A little bit of history from Winnebago County and Ogle County in Illinois
OUT MONTAGUE ROAD
Monday Club
October 14, 1974
by Mildred Geddes
As you members of Monday Club drove out of the city this morning, you came into the countryside which my father always maintained should have been Wisconsin rather than Illinois. Its geological formation is related to the terrain of Wisconsin which was covered by the glaciers of the ice ages. Over the eons of time the ice cap pushed forth, scouring out the lakes and forming the rivers. Then the ice retreated, leaving great mounds and moraines. Northern Illinois was so landscaped. Southern Illinois was different with its flat, rolling prairies.
There was little community of interest existing between the northern and the southern areas of Illinois. The settlers in the northern sector were principally from New England and New York. The southern part of the state was settled by emigrants from the slave holding states of the south. Thee was a conflict of interest and a lack of mutual understanding.
Between 1818 and 1845 Winnebago County was prominent in a movement to secede from the state of Illinois for the purpose of annexation to Wisconsin. The secession sentiment covered the period immediately after admission of Illinois as a state of the Union and before the admission of Wisconsin to statehood. This time span of around thirty years witnessed widespread agitation which sometimes became bitter. A mass meeting was held in Rockford in 1840 with representatives from the northern counties. The delegates were instructed to instigate proceedings for the secession from Illinois. They were instructed to investigate means of annexation to the proposed new state.
The apparent motive was to re-establish the boundary line as originally set up when the Northwest Territory was divided into several states. Illinois was south of an east-west line running through the southerly bend of Lake Michigan. Many claimed this line had been unfairly extended fifty miles north when Illinois became a state, but this land is still in Illinois and it is Winnebago County which I want to talk about with you today.
In 1830 there was a winding, twisting foot-path leading southwestward from the Rock River. It was an Indian trail through the land to the west of the river. As the first settlers moved out from the little village on the river banks, this trail gradually developed into a road which was later named for Richard Montague. He was from Massachusetts and arrived in Rockford, then know as Midway, in the late 1830’s.
You probably drove by Pinehurst Farms as you came today. Let me tell you what was written about the farm by a student at Washington Junior High School a few years ago. His teacher, Hazel Mortimore Hyde, assigned her class the project of looking for an old house or building around Rockford which looked interesting; finding out its history and writing it up for a class paper. I’ve used a number of such papers, written by her students and published in the Rockford Historical Society’s “Nuggets of History”. This is what John Tallackson has to say about “The House That Leach Built”:
Many times when people are looking for something of historical value, they go far out of their way to find it. Such was the case with me. I was looking for one of the older houses in Rockford, and I found a perfect house a little more than a mile away from my home. This house is on Pinehurst Farms.
The land on which the house is located was originally one hundred and sixty acres. It was first homesteaded by Shepherd Leach, who is Frannie Miller’s great-grandfather. The land he gradually acquired made up all the farm and extended north to the Illinois Central tracks. The next information is from the Historical Society notes on “When did your Family come to Winnebago County?”.
Shepherd Leach was a Vermonter and came to Winnebago County in 1838. He was a sheep farmer and school teacher and came west because of his health. He and a Mr. Pierpont took up adjoining claims and shared a cabin which was built straddling the common property line. By doing this, when one was gone overnight, the other slept crosswise of the line so that his head was on one claim and his feet on the other. In this way they could hold onto both claims as it was necessary to sleep on your claim. Leach was so homesick when he first came here that he wrote home to his father, instructing him not to sell the house next door because he might come back to Vermont. However, he stuck it out. Willoughby Frisbie claimed Clara, the oldest daughter of the Shepherd Leaches as his bride. Their son, Leigh Allen Frisbie, was the father of Frances Miller.
According to our student writer, “the main section of the stone home was built in 1837. The lumber was brought from Chicago by ox team. Of course, there had to be payment for the lumber, so an agreement was made whereby three loads of grain sent to Chicago would purchase one load of lumber. It took two weeks to make the trip. The east wing of the house was built about 1870 and the west wing was added in 1889. The living room was made out of three rooms in 1918. The area which now comprises the kitchen was originally the chicken house and wood shed, and the present dining room was the kitchen and dining room combined. The front book room was formerly a small parlor. A ladder was used to get to the second floor. The walls of the house are almost fifteen inches thick, of solid stone and the floors are supported by hand hewn oak beams.”
“The stone wall surrounding the home was built in 1865 with stones quarried just north of the Leigh Frisbie home. The juniper trees in front of the house were cuttings from behind the Great Wall of China. They were brought here in 1918. The main highway from Chicago to Galena passed in front of the stone wall and it is said, but Frannie questions this, that Abraham Lincoln spent the night on the farm. Perhaps he only stopped by. By 1877 Mr. Leach owned over one thousand acres of land.”
Drive along a little farther on Montague Road and you will find the Centerville Road intersection. Here is the old stone school house which used to be the landmark where we turned down into the Brantingham woods for our picnics when Kay Boehland’s parents owned Pinehurst Farms. This is the description of Centerville School by two students who live in the neighborhood.
WHAT IT WAS LIKE THEN
by Mary Johnson
“It must have been grand in the days when our parents went to school. They tell of all the fun they had. The particular school in which these gay times occurred is the formerly Centerville School which is located on Centerville Road at the intersection with Montague Road.”
“The school has now been converted into a house, but it once held a room full of eager students. The first through eighth grades were contained in a single room, heated by a coal furnace space heater. There were many good times with that furnace. Once when my father went to school at Centerville there was a boy full of spunk who stuffed the chimney with paper until it started to smoke. He kept this up until the intense smoke drove the teacher and the students out of the room. No school was held for the rest of the day so the room had a chance to air out.”
‘The school is over 125 years old, and on its one-hundredth anniversary many historical papers were written, to be kept in the files of Centerville School District. The old Centerville school house was made out of light tan bricks.” (I thought it was stone.)
Janet Prenot also described the earlier days of the school history when “it had just the one room with wood benches, a pot bellied stove and a desk for the teacher. At first there was enough room for the students because it was only a small community, but as the years went by the community grew larger and more families moved in so the school became too small to accommodate the students and a new school was built in 1951 and even that has been replaced, and now the children are bused into the town of Winnebago.”
“The little old stone school was auctioned off and it was purchased for $600. The new owners divided the one room into four parts, making a living room, dining room and two bedrooms. Then they added the kitchen and a bath and a back room.”
Let’s drive on along Montague, up hill and down dale and across Meridian Road until we come to the next cross road which is Weldon. I have much to tell you about it. I’ll begin with quotations from John Thurston. John was an active boy of thirteen when he came from an eastern city to a frontier settlement in 1837. As an older resident of Rockford, he finally wrote his “Reminiscences, Sporting and Otherwise or Early Days in Rockford, Illinois”. His little book was published in 1891 and it is a collector’s item. It is most entertaining reading and I found myself laughing out loud as I read it in the historical Rockfordiana Room at the Rockford Public Library. John Thurston writes and I quote:
“In 1836 Jonathan Weldon with his family of four children arrived in Winnebago County and settled in an oak grove near a fresh spring. The fact that he and his wife were crippled from childhood did not keep these determined pioneers from leaving their native New Hampshire and traveling by specially constructed wagons so they did not need to cross fords by foot.”
“He was called ‘Thousand Legs Weldon’. This nickname originated from the personal deformity of his legs and to the best of my knowledge his wife, whom I never saw, was also deformed like unto her husband. His head, arms, and body were large and muscular and his appearance from his waist up was depicted as John the Baptist. His appearance as he swung along the trail on his crutches, and he could only do so for a short distance, was a sight to be avoided by hysterical females.”
“This man was intellectual and shrewd but he was the cause of constant strife and turmoil in his neighborhood. It was a current story in the early days that Richard Montague said he left New Hampshire, not only to better his condition, but also in the pleasing belief that he had succeeded in getting away for all time from the locality infested by Jonathan Weldon. To his utter disgust, almost the first person he encountered when he arrived in Rockford was ‘Thousand Legs’.”
“One night Weldon was taken from his residence by a disguised party of men and carried out on the prairie where they made preparations, as he believed at the time, to hand him. But after a consultation, they took him to a school house and left him in the fireplace covered with tar and feathers.”
This Jonathan Weldon of Westfield was the grandfather of the person who resided on the Weldon Farm and was intimately connected with ‘Heaven’. Hazel Heyde, the school teacher, wrote this account of ‘Heaven’ which I’ll read to you.
SCHWEINFURTH’S HEAVEN
A large red house, trimmed with white, on Weldon Road about a mile north of Montague Road, is a well known landmark of Winnebago County. Some people call the place “The Weldon Farm” because it was owned for many years by the Weldon family; others call it ‘Heaven’.
