Carrollton Patriot Newspaper

18 Mar 1920
Greene County in 1820
100 years ago this spring Greene County Farmers that is Farmers in what is now Greene County had enough to discourage them, but if they were discouraged, History does not record the fact. There was no fly in their wheat, for they had no wheat. In fact they hadn't much of any thing except a few cattle and horses that we're starving because there was nothing to eat. here is what the history of Greene County status of the winter of 1819 – 1820 and the condition of the pioneers of this section.
"The winter of 1819- 20 proved to be an unusually severe one. The grass of the prairies had been destroyed by fires lighted by the Indians or hunters and much of the undergrowth in the woods was killed by the same element. Before the close of the winter the provision is gathered by the settlers for their stock, from places where it had escaped the ravages of the fire, gave out and as they were compelled to cut down trees from the boughs of which the cattle and horses could procure a scanty supply of food. Many of these wandered away and where lost, while some of them died from the effects of hunger and cold. The supply of food for the settlers and their families proved to be sufficient yet their suffering from the cold was often intense.
Seymour Kellogg, who lived in the Manvaisterre Settlement (now in Morgan County) in his search for some of his stock one bitterly cold night, lost his way and saved his life only by walking vigorously between two trees standing several rods apart. he did not dare to leave his track during the night for fear of being irrecoverably lost. he didn't know how far he was from either his own or his brothers cabin. And the appearance of daylight he found himself about 2 miles from a latter place, to which he immediately repaired. His feet were badly frozen during the night, making him a cripple for several months.
Notwithstanding, these hardships, the residence of the County were not discouraged, but went to work in the spring with renewed vigor. We hear of very large accessions to the population of the County in 1820, an important strides were made forward. Immigrants poured in from nearly every direction, and almost every township in the County contained one or more families before the close of the year. if had half The county was not organized until the following year and a historian means there were settlers in nearly every one of the present townships.)
Among those whom we find recorded as arriving during the year 1820 are Jacob Bowman, Martin Bowman, Silas Eldred, Mrs. Ruth Eldred, south and West of Carrollton; John Greene and James Whitlock near Kane; John Lorton, Robert Lorton, Thomas

