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History Of County, 1832-1968 la Recorded At the request of Education and Public Relations committee of the board of supervisors, the first chapter of McHenry County, 1832-1968, will be printed in serial form. Orders for this 900-plus book are now being taken by W.H. Tammeus, Woodstock. CHAPTER I PROLOGUE By Lowell A. Nye While the history of the white man in the area now known as McHenry, county, Illinois, would logically begin with the story of its first settlers in 1834, destiny has decreed otherwise. It really began two years earlier, when a veteran frontier officer from Kentucky and White county, Illinois, led a party of foot-soldiers through this region in pursuit of Indians during the summer of 1832. His name was Major William McHenry. The Sac and Fox Indian nations were led at that time by an old chief who fought with bravery in the service of Great Britain during the War of 1812. His name was Chief Black Hawk. (A huge statue of him sculptured by Loredo Taft, stands today, in 1967, on the east bank of the Rock River near Oregon, Illinois, looking south down the Rock River Valley.) Black Hawk did not accept a treaty of 1804 between the United States and his people. In 1831 he established himself, with a band of warriors, on the disputed territory and ordered the whites to leave at once. When he crossed the Mississippi into Illinois in the spring of 1832, Governor John Reynolds of Illinois collected a body of 1,800 volunteers, putting them under the command of Brig-Gen. Samuel Whiteside, and the Black Hawk war was on. William McHenry, the National Archives and Records Service at Washinton, D.C., reveal had been a 3d lieutenant of rangers, U.S. Volunteers, from August, 1813, to June, 1815. With that background, he responded to the call for Black Hawk fighters and left his home at Williams Ferry on the Wabash River where he held the rank of captain according to White county records, to offer his services. He was enrolled at Dixon's Ferry, Rock River, 0D/May> 18, 1832, for 90 days, service. (War Dep^ Records). He was made a major in the Spy Battalion, 2d Brigade, Illinois Mounted Volunteers, and served from June to August, 1832. Major McHenry led his troops through this region to join forces with General Atkinson's troops at Fort Atkinson, Wis. He then fought, with a General Dodge, going as far west as the Wisconsin river. (Black Hawk was finally defeated at the Battle of Bad Axe, a southern Wisconsin river flowing into the Mississippi. Major McHenry did not fight in that war). But his military record was only part of the reason why the Illinois State legislature, on Jan. 16, 1836, decided to hpnor William McHenry by naming a new county after him. Prior to the Black Hawk War, he had represented White county as a state representative from 1818-20, again from 1824-28 find as a state senator from 1828-30. - After his Black Hawk war service he returned to White county and was elected to the House again in 1834 but died on Feb. 3, 1835, during that session of legislature. The high regard in which he was held was indicated in the Illinois Advocate newspaper, published at Vandalia on Feb. 4, 1835, which reads under obituary: "In this place at his boarding house. Major WILLIAM McHENRY, one of the Representatives from White county, aged 65 years. His merits are too well known to need praise from our hands." The Illinois State Historical Library at Springfield giveshis birth date as Oct. 3, 1774, place unknown. (Research by the editor of this History fairly established the fact that this Wil- Ham McHenry was not related to •femes McHenry, Secretary of War under Presidents George Washinton and John Adams, after whom the illustrious Fort SJcHenry was named that stands today overlooking the Baltimore, Md., harbor and where Francis Scott Key on Sept. 15, ' !$14, penned the immortal lines of our Star Spangled Banner. Either the Newberry Library ill Chicago nor the Illinois State historical Library at Spring.- field nor the Rockford Public library could establish the parentage or birthplace of William McHenry. It is known only thaf he came to this state from Kentucky in 1809. White county records at Carmi show he had a Wife, Hannah R., who died Jan. 20, 1844, at the age of 72. She is buried in the McHenry cemetery at Carmi.) To Samuel and Margaret Gillilan, looking for a place that might spell shelter for themselves and their children, the west bank of the Fox River at what is now Algonquin, Illinois, surely looked a bit like West Virginia. Steep hills leaping up from a wide-flowing river that resembled the Greenbrier could recall their home county of Pocahontas, back there in a ' forested region near the Vir- I ginia state line and many, many Vdays from where they now stood on this chill 18th day of November, 1834. It , mattered not to the Gillilans that they might have been poaching. In their long journey overland, they were seeking virgin country. They had undoubtedly, a day or two back, ione through Chicago, a town that had just emerged from the trading post class. It was too civilized. They wanted unsettled land. There on the west bank of the Fox River, they found it. And they didn't know, or cared less, that it was stiM ceded to the Indians. Their journey from Champaign county, Ohio, where they had stayed for ayear, was made in two canvas-covered wagons, one drawn by horses, the other by oxen. Accompanying them was a helper, EdwardRutledge.