George Jacob Schweinfurth was a self styled prophet and “Second Christ” of the Beekmanites. Prophet Schweinfurth established his headquarters on the Weldon Farm, six miles southwest of Rockford. In 1882, aided by Mrs. Dora Beckman, he had converted the Weldon family and persuaded them to make over to him the large farm, its spacious house, and fine farm buildings as a seat for a new religious cult. Schweinfurth remodeled the house and buildings, painting them a bright red. He outfitted the home with excellent furniture and stocked the farm with purebred cattle and horses.
The cult started in 1873 when Mrs. Doris Beekman, wife of J. C. Beekman, pastor of the Second Congregational Church of Byron, Illinois, claimed to have experienced revelations. She alleged that she was convinced that Christ had been reincarnated in her form. This fancy so inspired her that she left her husband and went to Alpena, Michigan to establish a new religious cult and church, sometimes referred to as the Beekmanites.
In Alpena, a young Methodist minister, Rev. George Jacob Schweinfurth, heard Mrs. Beekman. He became her principal convert and returned with her to Illinois. He helped Mrs. Beekman to convert the Weldon family. The farm then became the headquarters for a small colony and seat of the new religion. Before Mrs. Beekman’s death in 1883, lesser “heavens” were also established at Byron, Alpena, Chicago, and several other communities. The cultists believed, at first, that Mrs. Beekman would arise from the dead in three days. When it didn’t occur, Schweinfurth explained that Mrs. Beekman’s spirit had passed into his body and that he was the new Messiah.
Neighbors on the nearby farms reported what they considered scandalous events enacted at ‘Heaven’. The colony was composed of about twenty-five persons, most of whom were workers. There was a type of communal arrangement, but common workers of the cultists lived on dry bread and mush. The favored members of the group and the prophet ate the best of foods. Certain beautiful women attained the stage known as “angels”. Schweinfurth dressed in the height of fashion and drove a span of spirited horses.
Schweinfurth created stage tableaus, some biblical in character, some historical and others creative flights of his own imagination. Twice a week the angels were alleged to have donned flesh colored tights to dance and perform in these extravaganzas.
Members of the colony were said to have avowed that the red-haired children of several of the angels were sired by the Holy Ghost, since they believed in immaculate conception. For nearly twenty years Rockford was shocked or amused by stories concerning events of conditions in “Heaven”.
Schweinfurth assumed responsibility for a cloudburst which occurred in Rockford in 1890. The damage from this natural disaster totaled $300,000. Houses were set adrift in Kent Creek and the wooden block paving on South Main Street floated down to the river. Ten bridges across Kent and Keith Creeks were destroyed. The prophet explained that this was a manifestation of Rockford’s wickedness and its scornful attitude toward his cult.
The Chicago Tribune in 1892 described the return of Schweinfurth from his missionary trips. “The woods were scoured and stripped of every blossom; florists in Rockford were called on for elaborate displays. One house before he was expected, the prettiest damsels, decked in gala attire, carpeted the road for a mile with flowers. The heavenly host met him two miles from the house, unhitched the horses from the carriage that bore his sacred person and, attaching a rope covered with evergreen, hauled him to the abode that was lonely when he was away.”
Mr. Weldon had been made a deacon of the assembly of Beekmanites. Upon approach of the carriage he was found waiting on the front steps. Quoting further from the Tribune article, “The deacon advanced with a stately step and placed a gilt paper crown over Schweinfurth’s pompadour.”
In the late nineties, legal action was taken against Schweinfurth. In court he was accused of taking money and property from converts since they had been required to surrender their worldly goods to the cult. He was found guilty and forced to return the real estate he had acquired. Charles Church’s History of Rockford disagrees with this and states that the jury exonerated him. All sources acknowledge the fact that he disbanded his flock and moved into Rockford where he engaged in real estate before moving to Chicago where he died in 1910.
Now we’ll turn south down Weldon Road and cross Montague for a short distance where we’ll find an old white frame house, known locally as “Hell” where the laborers and out-of-favor members of the cult were forced to exist and subsist on meager rations.
NOTE: A few sources refer to Doris Beekman as Doris Beckman, and refer to Beekmanites as Beckmanites.
After Weldon Road passed “Heaven” and “Hell”, it wound down through a beautiful grove of trees to a little stream which had cut its way through the rocky hillside, creating a miniature dell. I remember being taken by my parents to a picnic there. It seemed a long way to me from town and I remember how lovely the spring flowers and ferns were along the water. I learned more about the dells from a neighbor who has lived all her life on the south side of the woods, Margaret Jacobsen. She tells it:
“There was once a dam which restrained the creek and a sawmill where the handsome stand of white pines was converted into lumber. Then heavy teams of horses hauled the lumber wagons up past my parents’ house on out to the rapidly growing settlements.”
“A man named Rippentrop owned the farm which contained the Dells. He allowed groups to picnic there - for a price. Cattle grazed in the pasture watered by the stream. They ate down the weeds and undergrowth so the banks were like a park. Near the dam at the sawmill there was a spring flowing from an outcropping in the rock. This provided an adequate source of delicious water for the usual groups of picnickers. One time Rippentrop expected to rent the grounds to a temperance group. To accommodate them, he used some dynamite to open up the flow of spring water. Instead of accomplishing what he intended, the blast destroyed the spring itself. It changed still another feature of the area. There had been a marshland which contained quicksand. Rippentrop had a prize bull of which he was very proud. This valuable animal became mired in the marsh. Although men were able to get a rope around the bull, they were not able to drag the heavy creature loose and he gradually was sucked down into the quicksand and lost. The destruction of the spring eventually changed the water level of the area and the marshy bog drained dry.”
“Sometimes the picnickers brought cakes of ice from town with which to make ice cream for the party. After the visitors had gone, Margaret told me, the children ran down to gather up as much ice as they could and her mother made ice cream for them.”
The Dells Farm and much of the surrounding farmland was purchased by Herbert Lewis of Rockford and the beauty spot along the stream was enjoyed by his friends. I wish I could say that the park is still in existence, but I can’t. The stream still flows under the rocky cliffs but the towering elms have died and fallen. Underbrush is dense and weeds have crowded in. Instead of spring wild flowers in profusion, there are tin cans, beer and whiskey bottles and refuse littering the ground.
We have been talking about the Dells, located on the Dells Farm - now part of the Harry Severson property. We’ll go back in time one hundred and forty years but our location on Montague Road is still the same spot.
The first man to settle in this township west of Midway was David Adams Holt. He came here from New York in 1835 and built a log cabin on section 34. Holt’s daughter, Harriett, was the first white baby to be born in this township. She arrived in June, 1836. This first settler was also the first to die, July 13, 1839, being only 39 years old and the father of ten children. His brother, William, followed him west. He was 41 years old when he left Buffalo, New York, and walked most of the way to Chicago. It was early spring and navigation on the lakes had not yet opened. From Chicago he paid his passage to Dixon on the stage coach line running to Galena, by way of Dixon. But after two days of getting stuck in deep mud holes and slow progress, he got so disgusted that he walked the rest of the way. Elijah Holt followed his brothers and built the first stone house from stone from the quarry in the woods back of David Holt’s home.
The first school was started in the David Holt home by Miss Mary Treadwell who later married Elijah. Subscription schools were common in those days and hers succeeded. In 1844 a frame school house was built and Mrs. Mary Treadwell Holt was employed for $2.00 per week and she had to board herself. She had forty scholars and cared for her own two small children while hearing the lessons of her pupils.
Three years after David Holt, Alby Briggs settled on section 33 and a year later Duty Hudson and two of his brothers, Richard and Horace, homesteaded land in the same section. This location is Cam Perks property and extends on west of Severson Road. The three Hudson brothers came from New York State. To Duty Hudson is due the honor of opening the first public house in the township. This tavern was known from Chicago to Galena, in fact in all parts of the country from which travelers came, as the Buck-Horn Tavern. It was a station on the stage coach route from Chicago and was identified by an immense pair of antlers on a crossbeam between two poles. The house was plastered outside and lathed and plastered inside. It had five large rooms and pantry downstairs and the upper story was partitioned off for sleeping quarters. At one time forty people going to California during the gold rush stopped at this station and Mrs. Hudson prepared supper for the entire company. During the winter when cold temperatures made it possible, she often baked and had on hand as many as one hundred mince pies, quick frozen for emergencies of this kind.
