales.(342) Two years later, another memorial was sent. This asked that land be offered for sale at prices graduated according to the quality of the land, suggested that the poorest land might well be donated to settlers, and declared that settlement was retarded by the high minimum price of land.(343) Governor Ninian Edwards pointed out that in 1790, Hamilton had recommended that public lands be sold at twenty cents per acre, which “was the price at which Kentucky, long afterward, sold her lands.”(344) In 1828, the Committee on Public Lands recommended that public lands unsold at public sale be first offered at one dollar per acre, and if still unsold, that the price be reduced twenty-five cents per acre each two years until sold or reduced to twenty-five cents per acre; that eighty-acre homestead claims be given to such persons as would cultivate and occupy them for five years; and that lands unsold at twenty-five cents per acre be ceded to the states in which they lay, upon payment of the cost of survey and twenty-five cents per acre. At this time, there was in Illinois 1,403,482 acres surveyed and sold; 19,684,186 acres surveyed and unsold, of the 39,000,000 acres estimated to be in the State.(345) Still another memorial from the legislature was sent to Congress in 1829. It pointed out, in strong terms, the inconvenience arising from the high price at which public land was offered for sale. Unsold public land could neither be taxed nor legally settled. It was stated that of the forty millions of acres in Illinois, little over one and one-half millions had been sold at public sales. A granting of the right of preemption, which implies the presence in the state of squatters, is suggested.(346)

The implication of the presence of squatters was well founded. When Peter Cartwright, in 1823, visited a settlement in the Sangamon country, he found it a community of squatters, on land which had been surveyed, but was not yet offered for sale. Money was hoarded up to enter land when Congress should order sales. Cartwright paid a squatter two hundred dollars for his improvement and his claim, bought some stock, and rented out the place, to which he was to remove from Kentucky the following year.(347) This squatting on surveyed land, and even on unsurveyed land, was a regular procedure. It added much to the difficulty of governing the state—hence the memorials to Congress, and hence the great significance to Illinois of an act of May 29, 1830, which gave to all settlers who had cultivated land in 1829 the right to preempt not more than one hundred and sixty acres.(348) This law was of general application. Even now the Illinois legislature sent another petition concerning preemption to Congress, because one of the provisions of the act of May, 1830, was that the plat of survey should have been filed in the land-office, and this provision debarred about one thousand Illinois squatters from the benefit of the act. A modification in their favor was desired.(349)

The land claims of the ancient settlers, as they are called in government documents, continued to occupy the attention of Congress, in a desultory way, throughout the period, but their influence upon settlement had practically ceased with the opening of the public land-offices.(350)

Among the obstacles to settlement was the holding of land by non-residents. Such lands were subject to a triple tax in case of delinquency, and when sold for taxes and costs frequently did not bring enough for that purpose, in which event they reverted to the state and the state paid the costs. Redemption, although possible, was rare.(351) In 1823, about nine thousand quarter-sections of land in the Military Tract, lying between the Illinois and the Mississippi, were advertised for sale, because of the non-payment of taxes by non-resident landholders.(352) At this time, two of the prominent men of the state who wished to dispose of a large amount of state paper, advertised that they would pay such delinquent taxes at twenty-five per cent discount.(353) In 1826, thirty-eight pages of the _Illinois Intelligencer_ were filled with a description, in double column, of lands owned by non-residents, the lands being for sale for taxes. In 1829, a similar list filled thirty-two pages.(354) Much discontent was manifested in the state on account of the laws concerning the public lands, and Governor Edwards’ message to the legislature, in 1830, elaborated a theory that all public lands belonged of right to the states in which they lay.(355)

Illinois early understood that an Illinois-Michigan canal would help to people her northern lands. This led to many efforts to secure such a waterway. In 1819 a favorable topographical report concerning the route for the proposed canal was made,(356) and in 1822 the state was authorized to construct the canal, but no tangible aid was given.(357) In 1825 the legislature petitioned Congress for a grant of the townships through which the canal would pass. A committee report of March, 1826, which was almost identical with another presented in February, 1825, pointed out that the cost of transporting a ton of merchandise from Philadelphia, New York, or Baltimore was about ninety dollars, and required from twenty to twenty-two days. The probable cost by the proposed canal, the Lakes, and the Erie Canal, from St. Louis to New York was from sixty-three to sixty-five dollars per ton, and the time from twelve to fifteen days. The canal would bind Illinois and Missouri to the North.(358) Congress received a memorial from the legislature on the same subject in January, 1827, requesting the grant of “two entire townships, along the whole course of the canal,” and declaring that markets at New Orleans fluctuated because of speculators, and that grain and goods sent from the West to the Atlantic ports by way of New Orleans was exposed to the dangers of both the southern climate and the sea.(359) A few weeks later the desired grant was made, the state being given one-half of five sections in width on each side of the canal, the United States reserving the alternate sections.(360) The canal commissioners promptly platted the original town of Chicago and sold lots at from twenty to eighty dollars each, but no immediate settlement followed the land sale, and Chicago remained for some years longer an Indian town. The prospect of having a canal doubtless had some influence upon settlement, but at the close of 1830 the actual construction of the canal was still a thing of the future. By the close of 1828, Congress had donated to Illinois, for various purposes, chiefly for schools and internal improvements, 1,346,000 acres.(361)

The salt springs had been vested in the state of Illinois with the provision that no part of the reservations should be sold. Large reservations were made at the Saline River salt works and at the Vermilion saline near Danville, the object being to reserve a supply of wood for the making of salt. Upon the discovery of coal near the springs the state was permitted to sell not more than thirty thousand acres of the Saline River reservation.(362)

Illinois as a landowner sometimes mingled church and state. The original proprietors of Alton having donated one hundred lots, one-half for the support of the gospel, and one-half for the support of a public school, the state vested the donated lots in the trustees of the town, upon its incorporation in 1821. A similar donation made by the proprietors of Mt. Carmel was confirmed in the same manner.(363) The Cumberland Presbyterians having built a church on a school section, the state provided that for ninety-nine years the building should be used as a schoolhouse also, the school being under the joint direction of the trustees of the township and the church society.(364)

