The following interesting historical speech of Center Prairie formed a
portion of an address delivered by W. B. Elliott at the celebration of
the fiftieth anniversary of the Swedish Methodist Church of that community
recently.
"The early settlers who settled in the timber around Center Prairie and who
later themselves or their descendants helped to make Center Prairie what it is
were hardy pioneers, who came overland with their families in wagons from the
older states. I shall only attempt to enumerate a few.
Thomas Elliott first settled in Persifer township in 1837 where the
writer's father, Burgess Elliott was born. He moved later to
Victoria township near the present home of James Cook and it was while
he was living here that he undertook and got out and delivered on the ground
the long hewn timbers for the Methodist church which was built in Victoria in
1854. It was here he lived when he had a contract to deliver railroad
ties between Altona and Galva for the C. B. and Q. R.R. Well do I
remember hearing my father tell how when a boy of fifteen he with many others
went in long strings of teams across the prairies with these ties and how when
they came to a boggy place each man got off his wagon and took a tie and laid
them side by side to make a corduroy bridge which they crossed over, then they
took up the ties and continued on their way. In 1856, Thomas Elliott
moved on the north side of the John Arnold place and a year later to
section 25, just north of where James Mustain now lives, where he built
the first house in that locality from the logs of the old Salem school house
which he moved there.
Moody Robinson first settled on section 20 in 1836 and a daughter of
his, Sarah, born 1836, was the first white child born in Victoria township.
Later he moved to the John Arnold place in 1865 where Gus Swanson
now lives and in 1858 to the place where Charley Rice now lives where
they built one of the first frame houses on Center Prairie.
The Wilburs settled just west of Delbert Patty's place in the
thirties and a daughter, Phoebe, married Peter Sornberger, and they
were the first white couple married in Victoria township in 1838 on Easter
Sunday.
Luther Rice settled in the timber about two miles south from the
Center Prairie church, about 1842 and was the progenitor of a numerous family,
among which were Foster Rice who built a log house where Charley
Larson now lives, about 1857 and Cyrus Rice, who built the
Robert Young house in 1857 where J. L. Huber now lives, which was
another of the first frame houses on Center Prairie. Alvin Rice
still owns part of his grandfather's land. Perhaps the earliest settler
on Center Prairie proper was Thomas G. Stuart who patented the N.E.
quarter of section 27 in 1836 which old patent the writer recently saw at the
Exchange Bank at Victoria.
Burned To Death
He died about 1845 and left his estate by will to his wife Catherine
[Stuart]. In 1850 Catherine burned a brush pile near the house to
prepare ground to sow tobacco seed and the house caught fire and Mrs. Stuart
was burned until she died trying to save money in the house and was buried
just west of the creek on the S.E. 1/4 of the old homestead. She was the
mother of four boys: Tom, who kept the homestead; married Eliza Gladfelter,
was crippled in the war, died at the old home and was buried in Thomas'
graveyard, now the Center Prairie Cemetery, Elija, Peter, William and one
girl, Katie, who married Van Winkle and was the mother of Henry Van Winkle,
who lived for many years north of Four Corners.
Perhaps the next settler in line who settled on Center Prairie was
Josiah Patty and Beka Patty, his wife, who built a log house on the
southeast quarter of section 27 where Phillip Gibbs now lives, he
having purchased the land from Richard J. Barrett in 1839. Mr. Gibbs
still has the old patent. Their children were James, William, Sarah, Nancy,
Robert, George and Josiah.
John Arnold, a blacksmith, first came to Knox county and Victoria
township in 1836, but did not buy the old Arnold place where Gust Swanson
now lives until 1840. He did blacksmithing there until 1853 when he
moved to Victoria. John Arnold and his wife had ten children.
In fact in those days the hardy pioneer family that did not consist of ten was
the exception rather than the rule. Thomas Elliott
and his wife were the parents of fourteen children.