Near the tavern at the crossroads, called Westfield Corners, was a pioneer church which first met in a school house there. The beginnings of this story are best traced by going back to the year 1845 and to two families which decided to leave Oneida County in New York to migrate to new homes in Illinois. It was a winter day in the east when the men and women drove to the home of Deacon Laney for a meeting of the Ladies Sewing Society. Two couples present were eagerly planning their coming trip to Illinois. They persuaded their pastor to bring his wife and eight children along. These were the people who in July of 1846 organized the church that later came to be know as the Winnebago Congregational Church. More families came with their household goods from New London, Conn., on the Erie Canal to Buffalo and from there by propeller boat around the lakes to Chicago. There they were met by a Mr. Miller of the original party with oxen and wagons. He took the group and their belongings to their new home in Winnebago County. The trip from Connecticut to Illinois often took three months. Church services were held in the school house. The church was formally organized in 1846 with eight members. Letters back home to families in the east tell of the sacrifice and effort which went into establishing the little church.
The members of the little church were staunch Congregationalists, true descendants of the old pilgrim fathers who stood for the sanctity of the Sabbath, for temperance and equality of rights without regard to color. Members of the group became deeply involved in discussions of the wrongs of slavery. Some people in the vicinity were apparently opposed to this strong stand. To avoid unpleasantness, meeting were held in the homes of members. Some were actively engaged in the pre-Civil War “Underground Railroad”, aiding many Negroes to get to Canada. Some of the stations on the railroad were the old stone ban near Byron, Homer Smith’s place and the Coffin Farm.
Here, too, was the first post office established in this southern part of the county. Duty Hudson was appointed postmaster. The mail came in by horseback or muleback from Dixon and it is said that the mail carrier’s daughter was named “Elida” which explains why that name was given at first to the little settlement. If you look on some highways maps of northern Illinois today you will see a small dot marked “Elida” there.
The first store in the township was also opened at Westfield Corners by Albert Wilson in 1853. It was a small grocery store with very limited resources but it was open for business for over one hundred years. The old store is the wooden building on the southeast corner of the crossroads. Behind it is a residence which has been added onto the store itself.
In 1839 the western area of the county detached from the Rockford and Kishwaukee precincts and chose to be a separate precinct know as “La Prairie”. The home of David Holt was the first election place. Fourteen votes were cast at the first election for thirteen different candidates up for office as justices of the peace and constable. In 1843 the voting place was changed to Duty Hudson’s house, and the precinct name was changed from La Prairie to Westfield. In 1849 townships were formed from the old precincts and by a misunderstanding the name of Elida was given to Westfield. Petitions in 1855 affected the change from Westfield township to Winnebago township. This makes my story even more confusing since we now have a town of Winnebago, a township of Winnebago, and a county of Winnebago.
In the lists of Illinois post offices, it states that Swan post office was established in 1848 at this cross roads settlement. In 1850 the name was changed to Elida and then to Westfield. The post office was discontinued in 1905. Mail is now R. F. D. Winnebago.
Montague Road continues on west and winds into Seward Township. On the north side is Middle Creek Presbyterian Church. Originally it was a white frame building constructed in 1855 mainly by the manual labors of the congregation at a total cost of a little of $2,000. It has been replaced by a handsome new church and church school building. Close by is a most unusual modern mausoleum. Edward Kistler, a school boy, writes for the Historical Society about “A Tomb Near a Country Churchyard”.
“Near Middle Creek Church, a granite crypt has been cut into the hillside. About fifty yards from the road is a path leading to a brass door. It is difficult to read the name engraved on the door because of paint and scratches, made by vandals, which almost obliterate the letters.”
“The tomb is the last resting place of Joseph Medill McCormick, and Illinois journalist, legislator, country squire, and United States Senator. His country estate, Rock River Farms, once occupied 2,400 acres along the west bank of Rock River near Byron and extending westward. He had a deer preserve and the finest dairy herd in this part of the country.”
“McCormick’s tomb lies in the center of four acres of pines and dense underbrush. Through the trees you can see the top of nearby Middle Creek Presbyterian Church. A fence has been built which extends from the front gate around the church yard to the east of the church and the other half of the fence extends around behind the minister’s house. The front gate is opened in the daytime for people to visit the tomb”.
This is according to the student who wrote this but is no longer true. The entire area has been closed off because of vandalism. The tomb with its huge stone construction and its enormous boulders which once formed an apparently dry watercourse down the slope toward the road is no longer accessible or even visible to the passerby. It lies near Middle Creek Church in quiet isolation and hidden by dense vegetation. The body of Mr. McCormick was removed to the church cemetery.
Montague Road history continues with reminiscences from two Seward residents ho talked with Rockford Historical Society members and whom I’ll quote from now on; Miss Juanita Scott and her father Clair. Their father was born in Seward Township.
“In 1846, a courageous gentleman from England, Alfred Bridgeland, settled on a claim in the southeast part of the township, owning three hundred acres. He had been a gardener for a royalty in England and his flowers were famous. Continuing west on Montague Road, dipping down into the valley of Bebb Creek, if you had gone up the tree lined drive to the William McDonald home, you might have seen a faint outline in the ground where part of the seventeen room Victorian mansion once stood. Part of the house was built in 1852 and it was destroyed by fire in 1909. It was the Illinois home of former Governor William Bebb of Ohio. The family named it “Fountaindale”. The Bebbs came from the East in 1850. The children helped drive a herd of thoroughbred Durham cattle, the first breed of shorthorns.”
“They bought 5,000 acres of land in Winnebago and Ogle Counties. Through its peaceful valley pastures ran a meandering stream, where their son, Michael, a world famous botanist, planted many of his willows. At one time he planted 1,000 cutting of 175 species sent from Kow Gardens in London. Many of his willows were native but others were sent from all over the world. The plow was Michael Bebb’s greatest enemy. He wrote, ‘How beautiful were the rolling prairies before man’s coming!’ Some of his specimens and notes on plants of Winnebago County are preserved in the Evelyn Fernald Herbarium at Rockford College, and other in Chicago Natural History Museum.”
Clair Scott told a story at this point: “Michael was seen looking at something in the grass. People supposed he had lost something, but someone said, ‘Shucks! He was just looking at a bug!’”
“Back of the old Bebb home, down a slope to the spring, limestone steps lead up to a grassy knoll where there are collar holes. According to local tradition, it is the site of the first Fountaindale Post Office. At that spot a lilac bush still blooms every spring.”
“The ex-Governor, lawyer and landowner, entered much into public life. He helped colonize the area with Welsh people. However, from the Michael brought his bride from the East in 1857, William’s life was haunted by great tragedy for he accidentally shot a young man at the charivari for the young married couple. He was tried for manslaughter at the court house in Rockford. The trial had to be moved to Metropolitan Hall to secure more room. A noted lawyer came from Ohio and was assisted by three other competent men. Three Pecatonica men served on the jury which freed him, since the shooting was accidental. He shot up into the trees in protest against the noisy commotion and hit a young man who had climbed high in the branches.”
THE CHARIVARI
By Mrs. Harold B. Hyde
When there were loud banging, thumping, screeching, clattering noises, the old folks would shake their heads and say, “It sounds like a shivaree”. They would recall the sounds of funs banging, pans being beaten and a bedlam of voices.
The charivari, also known as a shivaree, was a noisy, mock serenade to a newly married couple in an early day. The custom was borrowed from early French settlers of Illinois, especially around Kaskaskia. Mostly the young men of the community organized the charivari, called colloquially a “shivaree”. It was a mark of friendly notice of the newly wedded person’s new estate to shivaree them or their return from their wedding journey. Scarcely had the horse been unhitched, watered, fed and rubbed down, and led into her stall, when people began to gather from over the village or countryside.
It was a mark of manhood and courage for the young groom to come down and submit to his friends’ often ill advised witticisms. Some young brides shivered for the bodily safety of the new husband. Sometimes the couple was expected to invite the entire group into the house and provide some refreshments. After the initial noisemaking, the women and children came trooping along to join the fun makers, laden with gifts for the newly married couple. Brooms were often part of the gifts for the household and one old timer traditionally presented what he termed a “thunder mug” or, in more polite language, a useful item of the time known as a chamber pot.
John Thurston described one such affair: “The weather was perfect when all gathered for the “concert”. One man had a large dry goods box and a piece of wooden scantling well resined which he drew rapidly across the edges of the box to make an unearthly screech. One man carried a huge rattle, called a horse fiddle. Horns, pans, cow bells, drums, guns, and other nose makers suddenly broke the silence. When the players with wind instruments had become exhausted, a group of men left the gathering to return with what was called a “Swinette”. Each man carried a large shoat under his arm. By rasping the muzzle of the animal, he produced high or low sounds by opening or shutting its mouth. With pigs squealing loudly, the most noted shivaree in northern Illinois came to an end.”
