Genealogy/Books/Kentucky/Iles 1955

Link: https://www.ancestryheritagequest.com/search/collections/28850/

Author: Elijah Iles

Year: 1955

Title: Sketches of early life and times in Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois

Note - this book was written by a man whose family lived on the Kentucky frontier when he was born in Kentucky in 1797.

Chapter 1

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My earliest recollections bring to my view a Buck-eye cabin of one room, in which we lived, that stood on the bank of a clear stream of water, the bed of which was of flat limestone rock and pebbles. The bottom land surrounding the cabin was covered with a heavy growth of beech timber, so thick that it darkened the sunlight. The upland was a varied growth of timber, not so thick, but covered with a dense thicket of cane. Our neighbors were not so near that we could see the smoke from each other's cabins. This district, at that day, was truly a wild and backwoods country. Bear and deer were so plentiful that we could often see them from the door of our cabin. We could not raise hogs until the bear and panther were thinned out, as they would kill and eat the pigs. But we made good use of the bears by killing them and using the meat as we do pork.

My mother, with her wool cards, spinning wheel, and loom manufactured all the clothing worn by herself and the family, except hte buckskin pants worn by the men and boys. All these were made into garments with thread spun by herself. No other kind of apparel was used at that day.

We had to make out with very little, as almost every article used about the house had to be brought from Virginia to Kentucky on pack horses. Our table-ware consisted of pewter plates, pewter dishes and spoons and japanned tumblers (tin). We made much use of gourds for drinking cups. Our cooking utensils were a small dinner pot, oven, skillet, and frying pan.

Our bread was always corn bread, mostly baked on a board and called johnny cake, or in the ashes, when it was called ash-cake. Our meat, consisting of bear meat, turkey, venison, squirrel, quail, and fish, was often roasted before the fire.

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In 1816, I wanted to be doing something for myself, and my father let me have $300.00 in money. With this I bought one hundred yearling calves at less than $3.00 each, and drove them several hundred miles beyond all settlements to the headwaters of Little Sandy River, in a mountainous, wild and rugged country. The cliffs were very precipitous, overhanging so as to form good shelter for my cattle in the winter. The valleys between the bluffs were from five to fifteen miles long, and from bluff to bluff about three hundred yards wide. In these valleys I wintered my cattle, by changing them from valley to valley as they ate out the bunch grass. They got poor in winter, but by herding them on high land in summer they would get very fat. I camped and staid with my cattle three summers and two winters, and although my only companions were my gun, horse, dog and cattle, I did not feel lonely. I had an object in life.

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I sold my cattle in the fall of 1818. Such cattle as would only sell at that day for eight to ten dollars each, would now bring more than forty dollars a head.

I now heard of a new country in Missouri called the Bonne's Lick, about six hundred miles distant, represented to be very fine. By this time I felt well weaned, and determined to emigrate to this new country, where I expected I would have to depend on myself for the future, and that, too, among strangers, far away from all my kin. This was before the government had offered the land in Missouri for sale.

After arranging my money matters I had six hundred dollars. This seemed to me a big pile, and with it I left Kentucky, which was still new, for this wilder country, in October of 1818, in company of a young man by the name of Wiley.

Chapter 2

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Passing through the above counties (Bath, Montgomery, Burbon, Clark, Fayette, Woodford, and Franklin Counties in Kentucky) I was charmed with the fertility of the soil, the sightly appearance of the country, its beauty, and the luxuriant growth of farm products, and I determined to find a section equal in beauty, fertility, and extent; where I could have a large, square cornfield and not little zig-zag ones as we had where I was raised, and where we had numerous short rows to plow. All of which I found both in Missouri and Illinois.

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After leaving the vicinity of St. Charles, the trail led for about eighty miles through a district in which there was scarcely an inhabitant, other than a few settled on the road to accomadate travelers. Daniel Boone then lived in this district, on Luter Creek, six miles off the road, with his son and son-in-law.

When we got within thirty miles of Franklin we found a timbered country, much like the lands about Lexington, Ky. pretty well filled with squatters, who had made small improvements and were awaiting the sale of the public land. These squatters were mostly from Kentucky and Tennessee.