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A tract of valuable prairie and timber along the north side of apple where he soon accumulated property and money and enough to supply all reasonable wants.
Robert Whitaker made a home on the Andy Johnson farm during this year, and from him Whitaker’s creek, the stream flowing from the prairie a few miles west of Greenfield, into Apple Creek was named.
22 Apr 1920
Train to Work
Shall the public schools undertake vocational training? This question, like most others, had 2 sides in the discussion given by the Current Topic Club last Thurs. night even though most the members admitted that they didn’t know anything about the subject.
Principal Keith Purl read a paper on “Vocational Education & Continuation Schools”, giving quite a full outline of what is being done in these lines.
Vocational Education, said Mr Purl, aims to meet the needs of the manual worker in the trades & industries.
Vocational guidance is a recent development in education which aims to give to parents and children information with regard to trades and other occupations, and the best method of entering or preparing to enter them. It’s not an attempt to find employment for young people, although this is sometimes done.
Mr Purl told something of the work of the Federal Commission on national aid to Vocational Education which in 1914 recommended that Federal Aid be given to this work for a number of reasons, among them that there’s pressing need for Vocational Education, that the problem is too extensive for any except a national agency, and that the states are too poor to attempt a solution.
Continuation schools are provided in IL. By a law recently passed. This law requires school boards to establish part-time or day continuation schools for persons in employment and requires such persons to attend these schools.
10 Jun 1920
That Paper About Greene
Read by Editor Bradshaw before the Illinois State Historical Society at Springfield last week.
Illinois is a domain comprising 102 counties. Each of these counties has within its borders towns, villages and communities, and these in turn are made up of homes - the homes of the people, the seven or eight million people who really constitute the State of Illinois
The early history of Illinois is a composite photograph of life in these scattered communities and isolated cabins that made the pioneer counties of the state. There were 15 of these counties in 1818, when Illinois became a state. Four more came into existence the following year, and at the session of the General Assembly during Jan. & Feb. 1821, there was increased activity in this line, and seven new counties were formed. The Centennial Anniversary of these counties in the order which they were formed are Lawrence, Greene, Sangamon, Pike, Hamilton, Montgomery and Fayette.
This paper is to deal with the early history of one of the seven - Greene County.
During the spring of the year 1820 several house and barn raisings took place between Apple and Macoupin Creeks, a region that, two years before, had been the uttermost frontier of civilization in the then newly-born State of Illinois. During the summer of that same year there was an occasional "hoss race" within that same territory. In the fall there were husking bees and hunting frolics. These house and barn raisings, these horse races, these husking bees and hunting parties provided the only means by which pioneers of that region could exercise their natural bent as social beings. It was 35 or 40 miles to Edwardsville, the nearest town and their county seat. Not a church nor a school house between the Apple and the Macoupin, nor for many miles in either direction beyond those streams.
Hence the typical social gatherings of a pioneer settlement - the house raisings and husking bees - were well attended functions. Always there was one topic for talk wherever a few of these hardy pioneers gathered. It was the growth and future development of their sparse settlement into a political unit of the sovereign State with a capital of their own - a county, with a county seat located somewhere between Apple and Macoupin Creeks.
The Spring and Summer of 1820 brought many accessions to the scattered settlements of that region, and the rapid growth gave weight to the agitation for forming a new county. The second General Assembly of the State of Illinois assembled at Vandalia, December 4, 1820. The future county, of course, had no representative in that body, and whether it sent any lobbyists over the bridle paths to the new state capital or not, can only be conjectured. Probably that we unnecessary. At any rate, a bill to create the new county was introduced early in the session, was passed January 18 and approved January 20, 1821.
The act creating the county bestowed upon it the name of "Greene," in honor of Gen. Nathaniel Greene of Revolutionary fame. The boundaries as then defined included all of the present counties of Greene and Jersey, and to this territory was added that of the present counties of Macoupin, Morgan and Scott. Thus the county became "Mother Greene" to a bevy of buxom daughters. Miss Morgan was the first to set up housekeeping for herself in 1823; Macoupin followed in 1829 and Miss Jersey became a matron in 1839. Little Miss Scott remained in the Morgan household until '39, and then followed the example of her sisters.
The forming of Greene County brought on a contest for the location of the county capital. The contest was short, sharp and decisive. One February 20, 1821 - just a month after the county was created by enactment, the fine commissioners who had been named in the act met at a lone cabin on the prairie and proceeded to consider the eligible sites.
There were several of these. One was a beautiful mound about 3 miles Southwest of the present town of Carrollton. Fifty years afterward a somewhat florid description was written by a man who remembered it as it then was, untouched by the hand of man, and he declard that "the sun in all his wanderings had seldom shone upon a lovelier spot of earth since the day on which the flaming sword was placed at the gates of Eden." The owner of that spot, Thos. Hobson, confident that no other proposed site could compete with his, had laid out a town on that mound and had it named Mt. Pleasant.
But Hobson was an Englishman who had come out from his native country only a short time before. The War of 1812 had ended, but it left more or less bitterness rankling in the breasts of these pioneers whose lines and homes had been menaced by the Indian allies of the British. This probably had something to do with the result of that contest. But perhaps a greater factor in it was the personality of the man who won.
The official report of the Commissioners, as it appears in the records of the county states that "after examining the most eligible situation in said county, giving due weight and attention to the considerations set forth as to present the future population, etc." that had concluded that the most suitable place for said seat of justice was a point 88 poles South of the N.E. corner of Section 22, Township 10 North, Range 12 West of the Third Principal Meridian.
The land thus described and selected was owned by one of the Commissioners, but it is said that he refused to vote on fixing the site. The other four were unanimous. The man who did not vote and whose land became the site of Green County's capital, was Thomas Carlin, afterward sixth Governor of Illinois.
Local historian have been content to add that, after the decision had been made, one of the Commissioners paced fifty yards to the West and said, "Here let the Court House be built," that the town was immediately laid out and named Carrollton.
Many have since wondered why the town was not named in honor of its founder, and why, a few years later, the county seat of Macoupin was apparently so named. Several years ago a descendent of Governor Carlin - a man who had never been in the West - came out to visit the scene of his grandfather's pioneering. Quite logically he steered his course to Carlinville, and was puzzled to find there no trace of ancestral records. I do not know why Carlinville was so named; why Carrollton was not is, partly at least, a matter of tradition only.
We can imagine those four other Commissioners suggesting that the town be named for Mr. Carlin, and we imagine him declining the honor with the modesty of real greatness. "Suggest a name, then," they no doubt said to him. And it is fairly well established that he did suggest the name. Himself a pioneer, he greatly admired those earlier pioneers who laid the foundations of a nation in the Declaration of Independence, and he especially loved the name of that signer of the document who, in order that no British high executioner would be put to the trouble of enquiring, wrote down his name - "Charles Carroll of Carrollton."
And so he gave the town a name, beautiful in itself, honored in history, and significant of courage and fidelity to principal.
Perhaps it would be well at this point to pause a bit in the story itself, an introduce the case of characters in this little drama, "The Birth" - not of a Nation - but "of a County."
When the Federal Government was unable to send troops to protect the settlers in Illinois from Indian atrocities, encouraged by the British during the war of 1812, the settlers themselves organized as Rangers. One of the camps was at Edwardsville. "For several years," says Clement Clapp in his history of Greene County, "these brave determined men rode over the bare and silent prairies for hundreds of miles, now chasing a band of fleeing savages, now hurrying to the defense of a threatened settlement. They were almost always constantly in the saddle, rarely slept under a roof, and exercise almost super human viligance in keeping the red men at bay. They were familiar with every feature of Indian warfare and their deeds of daring and endurance have been made the theme of many a thrilling poem or romantic tale."
30 Sep 1920
C. J. Weis and H. C. Johnson bought the store of Kessinger & Marks at Wrights.

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