On the subject of noise makers, John Thurston also tells about a drum: “Mr. Thomas Johnson, an Englishman, was the first cabinet maker in Rockford and made the first musical instrument constructed in Rockford.” John Thurston says he had in his possession an agreement drawn up by his father which stated, “We, the undersigned, agree to pay the several sums annexed to our respective names for the ‘purtchs’ of a bass drum for the use and accommodation of the village of East Rockford to be subject to the control of a certain number of Trustees to be chosen by those who are proprietors in the instrument. Dated Rockford, August 6th, 1838”.
Subscriptions were from a top of three dollars down to twenty-five cents. Seventeen men signed and eleven more marked down as paid. Thurston comments: “It will be observed some of the subscribers were ‘dead heads’ as has proved the case under like circumstances in after years”. The itemized bill totaled $19.01 3/4. “The drum itself went the way destined for all bass drums. When John Haight left the town he had founded, he turned it over to me. Shortly after I loaned it for some festival at Twelve Mile Grove and in the fracas a wagon pole demolished it”.
I find it all too easy to digress from my main road map, so let’s return to the south side of Montague Road where there is a tree shaded drive leading to a lively old home. It is one of the Bebb houses in Ogle County where Edward Bebb, a civil engineer lived. In the year there remains some of the huge, old hemlock trees. Milton Wahlburg, director of the Rockford Museum of Natural History, has no doubt that some of the trees on the former Bebb estates, like the tall, old larches and the equally tall white poplars may well have been planted by the botanist Bebb, or spread from trees he had planted.
We have followed Montague Road far enough and we’ll turn north on the road toward Seward and on beyond to Twelve Mile Grove. This was the first stop west of Rockford on the stage coach route. There was an ordinary or tavern there, a church and a cemetery. Only the cemetery remains - still one of the most peaceful, beautiful of resting places for burial. It is interesting that Winnebago County has five Revolutionary War soldiers whose graves have been marked by the Rockford Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. Two of these graves are in the Twelve Mile Grove Cemetery.
Farther north our route touches West State Road which is Highway 20 and there was once a tiny settlement there called Vanceborough. It was quite a gathering place in those early days and notable as the scene of a dance, perhaps on New Year’s Eve, when the floor timbers gave way and all fell into the cellar.
A letter from Vanceborough written by John Rogers in 1851 says, “Emily’s health is better than formerly. She take the “Water Cure Journal” and has adopted the practice of bathing frequently and had received benefit from this practice. Health or sickness was newsworthy in those rugged days. Roger Neely, who lives on the family farm which has been in the Short family for over one hundred years, says that his great-grandmother, Mrs. Mary Short, went to the death beds of those stricken with cholera at the old tavern at Vanceborough.
Claire Scott and his daughter can tell us more about Vanceborough. It was John Vance’s cabin on the hillside to the east which was known as “The Lighthouse of the Prairie”. Fifteen families lived in Twelve Mile Grove but south of that, says Mr. Scott, only wild creatures inhabited the woodland, the prairie and the sloughs. He remembers that as a boy he saw carrier pigeons. He told how men made a ditch and a net which was baited and thus netted hundreds of carrier pigeons at one time.
In this area there were buffalo wallows, still distinguishable until recently if you were skilled in knowing what signs to look for. There were strange patches of dark, weedy vefgetation about two feet high and many feet in diameter. These rings were plainly visible half a mile away and had nothing in common with the buffalo wallow of the western plains. The dark vegetation of the larger ones was from four to ten feet wide with the inside of prairie grass, the earth as level as a floor, with the ring itself as true as though made with a compass.
As we drive east along Edwardsville Road, we’ll pass the Clark Farm with its sign at the gate, “Clark Farm since 1849” and still owned and farmed by the grandson of Jonathan Clark whose obituary read, “A warm heart beneath a somewhat bluff exterior”. Nearby is a farm of the same time which was settled by Darwin Whitney. The story is that they moved an old house from Westfield Corners by oxen. They got mired in a slough on the way and the house slid out of place so it has always been out of line. A grandson lives on the property today but the old house is gone. This area was called the Big Slough where settlers plod small boats about while hunting ducks and geese. Modern farm methods have installed tiling and drainage ditches.
Perhaps you read in Sunday’s Morning Star on October 6th a very fine article about the Edwardsville Creamery. It was started in 1878 and is still in operation but state and government regulations may force it to close down. Before the turn of the century was the time of small, local creameries. Clifford Whitney, now a leading midwest dairyman recalls that as a boy he delivered milk to Edwardsville Creamery. It was customary to be permitted to “drink free” all the natural buttermilk you wanted, using the community dipper, while you waited for your turn to have your milk cans emptied. It was fun to watch the farmers bring their milk in large galvanized milk cans. They were plain, hard-used cans that carried sweet milk in its daily trip to the creamery. This was when cows were milked by hand, no milking machine nor bulk milk trucks. Now milk cans are antiques used as decorative accessories with gaily painted designs on them.
As we come into the town of Winnebago, there is one most interesting house to see. Not a pioneer home but an early Victorian house with Italian influences, it was built in 1874 by Nahum Parsons. His son lived in the house until 1940. It is red brick with white trim. The windows are tall, arched and narrow. Many old fashioned flowers trim the walks and driveway. The interior has Italian marble fireplaces and walnut paneling in the dining room.
The wife of Hugh Parsons was on trial in Rockford in 1919 for being a Socialist. She was defended by the famous lawyer, Clarence Darrow. Later Mrs. Parsons wrote a book about the trial entitled “The Trial of Helen Macloud” in which the house is described. For the next twenty-five years the house had several owners until it was purchased in 1965 by Mr. John Fritsch, who is an English teacher at Rock Valley College. He filled it with Victorian antiques in furniture, china and glass. He restored it completely. Now he has sold it to new owners and has purchased the Dr. John Green home on Harlem Boulevard in Rockford. This he is renovating and refurnishing to his own taste.
Our way out of Winnebago takes us past the site of the old stone church which began with eight members in the Elida school house. The Merryfield family donated the land for a permanent building for the church with its surrounding cemetery. Stone from the quarry on David Holt’s property was the building material. This church had the first bell outside of Rockford for some time and it was rung on many different occasions since there were not telephones. If anyone died in the neighborhood, the bell was tolled to inform people of the age of the deceased. It was the women of the church who had worked with such energy to raise the money for the bell; the men backed their efforts and helped to make the bell possible.
By 1892 the old stone church was condemned as unsafe and it was razed to the ground. The congregation voted to deed the site to the cemetery association. Part of the ground was set aside for the burial of Civil War soldiers and a thirty-two foot high monument was erected with a soldier figure standing guard on its summit. The bell was moved to the new Congregational Church built within the town limits.
From Winnebago, Westfield Road leads down to Montague and a short way to the east Severson Road turns off past Cam Perks ranch and into the woods. Did you miss the little log cabin which used to stand in the woods behind its split rail fence at the edge of the road? It did look like a pioneer cabin but, to our surprise, we found it was not built until after 1900. Herbert Lewis owned a large acreage of woods, fields and grazing land. He employed the two Nason brothers to build a cabin for him. Charlie and Ed Nason were the finest fence builders in northern Illinois. They were Seventh Day Adventists so they would work on Sunday but never on Saturday. They built the cabin in the old-fashioned way. It had a sitting room, a kitchen the full width across the back and two small bedrooms. It was heated by stoves. It was home for several years in the 1920’s to the Carl Johnson family. Their children, Bob and Betty, were photographed about 1927 just outside the cabin. Then the family moved into the house on the Dells farm.
When the Harry Seversons bought the property, they put a large stone fireplace and chimney into the house; opened up the interior; built a huge back oven outside and made the place a retreat in the woods which everyone enjoyed - family, friends, and guests. Scout troops used it for nature jaunts and weekend camping. Unfortunately, vandals began to damage the place, breaking out the windows, tearing off shutters for fire wood, and nearly destroying it. Mrs. Severson gave it to Walter Williamson who hauled it to the Wagon Wheel to preserve it. Now it serves as the ticket office for the little train which winds through the Wagon Wheel property.
Long before the log cabin was built, Grandpa Billy Sloan had the farm across from the woods. He built a house a quarter of a mile in from the dirt road. It stood on a slope overlooking a wide expanse of woods and fields south toward the river. Digging a well by hand on the place, Grandpa fell and broke his legs. They mended but he was a bowlegged cripple after.
The lane was such a clay mud hole that he built a two story frame house right on the road. The house was willed with the farm to his daughter, Mary. Her nephew, Harry Barber, Sloan’s grandson, farmed it for her. But the family lost it, I suppose by foreclosure on the mortgage. A Rockford lawyer, Mr. Monahan, acquired it. Mr. Harry Severson bought it from him and turned the place into his horse farm.
