The settlement of Illinois, 1778-1830

by Arthur Clinton Boggess

Life of the People.

Of the 13,635 persons who were following some occupation in Illinois in 1820, nearly 91 per cent (12,395) were engaged in agriculture.[437] To this pursuit the state was naturally well adapted. One of the most observant of German travelers in America wrote that the meaning of “fertile land” was very different in this region from its meaning in Germany. In America fertile land of the first class required no fertilizer for the first century and was too rich for wheat during the first decade, while fertile land of the second class needed no fertilizer during the first twelve to twenty years of its cultivation. Bottom-lands belonged to the first class.[438] The prairies remained unappreciated by the Americans, although some foreign farmers preferred to settle in Illinois, because there they could avoid having to clear land, and could raise a crop the first year, while coal could serve as fuel,[439] and a ditch and bank fence, requiring little wood, could be constructed, or a hedge could be grown.[440] A traveler of 1819 speaks of one of the largest prairies as not well adapted to cultivation, because of the scarcity of wood, and in the fall of 1825 there was [pg 166] but one house on the way from Paris to Springfield, leading across eighty miles of a prairie ninety miles in length.[441]

It was easy to obtain land. After 1820 it could be bought from the government of the United States at $1.25 per acre, it could be rented—sometimes for one peck of corn per acre per year[442]—, or the claim of a squatter could be purchased. When Peter Cartwright moved from Kentucky to Illinois in 1824, he gave as reasons for moving the fact that he had six children and but one hundred and fifty acres of land, and that Kentucky land was high and rising in value; the increase of a disposition in the South to justify slavery; the distinction in Kentucky between young people reared without working and those who worked; the danger that his four daughters might marry into slave families; and the need of preachers in the new country.[443] The land being obtained, the first cultivation was difficult. Writers often give the idea that after a year or two the land which had been heavily timbered was left free from trees, stumps, or roots, but many a pioneer plowed for twenty years among the stumps. Stump fields are today no novelty in Illinois, and farming has not retrograded. Usually the settler's first need was a crop, and in order to hasten its production the trees were girdled, a process which might either precede or follow the planting, according to the time of year in which the immigrant arrived. If prairie land was plowed six horses, or their equivalent of power in oxen, were required for the first breaking, and a summer's fallow usually followed in order to allow the roots to decay. In 1819 five dollars per acre [pg 167] was paid for the first plowing of the prairie, and three or four dollars for the second.[444]

Agricultural products exhibited considerable variety, although corn was the chief article raised, because it furnished food for man and beast, it gave a large yield, and it was more easily harvested than wheat. Wheat was raised without any great degree of care as to its culture, being frequently sowed upon ground that was poorly prepared, and being threshed in a most wasteful manner. Both wheat and flour were exported. Flour-mills, often of a rude sort, were found at inconveniently long distances from each other. Ferdinand Ernst, traveling in 1819, found a turbine wheel at the mill of Mr. Jarrott, a few miles from St. Louis, and mentioned the fact as a peculiar feature.[445] Some of the settlers in Sangamon county had to go sixty miles to mill in 1824.[446] In 1830 the first flour mill in northern Illinois was erected on Fox River. It was operated by the same power that ran a saw-mill, and the millstones were boulders, laboriously dressed by hand.[447] Tobacco of excellent quality was grown, and sometimes formed an article of export.[448] Cotton was an important article for home consumption. In the early years of the state hopes were entertained that cotton might become an article of export, but it was found that the crop required so much labor as to make raising it in large quantities unprofitable. It was after 1830, however, that it ceased to be cultivated in the state. It was raised at least as far north as the present Danville, about one hundred and [pg 168] twenty-five miles south of Chicago.[449] A woman whose parents moved to Sangamon county in 1819 says that when in that county they raised, picked, spun, and wove their own cotton. The children had to seed the cotton before the fire in the long winter evenings. The importance of cotton as a factor in inducing immigration may have been considerable.[450] Large quantities of castor oil were made in the state from home-grown castor beans.[451] Vegetables were large, although not always of good flavor.[452] Peaches, apples, pears, quinces and cherries were cultivated successfully, while grapes, plums, crabapples, persimmons, mulberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries grew wild.[453] An agricultural society was formed in 1819, a chief purpose being to rid the state of stagnant water.[454]