* They also brought several cows. At LaPorte, Ind., they were joined by two bachelor brothers, Alonzo and Morris Cutler, who located a claim in McHenry county but afterwards sold out and went away. The Gillilans, as they left the Chicago region, looked onto a beautiful landscape consisting of alternate stretches of prairie and oak groves, over which roamed all kinds of game. In a single grove they counted seventy deer. Wolves and Lynx abounded along the Fox. The Indiams had a camp at Cornish's Ferry (Algonquin) and another across the river opposite the Gillilans. Had Margaret been told that she was the first white woman to cross that water known as the Fox, and that she would find no neighbors, anywhere on the other side, it likely would not have fazed her. Because the Gillilans, after staking their claini on Section 23 of a vast .region known as McHenry county, Illinois, remained right there for the next three years until the husband and father took sick and died September 6, 1837. But that is getting ahead of the story. 1834 was a year of peace, as Illinois' early history went. The Blackhawk War of 1831-- 32 had ended, but there were' still enough Indians around so that the Gillilans could record the theft of a horse which they later recovered. And Margaret Gillilan had her own constant war with the Indians. For the story is told, in the McHenry County History of 1885, that when a party of the marauders canje to their house and one of them spat in a pot of boiling meat "She sprang on him and put him out of the house which very much delighted the rest of the savages." Andrew Jackson was president of the United States in that year of 1834 and Joseph. Duncan was elected governor of Illinois that same year on the Whig ticket. Today the Whig ticket would be called the Republican party. When the Gillilans crossed that November Eighteenth to the west bank of the Fox, they hastily set up what was known as a "Three-faced camp," a temporary shelter with three walls and an open front, the roof being of bark and shingles, all held in place by weight poles. This camp had to serve until the cabin was constructed. Mom and Dad Gillilan had some help in their first-set-1 tling chores--eight of nine children. Their names were Deida, Lydia, Chaney, (who died in Virginia), Nancy, Martha, James, Electa, Tabitha and Richard. (Of these, Richard continued the family name in the county, living with his mother. He died in 1919, Aug. 13, age 90 years 11 montfis.) Hard luck plagued them in 1835, their first full year as first-comers in the vast region " that included what is now Lake and McHenry counties and the northern part of Cook county. They lost their first corn crop, due to sickness. And on Aug. 20 that year, their 15-year old daughter Deida, died--the first recorded death in the new county. She was the first person buried in the Gillilan cemetery. It was this same year that John Gillilan came west from the Virginias to join his brother, Samuel, and Margaret and their big family. John made his claim in Section 35 on the east side of the Fox river, where he married twice and fathered six children. (The headstone in the Algonquin cemetery today shows John and his first wife, Belinda, buried there, along with their children, Susan, Robert and Esther. John's dates were 1811-1889 and Belinda, 1825-1876. Sam's dates on his headstone show 1792 to 9-6-1837 and Margarets are 1793-1890. The headstone also show their children, Richard, Lydia, Deida, and Shadrach, a boy of 12 years, buried there.) That same year of 1835 saw settling of the county begin in earnest. There were two settlements in 1835. The Virginia settlement took place in the eastern part of what is now Dorr township and included the following: James Dufield, Christopher Walkup, John Walkup, Josiah Walkup, William Hartman, John Gibson, John Mc- Clure, and the Samuel Gillilans were regarded as part of this neighborhood. The other "first" community was Pleasant Grove, now Marengo. The Pleasant Grove, settlers were Oliver Chatfield, Calvin Spencer, A.B. Coon, Porter Chatfield, Russell Diggins, Richard Simpkins and Moody B. Bailey. Church-going was an important part of these first settlements. Many of their cabins probably were not completed when they held the first religious services in the house of Sam and Margaret Gillilan in 1836. The first birth in the region was a year later when a son, William Beardsley, was born to the Abner Beardsleys in 1837. (It was two years later before anyone