Monday Club
October 14, 1974
by Mildred Geddes
As you members of Monday Club drove out of the city this morning, you came into the countryside which my father always maintained should have been Wisconsin rather than Illinois. Its geological formation is related to the terrain of Wisconsin which was covered by the glaciers of the ice ages. Over the eons of time the ice cap pushed forth, scouring out the lakes and forming the rivers. Then the ice retreated, leaving great mounds and moraines. Northern Illinois was so landscaped. Southern Illinois was different with its flat, rolling prairies.
There was little community of interest existing between the northern and the southern areas of Illinois. The settlers in the northern sector were principally from New England and New York. The southern part of the state was settled by emigrants from the slave holding states of the south. Thee was a conflict of interest and a lack of mutual understanding.
Between 1818 and 1845 Winnebago County was prominent in a movement to secede from the state of Illinois for the purpose of annexation to Wisconsin. The secession sentiment covered the period immediately after admission of Illinois as a state of the Union and before the admission of Wisconsin to statehood. This time span of around thirty years witnessed widespread agitation which sometimes became bitter. A mass meeting was held in Rockford in 1840 with representatives from the northern counties. The delegates were instructed to instigate proceedings for the secession from Illinois. They were instructed to investigate means of annexation to the proposed new state.
The apparent motive was to re-establish the boundary line as originally set up when the Northwest Territory was divided into several states. Illinois was south of an east-west line running through the southerly bend of Lake Michigan. Many claimed this line had been unfairly extended fifty miles north when Illinois became a state, but this land is still in Illinois and it is Winnebago County which I want to talk about with you today.
In 1830 there was a winding, twisting foot-path leading southwestward from the Rock River. It was an Indian trail through the land to the west of the river. As the first settlers moved out from the little village on the river banks, this trail gradually developed into a road which was later named for Richard Montague. He was from Massachusetts and arrived in Rockford, then know as Midway, in the late 1830’s.
You probably drove by Pinehurst Farms as you came today. Let me tell you what was written about the farm by a student at Washington Junior High School a few years ago. His teacher, Hazel Mortimore Hyde, assigned her class the project of looking for an old house or building around Rockford which looked interesting; finding out its history and writing it up for a class paper. I’ve used a number of such papers, written by her students and published in the Rockford Historical Society’s “Nuggets of History”. This is what John Tallackson has to say about “The House That Leach Built”:
Many times when people are looking for something of historical value, they go far out of their way to find it. Such was the case with me. I was looking for one of the older houses in Rockford, and I found a perfect house a little more than a mile away from my home. This house is on Pinehurst Farms.
The land on which the house is located was originally one hundred and sixty acres. It was first homesteaded by Shepherd Leach, who is Frannie Miller’s great-grandfather. The land he gradually acquired made up all the farm and extended north to the Illinois Central tracks. The next information is from the Historical Society notes on “When did your Family come to Winnebago County?”.
Shepherd Leach was a Vermonter and came to Winnebago County in 1838. He was a sheep farmer and school teacher and came west because of his health. He and a Mr. Pierpont took up adjoining claims and shared a cabin which was built straddling the common property line. By doing this, when one was gone overnight, the other slept crosswise of the line so that his head was on one claim and his feet on the other. In this way they could hold onto both claims as it was necessary to sleep on your claim. Leach was so homesick when he first came here that he wrote home to his father, instructing him not to sell the house next door because he might come back to Vermont. However, he stuck it out. Willoughby Frisbie claimed Clara, the oldest daughter of the Shepherd Leaches as his bride. Their son, Leigh Allen Frisbie, was the father of Frances Miller.
According to our student writer, “the main section of the stone home was built in 1837. The lumber was brought from Chicago by ox team. Of course, there had to be payment for the lumber, so an agreement was made whereby three loads of grain sent to Chicago would purchase one load of lumber. It took two weeks to make the trip. The east wing of the house was built about 1870 and the west wing was added in 1889. The living room was made out of three rooms in 1918. The area which now comprises the kitchen was originally the chicken house and wood shed, and the present dining room was the kitchen and dining room combined. The front book room was formerly a small parlor. A ladder was used to get to the second floor. The walls of the house are almost fifteen inches thick, of solid stone and the floors are supported by hand hewn oak beams.”
“The stone wall surrounding the home was built in 1865 with stones quarried just north of the Leigh Frisbie home. The juniper trees in front of the house were cuttings from behind the Great Wall of China. They were brought here in 1918. The main highway from Chicago to Galena passed in front of the stone wall and it is said, but Frannie questions this, that Abraham Lincoln spent the night on the farm. Perhaps he only stopped by. By 1877 Mr. Leach owned over one thousand acres of land.”
Drive along a little farther on Montague Road and you will find the Centerville Road intersection. Here is the old stone school house which used to be the landmark where we turned down into the Brantingham woods for our picnics when Kay Boehland’s parents owned Pinehurst Farms. This is the description of Centerville School by two students who live in the neighborhood.
WHAT IT WAS LIKE THEN
by Mary Johnson
“It must have been grand in the days when our parents went to school. They tell of all the fun they had. The particular school in which these gay times occurred is the formerly Centerville School which is located on Centerville Road at the intersection with Montague Road.”
“The school has now been converted into a house, but it once held a room full of eager students. The first through eighth grades were contained in a single room, heated by a coal furnace space heater. There were many good times with that furnace. Once when my father went to school at Centerville there was a boy full of spunk who stuffed the chimney with paper until it started to smoke. He kept this up until the intense smoke drove the teacher and the students out of the room. No school was held for the rest of the day so the room had a chance to air out.”
‘The school is over 125 years old, and on its one-hundredth anniversary many historical papers were written, to be kept in the files of Centerville School District. The old Centerville school house was made out of light tan bricks.” (I thought it was stone.)
Janet Prenot also described the earlier days of the school history when “it had just the one room with wood benches, a pot bellied stove and a desk for the teacher. At first there was enough room for the students because it was only a small community, but as the years went by the community grew larger and more families moved in so the school became too small to accommodate the students and a new school was built in 1951 and even that has been replaced, and now the children are bused into the town of Winnebago.”
“The little old stone school was auctioned off and it was purchased for $600. The new owners divided the one room into four parts, making a living room, dining room and two bedrooms. Then they added the kitchen and a bath and a back room.”
Let’s drive on along Montague, up hill and down dale and across Meridian Road until we come to the next cross road which is Weldon. I have much to tell you about it. I’ll begin with quotations from John Thurston. John was an active boy of thirteen when he came from an eastern city to a frontier settlement in 1837. As an older resident of Rockford, he finally wrote his “Reminiscences, Sporting and Otherwise or Early Days in Rockford, Illinois”. His little book was published in 1891 and it is a collector’s item. It is most entertaining reading and I found myself laughing out loud as I read it in the historical Rockfordiana Room at the Rockford Public Library. John Thurston writes and I quote:
“In 1836 Jonathan Weldon with his family of four children arrived in Winnebago County and settled in an oak grove near a fresh spring. The fact that he and his wife were crippled from childhood did not keep these determined pioneers from leaving their native New Hampshire and traveling by specially constructed wagons so they did not need to cross fords by foot.”
“He was called ‘Thousand Legs Weldon’. This nickname originated from the personal deformity of his legs and to the best of my knowledge his wife, whom I never saw, was also deformed like unto her husband. His head, arms, and body were large and muscular and his appearance from his waist up was depicted as John the Baptist. His appearance as he swung along the trail on his crutches, and he could only do so for a short distance, was a sight to be avoided by hysterical females.”
“This man was intellectual and shrewd but he was the cause of constant strife and turmoil in his neighborhood. It was a current story in the early days that Richard Montague said he left New Hampshire, not only to better his condition, but also in the pleasing belief that he had succeeded in getting away for all time from the locality infested by Jonathan Weldon. To his utter disgust, almost the first person he encountered when he arrived in Rockford was ‘Thousand Legs’.”
“One night Weldon was taken from his residence by a disguised party of men and carried out on the prairie where they made preparations, as he believed at the time, to hand him. But after a consultation, they took him to a school house and left him in the fireplace covered with tar and feathers.”
This Jonathan Weldon of Westfield was the grandfather of the person who resided on the Weldon Farm and was intimately connected with ‘Heaven’. Hazel Heyde, the school teacher, wrote this account of ‘Heaven’ which I’ll read to you.
SCHWEINFURTH’S HEAVEN
A large red house, trimmed with white, on Weldon Road about a mile north of Montague Road, is a well known landmark of Winnebago County. Some people call the place “The Weldon Farm” because it was owned for many years by the Weldon family; others call it ‘Heaven’.