Perhaps the first family that settled on the flat prairie to the north was
that of Thomas Durand, for whom Jonas Hedstrom the tailor and
preacher made a wedding suit, who owned the Conley place, where Martin
Gibbs afterwards settled in 1850, and the two eighty acre pieces that now
belong to Alex Ingels and William Englund. This land he
bought in 1841 and as there was no timber near he fenced the half section with
a sod fence, the remains of which may still be seen after a lapse of nearly
eighty years. He was the grandfather of John McNaught and Mrs.
Cornelius Stevenson of later times. These were the N.W. 1/4 section
of section 13 and the S.E. 1/4 of section 12.
Arrival of Swedes
From this time as settlers came in increasing numbers. Especially about
1850, the Swedes began to arrive in large numbers. Among the early
settlers were J. L. Jarnigan, 1845; Dalgren, 1846; Adolphus
Anderson, 1847 and Jorn Saline 1854. Then came in 1855
Peter Anderson, Lars Ostrom, John Chalman, Sam Coleman.
In 1857 Peter Skoglung, stepfather to Mrs. Catherine Larson, who
is still with us, and Sievert Larson, to be quickly followed by Noah
Swickard, Lars Johnson, Willaim Hammerlund, John P.
Anderson, father of Frank Anderson, who still lives on the old
homestead and shipped the first carload of frozen beef to Chicago and the man
who invented the refrigerator cars that makes it possible to ship fresh meat
all over the world, as also Eli and Shil Johnson, Theodore Hammond,
Joseph Cain, James Thomas, Jonas Olson and many others.
School Facilities
These were a hardy race who willingly bore the hardships of a pioneer life and
bravely withstood the rigorous winters of the bleak and open prairies for the
sake of founding their new homes and establishing their families in a new
country. They early felt the need of an education, as most of them had
very limited opportunities for securing an education, so that almost with
their coming they set up log school houses, covered with clapboards and
floored with puncheon, which was poles split side hewn and laid up as a floor.
There was a fireplace in one end of the room and seats around the wall made of
slabs or split logs with four sticks in for legs upon which the children sat
with their feet dangling from the floor as they studied the old Webster's
spelling book, before the time of the far-famed McGuffey's speller. It
was in such an institution of learning that Burgess Elliott who was
born in Knox county in 1837, as well as others of that time, secured the
rudiments of an education. Not long after the first settlers came here,
Old Salem, which was started in 1836, became too crowded and the settlers were
so far away that they built a small square house on the corner near Tom
Stuarts.
William Robinson, a cousin of John K. Robinson, was one of
the early teachers here. This school house soon became too small and it
was proposed to build a new one and there was great rivalry as to where it
should be built, but as this was near where Salem school now is, and most of
the patrons lived east of the prairie, it was finally determined to put it
where it now stands and so the school house was built here in 1856. The
sawed lumber was hauled overland from Rock Island and Peoria and the framing
timber was got out by John Saline and Charles Appell.
John Saline did the building of it. There was much discussion as to
what it should be called. Some wanted to call it Stuart's Prairie and
some Anderson's Prairie, but a compromise was made and it was called Center
Prairie and Center Prairie it still is. The first teacher was John
Fleeharty, from Galesburg, who taught in 1856. The next winter,
John Van Buren, a brother of George Van Buren, who still lives in
Victoria taught, and 'tis said of him to this day that he was one of the best
teachers Center Prairie ever had. The next year, 1858, Miss Marry
Garrett, a daughter of old Captain Garrett, who later became
Mrs. McIlvary, and still lives in Victoria, taught the school, as she did
for several terms thereafter. She, like all teachers of that day,
boarded at Thomas Elliott's and with other families who had children
The Big Storm
She was staying a week at Moody Robinson's when they had the big storm,
May 14, 1858, about five o'clock in the afternoon. It came from the
north and blew Robinson's new frame house off the foundation and lodged it
against the well. It blew the roof off Foster Rice's houses and
blew a log out over the door so that Mrs. Rice had to put a blanket over
Foster who was holding the door to keep him from drowning. It blew the
windows out of Peter Anderson's house; in fact, the double log house of
Thomas Elliott, made of the logs of the Old Salem school house, was the
only one in that region that withstood the storm and all the neighbors stayed
that night at Thomas Elliott's as it was the only dry place in the
neighborhood. They lay about two deep all over the floor and 'tis said
that none who were old enough to remember ever forgot that storm.
