Shawneetown was a sort of center from which emigrants radiated to their destinations. It owed much to its location, being on the main route from the southern states to St. Louis and what was then called the Missouri, and being also the port for the salt works on Saline Creek. It was the seat of a land-office. The town thus had a business which was out of all proportion to the number of its permanent inhabitants. In 1817 it consisted of but about thirty log houses, a log bank, and a land-office. When a certain traveler came to the place from the South, in 1818, he found the number of wagons, horses, and passengers waiting to cross the Ohio, on the ferry, so great that he had to wait “a great part of the morning” for his turn.[301]
During the latter part of the territorial period freight charges from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, by land, were from seven to ten dollars per hundredweight;[302] from Pittsburg to Shawneetown, one dollar; from Louisville to Shawneetown, thirty-seven cents; and from New Orleans to Shawneetown, four dollars and a half.[303] The use of arks [pg 126] was common. These were flat-bottomed boats of a tonnage of from twenty-five to thirty tons, covered, square at the ends, of a uniform size of fifty feet in length and fourteen in breadth, usually sold for seventy-five dollars, and would carry three or four families. A common practice was to re-sell them at a somewhat reduced price to someone going further down the river. Two dollars was the charge for piloting an ark over the falls of the Ohio.[304]
There is much truth in the remarks made by a German traveler in 1818-19. He said: “The State of Illinois is from one thousand to twelve hundred miles distant from the sea ports. The journey thither is often as costly and tedious, for a man with a family, as the sea passage. Any father of a family, unless he is well-to-do, can certainly count on being impoverished upon his arrival in Illinois. At Williamsport, on the Susquehanna, I found a Swiss, who, with his wife and ten children, had spent one thousand French crown-dollars for their journey. In the village of Williamsport, an old German schoolmaster, who seems to have been formerly a merchant in Nassau, told me that the passage of himself and family had cost thirteen hundred dollars. For an adult the fare is seventy-five dollars—one dollar is equal to one thaler, ten groschen, Prussian—for children under twelve years, half so much, for children of two years, one-fourth so much, and only babes in arms go free.”[305]
It can now be understood why people emigrated to the West, and also why many went overland. A family too poor to go by water could go in a buggy or wagon, and if poorer still they might walk, as many actually did. The immigration to Illinois, which was but a small fraction of [pg 127] the great westward movement, was still largely southern in origin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and even New York still staying, in large measure, the tide from New England. In New England it was the “Ohio fever” and not the Illinois fever which carried away the people, and the designation is geographically correct. The men prominent in Illinois politics at the close of the territorial period, and at the beginning of the state period, were natives of southern states, a fact hardly conceivable if New England had been largely represented in Illinois. Then, too, the natural routes from the South led to, or near to, Illinois, the great road from the South crossing the Ohio River at Shawneetown, and the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers being natural water routes. Another fact to be noticed is that much of the emigration was of relatives and friends to join those who had gone before, and as Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and even Georgia, had furnished a large number of early settlers to Illinois, this was a powerful inducement to continued emigration from the same sources. Similarly Ohio and Michigan had early received settlers from the East.
Immigration to Illinois was not large in comparison to that to neighboring states or territories. Indians still held the greater part of Illinois, and the inconveniences incident to frontier life were more pronounced as the distance from the East increased. Pro-slavery men, and anti-slavery men as well, were still in doubt as to the ultimate fate of slavery in Illinois. This had a deterrent effect upon immigration.
IV. Life of the Settlers.
According to the marshal's return the manufactures in Illinois, in 1810, were as follows:
Spinning-wheels, $630