George Jacob Schweinfurth was a self styled prophet and “Second Christ” of the Beekmanites. Prophet Schweinfurth established his headquarters on the Weldon Farm, six miles southwest of Rockford. In 1882, aided by Mrs. Dora Beckman, he had converted the Weldon family and persuaded them to make over to him the large farm, its spacious house, and fine farm buildings as a seat for a new religious cult. Schweinfurth remodeled the house and buildings, painting them a bright red. He outfitted the home with excellent furniture and stocked the farm with purebred cattle and horses.
The cult started in 1873 when Mrs. Doris Beekman, wife of J. C. Beekman, pastor of the Second Congregational Church of Byron, Illinois, claimed to have experienced revelations. She alleged that she was convinced that Christ had been reincarnated in her form. This fancy so inspired her that she left her husband and went to Alpena, Michigan to establish a new religious cult and church, sometimes referred to as the Beekmanites.
In Alpena, a young Methodist minister, Rev. George Jacob Schweinfurth, heard Mrs. Beekman. He became her principal convert and returned with her to Illinois. He helped Mrs. Beekman to convert the Weldon family. The farm then became the headquarters for a small colony and seat of the new religion. Before Mrs. Beekman’s death in 1883, lesser “heavens” were also established at Byron, Alpena, Chicago, and several other communities. The cultists believed, at first, that Mrs. Beekman would arise from the dead in three days. When it didn’t occur, Schweinfurth explained that Mrs. Beekman’s spirit had passed into his body and that he was the new Messiah.
Neighbors on the nearby farms reported what they considered scandalous events enacted at ‘Heaven’. The colony was composed of about twenty-five persons, most of whom were workers. There was a type of communal arrangement, but common workers of the cultists lived on dry bread and mush. The favored members of the group and the prophet ate the best of foods. Certain beautiful women attained the stage known as “angels”. Schweinfurth dressed in the height of fashion and drove a span of spirited horses.
Schweinfurth created stage tableaus, some biblical in character, some historical and others creative flights of his own imagination. Twice a week the angels were alleged to have donned flesh colored tights to dance and perform in these extravaganzas.
Members of the colony were said to have avowed that the red-haired children of several of the angels were sired by the Holy Ghost, since they believed in immaculate conception. For nearly twenty years Rockford was shocked or amused by stories concerning events of conditions in “Heaven”.
Schweinfurth assumed responsibility for a cloudburst which occurred in Rockford in 1890. The damage from this natural disaster totaled $300,000. Houses were set adrift in Kent Creek and the wooden block paving on South Main Street floated down to the river. Ten bridges across Kent and Keith Creeks were destroyed. The prophet explained that this was a manifestation of Rockford’s wickedness and its scornful attitude toward his cult.
The Chicago Tribune in 1892 described the return of Schweinfurth from his missionary trips. “The woods were scoured and stripped of every blossom; florists in Rockford were called on for elaborate displays. One house before he was expected, the prettiest damsels, decked in gala attire, carpeted the road for a mile with flowers. The heavenly host met him two miles from the house, unhitched the horses from the carriage that bore his sacred person and, attaching a rope covered with evergreen, hauled him to the abode that was lonely when he was away.”
Mr. Weldon had been made a deacon of the assembly of Beekmanites. Upon approach of the carriage he was found waiting on the front steps. Quoting further from the Tribune article, “The deacon advanced with a stately step and placed a gilt paper crown over Schweinfurth’s pompadour.”
In the late nineties, legal action was taken against Schweinfurth. In court he was accused of taking money and property from converts since they had been required to surrender their worldly goods to the cult. He was found guilty and forced to return the real estate he had acquired. Charles Church’s History of Rockford disagrees with this and states that the jury exonerated him. All sources acknowledge the fact that he disbanded his flock and moved into Rockford where he engaged in real estate before moving to Chicago where he died in 1910.
Now we’ll turn south down Weldon Road and cross Montague for a short distance where we’ll find an old white frame house, known locally as “Hell” where the laborers and out-of-favor members of the cult were forced to exist and subsist on meager rations.
NOTE: A few sources refer to Doris Beekman as Doris Beckman, and refer to Beekmanites as Beckmanites.
After Weldon Road passed “Heaven” and “Hell”, it wound down through a beautiful grove of trees to a little stream which had cut its way through the rocky hillside, creating a miniature dell. I remember being taken by my parents to a picnic there. It seemed a long way to me from town and I remember how lovely the spring flowers and ferns were along the water. I learned more about the dells from a neighbor who has lived all her life on the south side of the woods, Margaret Jacobsen. She tells it:
“There was once a dam which restrained the creek and a sawmill where the handsome stand of white pines was converted into lumber. Then heavy teams of horses hauled the lumber wagons up past my parents’ house on out to the rapidly growing settlements.”
“A man named Rippentrop owned the farm which contained the Dells. He allowed groups to picnic there - for a price. Cattle grazed in the pasture watered by the stream. They ate down the weeds and undergrowth so the banks were like a park. Near the dam at the sawmill there was a spring flowing from an outcropping in the rock. This provided an adequate source of delicious water for the usual groups of picnickers. One time Rippentrop expected to rent the grounds to a temperance group. To accommodate them, he used some dynamite to open up the flow of spring water. Instead of accomplishing what he intended, the blast destroyed the spring itself. It changed still another feature of the area. There had been a marshland which contained quicksand. Rippentrop had a prize bull of which he was very proud. This valuable animal became mired in the marsh. Although men were able to get a rope around the bull, they were not able to drag the heavy creature loose and he gradually was sucked down into the quicksand and lost. The destruction of the spring eventually changed the water level of the area and the marshy bog drained dry.”
“Sometimes the picnickers brought cakes of ice from town with which to make ice cream for the party. After the visitors had gone, Margaret told me, the children ran down to gather up as much ice as they could and her mother made ice cream for them.”
The Dells Farm and much of the surrounding farmland was purchased by Herbert Lewis of Rockford and the beauty spot along the stream was enjoyed by his friends. I wish I could say that the park is still in existence, but I can’t. The stream still flows under the rocky cliffs but the towering elms have died and fallen. Underbrush is dense and weeds have crowded in. Instead of spring wild flowers in profusion, there are tin cans, beer and whiskey bottles and refuse littering the ground.
We have been talking about the Dells, located on the Dells Farm - now part of the Harry Severson property. We’ll go back in time one hundred and forty years but our location on Montague Road is still the same spot.
The first man to settle in this township west of Midway was David Adams Holt. He came here from New York in 1835 and built a log cabin on section 34. Holt’s daughter, Harriett, was the first white baby to be born in this township. She arrived in June, 1836. This first settler was also the first to die, July 13, 1839, being only 39 years old and the father of ten children. His brother, William, followed him west. He was 41 years old when he left Buffalo, New York, and walked most of the way to Chicago. It was early spring and navigation on the lakes had not yet opened. From Chicago he paid his passage to Dixon on the stage coach line running to Galena, by way of Dixon. But after two days of getting stuck in deep mud holes and slow progress, he got so disgusted that he walked the rest of the way. Elijah Holt followed his brothers and built the first stone house from stone from the quarry in the woods back of David Holt’s home.
The first school was started in the David Holt home by Miss Mary Treadwell who later married Elijah. Subscription schools were common in those days and hers succeeded. In 1844 a frame school house was built and Mrs. Mary Treadwell Holt was employed for $2.00 per week and she had to board herself. She had forty scholars and cared for her own two small children while hearing the lessons of her pupils.
Three years after David Holt, Alby Briggs settled on section 33 and a year later Duty Hudson and two of his brothers, Richard and Horace, homesteaded land in the same section. This location is Cam Perks property and extends on west of Severson Road. The three Hudson brothers came from New York State. To Duty Hudson is due the honor of opening the first public house in the township. This tavern was known from Chicago to Galena, in fact in all parts of the country from which travelers came, as the Buck-Horn Tavern. It was a station on the stage coach route from Chicago and was identified by an immense pair of antlers on a crossbeam between two poles. The house was plastered outside and lathed and plastered inside. It had five large rooms and pantry downstairs and the upper story was partitioned off for sleeping quarters. At one time forty people going to California during the gold rush stopped at this station and Mrs. Hudson prepared supper for the entire company. During the winter when cold temperatures made it possible, she often baked and had on hand as many as one hundred mince pies, quick frozen for emergencies of this kind.