Mrs. Robinson's geese were blown away till she never found them.
Wagons were picked up and carried to the creek and washed away. Noah
Swickard's new frame house where Alvira Johnson now lives, was
blown off the foundation and at Rochester a house was blown in the river and
carried away. The young men of the neighborhood went the next day to
Walnut Creek and swam around in the tops of the trees among the limbs which
were twenty or thirty feet from the ground when the waters receded.
To these schools came the boys and girls that were to make this wilderness
a teeming land of plenty. Such men as young Arnold, son of John
Arnold, who afterwards became a noted lawyer of Peoria, and Jonas Olson,
the crippled orphan boy who afterwards became Galva's most famous attorney and
member of the Illinois legislature, and above all a life-long friend of all
who knew him. 'Tis said that although he had to walk two miles to school
with a crutch, he was one of the most happy pupils as well as one of the most
industrious. It is handed down in school lore that he was a mischievous
boy and while studying the old McGuffy's spelling book one day he ran onto
what he thought was a bad word and spelled out in a loud whisper so that the
whole school could hear, d-a-m, dam, n-a, na, t-i-o-n, shun, damnation, and he
still asserts that what the teacher, Mary Garrett, gave him, fitted the
word. At these school houses were held many famous exhibitions, singing
schools and spelling schools. Thomas Stuart was said to be a very poor
reader who was the most famous speller of all this region, always standing up
till all the teachers even were spelled down.
Center of Patriotism.
So it was at this school house that the patriots of '61 met to encourage the
boys to enlist in their country's cause. One of the most famous songs
and one that always aroused the boys to a fever pitch of enthusiasm and which
fitted the great leader, Abraham Lincoln, was 'We are coming Father Abraham,
Fifty Thousand Strong.'
Center Prairie and the immediate neighborhood did not lack in patriotism as
evidenced by the list of boys who wore the blue. Among them were
August Carlson, Robert Young, Tom Stuart, Oliver Willy,
Bill Larson, George Elliott, George Newberg, Adolphus
Anderson,
John P. Anderson, Nehemiah Coleman, Aaron Brothwell,
Sam Cain, Jimmy Topp, Jonahs Empstrom, Lee Shannon,
Bill Thomas, Jonas Johnson, John Case, James Alderman,
John Labar, Noah Swickard, James Jarmigan, Spencer
Jarnigan,
John P. Peterson, Ward Todd, William Linday, and Nat
White. Of these famous sons of Center Prairie and surrounding
territory who fought in the army blue, only three, George Newberg,
August Carlton and George Elliott are now living. Sad to
relate that although Center Prairie showed her patriotism by sending so many
of her sons to the front, there were those whose sympathies were with the
enemies of a united people and who showed a yellow streak down the back by
trying to avoid service. In this day we would call them slackers and to
this day their descendents have never retrieved the disgrace of their
forefathers by offering themselves on the altar of Liberty when their country
called. Thank God there were not many.
In the World War.
A history of the patriotic activities would be incomplete in this year of
grace did it not include a list of the boys of the world war who wore the
khaki of the army and the blue of the U.S. navy. The honor roll that
stands out in front of this church contains the name of a list of men who
risked their lives that democracy might live. They are: Glen Olstrom,
Raymond Wall, Arnold Swanson, Roy Gibbs, Lew Gibs,
Charles Carlson, Sargeant, Harold Elliott, Raymond Elliott,
Charles Warrensford, Forest Cain, Machinist Mate 2nd, Edward
Elliott, Paul Mustain, George Todd, Ervin Mosher,
Ernest Brown, Bertas Mackey, Clarence Spencer, Fred
Steinman,
Robert Kaser, Earl Brown.