The receipts for public lands in 1828 and 1829, respectively, were:

1828 1829. Kaskaskia $ 4,639.82 $ 10,503.99 Shawneetown 7,250.28 16,058.79 Edwardsville 23,536.49 38,001.35 Vandalia 4,489.71 24,258.13 Palestine 25,671.62 59,026.81 Springfield 56,507.63 108,175.47 $122,095.55 $256,024.54(365)

The receipts for 1828 were for 96,092.91 acres; of 1829, for 196,324.92 acres.(366) From October 1, 1829, to September 30, 1830, sales, receipts, and prices were:

Acres. Average Price per Acre. Illinois 291,401.28 $364,369.87 $1.2504 Indiana 413,253.63 521,715.13 1.2624 Alabama 233,369.27 291,715.20 1.25 Missouri 182,929.63 228,748.12 1.2505 Michigan 106,201.28 132,751.68 1.25 Ohio 160,182.14 201,923.50 1.2606 Mississippi 103,795.61 130,475.87 1.257(367)

The northward movement of population in Illinois is well indicated by the figures for 1828 and 1829. The Indian barrier was being pushed back, and the Sangamon country, with its land-office at Springfield, was a favorite place for settlement. The rapid increase in the amount of land sold is also striking. As the third decade of the century closed Indiana was the favorite place for frontier settlement. The sales of public lands in Ohio were diminishing. A prophetic glance would have seen that as the ever-shifting frontier passed westward Illinois was to overtake and then to far surpass Indiana in number of settlers.

The period from 1818 to 1830 saw the Indian title to a great fertile tract of land in Illinois extinguished, the price of all public lands lowered and the land offered for sale in smaller tracts, the right of preemption granted to squatters who had settled before 1830, considerable grants of land made to the state for internal improvements, the great salt spring reservations reduced. These changes did much to make Illinois a more attractive place for settlement. When a committee of workingmen in Wheeling, Virginia, made a report, in October, 1830, on a method of escaping from the ills of workingmen, they presented an elaborate plan for buying land and forming a colony in Illinois.(368) The experience of the squatter who settled with four or five sows for breeders and in four years or less drove forty-two fat hogs to market and sold them for $135, with which he bought eighty acres of land and paid his debts, was not a rare one.(369)

As 1830 closed there were still problems connected with the land to solve. The Indian question persisted, non-resident landholders were troublesome, and the state would still seek grants for internal improvements, but none of these was to be long a serious impediment to settlement.

The Government and Its Representatives, 1818 to 1830.

In some respects the character of the state government of Illinois shows the character of the settlers. The nativity of the governors and the congressmen of the state indicates that the South was the origin of a majority of the population. Before the end of 1830 there had been no northern-born representative of the state in the national House of Representatives; the first northern-born senator was chosen in the last month of 1825, and the first northern governor in 1830.(370) Pierre Menard, a French Canadian, the first lieutenant-governor, came to Illinois in 1790, and can not fairly be cited as a type of the French descendants of the first white settlers of Illinois.(371) As a matter of fact, the French element was not a political factor of importance. Nor is it true that all southerners were pro-slavery, for the most noted anti-slavery governor of Illinois, and her governor during the Civil War, were from the South, while her first northern senator was pro-slavery. The great influx of immigrants from New England and the rest of the North did not come until after 1830. It was retarded, after the opening of the Erie Canal (1825), by the Winnebago and Black Hawk wars, and did not reach its height until the latter war had closed and the Indian claims to land in northern Illinois had been extinguished. Immigration from the northern states increased proportionally, however, after 1820.

Illinois men in Congress give a number of indications of the feeling of the people on questions having a more or less intimate relation to settlement. Constant and insistent demands for more land-offices, more post-roads, more pensions, donations of land for poor settlers, grants of land for internal improvements, the right of preëmption for squatters, and the reduction of the price of public lands show that the frontier was in favor of a liberal governmental expenditure.(372) Congressmen from Illinois, without exception, favored the tariff bills of 1824 and 1828.(373) In 1828, the only senator from Illinois who voted on the question, voted for the bill abolishing imprisonment for debt on processes issuing from a United States court.(374) Since Illinois early abolished such imprisonment, it is interesting to note that three hundred and thirty-eight persons were committed to the Essex county jail in New Jersey, for debt, in the year ending April 1, 1823, of whom one hundred and forty-one were in close confinement. The aggregate of debt was fifty-five thousand dollars.(375)

Within the state one of the phenomena which has characterized frontier regions appeared about the year 1821. A desperate gang of immigrants had robbed and plundered until, after a most notable robbery, “a public meeting was held, and among other things, a company was formed, consisting of ten law-abiding men of well-known courage, who bound themselves together, under the name of the Regulators of the Valley, to rid the country of horse thieves and robbers.... A regular constitution was drawn up and subscribed to.” After the leader of the desperadoes had been killed the remainder fled.(376) A frontier condition is indicated also by the fact that when Sangamon county was formed, on January 30, 1821, a special law provided that housekeepers in the county should perform the duties and receive the privileges of freeholders. The same provision was made for Morgan county two years later. As land sales in the Sangamon country, in which these counties lay, did not begin until November, 1823, these laws probably resulted from the formation of counties whose entire population consisted of squatters.(377) The persistence of wolf bounties bears testimony to continued wild surroundings.(378) In 1829 alien Irish, and presumably all other aliens, could vote at all elections. An election law of this year provided that voting should be by the voter’s approaching the bar, in the election room, and naming in an audible voice the persons for whom he voted, or, if the voter preferred, by delivering to the judges a ballot which should be read aloud by them, the alternative being for the benefit of illiterate voters. Voting had previously been by ballot.(379)