Near the tavern at the crossroads, called Westfield Corners, was a pioneer church which first met in a school house there. The beginnings of this story are best traced by going back to the year 1845 and to two families which decided to leave Oneida County in New York to migrate to new homes in Illinois. It was a winter day in the east when the men and women drove to the home of Deacon Laney for a meeting of the Ladies Sewing Society. Two couples present were eagerly planning their coming trip to Illinois. They persuaded their pastor to bring his wife and eight children along. These were the people who in July of 1846 organized the church that later came to be know as the Winnebago Congregational Church. More families came with their household goods from New London, Conn., on the Erie Canal to Buffalo and from there by propeller boat around the lakes to Chicago. There they were met by a Mr. Miller of the original party with oxen and wagons. He took the group and their belongings to their new home in Winnebago County. The trip from Connecticut to Illinois often took three months. Church services were held in the school house. The church was formally organized in 1846 with eight members. Letters back home to families in the east tell of the sacrifice and effort which went into establishing the little church.
The members of the little church were staunch Congregationalists, true descendants of the old pilgrim fathers who stood for the sanctity of the Sabbath, for temperance and equality of rights without regard to color. Members of the group became deeply involved in discussions of the wrongs of slavery. Some people in the vicinity were apparently opposed to this strong stand. To avoid unpleasantness, meeting were held in the homes of members. Some were actively engaged in the pre-Civil War “Underground Railroad”, aiding many Negroes to get to Canada. Some of the stations on the railroad were the old stone ban near Byron, Homer Smith’s place and the Coffin Farm.
Here, too, was the first post office established in this southern part of the county. Duty Hudson was appointed postmaster. The mail came in by horseback or muleback from Dixon and it is said that the mail carrier’s daughter was named “Elida” which explains why that name was given at first to the little settlement. If you look on some highways maps of northern Illinois today you will see a small dot marked “Elida” there.
The first store in the township was also opened at Westfield Corners by Albert Wilson in 1853. It was a small grocery store with very limited resources but it was open for business for over one hundred years. The old store is the wooden building on the southeast corner of the crossroads. Behind it is a residence which has been added onto the store itself.
In 1839 the western area of the county detached from the Rockford and Kishwaukee precincts and chose to be a separate precinct know as “La Prairie”. The home of David Holt was the first election place. Fourteen votes were cast at the first election for thirteen different candidates up for office as justices of the peace and constable. In 1843 the voting place was changed to Duty Hudson’s house, and the precinct name was changed from La Prairie to Westfield. In 1849 townships were formed from the old precincts and by a misunderstanding the name of Elida was given to Westfield. Petitions in 1855 affected the change from Westfield township to Winnebago township. This makes my story even more confusing since we now have a town of Winnebago, a township of Winnebago, and a county of Winnebago.
In the lists of Illinois post offices, it states that Swan post office was established in 1848 at this cross roads settlement. In 1850 the name was changed to Elida and then to Westfield. The post office was discontinued in 1905. Mail is now R. F. D. Winnebago.
Montague Road continues on west and winds into Seward Township. On the north side is Middle Creek Presbyterian Church. Originally it was a white frame building constructed in 1855 mainly by the manual labors of the congregation at a total cost of a little of $2,000. It has been replaced by a handsome new church and church school building. Close by is a most unusual modern mausoleum. Edward Kistler, a school boy, writes for the Historical Society about “A Tomb Near a Country Churchyard”.
“Near Middle Creek Church, a granite crypt has been cut into the hillside. About fifty yards from the road is a path leading to a brass door. It is difficult to read the name engraved on the door because of paint and scratches, made by vandals, which almost obliterate the letters.”
“The tomb is the last resting place of Joseph Medill McCormick, and Illinois journalist, legislator, country squire, and United States Senator. His country estate, Rock River Farms, once occupied 2,400 acres along the west bank of Rock River near Byron and extending westward. He had a deer preserve and the finest dairy herd in this part of the country.”
“McCormick’s tomb lies in the center of four acres of pines and dense underbrush. Through the trees you can see the top of nearby Middle Creek Presbyterian Church. A fence has been built which extends from the front gate around the church yard to the east of the church and the other half of the fence extends around behind the minister’s house. The front gate is opened in the daytime for people to visit the tomb”.
This is according to the student who wrote this but is no longer true. The entire area has been closed off because of vandalism. The tomb with its huge stone construction and its enormous boulders which once formed an apparently dry watercourse down the slope toward the road is no longer accessible or even visible to the passerby. It lies near Middle Creek Church in quiet isolation and hidden by dense vegetation. The body of Mr. McCormick was removed to the church cemetery.
Montague Road history continues with reminiscences from two Seward residents ho talked with Rockford Historical Society members and whom I’ll quote from now on; Miss Juanita Scott and her father Clair. Their father was born in Seward Township.
“In 1846, a courageous gentleman from England, Alfred Bridgeland, settled on a claim in the southeast part of the township, owning three hundred acres. He had been a gardener for a royalty in England and his flowers were famous. Continuing west on Montague Road, dipping down into the valley of Bebb Creek, if you had gone up the tree lined drive to the William McDonald home, you might have seen a faint outline in the ground where part of the seventeen room Victorian mansion once stood. Part of the house was built in 1852 and it was destroyed by fire in 1909. It was the Illinois home of former Governor William Bebb of Ohio. The family named it “Fountaindale”. The Bebbs came from the East in 1850. The children helped drive a herd of thoroughbred Durham cattle, the first breed of shorthorns.”
“They bought 5,000 acres of land in Winnebago and Ogle Counties. Through its peaceful valley pastures ran a meandering stream, where their son, Michael, a world famous botanist, planted many of his willows. At one time he planted 1,000 cutting of 175 species sent from Kow Gardens in London. Many of his willows were native but others were sent from all over the world. The plow was Michael Bebb’s greatest enemy. He wrote, ‘How beautiful were the rolling prairies before man’s coming!’ Some of his specimens and notes on plants of Winnebago County are preserved in the Evelyn Fernald Herbarium at Rockford College, and other in Chicago Natural History Museum.”
Clair Scott told a story at this point: “Michael was seen looking at something in the grass. People supposed he had lost something, but someone said, ‘Shucks! He was just looking at a bug!’”
“Back of the old Bebb home, down a slope to the spring, limestone steps lead up to a grassy knoll where there are collar holes. According to local tradition, it is the site of the first Fountaindale Post Office. At that spot a lilac bush still blooms every spring.”
“The ex-Governor, lawyer and landowner, entered much into public life. He helped colonize the area with Welsh people. However, from the Michael brought his bride from the East in 1857, William’s life was haunted by great tragedy for he accidentally shot a young man at the charivari for the young married couple. He was tried for manslaughter at the court house in Rockford. The trial had to be moved to Metropolitan Hall to secure more room. A noted lawyer came from Ohio and was assisted by three other competent men. Three Pecatonica men served on the jury which freed him, since the shooting was accidental. He shot up into the trees in protest against the noisy commotion and hit a young man who had climbed high in the branches.”
THE CHARIVARI
By Mrs. Harold B. Hyde
When there were loud banging, thumping, screeching, clattering noises, the old folks would shake their heads and say, “It sounds like a shivaree”. They would recall the sounds of funs banging, pans being beaten and a bedlam of voices.
The charivari, also known as a shivaree, was a noisy, mock serenade to a newly married couple in an early day. The custom was borrowed from early French settlers of Illinois, especially around Kaskaskia. Mostly the young men of the community organized the charivari, called colloquially a “shivaree”. It was a mark of friendly notice of the newly wedded person’s new estate to shivaree them or their return from their wedding journey. Scarcely had the horse been unhitched, watered, fed and rubbed down, and led into her stall, when people began to gather from over the village or countryside.
It was a mark of manhood and courage for the young groom to come down and submit to his friends’ often ill advised witticisms. Some young brides shivered for the bodily safety of the new husband. Sometimes the couple was expected to invite the entire group into the house and provide some refreshments. After the initial noisemaking, the women and children came trooping along to join the fun makers, laden with gifts for the newly married couple. Brooms were often part of the gifts for the household and one old timer traditionally presented what he termed a “thunder mug” or, in more polite language, a useful item of the time known as a chamber pot.
John Thurston described one such affair: “The weather was perfect when all gathered for the “concert”. One man had a large dry goods box and a piece of wooden scantling well resined which he drew rapidly across the edges of the box to make an unearthly screech. One man carried a huge rattle, called a horse fiddle. Horns, pans, cow bells, drums, guns, and other nose makers suddenly broke the silence. When the players with wind instruments had become exhausted, a group of men left the gathering to return with what was called a “Swinette”. Each man carried a large shoat under his arm. By rasping the muzzle of the animal, he produced high or low sounds by opening or shutting its mouth. With pigs squealing loudly, the most noted shivaree in northern Illinois came to an end.”
