Early Days in Lyman #5

EARLY DAYS IN THE TOWN OF LYMAN
by Bela Foster

Continuing . . .
In 1869 we heard more about the railroad coming. We heard of bonds and right of way. Melvin, Thaw, and quite a lot about the town of Beset, soon to be started. A. M. Haling had his eye on Beset grove and about one half a section of land that was to be crossed by the railroad. It looked a favorable spot for a town.
At the town meeting in April 1869 the following officers were elected: Supervisor, A. M. Haling who lived on the Louis Stiegman farm. Town Clerk, A. A. Haling who lived where Milo Higgens now lives. Assessor, W. S. Larkin, who lived on what is now John Rock's east farm. Collector, Lyman Peck who lived in the house north of Louis Chambers farm. Constable, Sethe Woodward who lived in northwest corner of Section 13, Seward Arnold's farm. Road Commissioners Joseph Hurst who lived where Mrs. Dodson now lives, T. A. Ireland who lived where S. McCorkel now lives. This year the town was divided into ten road districts. The pathmasters were N. G. Barber who lived on the Martin Grohler farm, D. Blakely who lived on the E. Hornickel farm about sixty rods west of the NE corner. His house is now the Henry Onken home. C. S. Pierce who lived on the east end of the Onken farm, N. McNeil who lived where Robert Madden lives, O. D. Sacket who lived where Fred Sturm lives, William Hurst who lived where Bert Moseman lives, R. Pettit who lived in the NE corner of Section 31, C. B. Finch, A. Schaeffer who lived where Edw. Russell lives, Patrick Russell who lived on the hill near the center of the NE quarter of section 26.
The officers this year were pretty well scattered and showed more interest. A special election was called for Sept. 11, 1869, to vote upon R. R. bonds and right of way of the proposed Gilman, Clinton and Springfield railway. There were 42 votes cast, 34 for and 8 against. In giving the right of way 16 were for and 26 against.
William Bentley, son of W. H. Bentley, one of the Connecticut settlers who settled near Onarga was a music teacher, instrumental and vocal, held singing school in Smith School house in 1869 and 1870. Nearly all the young people of North Lyman attended. I did not attend but enjoyed the meetings they had at our house. I remember the membership card he gave his pupils. It read "Come and learn to sing and bring along your lady, For Bentley is the agent for Messrs. Root and Cadey." That was my first winter in school. I remember the teacher very distinctly. he was a corpulent man about the size of Glenn Yackee. One afternoon two young ladies, Maggie and Eliza McDonald from the Smith school visited our school and of course, if I ever received a "paddling" it was when company was present. To make my chagrin more acute, the visitors went home with my sister. Though I may have been black and blue, I could not see, so sat pat.
Some evenings we would collect on the ice. The professor enjoyed skating and was always present and nothing gave me more joy than to see his feet go up and his body come down with a thud upon that part of his anatomy that he paddled on me.
At the town meeting in 1870, A. C. Maxson was chosen moderator. The adopted several rules of government. One of them was in regard to pasturing and cutting hay off the unoccupied land. It was declared unlawful to cut grass or pasture the land without a permit. The fences began to be used at that time. People who had a few cows staked them out and others sent their cattle to herds. Our cattle were few and were staked. I can remember going skidding one time when the cow chain got around my foot. It was fun but hard on the clothing.
The officers elected in 1870 were: Supervisor, P. S. Gose who lived on the S. W. Netherton farm. Town Clerk, A. B. Graham lived where Joe Sans does. Assessor, Joseph Hurst, Collector F. G. Atwood, lived on section 22. Road Commissioner, Patrick Russell, Justice of the Peace J. F. Smith, lived on Section 4. The pathmasters were: John Davis lived where John Woodward does, W. A. Conger lived where Tornowski does, J. B. Jones lived where Roy Stiner does. John Hummel, James Drummond, James Dycus, Horace Lester, F. G. Atwood, A. Shafer, P. Russell.
The next two years were much occupied in surveying and building new roads and bridges. We also notice familiar faces, those with whom I worked.
Next week we will tell you what became of Bungtown.

--Roberts Herald. 10 April 1935.  

Early Days in Lyman #3

EARLY DAYS IN THE TOWN OF LYMAN by Bela Foster

Continuing . . .