The Religious Side
The early settlers were not satisfied to rest at mere physical and
intellectual betterment, but above all they were religious. At first
they met at the homes to hold worship and as soon as the school houses were
built they took the place of churches until churches could be built, so that
when the Old Salem school house was built, they began to hold meetings there
and camp meetings in the grove just north and later the Swedish people held
camp meetings on the opposite side of the hollow from the American. Then
when the Center Prairie school house was built, they used it for a meeting
house, both the Swedes and the English speaking people. Louisa
Anderson, now Mrs. William Seward, tells me that she was baptized
at the school house. Many of the inhabitants of the prairie had helped
to build both Methodist churches in Victoria, but they were now so far away
and had only oxen to drive, that they early began to feel the need of a church
on Center Prairie and when Peter Newberg and Exstrand started
the movement to build a church on Center Prairie they found willing hearts and
hands to help. 'Exstrand was a very bright young man, ' says
Jonas Olson. 'Perhaps I am partial to him because he was a cripple
like myself. He walked with a crutch.' They were ably assisted by
the English people and Swedes alike, one of the most earnest workers being
Peter Skoglund. The land where the church now stands was purchased
by Adolphus Anderson in 1855 and he broke it up. In 1857 he sold
it to Lars Johnson and he in turn sold it to William Hammerlund
in 1858.
For a consideration of fifty dollars, Hammerlund sold a piece of
land eight and one half rods north and south and seven rods east and west to
the Swedish Methodist Episcopal church of the United States to be for and
under the control of the Swedish M. E. church in Victoria township, Knox
county, Illinois. The money to build it was contributed by popular
subscriptions. Many volunteered to haul a load of lumber back from Galva
when they went up with grain and produce. The mason work was done by
Swenson from Knoxville and the carpenter work was done by Peter Herdine,
who lived in Galva for so many years. But the building of the church in
1869 was not without some opposition. Peter Chaiman, who had formerly
been presiding elder of the Swedish M. E. church of this district, assisted by
John Wilson, a cabinet maker, and full of gab, as Andrew Hartman
expresses it, and who came to be a real free shouting Methodist and who,
wearing no suspenders, in the heat of his discourse, is said to have shed his
rainiment, organizing about three-quarters of a mile south of the school
house, a Free Methodist church. The money was raised by popular
subscription, but not enough was raised to pay the debt and so the trustees
paid the debt and tore the church down after some fifteen or twenty years.
In this church, the English Sunday school was held for many years. Thus
Center Prairie has been supplied since a very early day with ample church
facilities and I hope will take cognizance of this fact in writing the early
church history of Knox county.
The Cemetery
One of the things neglected here, as in all newly settled districts, was the
early setting apart of a plot of ground for a public cemetery. The early
settlers buried on their own premises. The tabors buried on what is now
the John Saline place, the Stuarts on the Stuart place, the Arnolds on
the Arnold place, the Cliffords on the Dr. Craven's place where old Bobby
Armstrong's first wife, who was a Clifford is buried. It was not
until about 1858 that the family of Jim Thomas who owned the farm where
the Center Prairie cemetery is located, lost several children to diphtheria
and buried them there and when he sold the place to Olaf Bowman he
received the present plot for a burial ground, and later, at the suggestion of
William Messmore, deeded it to Knox county for a public cemetery.
Center Prairie owes a dept of gratitude to Hohn Thomas for this
generous gift and can best repay it by seeing that it is always properly kept
up. The present neat appearance is due largely to the good work of
William England, Charley Larson, and Victor Larson, who were
selected by their neighbors to solicit funds and have it taken care of.
As to Utensils.
The early settlers had very few of the comforts of life as we view them now.