On the subject of noise makers, John Thurston also tells about a drum: “Mr. Thomas Johnson, an Englishman, was the first cabinet maker in Rockford and made the first musical instrument constructed in Rockford.” John Thurston says he had in his possession an agreement drawn up by his father which stated, “We, the undersigned, agree to pay the several sums annexed to our respective names for the ‘purtchs’ of a bass drum for the use and accommodation of the village of East Rockford to be subject to the control of a certain number of Trustees to be chosen by those who are proprietors in the instrument. Dated Rockford, August 6th, 1838”.
Subscriptions were from a top of three dollars down to twenty-five cents. Seventeen men signed and eleven more marked down as paid. Thurston comments: “It will be observed some of the subscribers were ‘dead heads’ as has proved the case under like circumstances in after years”. The itemized bill totaled $19.01 3/4. “The drum itself went the way destined for all bass drums. When John Haight left the town he had founded, he turned it over to me. Shortly after I loaned it for some festival at Twelve Mile Grove and in the fracas a wagon pole demolished it”.
I find it all too easy to digress from my main road map, so let’s return to the south side of Montague Road where there is a tree shaded drive leading to a lively old home. It is one of the Bebb houses in Ogle County where Edward Bebb, a civil engineer lived. In the year there remains some of the huge, old hemlock trees. Milton Wahlburg, director of the Rockford Museum of Natural History, has no doubt that some of the trees on the former Bebb estates, like the tall, old larches and the equally tall white poplars may well have been planted by the botanist Bebb, or spread from trees he had planted.
We have followed Montague Road far enough and we’ll turn north on the road toward Seward and on beyond to Twelve Mile Grove. This was the first stop west of Rockford on the stage coach route. There was an ordinary or tavern there, a church and a cemetery. Only the cemetery remains - still one of the most peaceful, beautiful of resting places for burial. It is interesting that Winnebago County has five Revolutionary War soldiers whose graves have been marked by the Rockford Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. Two of these graves are in the Twelve Mile Grove Cemetery.
Farther north our route touches West State Road which is Highway 20 and there was once a tiny settlement there called Vanceborough. It was quite a gathering place in those early days and notable as the scene of a dance, perhaps on New Year’s Eve, when the floor timbers gave way and all fell into the cellar.
A letter from Vanceborough written by John Rogers in 1851 says, “Emily’s health is better than formerly. She take the “Water Cure Journal” and has adopted the practice of bathing frequently and had received benefit from this practice. Health or sickness was newsworthy in those rugged days. Roger Neely, who lives on the family farm which has been in the Short family for over one hundred years, says that his great-grandmother, Mrs. Mary Short, went to the death beds of those stricken with cholera at the old tavern at Vanceborough.
Claire Scott and his daughter can tell us more about Vanceborough. It was John Vance’s cabin on the hillside to the east which was known as “The Lighthouse of the Prairie”. Fifteen families lived in Twelve Mile Grove but south of that, says Mr. Scott, only wild creatures inhabited the woodland, the prairie and the sloughs. He remembers that as a boy he saw carrier pigeons. He told how men made a ditch and a net which was baited and thus netted hundreds of carrier pigeons at one time.
In this area there were buffalo wallows, still distinguishable until recently if you were skilled in knowing what signs to look for. There were strange patches of dark, weedy vefgetation about two feet high and many feet in diameter. These rings were plainly visible half a mile away and had nothing in common with the buffalo wallow of the western plains. The dark vegetation of the larger ones was from four to ten feet wide with the inside of prairie grass, the earth as level as a floor, with the ring itself as true as though made with a compass.
As we drive east along Edwardsville Road, we’ll pass the Clark Farm with its sign at the gate, “Clark Farm since 1849” and still owned and farmed by the grandson of Jonathan Clark whose obituary read, “A warm heart beneath a somewhat bluff exterior”. Nearby is a farm of the same time which was settled by Darwin Whitney. The story is that they moved an old house from Westfield Corners by oxen. They got mired in a slough on the way and the house slid out of place so it has always been out of line. A grandson lives on the property today but the old house is gone. This area was called the Big Slough where settlers plod small boats about while hunting ducks and geese. Modern farm methods have installed tiling and drainage ditches.
Perhaps you read in Sunday’s Morning Star on October 6th a very fine article about the Edwardsville Creamery. It was started in 1878 and is still in operation but state and government regulations may force it to close down. Before the turn of the century was the time of small, local creameries. Clifford Whitney, now a leading midwest dairyman recalls that as a boy he delivered milk to Edwardsville Creamery. It was customary to be permitted to “drink free” all the natural buttermilk you wanted, using the community dipper, while you waited for your turn to have your milk cans emptied. It was fun to watch the farmers bring their milk in large galvanized milk cans. They were plain, hard-used cans that carried sweet milk in its daily trip to the creamery. This was when cows were milked by hand, no milking machine nor bulk milk trucks. Now milk cans are antiques used as decorative accessories with gaily painted designs on them.
As we come into the town of Winnebago, there is one most interesting house to see. Not a pioneer home but an early Victorian house with Italian influences, it was built in 1874 by Nahum Parsons. His son lived in the house until 1940. It is red brick with white trim. The windows are tall, arched and narrow. Many old fashioned flowers trim the walks and driveway. The interior has Italian marble fireplaces and walnut paneling in the dining room.
The wife of Hugh Parsons was on trial in Rockford in 1919 for being a Socialist. She was defended by the famous lawyer, Clarence Darrow. Later Mrs. Parsons wrote a book about the trial entitled “The Trial of Helen Macloud” in which the house is described. For the next twenty-five years the house had several owners until it was purchased in 1965 by Mr. John Fritsch, who is an English teacher at Rock Valley College. He filled it with Victorian antiques in furniture, china and glass. He restored it completely. Now he has sold it to new owners and has purchased the Dr. John Green home on Harlem Boulevard in Rockford. This he is renovating and refurnishing to his own taste.
Our way out of Winnebago takes us past the site of the old stone church which began with eight members in the Elida school house. The Merryfield family donated the land for a permanent building for the church with its surrounding cemetery. Stone from the quarry on David Holt’s property was the building material. This church had the first bell outside of Rockford for some time and it was rung on many different occasions since there were not telephones. If anyone died in the neighborhood, the bell was tolled to inform people of the age of the deceased. It was the women of the church who had worked with such energy to raise the money for the bell; the men backed their efforts and helped to make the bell possible.
By 1892 the old stone church was condemned as unsafe and it was razed to the ground. The congregation voted to deed the site to the cemetery association. Part of the ground was set aside for the burial of Civil War soldiers and a thirty-two foot high monument was erected with a soldier figure standing guard on its summit. The bell was moved to the new Congregational Church built within the town limits.
From Winnebago, Westfield Road leads down to Montague and a short way to the east Severson Road turns off past Cam Perks ranch and into the woods. Did you miss the little log cabin which used to stand in the woods behind its split rail fence at the edge of the road? It did look like a pioneer cabin but, to our surprise, we found it was not built until after 1900. Herbert Lewis owned a large acreage of woods, fields and grazing land. He employed the two Nason brothers to build a cabin for him. Charlie and Ed Nason were the finest fence builders in northern Illinois. They were Seventh Day Adventists so they would work on Sunday but never on Saturday. They built the cabin in the old-fashioned way. It had a sitting room, a kitchen the full width across the back and two small bedrooms. It was heated by stoves. It was home for several years in the 1920’s to the Carl Johnson family. Their children, Bob and Betty, were photographed about 1927 just outside the cabin. Then the family moved into the house on the Dells farm.
When the Harry Seversons bought the property, they put a large stone fireplace and chimney into the house; opened up the interior; built a huge back oven outside and made the place a retreat in the woods which everyone enjoyed - family, friends, and guests. Scout troops used it for nature jaunts and weekend camping. Unfortunately, vandals began to damage the place, breaking out the windows, tearing off shutters for fire wood, and nearly destroying it. Mrs. Severson gave it to Walter Williamson who hauled it to the Wagon Wheel to preserve it. Now it serves as the ticket office for the little train which winds through the Wagon Wheel property.
Long before the log cabin was built, Grandpa Billy Sloan had the farm across from the woods. He built a house a quarter of a mile in from the dirt road. It stood on a slope overlooking a wide expanse of woods and fields south toward the river. Digging a well by hand on the place, Grandpa fell and broke his legs. They mended but he was a bowlegged cripple after.
The lane was such a clay mud hole that he built a two story frame house right on the road. The house was willed with the farm to his daughter, Mary. Her nephew, Harry Barber, Sloan’s grandson, farmed it for her. But the family lost it, I suppose by foreclosure on the mortgage. A Rockford lawyer, Mr. Monahan, acquired it. Mr. Harry Severson bought it from him and turned the place into his horse farm.