chose the northern part of the new county. In 1836 E.W. Brighamt took up a claim in what became Hebron township and Josiah H. Giddings was next. Both came here from Vermont, continuing to live in this county at least until 1884.) Actually, the Indians had the right, by an act of Congress, to be in the Mc Henry-Lake county region until 1836. The Act forbade settlers to occupy this land prior to that year. A treaty had been made at Chicago on Sept. 26, 1833, Article 1 of which ceded all land held by the Winnebago Indian nation "along the west shore of^Lake Michigan and between this lake and the land ceded to the United States by the Winnebago nation by the treaty at Fort Armstrong, made September 15, 1832: bounded on the north by the country lately ceded by the Menominees, and on the south by the country ceded at the treaty of Prairie du Chien, made July 29, 1829, supposed to contain 5,- 000,000 acres." The Winnebago nation consisted of the Chippewas, Ottawas1 and Pottawatomie tribes. While by this treaty that followed the Black Hawk War they were to move to a reservation along the Missouri river, the Indians nevertheless had until August, 1836, to get out. That is why this account concludes the first McHenry county white settlers could almost have been considered poachers. While the Gillilans were deciding to come west from the Virginias, another hardy individual, one Calvin Spencer, came from Indiana that spring of 1834 to look things over in McHenry county. He first made a claim near what is now Crystal Lake but thought better of another location near what is now Marengo, called Pleasant Grove. He cut logs for a cabin and put up stacks of hay with a scythe. But it was not until Sept. 14, 1835 -- almost a year after the Gillilans set up housekeeping -- that Calvin Spencer came with an oxteam accompanied by Joseph Braytom and wife ( Cal's brother-in-law and sister) and two young men and a boy. They built a small log house and then Mr. Spencer returned to Indiana to get his wife and three children, Phoebe, Sally and LeRoy, (all of which is admirably detailed in the Marengo Republican-News Centennial edition of Sept. 12, 1935.) Mr. Spencer is regarded as Marengo's first settler, has a park named after him there. Some of those 1835 settlers are memorialized in the McHenry county of today. Walkup avenue is a main thoroughfare in Crystal Lake and Diggins street is one of the main eastwest streets in Harvard. A movement obviously started that year of 1835 to give the new territory official sanction. Because it is a recorded fact that on Jan. 16,1836, the state legislature approved "An act to establish certain counties." Section 1 of this act reads as follows; "BE IT ENACTED, etc., That all that tract of country within the following boundaries, to wit: Beginning at a point on Lake Michigan where the township line dividing townships 42 and 43 strikes said lake running thence west along srfid line to the east line of range number 4, east of the third principal meridian, thence north to the boundary line of the state, thence east to Lake Michigan, thence along the shore of said lake to the place of beginning, shall constitute a new county to be called McHenry." Why the name McHenry? See Prologue to this History for detailed report on Major William McHenry, the Black Hawk Indian fighter from White county who became a state assemblyman and senator. Section 16 of the above mentioned act contained the provision t h a t . . . . "The county of McHenry shall continue to form a part. of Cook (county) until it shall be organized; shall vote with the county of Cook in all general elections, until otherwise provided by law." A subsequent act by the Legislature set the first day of June, 1837, as election day, for the choosing of county officers. A board of commissioners, also set up by state law, fixed on the village of McHenry to be the county seat by an act of May 10, 1837, McHenry at thattime being near the geographical center of"the * new county as then constituted, since it also included what is now Lake county. Most of the population, however, was east of the Fox river. On that June 1, 1837, at Half Day, (south of Libertyville) in the house of Hiram Kennecott, the first record in this county of an official character showed the following elected to office: "County Commissioners: Charles H. Bartlett, Matthias Mason, Solomon Norton; Sheriff: Henry B. Steele; Coroner, Michael C. McGuire; Recorder: Seth Washburn; Surveyor, Charles E. Moore." Half Day is still a Lake county community today. The three commissioners above named were actually the county board in those days, fixing precincts, public roads, setting rates and licenses. That system of governing the new county continued until 1850 when the township system was adopted. The activities of this commission were admirably detailed in the History of McHenry County, 1885, and thus are not repeated here. Copies of the 1,000 page 1885 history can be found in most McHenry county