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We reached Franklin on a Saturday afternoon. On Sunday we strolled about the town and bathed in the Missouri River. On Monday Morning Mr. Wiley, my companion, told me that he had decided that Kentucky as new enough and a good enough country for him, and that he would return there. I said I would not be satisfied until I had explored more of the country and had paid a visit to the most extreme western cabin in the United States, which was only about thirty miles from Franklin, and above the present site of Booneville. This cabin I found not far above the mouth of Chariton River.

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After breakfast, we saddled our horses and rode half a mile to where the road forked. Here we gave each other a good hand-shaking, wishing each other all the health, prosperity, and enjoyment this world could afford us, and then separated - he turning his face to the east and I mine to the west. After we separated I felt lonely enough. I was in a section of country where all were entire strangers to me; not one of them had I ever seen before. This set me to thinking, and I thought - and I thought - and I thought - but I did not halt until I got to that outside cabin.

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Here I found a colony of about a dozen Tennesseans, who had enclosed in one common field more than a thousand acres of prairie bottom - government land, designated by turning rows for each one to till. This was a grand site. I had never seen such an immense field and such large ears of corn. Where I was raised the corn was small, the soil being thin. Here you could have a corn row to plow more than a mile long, without stones, roots, or stumps to interfere.

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I liked that part of Missouri where I had settled. It seemed no better lands could be found, and I liked the settlers; they were mostly from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, and a more honest, hospitable, and industrious class never settled in any new country. The three years I remained there i had no one to care for but myself, and I had uninterrupted enjoyment, with nothing to mar it up to the time I was married.

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On our return, before we got back to the cabin, I was taken sick with a most violent fever. As it was more than a hundred miles to the nearest doctor, and my suffering excruciating, it was supposed I must die. Whilst I lay in great agony at the cabin, where I was cared for by the woman, the young men, who were waiting until I should die, amused themselves in killing beaver, otter, and deer. After I had been sick four or five days I remembered a spring of ice-cold water that I had passed on an Indian trail, a half a mile off, and as I had not lost much strength, I put out to the spring, where I lay down with my face over the water and drank until I could not swallow another drop. As soon as the water warmed in my stomach, I cast it up. This I did a number of times, until my thirst was allayed and the perspiration began to flow... although I did not crave for more water, I drank as much as I could possibly swallow, and started for the cabin. The perspiration ran from my body and limbs in streams, every finger dripping with it, and my shoes were almost filled with perspiration. You could have tracked me on the trail. When I reached the cabin the fever had left me, and I had no more. Next morning, I was able to travel.

Chapter 3

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In passing through Illinois I heard of a district called the Sangamon Valley, north of St. Louis one hundred miles, then just settling, said to be very fertile. As I thought Missouri would remain a frontier state during my life time, I decided to visit and explore more of Illinois, and if I liked it and found it as represented, I would quit Missouri and fix my permanent abode in Illinois, as it would be more of a thoroughfare, more interior, and nearer a market.

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In 1821, after building my store house and as soon as the land was surveyed, I laid claim to the quarter on which my house was built, and told all who chose to settle in the place that if I got the land I would give each a lot. We traced out a street east and west, and by the time the sales took place we had a village of about 150 inhabitants, and children enough for a school. Our court house was of rough logs, daubed with black mud. A plat form for the judge's seat, and the seats for the lawyers, jurors, and others, were made of split logs, and the jurors had all out-doors in which to decide on their verdict.

Our school teacher was fond of his dram, and could make a good speech. One day, when the court had adjourned for dinner, some of his scholars drove into the court-house a poor calf and twelve geese. The calf was tied on the platform, and the geese carefully driven into the corner usually occupied by the jury. They then got the teacher into the house, well primed and in good condition to make a speech, and when the court returned from dinner they found the door closed and Mr. Mendal, the teacher, making an excited speech, addressing calf as "the honorable judge" and the geese as "gentlemen of the jury." The judge let him off without inflicting any fine for contempt.

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After selling my stock of goods to John Williams in 1831 I moved to my farm, and my time was occupied in farming, driving and selling hogs and cattle in St. Louis, and mules in Kentucky, and in buying and selling land and town lots until 1839. During that year I lost quite a large amount of money (for me) in packing and shipping pork to New Orleans, which cured me of any more prok packing.