Although frontier conditions obtained, there were evidences of their gradual amelioration. A law of 1823 provided that counterfeiting, which, in the territorial period, had been punishable by death, should be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, whipping with not fewer than one hundred nor more than two hundred lashes, imprisonment for not more than twelve months, and being rendered forever infamous.(380) The state established a system of common schools to be supported, in part, by the state, in 1825; but in 1829 the sections of the act which provided that two per cent of all money received into the state treasury, and five-sixths of the interest of the school fund, should be for the support of public schools, were repealed,(381) taxation for such a purpose not being then in accord with public sentiment. A mechanic’s lien law, passed in 1825, provided that in case of a contract between a landowner and a mechanic, the mechanic should have a lien upon the product of his labor for three months, after which the lien lapsed unless suit had been commenced. Three years later an unsuccessful attempt to secure such a law was made in New York.(382)

Two accounts on the records of the state are of sufficient interest to give at length. The first gives the amount of money received into the treasury during the two years ending December 27, 1822:

“The amount paid into the treasury by the different sheriffs
within the two years ending as aforesaid, is $ 7,121.09

The amount of a judgment obtained against the former sheriff of
Randolph [County] for non-resident tax of 1818, is 147.14

The amount from non-residents for the two preceding years,
including back taxes, redemptions, interest, &c., is 38,437.75

The amount from non-residents’ bank stock, is 97.77

The amount from the Saline on the Ohio, is 10,563.09

The amount from the Saline on Muddy river, is 200.00

The amount from the sale of Lots in the town of Vandalia, is
5659.86

Total amount of money paid at the Treasury between the 1st of
January, 1821, and the 27th of December, 1822, $62,226.70”

The balance in the treasury was $33,661.11, but Governor Edwards, in his message of December 2, 1828, reported a state indebtedness of $44,140.03 and taxes in Illinois as precisely eight times as high as those in Kentucky which were payable in the same kind of currency.(383) The rage for internal improvements was partly responsible, and for this in turn the wide dispersion of the settlements in Illinois, caused by the fact that all public lands were offered at the same minimum price and that the prairies were in large measure shunned, furnishes a partial explanation.

The second account of the state, above referred to, shows that in 1822 it cost $151.82 to make a trip from Vandalia to Shawneetown and return, and one from Vandalia to Kaskaskia and return, to convey to the capital some money paid by the United States on the three per cent fund due the state. The former trip occupied fourteen days, the latter eight days.(384)

Governor Cass’ protection of Galena during the Winnebago War of 1827 may have been influenced by its uncertain governmental status. In 1828 miners in what is now southwestern Wisconsin voted for members of Congress from Illinois, and in 1829 Galena was enumerated among the thriving towns of Huron or Ouisconsin Territory. November 29, 1828, one hundred and eighty-seven inhabitants of Galena and vicinity sent a memorial to Congress asking that a separate territory be formed, the territory to be bounded on the south by a line drawn due west from the southern point of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, and by the northern boundary of Missouri. The memorial began: “The undersigned, inhabitants of that portion of the ‘Territory Northwest of the Ohio,’ lying north of a due east and west line drawn through the southernmost end of Lake Michigan, and west of that lake to the British possessions, comprehending the mining district, more generally known as the Fever River Lead Mines.” The petitioners referred to the violation of the Ordinance of 1787, and also stated that they were subject to two separate governments, each some hundreds of miles from them, and each unacquainted with their needs. The petition was read and tabled.(385) It is true that the situation of Galena was peculiarly difficult. No mail could be carried along the rude trail from Peoria to Galena during the wet season, and when the Illinois legislature, seeking to give relief, passed a bill for laying out a road between the “Illinois settlements and Galena,” it was vetoed by the governor and council because the road would pass through lands of the United States and of the Indians. When the river was frozen provisions were very high, and mail was sent forward from Fort Edwards once a month. These conditions were more aggravating as the number of inhabitants increased, and in 1827, notwithstanding the trouble with the Winnebago Indians, there were about four thousand men at Galena, and they mined about fifteen times as much lead as had been mined in 1823. In January, 1828, a congressional committee reported favorably on a proposition to open a road to Galena.(386) In a letter written one year later by the delegate from Michigan Territory, to the committee on territories, the suggestion is made that a new territory, to be called Huron, should be formed, because the region at Galena was said to have received hundreds of settlers during the preceding summer and to have at the time of writing ten thousand or more, and government in the lead region could not be properly carried on from Detroit, which was eight hundred or one thousand miles distant, by the routes commonly traveled. The legislature of Michigan was said to be compelled to meet in the summer in order to enable delegates to attend and that was the busy time at the mines.(387) A congressional act of February, 1829, provided for the laying out of a village at Galena. The plat was not to exceed one section of land, no lot was to be larger than one-fourth of an acre, unimproved lots were to be sold at not less than five dollars, improved lots were to be graded, without reference to their improvements, into three grades, to sell at the rate of twenty-five, fifteen, and ten dollars, respectively, per acre, the occupants having the right of preëmption.(388) Another mode of relief, which the inhabitants were working out for themselves, is described in a Galena paper of September 14, 1829: “Mr. Soulard’s wagon and mule team returned, a few days since, from Chicago, near the southernmost bend of Lake Michigan; to which place it had been taken across the country, with a load of lead. This is the first wagon that has ever passed from the Mississippi River to Chicago. The route taken from the mines was, to Ogee’s ferry, on Rock River, eighty miles; thence an east course sixty miles, to the Missionary establishment on the Fox River of the Illinois; and thence a north-easterly course sixty miles to Chicago, as travelled, two hundred miles. The wagon was loaded with one ton and a half of lead. The trip out was performed in eleven, and the return trip in eight days. The lead was taken, by water, from Chicago to Detroit. Should a road be surveyed and marked, on the best ground, and the shortest distance, a trip could be performed in much less time. And if salt could be obtained at Chicago, from the New York Salt Works, it would be a profitable and advantageous trade.”(389)

As the life history of an individual recapitulates the history of the development of a species, so does the history of Galena, in respect to the difficulties of its early settlers, recapitulate the history of the several parts of the United States in their early days. As Illinois had sent petitions for relief to the governments of the Northwest Territory, of Indiana Territory, and of the United States, so did Galena send similar petitions to the governments of Illinois, of Michigan Territory, and of the United States. In each case the prayers of the petitioners were but partially granted. In each case the difficulties from Indians, lack of facilities for commerce, distance from the seat of government, inability to secure lands, were gradually mitigated until the steady onward sweep of settlement engulfed the outlying region and it ceased to be the frontier, and turned its energies to other questions—different, although probably as difficult. Galena, even at the close of 1830, was a frontier region on the outskirts of Illinois settlement.

