The bank referred to was “The Bank of Mount Carmel.” Its shares were ten dollars each. The proprietors might put into the stock one-half of the money received from the sale of proprietors' lots; all the money received for public donation lots was to be divided into three equal parts, one part to be funded in the bank in the name of the trustees (to be appointed) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the proceeds to be applied to the building of “Methodist Episcopal meeting houses in the city of Mount Carmel, and to other religious purposes,” not including ministers' salary; the second part to be funded in the name of the trustees (to be appointed) of a male academy; the third part to be similarly funded for a female academy; the money from private donation lots to be funded in the name of the purchasers, after deducting ten per cent for expenses, which ten per cent should remain in the bank [pg 200] as permanent stock. The articles of association were elaborate. The 18th article became known as the “Blue Laws.” It read as follows: “Art. 18. No theatre or play-house shall ever be built within the bounds of this city. No person who shall be guilty of drunkenness, profane swearing or cursing, Sabbath breaking, or who shall keep a disorderly house, shall gamble, or suffer gambling in his house, or raise a riot, or break the peace within the city, or be guilty of any other crime of greater magnitude in guilt than those here mentioned, and shall be convicted thereof before the mayor, council, or any other court having cognizance of such crime or crimes, shall be eligible to any office of the city of Mount Carmel or its bank, or be entitled to vote for any such officer, within three years after such conviction, notwithstanding anything in these articles to the contrary.”
The plan for a town was successful. Beauchamp was surveyor, pastor, teacher, and lawyer in the beginning of settlement. By 1819 a school was established; four or five years later a school-house was built; by 1820 Mt. Carmel circuit of the M. E. church had been formed; in 1825 a brick church was erected; the same year the town was incorporated by the state on the plan laid down in the articles of association; in 1827 the annual conference of the Illinois Conference was held at Mt. Carmel.
Beauchamp's health having improved he reëntered the ministry in 1822, and at the General Conference two years later he lacked but two votes of being chosen bishop. He died in 1824.
Hinde, in 1825, was a member of the Wabash Navigation Company, consisting of seventeen prominent Indiana and Illinois men, and having a capital stock of one million dollars. He was one of the nine directors for the first year. He continued to be a contributor to periodical literature [pg 201] and became the biographer of his friend Beauchamp. In a letter from Mt. Carmel, of May 6, 1842, Hinde says: “I have just returned from the East, having visited the Atlantic cities generally for the first time, after forty-five years pioneering in the wilderness of the West. I have been three times a citizen of Kentucky, twice of Ohio, and twice of Illinois.” Hinde died in 1846 and was buried at Mt. Carmel. Among his writings is found one of the most acute analyses of frontier character that has appeared. The writer points out that eastern ministers have often been unsuccessful and eastern immigrants unpopular, because they have underrated the people of the West, among whom there are many people of culture. They prefer “the useful to the shining or showy talent.” In the West the best work has been done by westerners. The English spoken in the West is the purest to be found, because the various provincialisms of the immigrants are mutually corrective. The Virginian, who retained his unbounded hospitality, was the most prominent character in the West. “If we expect to find on crossing the mountains a people either illiterate or ignorant as a body, we will assuredly, in many instances, be happily disappointed. It too often happens, that one puffed up with self importance, and possessing a conceited and heated imagination, will form wild conjectures as to men and things. We have been amused at the bewildered minds of such, with the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’; and one of the most ridiculous whims of some, is to endeavour to press every thing into their own mould; and shape it, be it what it may, if possible, after their own manner, custom, or operation, forgetting that ‘we have to take the world as it is, and not as we would have it to be.’ The fact is, an emigrant should come forth as an inquirer, and set himself down to learn at the threshold of experience. On this rock thousands have been [pg 202] injured, and none have suffered more than the English emigrants. Oh! with what poignant grief have I heard the English emigrant exclaim with the bitterest invectives on his own course and conduct, as to this particular. Conceiving that he knew every thing, when he came here to test his experience, he soon found that he ‘knew nothing.’ This circumstance I have found too to have its bearings upon American emigrants from different states; upon families, upon individuals, and upon preachers also. How often have I heard the old settler complaining, (who having himself learned by experience) of the impertinent conduct of an emigrant, who sometimes carries his local policy through all the ramifications of his life, and often into the religious society, as well as elsewhere; he wishing every thing done, as he saw it done in Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and very often ‘Old England’ and ‘Ireland!’ as if men who have to act, and reflect upon the circumstances of the case, different from any ever before presented except among themselves, are to be governed by acts and doings of people in the moon!”[549] A man who [pg 203] thus knew the frontier was fitted to be the founder of a western town.