I am sorry that I can not tell more of the early settlers of the south half of Lyman. I remember of only once that I crossed the section line north of Roberts before the Gilman, Clinton & Springfield Railway was built. I had head of the Tobys, the Pfaats, the Burshams, the Russells, and the Hursts, but to my knowledge had never seen them.
John T. Forbes came from England with a large family of boys and girls, J. F. Smith and family came from Canada in 1859, John McDonald and family came from Canada in 1862. The Forbes farm joined the Marston farm on the west.

 

--1884 Lyman Township Plat
 

My Notes:  So the Marstons were in Section 2.  Possibly on the G. Schuler site.  The school is located in this section.  They were the first school teachers, in their home and at the first school.

 

The Smith farm was lots 1 and 2 NE Sec. 4. The McDonald farm north of the Smith farm.

 

--1884 Lyman Township Plat
 

J. F. Smith and J. T. Forbes made sorghum molasses. This was a good business. Everybody used molasses. It was the dressing regardless of what was eaten. Alexander Forbes, eldest son of J. T. Forbes, was handy with tools. He made a windmill for grinding grain. It did not ? the meal but was better than a coffee pot. He also made a self drop corn planter. It did not use wire but corn was dropped by wheel traction.
The reapers used were the combined reaper and mower. The Kirby was the prevailing one. It needed two men to operate one. One man drove and one sat on a low seat behind with a hand rake to take the grain off the platform. It took a good man to be a good deliverer.

 

The only hay rake I remember seeing was a wooden one of the revolving sort. A boy rode the horse and a man held the rake and dumped it at the window. Bumble bees were plentiful. When the rake turned them up the boy was lucky to get off with fewer than half a dozen punctures. The early settlers had plenty of prairie hay as every other section was unbroken prairie.

In 1865-6-7 the influx to Lyman township was great. The new settlers took mostly government land. This took the hay land and the pastures from the older settlers.
A. M. and A. A. Haling bought all of section three. This is one of the large sections, 1240 acres. They made a new survey of it and dividing it into farms sold it to later arrivals.

 

--1884 Lyman Township Plat

 

A. M. Haling was a man with much "push." He put up good buildings. His stables were not roofed with slough grass hay. He burned a strip to protect his buildings and hay. One day when his men were busy on other parts of the farm a prairie fire came and with the aid of tickle grass jumped the barrage. It burned his barn and all within except one horse which his daughter, Kate succeeded in getting out. The other horses would not go out of the barn.
During the civil war prices rose. Corn sold for $1.00 per bushel, flour $16.00 per barrel, hogs $10.00 per cwt. The new settlers who came with no stock and little money were in a quandary. Corn meal proved to be the staff of life. Could you have looked into the larder of almost any family you would have found it stocked with corn meal. Several families came from southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois about the time we (the Foster family) did, 1865. Some of them settled in Iroquois County. One man made a trip back and when he returned brought some flour in his trunk. The agent mentioned the flour sifting out and the man replied, "Say nothing about it, that is some flour I am taking to a needy widow." In this community we were all in need. Had any one brought a barrel of flour to our home we would have celebrated the day as an epoch in the family history.

Could you see a picture of men planting corn in those early days you would wonder what they were doing. They would have an ax, a spade, a shovel, a sharpened stick, anything to make a cavity for the seed. Then came the hand corn planters, then the two row hand drop horse drawn planters.
Weeds soon became plentiful and it became necessary to check-row the corn. They used markers, 4-row size. The ground was marked off and the planters went at right angles across the marks. By check-rowing they could cross the corn with their single shovel, double shovel or five shovel one horse cultivators.
As a closing paragraph for this installment we shall return to that Fourth of July Celebration of 1859. This was a gathering of the people of a widely scattered community, not of Lyman township. The Town of Lyman was yet ten years in the future. Even Ford County was just being organized that year. The people came from north, south, east, and west. The meeting was held at Beset instead of the School Section Grove. That day, July 4th, 1859, is remembered in this local history for two important facts. First, this well remembered celebration and second, the frost. This was a cold morning. What corn had escaped the ground squirrels and other pests was killed by that Fourth of July frost. The settlers had no crops that year. That day they came to the picnic wearing overcoats.

--Roberts Herald. 27 March 1935. Bela Foster. 