Transportation.

Transportation was long a difficult problem, although it became gradually less so. Travel by either water or land was slow and difficult. When a party of about one hundred men, conducted by Colonel R. M. Johnson, went, in six or eight boats, from St. Louis to the site of the present Galena, in 1819, to make an arrangement with the Indians which would permit the whites to mine lead, the upward voyage occupied some twenty days.(390) Doubtless the journey of Edward Coles from Albemarle county, Virginia, to Illinois, in 1819, was typical of that of the better class of immigrants. At the Virginia homestead, slaves, horses and wagons were prepared for the long journey. A trusty slave was put in charge of the caravan of emigrant wagons and started out on the long journey over the Alleghanies to Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Mr. Coles started a few days later, overtook the party one day’s journey from Brownsville, and upon arriving at that place bought two flat-bottomed boats, upon which negroes, horses and wagons, with their owner, were embarked. The drunken pilot was discharged at Pittsburg, and Coles acted as captain and pilot on the voyage of some six hundred miles down the Ohio to a point below Louisville, whence, the boats being sold, the journey was continued by land to Edwardsville, Illinois.(391)

April 5, 1823, a party of forty-three started from Cincinnati in a keel-boat, arriving at Galena, June 1, 1823. Twenty-two days were required to stem the flooded Mississippi from the mouth of the Ohio to St. Louis, and twenty of these were rainy days.(392) In 1822 the English settlement in Edwards county sent several flat-boats loaded with corn, flour, beef, pork, sausage, etc., to New Orleans.(393) Improvement of the Wabash was entrusted to an incorporated company in 1825, and several years earlier a canal across the peninsula at the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi was contemplated.(394)

Many immigrants came overland. The following is typical: “In the year 1819 a party of six men, and families of three of them, started from Casey County, Kentucky, for Illinois.... The first three were young unmarried men, the last three had their wives and children with them. They came in an old-fashioned Tennessee wagon, that resembled a flat-boat on wheels. The younger readers of this sketch can form but a faint idea of the curious and awkward appearance of one of these old fashioned wagons, covered over with white sheeting, the front and rear bows set at an angle of forty-five degrees to correspond with the ends of the body, and then the enormous quantity of freight that could be stowed away in the hole would astonish even a modern omnibus driver! Women, children, beds, buckets, tubs, old fashioned chairs, including all the household furniture usually used by our log-cabin ancestors; a chicken coop, with ‘two or three hens and a jolly rooster for a start,’ tied on behind, while, under the wagon, trotted a full-blood, long-eared hound, fastened by a short rope to the hind axle. Without much effort on your part, you can, in imagination, see this party on the road, one of the men in the saddle on the near horse, driving; the other two, perhaps on horseback, slowly plodding along in the rear of the wagon, while the boys ‘walked ahead,’ with rifles on their shoulders ‘at half-mast,’ on the lookout for squirrels, turkey, deer, or ‘_Injin_.’ ”(395) Muddy roads sometimes caused emigrants to make long detours in the hope of finding better ones, and if the roads became impassable water transportation might be resorted to when the locality permitted.(396) The fear of breaking down was omnipresent and danger from professional bandits(397) was not lacking. There was also danger of being lost on the enormous prairies in Illinois.(398)

The best road from North Carolina to Indiana, for loaded wagons, was that which crossed the Blue Ridge at Ward’s Gap, in Western Virginia, led through East Tennessee and Kentucky, and reached the Ohio River at Cincinnati,(399) and this was a part of the route for some of the Illinois immigrants. Illustrations of the moving instinct, the ever-present desire to go frontierward, were constantly appearing.(400) Although the greater proportion of immigrants came by either wagon or boat, some came on horseback and some on foot.(401) One pioneer wrote: “My mother was a delicate woman and in the hope of prolonging her life, my father, in 1830, broke up his home at Windsor, Connecticut, and started overland for Jacksonville, Illinois. Most of the household furniture was shipped by water, _via_ New Orleans and did not reach its destination until a year afterwards, six months after our arrival. The wagon for my mother was made strong and wide, drawn by three horses, so that a bed could be put in it and most of the way she lay in this bed. Most of the time the drive was pleasant but over the mountains it was rough and over the national corduroy road of Indiana, it was perfectly horrible.”(402) A journey was made in 1827 in about four weeks over the same route that it had taken the same traveler seven and a half weeks to cover in 1822.(403)

Within the state changes in facilities for transportation were constant. From Shawneetown to St. Louis, by way of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, passed the great western road. There was also a road from Shawneetown, by way of Carmi, to Birkbeck’s settlement in Edwards county.(404) Frontier roads to different places seem to have been designated by different numbers of notches cut in the trees along the wayside.(405) New roads were in constant demand. In February, 1821, the legislature authorized the building of a turnpike road, one hundred feet wide, from the Mississippi, opposite St. Louis, across the American Bottom to the Bluffs. Toll was to be regulated by the county commissioners, but it must be not less than twelve and one-half cents for a man and horse, twenty-five cents for a one-horse wagon or carriage, six and one-fourth cents for each wheel and each horse of other wagons and carriages, six and one-fourth cents for each single horse or head of cattle, and two cents for each hog or sheep. If at any time the county should pay the cost of the road, plus six per cent, the county should become the owner.(406) A traveler writing late in 1822 says that a public road had just been opened between Vandalia and Springfield.(407) During the same year, Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, one of the most active of the agents of the American Fur Company in Illinois, established a direct path or track from Iroquois Post to Danville. In 1824 this path, which was known as “Hubbard’s Trail,” was extended northward to Chicago, and southward to a point about one hundred and fifty miles southwest of Danville. Along this trail trading-posts were established at intervals of forty or fifty miles. The southern extremity of the trail was Blue Point, in Effingham county.(408) This became the regularly traveled route between points connected by it.