Rufus Easton was the founder of the town of Alton. Like Hinde, he brought to his work a fund of experience gained on the frontier and in public affairs. Easton was born at Washington, Litchfield county, Connecticut, in 1774. He descended from pioneers, being a direct descendant of Joseph Easton, who came from England to Newtowne, now Cambridge, Massachusetts, about 1633, and was later one of Rev. Thos. Hooker's colony which founded Hartford, Connecticut, of which Easton was an original proprietor. In 1792 Rufus Easton's father, a Tory, obtained a large grant of land near Wolford, now Easton Corners, Ontario. Rufus received a good education before studying law. In 1798 he was practicing law in Rome, New York, then a frontier town. November, 1801, Easton, with thirteen other prominent men, held a banquet to celebrate the election of Thos. Jefferson as President. The prominence of the young lawyer at this time is shown by the fact that he was consulted in regard to federal appointments, and that he was in 1803 a confidential correspondent of De Witt Clinton. The winter of 1803-4 Easton spent in Washington, where he became a friend of Aaron Burr, Postmaster-General Granger, and others. In the spring of 1804 he started for New Orleans. Aaron Burr gave him a letter of introduction to Abm. R. Ellery, Esq., of New Orleans, in which he said: “You will certainly be greatly amused to converse with a man who has passed the whole winter in this city—who has had free intercourse [pg 204] with the officers of Govt. & members of Congress—who has discernment to see beyond the surface, and frankness and independence enough to speak his own sentiments.” Easton did not, however, go to New Orleans. He stopped for a short time at Vincennes and then located at St. Louis. He was appointed by Jefferson judge of the Territory of Louisiana and first postmaster of St. Louis. In September, 1805, Burr, Wilkinson and Easton had a conference at St. Louis. Easton turned a deaf ear to Burr's questionable proposals and from this time Wilkinson was hostile to Easton. Easton corresponded with Jefferson and Granger concerning the Burr conspiracy. Jefferson appointed him United States attorney, 1814-18 he was delegate to Congress from Missouri, 1821-26 he was attorney-general of Missouri. Easton was very prominent, entertaining almost all visitors of note. Edward Bates, Lincoln's attorney-general, read law in Easton's office.
Soon after coming to St. Louis, Easton began to buy up claims to land in Missouri and Illinois. When seeking to find a suitable place for a town in Illinois, he selected a point on the east bank of the Mississippi, twenty-five miles north of St. Louis and twenty miles south of the mouth of the Illinois. There was here a good landing place for boats, and also extensive beds of coal and limestone. The town was named Alton in honor of the founder's son. One hundred lots in the new town were donated to the support of the gospel and public schools, one-half of the proceeds to be devoted to each. This provision was confirmed by the act of incorporation of January 30, 1821, and the trustees were given the right to tax undonated lots for the support of schools. This latter provision was in advance of public sentiment and two years later it was repealed. Alton, like Mt. Carmel and to a much greater extent, proved the wisdom of its location. [pg 205] It has long been noted for its manufactures and is a thriving modern city.[550]
The town of Springfield, since 1839 the capital of Illinois, was laid out in 1822, before the land upon which it stood was offered for sale. When the land was sold in November, 1823, the section upon which the town stood was bought by Elijah Iles, Pascal Paoli Enos, Thomas Cox, and Daniel P. Cook, each purchasing one quarter, but the title being vested by agreement in Iles and Enos. Cook, like McDowell in the founding of Mt. Carmel, seems to have been a non-resident proprietor.
Elijah Iles was a child of the wilderness. He was born in Kentucky in 1796, and died at Springfield, Illinois, in 1883, leaving valuable reminiscences of his long experience on the frontier. His mother was Elizabeth Crockett Iles, a relative of David Crockett. Elijah attended school two winters and taught two winters. In 1812, although but sixteen years of age, he acted as deputy for his father, who was sheriff of Bath county, Kentucky. Some three years later his father gave him three hundred dollars, with which he bought one hundred head of yearling cattle. For three years he herded these cattle among the mountains of Kentucky, about twenty miles from civilization, having as his only companions his horse, dog, gun, milk cow, and the cattle. His meals usually consisted of a stew made of bear meat, venison, or turkey, and a piece of fat bacon. At the end of the three years the cattle were sold for about ten dollars a head, and the youthful dealer having attained his majority went to Missouri and became a land agent for eastern speculators, and soon began to speculate [pg 206] for himself. In 1821, concluding that Missouri was too far from a market, he sold some of his land and resolved to move to Illinois. At that time the site upon which Springfield was to stand had been chosen as the temporary county seat of Sangamon county, because eight men, some of whom had families, lived within a radius of two miles from the site, and at no other place in the county could the lawyers and judge secure board and lodging. Iles quickly discerned the advantages of the Sangamon country as a place of settlement, and straightway built a log store sixteen feet square, went to St. Louis and bought fifteen hundred dollars worth of goods, which he loaded on a keel-boat and had towed up the Mississippi and the Illinois by six men, whom he paid seventy-five dollars for their services. When the land was offered for sale, in 1823, Iles bought a quarter-section.
Another quarter-section of the town site was bought by Pascal Paoli Enos. The fact that the frontier is a great social leveler is well illustrated by the combination of Enos and Iles as joint owners of a town site. The Enos family had come from England in 1648, and Pascal Paoli Enos, son of Major-General Roger Enos, was born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1770. He was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1794, studied law, was a member of the Vermont legislature in 1804, married in Vermont and moved to Cincinnati in 1815, later to St. Charles, Missouri, then to St. Louis, then to Madison county, Illinois, and in 1823 was appointed by President Monroe receiver of public moneys for the land-office in the District of Sangamo. Thus the elderly scholar joined the shrewd but youthful frontiersman.
Col. Thomas Cox was the third of the trio of the resident proprietors of Springfield. He had signed a petition for the division of Randolph county in 1812, represented [pg 207] Union county as a senator in the first general assembly of Illinois, and in 1820 was appointed register of the land-office at Vandalia. In 1823 he came to Springfield as register of the land-office at that place. Col. Cox was six feet tall, weighed two hundred and forty pounds, and was a drunkard within a short time after the founding of Springfield.