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To enable her to do her part, I furnished her bed-ticking, feathers, and sheeting to be made up for a bed which was to be placed in a room over my little store. She was a brisk worker, and soon had them ready. For my part, I built a shed and brick chimney with open fireplace (this was before the days of cook stoves) attached to the rear of the store, for a cooking and dining place, until I had time to build a better. I soon had cooking utensils and tableware, and was prepared. After supper we called in a preacher, who married us, and our bridal trip was across the street to our bedroom. The next morning my wife got breakfast, which I relished. Our shed soon gave place to a more comfortable cook and bedroom and we now felt firmly rooted in our own domicile. We were married in 1824...

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The house I built in 1823 for a store house, and in which I commenced my married life in 1824, is the oldest house in Springfield. It is situated on the Northwest corner of the block next west of the Chicago and Alton depot. It was built of hewed logs, weatherboarded, and still has a respectable appearance.

In 1836, the state legislature passed an act removing the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield. A. Lincoln, a young member, was given much credit for his exertions in securing the passage of the act.

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In looking back over hte past sixty years, and recalling the condition of the state at that date, when the entire population was but little more than 100,000, and contrasting it with the Illinois of today, we are astounded at the wonderful progress made. When we see resting upon the margin of its fertile praries, and overlooking the great lake whose bosom is whitened with the sails of commerce, a city like Chicago, with a population of more than a half a million, besides numerous other cities scattered over the state of from ten to forty thousand, and reflect upon the vast growth of the farming interest, we can but marvel.

Chapter 4

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In the Indian War of 1832, known as the Black Hawk war, I enlisted...

After the dead were buried, and before returning to camp, we took our lunch. The army was scant of provisions, and my mess had for rations only a small piece of fat bacon and some parched corn. I was selected to cut the bacon into eight equal parts - the number in my mess. The boys watched me closely. We took our seats on the grass by the side of a pool of water thick with wrigglers, and ate our lunch. The boiling of the water for coffee fixed the wrigglers. We were more particular with what we drank, straining that through our pocket handkerchiefs. We got back to camp after dark, very tired, and lay down on sloping ground with our saddles for pillows. I slept soundly until a heavy rain fell which almost covered me in water before I awoke. My mess are now all dead but Major John T. Stuart, to whom I have referred.

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Mr. Lincoln, our late president, was a private in my company. After Gen. Atkinson handed me my orders, and my men were mounted and ready for the trip, I felt proud of them and was confident of our success, although numbering only forty-eight. Several good men failed to go, as they had gone down to the foot of the Illinois rapids to aid in bringing up the boats of army supplies. We wanted to be as little encumbered as possible, and took nothing that could be dispensed with, other than blankets, tin cups, coffee pots, canteens, a wallet of bread, and some fat side meat, which we ate raw or boiled.

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He (Col. Zachary Taylor) said the trip was perilous, and that since the murder of the six men all communication with Galena had been cut off, and it might be beseiged; that he wanted me to proceed to Galera, and that he would have my orders for me in the morning, and asked what outfit I wanted. I answered nothing but coffee, side meat, and bread.

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This was called the Black Hawk war of 1832 which closed up all further trouble with the Indians in Illinois, and opened up the country from a little above Lake Peoria, which was then without a single white inhabitant other than those isolated at Galena working the lead mines, a few Indian traders, and the troops at Fort Dearborn. The latter place was soon afterwards laid out in lots for the beginning of a town called Chicago. At that time there were no settlers either in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, or anywhere northwest, now so well settled with thrifty farmers and containing numerous large town and cities.

Of all the men in my company in the Black Hawk war I know of no one now living but John T. Stuart. Major Stuart was elected to congress over Stephen A. Douglas, and was the first and last one who ever beat Douglas in this race for office. Mr. Lincoln was assassinated in Washington, while president; Dr. Early was killed in Springfield, Gen. Henry died in New Orleans; Gen. Anderson, of Fort Sumter memory who mustered in my company and out, is dead, and his widow now resides at Green Cove Springs, Florida.