Springfield was the northern terminus of the mail route early in 1823, and the next year Sangamon county, in which the village lay, was almost entirely without ferries, bridges, or roads.(409) In 1830 mail was carried between Vincennes and St. Louis thrice a week; between Maysville and St. Louis, and between Belleville and St. Charles twice a week. No point in Illinois, not on one of these routes, received mail oftener than once a week. There was at this time a mail route from Peoria to Galena.(410) The legislatures of Indiana and Illinois petitioned Congress for an appropriation to improve the mail route from Louisville, Kentucky, to St. Louis, Missouri. The length of that part of the route which lay between Vincennes and St. Louis was one hundred and sixty miles, but a more direct route, recently surveyed by authority of the legislature of Illinois, reduced the distance to one hundred and forty-five miles. The distance between Vincennes and St. Louis was made up of about one-fourth of timber land and three-fourths of prairies, from five to twenty miles across. “The settlements are therefore scattered, and far between, and confined to the vicinity of the timbered land. More than nineteen-twentieths of the land, over which the road passes, is the property of the Federal Government. To make the necessary causeways and bridges, and to keep the road in a proper state of repair, is beyond the capacity of the people who reside upon it.” Another writer says of the route: “It must, for many years, be the channel of communication, through which the Government shall transmit, and receive, all its intelligence relative to the mines in the region of Galena, and Prairie Du Chien, the Military Posts of the Upper Mississippi, Missouri, and their tributary streams, and the whole northwestern Indian frontier.”(411)

Galena remained much isolated. A man who had horses and cattle, purchased in southern Illinois and driven to Galena, by way of Springfield and Peoria, in 1823, says that there was no settlement between Peoria and Fever River. A year before, a traveler who went from St. Louis to Galena, on horseback, arrived in time to assist in completing the second cabin in the place.(412) Two travelers who walked from Upper Alton to Galena, in January and February, 1826, had to camp out several nights, because no residence was in reach. Much of the way no trail existed.(413) About 1827 it was common for men to go with teams of four yoke of oxen, and strong canvas-covered wagons from southern Illinois to the lead regions. In those regions they spent the summer in hauling from the mines to the furnaces or from the furnaces to the place of shipment, usually Galena, and taking back to the mines a load of supplies. In the fall the teamsters returned to their homes, sometimes, in the early days, taking a load of lead to St. Louis. These men lived in their wagons, and cooked their own food. The oxen lived by browsing at night.(414)

Transportation rates can be only approximately given, because they varied with the condition of the weather or of the roads, and were frequently agreed upon by a special bargain. In 1817 steamboats are said to have descended the Ohio and the Mississippi at the rate of ten miles per hour, and to have charged passengers six cents per mile. Freight, by steamboat, from New Orleans to Shippingport (Falls of the Ohio), and thence by boats to Zanesville, was about $6.50 per 100 pounds.(415) It took about one month to make the trip from New Orleans to Shawneetown—June 6 to July 10 in a specific case. Nine-tenths of the trade was still carried on in the old style—by flat-boats, barges, pirogues, etc.(416) In December, 1817, freight from Shawneetown to Louisville was $1.12-½ per hundred weight; to New Orleans, $1.00; to Pittsburg, $3.50; to Shawneetown from Pittsburg, $1.00; from Louisville, $0.37-½; from New Orleans, $4.50. The great difference between the rates up stream and those down stream was due to the difficulty of going against the current.(417) Cobbett estimated that Birkbeck’s settlement, fifty miles north of Shawneetown, could be reached from the eastern seaboard for five pounds sterling per person.(418) In 1819, the passenger rate, by steamboat, from New Orleans to Shawneetown, was $110; the freight rate $0.04-½ to $0.06 per pound, the high charges being attributed to a lack of competition, which the many new boats then building were expected to remedy.(419) A party of nine people with somewhat more than six thousand pounds of luggage, wishing to start from Baltimore for Illinois, in July, 1819, learned that the water was so low that large boats could with difficulty pass from Pittsburg to Wheeling. They accordingly went from Baltimore to Wheeling, a distance of two hundred and eighty miles, by land. They had two wagons with six horses and a driver to each wagon. The price for transportation was three hundred and fifty dollars. At Wheeling a contract was made for transportation to Louisville, six hundred miles distance. For this, fifty dollars was paid, the passengers agreeing to help navigate the boat. At Louisville an ark was bought for twenty-five dollars, and two men were hired for eighteen dollars and their board, to take the party to Shawneetown, about three hundred miles distant. At Shawneetown the master of a keel-boat was engaged to take the luggage of six thousand pounds to a point about eleven miles from Birkbeck’s settlement, for 37-½ cents per hundred pounds. The travelers proceeded on foot. The time occupied in the journey was: From Baltimore to Wheeling, sixteen days; from Wheeling to Shawneetown, thirty-eight days; from Shawneetown to the Birkbeck settlement, four days.(420) A traveler in Illinois, in 1819, said that the usual price of land carriage was fifty cents per hundred pounds for each twenty miles; sometimes higher, never lower, and that it would not pay to have corn transported twenty miles.(421) In 1820, the charge for carrying either baggage or persons from Baltimore to Wheeling was reported as from five to seven dollars per hundred weight. Persons wishing to travel cheaply had their luggage transported while they walked.(422)