There were simple cooking utensils. The writer has an old kettle that
his grandmother has baked many a corn pone in by placing coals under the
kettle on the hearth of the fire place and putting coals on top. All the
clothes were made of wool or flax raised in the neighborhood and spun and
woven by the women into cloth. Much of the carpet woven in this locality
by Aunt Margaret Larson, Adolphus Anderson's first wife, was
made on the old loom of Mrs. Thomas Elliott's, and she used to weave
the woolen and Linsel-Woodsey out of which she made the clothes and blankets
to keep her family warm. It is only within the last few years that this
loom has been destroyed.
Practically all this whole prairie was broken up with oxen.
Burgess Elliott, Lars Ostrom, Martin Englund, and
Adolphus Anderson did much of this work. For this work they used a
28 or 32 inch breaking plow drawn by from four to six yokes of oxen.
Some of the back furrows can still be seen on the Martin Englund farm
where Mr. Englund now lives.
At first the ground was very wet but within a few years a ditching machine
which pressed a round hole about three feet under the ground and about the
size of a six inch tile was used. This took the place of tile which came
later and did very well in an early day, but the hole was gradually enlarged
by the water until the top caved in and started large ditches. Well does
this writer remember when his folks moved south of the school house, of
crawling, as a boy, for rods in these blind ditches as they were called.
As the people in present day go to tractor demonstrations, so in those days
would people come long distances to see new and improved machinery.
The sickle and scythe were not much used here to cut grain but the cradle
was although it was soon succeeded by the McCormick reaper on which one man
sat and drove and another stood and raked the grain off in sheaves for the
binders to gather up and bind. The first self raking reaper used here
was owned by Adolphus Anderson and his nephew, Frank Anderson,
tells of its first use. It was uses a quarter of a mile north of where
the church now is about 1857 to cut wheat. They used oxen on the tongue
and horses in the lead. Frank says he rode the horses. Among the
men binding were J. K. Robinson and Manford Mosher. Frank
says they had molasses, ginger and water in a pail and a long black bottle.
Charles Clark and many others came to see the new reaper work.
Robinson says Frank carried the water and bottle and took toll for carrying it
to the others. Thus does the historian find himself in a maze of
uncertainty as to the true facts.
In those early days all the corn ground had to be marked out both ways and
planted by hand. The tools they used to tend it with were the hoe,
single shovel, double shovel and bar share plow. It would look funny now
to see one plowing corn with oxen as Ben Nelson did about 1860 where
Fred Holstrum now lives."
Old Conveyances.
Your historian has had much pleasure looking over the old conveyances of the
Patty
place, the Arnold, the Stuart, the Peter Anderson,
Louis Ostrum, Eli Johnson and others. He has seen more
patents by the government to land in the last week than in his whole lifetime
before. Cliff Gibbs has the original patent to Tom Stuart
from the government signed with the president's name. That is what is
known as a sheepskin. Besides a patent which is in effect a government
deed, there were issued to soldiers of 1786 and 1812 land warrants. This
was a privilege to locate a quarter section of land in this military district,
enter the land at the land office, surrender the warrant and get a deed in the
form of a patent. Eric Ostrom had such a patent issued in 1817 to
Cornelius Riorden, sergeant in Nelson's company of infantry to the U.S.
after he had deposited a land warrant in the land office that was issued on
the soldier's bounty land of the territory of Illinois in 1817. On the
same day Riorden deeded the land to Alexander Cooper and the deed is
written on the back of the patent. It is sure a curious document.
In those days land titles were not so carefully recorded and there was more or
less counterfeiting of land transfers and the country was infested with
swindlers known as land sharps. It is said that Pete Skoglund
paid for his land two or three times rather than go to law about the title.
But we must not think that all the life of these ancestors of ours was
bereft of enjoyment. They lived in a land of milk and honey and had much
to be thankful for. One of these was a famous peach orchard owned by
Tom Stuart. They were real peaches, says Jonas Olson, and I
can readily believe him for you can always trust a boy to know where there's a
watermelon patch or a real peach orchard. With an ancestry such as this,
it behooves us, their descendants, to follow the advice of the poet who says:
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate,
Still achieving and pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."