libraries. LAKE COUNTY FORMED With most of the big county's population still east of the Fox river, it was deemed prudent two years later to split the area. And so, by act of the Legislature approved March 1, 1839, it was enacted that "All that portion of McHenry County east of a range or sectional, line not less than three miles nor more than four miles east of the present county seat of McHenry county "shall constitute a new county to be the county of Lake." The river was first thought to . make a natural boundary, but the people of McHenry village, the , county seat, protested strongly at being left at the eastern extremity of the reduced county. So a compromise was reached, setting the line about three miles east of the river. The election to organise Lake cOdnty out of McHenry county "was ordered for the first Monday in August, 1839. (In noting the date of March 2, 1840, when Abijah S. Barnum, surveyor of McHenry county, was appointed, along with two other men, to establish the Mc- Henry-Lake county line, it is interesting to observe that the McHenry County Historical society museum temporarily located thSs summer of 1967 in the rear of a business building with frontage on South Jefferson street, Woodstock, contains the original surveying instru- . ment used by a John Brink. Mr; Brink was a prominent U.S Deputy Surveyor who passed through northern McHenry county in November, 1833. Mr. Brink's tripod and instrument were officially reported to be the oldest item in the McHenry museum at this writing. He was McHenry County Surveyor from 1843-1844, living with his wife in Crystal Lake. It is alleged that at one time in his work he had Abraham Lincoln as a helper.) SECESSION ATTEMPT While we are discussing surveying and the setting of county boundaries, there should be reference here to a certain Rockford convention of July 6, 1840. Had the purpose of that gathering been successful, this history would conceivably be the record of a Wisconsin, rather that an Illinois county. The key work in this historic sidelight to McHenry county history is the word Secession. Now read this, from the Winnebago County History of 1884: "This convention was composed of delegated from the northern fourteen counties of the state. Its purpose was secession from Illinois and annexation to the proposed new State of Wisconsin . . .The apparent motive was the restoration of the boundary line as originally "i Established - between the two States that might be formed of the territory north of and eastand- west line running through the. southern bend of Lake Michigan. This line, it was claimed, had been arbitrarily and unfairly extended fifty miles north when Illinois became a state." Why all this hullabaloo, four years after the Illinois legislature had named McHenry county? It was a question of taxes. The legislature, led by Governor Joseph Duncan, in 1835 had passed a twenty million dollar state-wide public improvement program. In those days, such an appropriation was called stupendous. Some of the new settlers in northern Illinois feared the taxes to finance this program would be confiscatory. So the prospect of being part of Wisconsin, which had not yet achieved statehood and Rotary Club SEPT-3 l9ff - PLAINPEALER - SEC, I, PG. 9 THRILLING! DARING! EXCITING! MODIFIED AND STOCK CAR AUTO RACING Continuing EVERY SAT. NITE Thru. Sept. at The Lake Spii ir Play TOTAL and win $$$ -- Lucky Tickets Get Free Gifts. Dance in the Pit Stop Loft to'the Atlanta Blues Hurry -- It's Faster Than You Think! Time Trial 7;00 p.m. Races 8:15 Adults $2.00 Children 50c Would you like to share an international experience? If so, would you select a young man or a young woman from the Southern Hemisphere or the Northern Hemisphere? Briefly, the program is this. Rotary International, who has for many, many years supported and promoted an international student exchange program at the college level, has now developed a new Youth Exchange program. This program enables us to obtain a high school student (sophomore, junior or senior) to live with a local family for a period of up to one full year, the express purpose being to promote international good will and understanding at the person to perspn-levfel. The student qualifying must be in the upper one-third of his class scholastically. The l^cal McHenry Rotary club will sponsor such a student and assist the host family in the routine arrangements necessary here in McHenry. The Rotary club will provide monthly allowances concerning spending money and incidentals. The host family, and this could be you, would probably be best if they had in their own family a teen-ager attending high school at the sophomore junior, or senior level, to help the visiting student to become better acquainted and in general be helpful *in rounding out the family type atmosphere it is so desirable to achieve. All applicants for host family will be reviewed and a final selection made. The host family must reside withinthe McHenry