Colonel Strode was exceedingly familiar with them; one might say that he took liberties with them. First we find Colonel Strode Dr.–To Cash–$10.00, and again Strode was Dr.–To Cash–$5.00; invariably cash, running clear through from cover to cover.
Col. William S. Hamilton, son of General Alexander Hamilton, whose business ventures were as varied as they were numerous, was favored with merchandise to the extent of many pages and many hundreds of dollars, and so, by the by, was Col. Zachary Taylor, only to more modest amounts. One entry characteristic of the times is laughable enough. Here it is: “Col. Z. Taylor–To Md’se. (including a shirt pattern), $6:50,” and then follows its liquidation in a still more laughable manner: “Settled by note.”
There is humor for you! The hero of more than one war and President of the United States settling an account of $6.50 by note of hand! But the note was paid in due time, we are assured by Miss F. Louise Dixon, the owner of the little book with such historic credits and debits.
Even the dignity of Gen. Winfield Scott was not above the acceptance of the hospitality of those friendly pages, for we find entries which tell of the manner they had obliged him, but the punctilio observed by him in the discharge of those little accounts was manifested by the same precision one would expect from the dignified old soldier, who was nothing if not precise.
Men came and traded, traveled afar off and returned to settle, sometimes a year from date and sometimes at a still longer date, but they returned, and the score at Mr. Dixon’s was never forgotten. Today the debtor was a miner; tomorrow he might be a contractor, and later he might be a lawyer, but in meeting his obligations he was always a man.
On one occasion we find this same Colonel Hamilton, who had contracted two hundred steers to be delivered to the Government agency at Green Bay, Wisconsin, driving them from Springfield, Illinois, through Chicago, and thence northward to his destination. In the same month he was operating “Hamilton’s diggings,” and subsequently he was defending a noted Mormon at Nauvoo, Illinois, charged with the commission of a crime, and yet again he was commanding a band of Menominee Indians in the Black Hawk War; always strenuous and always unqualifiedly successful.
Backward and forward the people came, forgetting never to stop over with genial Mr. Dixon. Travel was constant, and in a general sense men were prosperous, particularly in the mines.
Though freely encroaching on the land of the Winnebagoes, no troubles had ensued since the “Winnebago scare” of 1827, when Red Bird was captured for an unwarranted attack upon the whites.
A little riffle was caused in 1831 by Black Hawk, but nothing serious arose to disturb the tranquillity of the settlements until the year 1832. Possibly if the affair of 1831 had been more serious the one of 1832 would have been less disastrous.
In the spring of the year 1832, Black Hawk and his “British band,” as it was denominated, of the Sac tribe of Indians, disregarding all former treaties, one of them so late as the preceding summer, crossed the Mississippi in search of trouble. He had traveled up Rock River, stopping one day with Mr. Dixon, and then continued to a point some thirty miles above, where Stillman and his militia in attempting later to dislodge them, were signally defeated, and in consequence consternation spread over the entire West.