Early Days in Lyman #2

EARLY DAYS IN THE TOWN OF LYMAN
by Bela Foster

Continuing . . .

The first installment of these "impressions" was published in the Herald last week. The following is a continuation. The installment ended with a picnic in 1859 the first Fourth of July celebration (and the first public gathering) ever assembled in these parts.

At that time grain was eight or nine cents per bushel. Crops were poor and after the deer, wild geese and ducks had taken a portion there was not much left. In the evening the deer would go into the fields and ere daylight returned, would be in there refuges in some low spot where grass grew tall. Could you have had some vantage point three miles north of here in the fall you might have seen the deer, one by one, going to the corn fields of the settlers.
The depredations of the deer were soon to cease. Deep snows and hunger made them scarce. The wolves hampered the farmers somewhat. Their scope was large. They would visit the farmer in the night and when daylight came they would be in their cover in the marshes to the north. By means of powder, and lead and poison, they also became scarce.
The early settlers felt the need of a school house. The first school had been held in a room in S. K. Marston's house. They petitioned the I. C. Railway Company to bring the lumber for a school house to Onarga gratis. When it came the settlers hauled the lumber and had a bee to put up the school house which was about 24 by 40 feet in size. The community had plenty of talent. Mr. and Mrs. Marston were musicians as well as teachers. The new building was erected one-half mile west of where the school building now stands. It being the first in twp. 25 was numbered one.

--1884 Plat Lyman Township

Roads in those days went as nearly as possible toward the town one wished to visit. The school house was erected on the Onarga road. The attendants of the school came from several miles around. Byron Lisk came from three and a half miles to the east. Maria Tinklepaugh from nearly six miles to the west. There are only two of those pupils of 1859 now living in Lyman Township. These are John P. Smith and Effie Maxson. There are only four living in the township who were here then. The other two are Mary Hurst and Maggie Mosher. Others came closely after the Connecticut colony and of the four mentioned only one, Effie Maxson belonged to the Connecticut settlers. Mary Hurst was from England. John Smith and Maggie Mosher Canada. 1859 was the year Ford County was organized. The community had been a part of Stockton Township, Vermilion County. It became a part of Benton Township, Ford County.
The early teachers of Lyman Township as far as the writer can learn were Mrs. Marston, Mr. Marston, Miss Mills, Quinn Thayer, Maria Tinklepaugh Havens, George Lyman, Marthaetta Wyman, Mary Ayer, Minnie Wilcox, David Bliss, Ida Burt, John Havens, and L. B. Wilcox. All were members of this early settlement.
The Lyman home for several years was a distributive point for the community mail. Each neighbor who went to Onarga would take the mail for the others to the Lyman home. They did not take daily papers in those days. The year 1858 was a wet one. The rain fall exceeded anything they had seen. It started in the spring and rained for three months. There was scarcely any drainage. The water could not get away fast enough to dry the land between showers.
Had you taken a balloon ride over this present Town of Lyman about 1860 you would have noticed that one section was occupied, the next prairie, the next occupied and then prairie. This formation was in regular checker board style. The government had given the Illinois Central Railway Company every other section of land for twenty miles on each side of the railroad, the line through Onarga. The Connecticut settlers bought their land from the Railway Company. The company was anxious to sell its land. I remember the maps and literature that representatives of the Company gave my father. On the map the sections altered, a red square then a white square; showing the railway land and the government land. These Connecticut settlers bought railway land. Most of the settlers who came between 1865 and 1870 took government land.

http://www.museum.state.il.us

Prairie fires (so numerous and terrible in the early years) began to wane. It was really frightful when one would hear a fire in the night roaring like a hurricane as it passed through some slough of rushes and course grass. I remember one such fire. The men went to fight it. In fighting a fire they put out side fires to confine it as much as possible.  The keep the side fires under control and burn a strip so that the larger fire can not spread. After it has subsided or passed the danger point the men return home and leave all blackness. As they start for home they do not know which light is theirs. The prairie all black with nothing to guide them. I remember that night hearing C. Pierce who lived on what is now the Henry Onken farm calling for help. He was answered and a light guided him to our home. After getting his bearing he was able to find his home. The new sod was covered with "tickle grass' and tumble weeds which burned like powder. In a brisk wind one could hardly keep up with it.
 
--Roberts Herald. 20 March 1935. Bela Foster.