In 1823 the following passenger rates, by steamboat, were quoted: From Cincinnati to New Orleans, $25.00; to Louisville, $4.00; to Pittsburg, $15.00; to Wheeling, $14.00; from New Orleans to Cincinnati, $50.00; from Louisville to Cincinnati, $6.00; from Pittsburg to Cincinnati, $12.00; from Wheeling to Cincinnati, $10.00. The time quoted for passage up stream was never less than twice that for passage down stream.(423) Early in 1825 the _Louisiana Gazette_ (presumably of New Orleans) reported that a steamboat had made the 2200 miles from Pittsburg in sixteen days,(424) and a few weeks later another steamer arrived at Shippingport, at the Falls of the Ohio about two miles below Louisville, thirteen days from New Orleans, this time including three days detention from the breaking of a crank.(425) Rates quoted in 1826, per one hundred pounds, were: From Pittsburg to St. Louis, in keel-boats, $1.62-½; to Nashville, $1.50; to Louisville, $0.75; to Cincinnati, $0.62-½; to Maysville, $0.50; to Marietta, $0.40; to Wheeling, $0.18-3/4; in wagons, from Pittsburg to Philadelphia, $1.00 to $1.12-½; from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, $3.00; from Philadelphia to Wheeling, $3.50.(426) A Columbus, Ohio, editor declared that it required thirty days and cost $5.00 per hundred to transport goods from Philadelphia to Columbus, while it required but twenty days and $2.50 to transport from New York.(427) No explanation was given, but the most probable one is the opening of the Erie Canal. Illinois buyers could, of course, take advantage of the cheaper rate as well as the inhabitants of Columbus. The freight schedule agreed upon by the owners, masters, and agents of steamboats in July, 1830, was, per 100 pounds, as follows: Pittsburg to Cincinnati, $0.45; Pittsburg to Louisville, $0.50; Wheeling to Cincinnati, $0.40; Wheeling to Louisville, $0.45; Cincinnati to Louisville, $0.12-½; in the reverse direction rates were the same, except that the rate from Louisville to Cincinnati was $0.16. Freight on pork, from Cincinnati to Louisville was $0.20 per barrel, and on flour and light (probably meaning empty) barrels, $0.15 per barrel. The schedule rates were not, however, generally adhered to, many boats carrying freight at from 2-½ to 5 cents lower than the quoted rate.(428) At this time there were 213 steamboats in use in western waters—an increase of about three-fold since 1820.(429) Improved transportation caused a better market price for produce in the West. In 1819, at Cincinnati, flour sold at $1.37-½ per barrel, corn at from $0.10 to $0.12 per bushel, and pork at $0.10-½ per pound,(430) while in 1830, in the same market, flour from wagons sold at $2.65 per barrel, or from store at $3.00; corn at $0.18 to $0.20, and pork at $0.05 per pound ($10.00 to $10.50 per barrel).(431) The influence of improved transportation on emigration is obvious. In regard to steamboat navigation it should be noted that in 1817 rates up-stream were more than three times as high as rates down-stream, in 1823 the former were less than twice the latter, and in 1830 the two were about equal. During the same period the time of up-stream passage was diminished more than one-half. Steamboats had not driven out the ruder crafts, but more and more use was being made of the more expeditious means of transportation, and its effect on the future economic activity of the West could already be seen.

Naturally the difference in price of the same commodity in two different markets was dependent in large measure on the ease or difficulty of transportation. In the latter part of 1817, corn was $0.24 to $0.30 and wheat $0.75, in Illinois, while corn was $0.50 and wheat $0.75 at Cincinnati.(432) In 1825 wheat was worth hardly $0.25 per bushel, while it sold for $0.80 to $0.87-½ in Petersburg, Virginia, and flour was $6.00 per barrel at Charleston, South Carolina, and was scarce even at that price in Nashville, Tennessee. At the same time corn sold for from $0.08 to $0.10 in Illinois, and for $1.75 to $2.00 in Petersburg, Virginia.(433) In 1826 wheat sold in Illinois at $0.37-½, and in England at $2.00 (nine shillings).(434) In 1829 flour was scarce at Galena. A supply from the more southern settlements in Illinois sold at $8.00 per barrel, and the farmers were urged to bring more.(435) This was in October. In November flour was quoted at Galena at $9.00 to $10.00 per barrel, while it sold at St. Louis for $4.50 to $5.50. In December, Cincinnati flour was from $10.00 to $10.50 and Illinois flour from $8.00 to $8.50, at Galena, whereas in the succeeding August they were $5.00 and $4.00, respectively. In November, 1829, the one article of food that was quoted as cheaper at Galena than at St. Louis was potatoes. They were $0.25 per bushel, at Galena, and from $0.37-½ to $0.50 at St. Louis. Butter was $0.25 to $0.37-½ at Galena, and $0.12-½ to $0.20 at St. Louis; corn, $0.50 at Galena, and $0.25 to $0.31 at St. Louis; beef, $0.03-½ to $0.04-½ at Galena, and $0.01-½ to $0.02 at St. Louis; whisky, $0.62-½ per gallon at Galena, and $0.30 to $0.33 at St. Louis.(436)

Life of the People.

Of the 13,635 persons who were following some occupation in Illinois in 1820, nearly 91 per cent (12,395) were engaged in agriculture.(437) To this pursuit the state was naturally well adapted. One of the most observant of German travelers in America wrote that the meaning of “fertile land” was very different in this region from its meaning in Germany. In America fertile land of the first class required no fertilizer for the first century and was too rich for wheat during the first decade, while fertile land of the second class needed no fertilizer during the first twelve to twenty years of its cultivation. Bottom-lands belonged to the first class.(438) The prairies remained unappreciated by the Americans, although some foreign farmers preferred to settle in Illinois, because there they could avoid having to clear land, and could raise a crop the first year, while coal could serve as fuel,(439) and a ditch and bank fence, requiring little wood, could be constructed, or a hedge could be grown.(440) A traveler of 1819 speaks of one of the largest prairies as not well adapted to cultivation, because of the scarcity of wood, and in the fall of 1825 there was but one house on the way from Paris to Springfield, leading across eighty miles of a prairie ninety miles in length.(441)