high school district. Won't you give this matter your utmost consideration, and if for any reason you are not in a position to participate, perhaps you might encourage one of your friends or neighbors to contact the local Rotary club for further information concerning this very worthy project. Let me re-assure you that the host family does not have to be one where the father is a member of Rotary, but rather anyone who might feel that they would like to participate in this international experience. Please make your inquiries to either of the following people: Donald D. Virgins, President of McHenry Rotary Club, 3307 W. Fairway, McHenry, or Donald B. Arvidson, 7002 Barnard Mill road Ringwood. As a matter of information, those international students selected from the Southern Hemisphere would be with the host family from January to December, and if from the Northern Hemisphere from August to July. An additional point, while it is desirable from both the was, in fact, not to be admitted to the union as a state until 1848, was tempting to these thrifty people. Their consternation, made manifest in the Rockford convention, apparently paid off, because the Legislature, that same year, repealed the improvement laws, but only after the state had accumulated a debt of nearly $15 millions. With the laws repealed, the secession movement died out and the McHenry county boundary, along with the others at the top of the,,, state, remained intact. [ For And About Teenagers ] Flowerwood has the largest selection of FRESHLY DUG EVERGREENS in Northern Illinois VISIT FLOWERWOOD FOR HELP IN YOUR LANDSCAPE PUNNING! LARGE SELECTION OF SHADE TREES Open Sunday 9-5 CRYSTAL LAKE ROUTE 14 AT 176 OPEN DAILY 8 - 5:30 Phone 459 - 6200 -- We Deliver we HAVfc TO THE WEEK'S LETTER: "Why do children over twelve have to pay adult prices to see a movie, and then have to be o v e r e i g h t e e n to see a d u l t movies? I think those persons twelve years of age to seventeen should be allowed to see adult movies. I would like your opinion on this." OUR REPLY: Wehavealways been a little unhappy o&er the fact that anyone over twelve has to pay adult prices. They are not adults. But, we don't think teenagers should be allowed to see most of today's so-called "adultT movies. In fact, grandpas and grandmas shouldn't see some of them. There are plenty of acceptable, entertaining movies on the amusement scene., There is also an un healthy supply of junk. In some areas of the country, the showing of imported "adult" films has caused theater operators to find themselves in court. More and more, suggestive x scenes are making their way in- 1 to television programs. It is / most likely this will continue until adequate regulations are adopted to keep this medium within the boundaries of good taste. It is not likely, but possible: if you are now twelve, by the time you are a legal adult, producers of "adult" movies may have gone so far they put themselves out of business. tf you hovo • teenage problem you wmrt) to dticvit, or on observation to mok«, oddrni YOU loftor ID FC« AND ABOUT TtCNAOEtS. COMMUNITY AND SUIUttAN PtISS SSRVlCf. FRANKFORT, KY. HOLD SYMPOSIUM AT MEETING OF AREA NURSES "Cystic Fibrosis" is the subject of the program which Will [ resume the monthly meetings of the 16th district, Illinois Nurses association for 1967-68. Featured speakers for this September 11 meeting in the nurses' residence, Victory Memorial hospital, Waukegan, are members of the Board of the Cystic Fibrosis foundation, Lake County unit, who willparticipate in a symposium. This 7:30 p.m. meeting will also include election of delegates to the state convention of the Illinois Nurses association to be held at the Pick- Congress hotel, Chicago, on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. standpoint of the host family and the student to be able to make arrangements with one family during the student* s entire stay here, it can be worked out that the student may live with two different families for six months each, or three families for four months at a time. CIVIL DEFENSE Donovan M. Vance, director of the Hlinois Civil Defense agency, announced a scheduled Civil Defense conference and seminar for area leaders in business, industry and government. The conference will be at 9:45 a.m. Friday, Sept. 15, at the Pheasant Run Lodge in Saint Charles. This is one of a series of 10 conferences being conducted throughout the state by the University of Ulinois Extension service in cooperation with the Illinois Civil Defense agency. Their purpose is to acquaint business, industry and government leaders with civil defense responsibilities and to achieve a close cooperation and coordination between them. Thinning Paint It is generally not necessary to thin your paint -- but if you need to, be sure- to carefully follow the thinning directions on the label. Thin down only the amount of material which is to be used at once. 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