It is not easy to exaggerate the simplicity of the farming of pioneer times. When one reads that in 1817 a log cabin of two rooms could be built for from $50.00 to $70.00; a frame house, ten by fourteen feet, for $575.00 to $665.00; a log kitchen for $31.00 to $35.50; a log stable for $31.00 to $40.00; a barn for $80.00 to $97.75; a fence for $0.25 per rod, and a prairie ditch for $0.29 to $0.44 per rod; that a strong wagon cost $160.00; that a log house, eighteen by sixteen feet, was made by contract for $20, and ceiled and floored with sawn boards for $10 more; [pg 169] that a cow and calf cost $12.00 to $16.00, and a breeding sow, $2.00 or $3.00; that laborers received $0.75 per day without board, and a man and two horses $1.00 per day; and that various other useful articles could be procured at certain prices, care is needed in order to avoid the conclusion that an immigrant must have had several dollars, if not a few hundreds of them. This need for care is increased by the fact that the most detailed statistical data for early Illinois is given by Birkbeck or his visitors, and is applicable to the English settlement in Edwards county—a settlement with enough unique features to make the data almost more of an obstacle than a help. As a matter of fact, many immigrants before 1820 had only enough money to make the first payment on their land ($80.00), or after July 1, 1820, only enough to buy the minimum tract offered for sale ($100.00), while in both periods hundreds had not even as much money as $80.00 or $100.00, and had to become squatters. A log house, and practically all of the first houses were of logs, was usually built without the expenditure of one cent in cash, being erected by the family which was to occupy it, or, if neighbors were within reach, on the “frolic” system. Ceilings and floors were both rare, and if a floor existed it was usually made of puncheons. The number of pioneers who actually paid as much as $31.00 for a log stable must have been small indeed. First fences were often of brush, or brush and logs, and many times crops were raised unfenced. Territorial laws prohibited allowing stock to run at large during the crop season. An immigrant often brought his cow and sow, and if not he either did without, which in the latter case was small privation in a region almost crowded with game, or secured the desired animals by barter or by working for a few days. Men frequently traded work, but the payment of cash wages was rare, the cheapness of [pg 170] land and the ease of securing a living leaving small inducement to anyone to become a day laborer;[455] while for the same reason those who were professional laborers were often of an undesirable type.[456] Foreigners were sometimes shocked at the utter carelessness of Illinois farmers. A soil of great fertility, a region so abundantly supplied with game and wild products as to make it almost possible to live from the forest alone, combined with a lack of efficient means of transportation, made such a temptation to a life of idle ease as many pioneers did not resist. Be it remembered, also, that although towns, retail trade, and export trade had begun in Illinois by 1830, these changes were not simultaneous throughout the state. As 1830 closed Illinois still had squatters many miles from a mill, it still had Indians, it still had unbridged streams, it still had regions far from a market—in a word, it had still persisting in some part of its wide extent each of the ills that had at various times confronted it in respect to personal danger and lack of inducements to farmers. The minority of really progressive farmers overcame the difficulties confronting them by raising cattle or hogs and driving them to distant markets, the price received being almost clear profit, or by constructing their own boats and shipping their produce.[457]

Although the great majority of the population of Illinois was engaged in agriculture, there were salt works in the southeast and lead mines in the northwest. The salt industry was important. Far the greater part of the salt made in the state was made at the Gallatin county saline, near Shawneetown. In 1819 the indefinite statement was made that these springs furnished between 200,000 and [pg 171] 300,000 bushels of salt annually, the salt being sold at the works at from fifty to seventy-five cents per bushel.[458] In 1822, the price of salt in Illinois was reported to have fallen from $1.25 to $0.50, because of the discovery of copious and strong salt wells.[459] The next year a strong well was reported twenty miles east of Carlyle.[460] In 1825, a visitor to the Vermilion county saline found twenty kettles in operation, producing about one hundred bushels of salt per week.[461] In 1828, an official report of the superintendent of the Gallatin county saline stated that about 100,000 bushels of salt was made annually, and sold at from $0.30 to $0.50 per bushel. The lessees paid $2,160.50 rent during the year.[462] In 1830, the salt works in Gallatin county had a capital of $50,000; a product of from 100,000 to 130,000 bushels, selling at from $0.40 to $0.50; and three hundred employees. The saline in Vermilion county had a capital of $3500; a product of 3000 to 4000 bushels, selling at $1.25 to $1.50 per bushel; and eight employees. The works in Jackson county produced 3000 to 4000 bushels, selling at $0.75 to $1.00; and had from six to eight employees. The difference in price is noteworthy as indicating what must have been the difficulty of transporting salt from Gallatin county to either Vermilion or Jackson counties. At the Gallatin county works fuel was becoming scarce and water had to be carried some distance in pipes, thus increasing the cost of production. At the springs in Indiana salt was $1.25 per bushel, and in Kentucky it was $0.50 to $1.00. The states of New York, Virginia, Massachusetts [pg 172] and Ohio, respectively, produced more salt than did Illinois.[463]

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

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

Not until after 1830 was a common school system with effective provision for its support established, although subscription schools existed some years before the close of the eighteenth century. Instruction given in the earliest schools was slight, and in 1818 a most competent observer declared that he believed that in Missouri “at least one-third of the schools were really a public nuisance, and did the people more harm than good; another third about balanced the account, by doing about as much harm as good; and perhaps one-third were advantageous to the community in various degrees. Not a few drunken, profane, worthless Irishmen were perambulating the country, and getting up schools; and yet they could neither speak, read, pronounce, spell, or write the English language.”[476] These schools closely resembled those of Illinois. Schoolbooks were rare and children carried to school whatever book they chanced to have, the Old Testament with its long proper names sometimes serving in lieu of a chart or primer.[477] In some schools pupils studied aloud. Reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic were the only branches commonly taught, although as early as 1806 surveying was [pg 174] taught in a “seminary” near the present Belleville.[478] In 1827 Rock Spring Seminary, now Shortleff College, was opened by Baptists, and the following year instruction was begun in what was to become McKendree College (Methodist).[479] The teacher of the first school in McLean county (1825) received $2.50 per pupil for the term of four months.[480] The next year a teacher in Jacksonville was to be paid in cash or produce, or in pork, cattle, or hogs at cash prices, and to pay board in similar commodities at the rate of one dollar per week. This included washing, fuel and lights. School was open ten, and often twelve, hours per day.[481]