It was easy to obtain land. After 1820 it could be bought from the government of the United States at $1.25 per acre, it could be rented—sometimes for one peck of corn per acre per year(442)—, or the claim of a squatter could be purchased. When Peter Cartwright moved from Kentucky to Illinois in 1824, he gave as reasons for moving the fact that he had six children and but one hundred and fifty acres of land, and that Kentucky land was high and rising in value; the increase of a disposition in the South to justify slavery; the distinction in Kentucky between young people reared without working and those who worked; the danger that his four daughters might marry into slave families; and the need of preachers in the new country.(443) The land being obtained, the first cultivation was difficult. Writers often give the idea that after a year or two the land which had been heavily timbered was left free from trees, stumps, or roots, but many a pioneer plowed for twenty years among the stumps. Stump fields are today no novelty in Illinois, and farming has not retrograded. Usually the settler’s first need was a crop, and in order to hasten its production the trees were girdled, a process which might either precede or follow the planting, according to the time of year in which the immigrant arrived. If prairie land was plowed six horses, or their equivalent of power in oxen, were required for the first breaking, and a summer’s fallow usually followed in order to allow the roots to decay. In 1819 five dollars per acre was paid for the first plowing of the prairie, and three or four dollars for the second.(444)

Agricultural products exhibited considerable variety, although corn was the chief article raised, because it furnished food for man and beast, it gave a large yield, and it was more easily harvested than wheat. Wheat was raised without any great degree of care as to its culture, being frequently sowed upon ground that was poorly prepared, and being threshed in a most wasteful manner. Both wheat and flour were exported. Flour-mills, often of a rude sort, were found at inconveniently long distances from each other. Ferdinand Ernst, traveling in 1819, found a turbine wheel at the mill of Mr. Jarrott, a few miles from St. Louis, and mentioned the fact as a peculiar feature.(445) Some of the settlers in Sangamon county had to go sixty miles to mill in 1824.(446) In 1830 the first flour mill in northern Illinois was erected on Fox River. It was operated by the same power that ran a saw-mill, and the millstones were boulders, laboriously dressed by hand.(447) Tobacco of excellent quality was grown, and sometimes formed an article of export.(448) Cotton was an important article for home consumption. In the early years of the state hopes were entertained that cotton might become an article of export, but it was found that the crop required so much labor as to make raising it in large quantities unprofitable. It was after 1830, however, that it ceased to be cultivated in the state. It was raised at least as far north as the present Danville, about one hundred and twenty-five miles south of Chicago.(449) A woman whose parents moved to Sangamon county in 1819 says that when in that county they raised, picked, spun, and wove their own cotton. The children had to seed the cotton before the fire in the long winter evenings. The importance of cotton as a factor in inducing immigration may have been considerable.(450) Large quantities of castor oil were made in the state from home-grown castor beans.(451) Vegetables were large, although not always of good flavor.(452) Peaches, apples, pears, quinces and cherries were cultivated successfully, while grapes, plums, crabapples, persimmons, mulberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries grew wild.(453) An agricultural society was formed in 1819, a chief purpose being to rid the state of stagnant water.(454)

It is not easy to exaggerate the simplicity of the farming of pioneer times. When one reads that in 1817 a log cabin of two rooms could be built for from $50.00 to $70.00; a frame house, ten by fourteen feet, for $575.00 to $665.00; a log kitchen for $31.00 to $35.50; a log stable for $31.00 to $40.00; a barn for $80.00 to $97.75; a fence for $0.25 per rod, and a prairie ditch for $0.29 to $0.44 per rod; that a strong wagon cost $160.00; that a log house, eighteen by sixteen feet, was made by contract for $20, and ceiled and floored with sawn boards for $10 more; that a cow and calf cost $12.00 to $16.00, and a breeding sow, $2.00 or $3.00; that laborers received $0.75 per day without board, and a man and two horses $1.00 per day; and that various other useful articles could be procured at certain prices, care is needed in order to avoid the conclusion that an immigrant must have had several dollars, if not a few hundreds of them. This need for care is increased by the fact that the most detailed statistical data for early Illinois is given by Birkbeck or his visitors, and is applicable to the English settlement in Edwards county—a settlement with enough unique features to make the data almost more of an obstacle than a help. As a matter of fact, many immigrants before 1820 had only enough money to make the first payment on their land ($80.00), or after July 1, 1820, only enough to buy the minimum tract offered for sale ($100.00), while in both periods hundreds had not even as much money as $80.00 or $100.00, and had to become squatters. A log house, and practically all of the first houses were of logs, was usually built without the expenditure of one cent in cash, being erected by the family which was to occupy it, or, if neighbors were within reach, on the “frolic” system. Ceilings and floors were both rare, and if a floor existed it was usually made of puncheons. The number of pioneers who actually paid as much as $31.00 for a log stable must have been small indeed. First fences were often of brush, or brush and logs, and many times crops were raised unfenced. Territorial laws prohibited allowing stock to run at large during the crop season. An immigrant often brought his cow and sow, and if not he either did without, which in the latter case was small privation in a region almost crowded with game, or secured the desired animals by barter or by working for a few days. Men frequently traded work, but the payment of cash wages was rare, the cheapness of land and the ease of securing a living leaving small inducement to anyone to become a day laborer;(455) while for the same reason those who were professional laborers were often of an undesirable type.(456) Foreigners were sometimes shocked at the utter carelessness of Illinois farmers. A soil of great fertility, a region so abundantly supplied with game and wild products as to make it almost possible to live from the forest alone, combined with a lack of efficient means of transportation, made such a temptation to a life of idle ease as many pioneers did not resist. Be it remembered, also, that although towns, retail trade, and export trade had begun in Illinois by 1830, these changes were not simultaneous throughout the state. As 1830 closed Illinois still had squatters many miles from a mill, it still had Indians, it still had unbridged streams, it still had regions far from a market—in a word, it had still persisting in some part of its wide extent each of the ills that had at various times confronted it in respect to personal danger and lack of inducements to farmers. The minority of really progressive farmers overcame the difficulties confronting them by raising cattle or hogs and driving them to distant markets, the price received being almost clear profit, or by constructing their own boats and shipping their produce.(457)

Although the great majority of the population of Illinois was engaged in agriculture, there were salt works in the southeast and lead mines in the northwest. The salt industry was important. Far the greater part of the salt made in the state was made at the Gallatin county saline, near Shawneetown. In 1819 the indefinite statement was made that these springs furnished between 200,000 and 300,000 bushels of salt annually, the salt being sold at the works at from fifty to seventy-five cents per bushel.(458) In 1822, the price of salt in Illinois was reported to have fallen from $1.25 to $0.50, because of the discovery of copious and strong salt wells.(459) The next year a strong well was reported twenty miles east of Carlyle.(460) In 1825, a visitor to the Vermilion county saline found twenty kettles in operation, producing about one hundred bushels of salt per week.(461) In 1828, an official report of the superintendent of the Gallatin county saline stated that about 100,000 bushels of salt was made annually, and sold at from $0.30 to $0.50 per bushel. The lessees paid $2,160.50 rent during the year.(462) In 1830, the salt works in Gallatin county had a capital of $50,000; a product of from 100,000 to 130,000 bushels, selling at from $0.40 to $0.50; and three hundred employees. The saline in Vermilion county had a capital of $3500; a product of 3000 to 4000 bushels, selling at $1.25 to $1.50 per bushel; and eight employees. The works in Jackson county produced 3000 to 4000 bushels, selling at $0.75 to $1.00; and had from six to eight employees. The difference in price is noteworthy as indicating what must have been the difficulty of transporting salt from Gallatin county to either Vermilion or Jackson counties. At the Gallatin county works fuel was becoming scarce and water had to be carried some distance in pipes, thus increasing the cost of production. At the springs in Indiana salt was $1.25 per bushel, and in Kentucky it was $0.50 to $1.00. The states of New York, Virginia, Massachusetts and Ohio, respectively, produced more salt than did Illinois.(463)

The lead industry at Galena was still in its infancy, notwithstanding the fact that the richness of the mines was early known.(464) In 1822, a number of persons went to Galena from Sangamon county.(465) For some years it was a common practice to go to the mines in the summer and return to the older settlements for the winter.(466) The population of Galena was 74 in August, 1823;(467) about 100 on July 1, 1825; 151 on December 31, 1825; 194 on March 31, 1826; 406 on June 30, 1826;(468) and 1000 to 1500 in 1829.(469) In 1826 a part of Lord Selkirk’s French-Swiss colony on the Red River moved to Galena and became farmers in that region.(470) The rush to the lead region began in 1826 and became intense in the next year.(471) In 1827, a rude log hut, sixteen by twenty feet, rented for $35.00 per month. Galena had then about two hundred log houses,(472) and in the same year the first framed house was raised.(473) In July, 1828, five hundred lead miners were wanted at $17.00 to $25.00 and board per month.(474)

A pursuit that was once common and profitable is described by a lawyer who traveled the first Illinois circuit, consisting of the counties of Greene, Sangamon, Peoria, Fulton, Schuyler, Adams, Pike and Calhoun, in 1827, as follows: “On this circuit we found but little business in any of the counties—parties, jurymen and witnesses were reported in all the counties after Peoria, as being absent bee and deer hunting—a business that was then profitable, as well as necessary to the sustenance of families during the winter.”(475)

Not until after 1830 was a common school system with effective provision for its support established, although subscription schools existed some years before the close of the eighteenth century. Instruction given in the earliest schools was slight, and in 1818 a most competent observer declared that he believed that in Missouri “at least one-third of the schools were really a public nuisance, and did the people more harm than good; another third about balanced the account, by doing about as much harm as good; and perhaps one-third were advantageous to the community in various degrees. Not a few drunken, profane, worthless Irishmen were perambulating the country, and getting up schools; and yet they could neither speak, read, pronounce, spell, or write the English language.”(476) These schools closely resembled those of Illinois. Schoolbooks were rare and children carried to school whatever book they chanced to have, the Old Testament with its long proper names sometimes serving in lieu of a chart or primer.(477) In some schools pupils studied aloud. Reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic were the only branches commonly taught, although as early as 1806 surveying was taught in a “seminary” near the present Belleville.(478) In 1827 Rock Spring Seminary, now Shortleff College, was opened by Baptists, and the following year instruction was begun in what was to become McKendree College (Methodist).(479) The teacher of the first school in McLean county (1825) received $2.50 per pupil for the term of four months.(480) The next year a teacher in Jacksonville was to be paid in cash or produce, or in pork, cattle, or hogs at cash prices, and to pay board in similar commodities at the rate of one dollar per week. This included washing, fuel and lights. School was open ten, and often twelve, hours per day.(481)

Religious societies were early organized, but the building of churches was not then common. In 1796 a Baptist society was organized, and previous to this time both Baptists and Methodists, without organized societies, had united in holding prayer-meetings in which the Bible and published sermons were read, prayers offered, and hymns sung.(482) Before the close of the century the Methodists organized. The Presbyterians were prominent in the early years of statehood, but in 1818 they were just beginning their work in Illinois.(483) Meetings were usually held in private houses until such time as the congregation felt that a church building should be erected, or at least until some one felt the need, for the first church was sometimes built by a few individuals.(484) Ministers were of two types—those who devoted all of their time to religious work and traveled over large areas, and those who combined ministerial duties with farming, hunting, or some other frontier occupation. Neither class received much money. Peter Cartwright, one of the most famous pioneer preachers, received $40 one year (1824-25) and $60 the next—and this he considered good wages.(485) Pioneer energy was displayed in the overcoming of difficulties. For more than ten years the Baptists held meetings on alternate months at two places thirty-six miles apart, and several families regularly traveled that distance to the two-days’ meeting, even in unfavorable weather—and this, too, after Illinois had become a state.(486) In 1829, the Presbyterians, true to their missionary spirit, occupied the extreme frontier at Galena.(487) Catholicism increased but slowly.(488) Divisions such as were found in the East or South reached Illinois, and at one time the Baptists were divided into three factions, which had about the same kind of fraternal relations as the Jews and the Samaritans. The chief questions for contention were whether or not missionaries should be sent out by the church and whether fellowship with slaveholders should be maintained.(489) An association of anti-slavery Baptists was formed, as also Bible societies and temperance societies.(490) Camp-meetings, with their well-known phenomena, were common in the early years of statehood, and it is no reflection upon their value to say that they were one of the chief diversions for the pioneers.