PHILIPS FERRY was a link in one of the most important early western trails. Along the Philips Ferry road moved
the adventurer, with mules loaded with mining equipment, and the homesteader with his ox-drawn covered wagon, his
family and household goods seeking his fortune on the great prairies. Romance and tragedy stalked the ferry road
in those distant days of western settlement and adventure.
Many who passed that way left their bones to bleach beside the trail upon the great plains. Others, beaten, returned
later along the road, heading back east to homes which they had abandoned, disillusioned, their spirits broken.
Often, hope and disillusionment met upon the trail, one headed west, the other east.
In the days of the white-topped caravans, heading into the setting sun, boom towns sprang along the trail, had
their brief day of glory, then faded into obscurity. Such was the town of Oxville, just east of the ferry, on the
Philips Ferry road, a favored stopping-place of prospectors and emigrants westward bound. Oxville in those days
assumed considerable prominence and was expected to become a large town. Daniel Pike built a hotel there and in
the second story provided a commodious hall for "balls," which were well patronized by the beaux and
damsels of the wagon trains and the swains and their girls of the pioneer community. There the Boone and Scholl
and Elledge girls of the early Sangamo country were wont to dance to the fiddle tunes of the border. In the ceiling,
to aid the music, Pike placed a sounding plane of empty bottles, open, with necks down. With the passing of the
emigrant trains, the old hostelry fell into disuse and decay.
At the Illinois river, near present Valley City, a ferry crossing was established in very early times, at the place
where the buffaloes had forded the stream in wilderness days. The ferry road had followed a trail marked centuries
earlier by the bison herds. Along these trails had stalked the Indians of the ancient wilderness, followed at a
later time by the early hunters and explorers. The story of the ferry at this point goes back to the days of Illinois
Territory.
The beginning of the ferry is shrouded in obscurity. The first ferryman, so far as can be determined, was a French-
Canadian by the name of Jean Baptiste Tibault, who had a hut on the bank of the river in what is now Flint township
before Illinois became a state. He was the man known in the early days of the county as John B. Tebo, who was killed
at Milton in 1844. Tibault had a rude pirogue ferry across the Illinois in the closing days of the Territory. Later,
another man named McWorthy shared in the enterprise. Canoes, or pirogues, lashed together, with log slabs laid
across for a floor, surrounded with a wooden railing, provided a ferry for livestock and vehicles, the crude craft
with its cargo being propelled across the river by means of sweeps or poles.
The first ferryman of official record at this crossing was Garret Van Dusen, a Knickerbocker Dutchman, who was
running a ferry there when Pike county was established on January 31, 1821. The first official cognizance of a
ferry at this point was taken by the first county commissioners (Leonard Ross, John Shaw and William Ward), at
a special term of the county commissioners' court "holden at Colesgrove, Thursday, the 10th day of January,
1822." Coles' Grove, located in what is now Calhoun county, was the first seat of justice for the original
Pike county, which embraced the northwest third of the state.
Spread in the minutes of this court session, in the marvelous hand of the first Pike county clerk, James W. (My
Lord Coke) Whitney, is the following entry:
"Ordered that a License be granted to Garret Vandusen to keep a Ferry across the Illinois River, from the
place where he now resides, on NE 20, T. 4 S., R. 2 W., on condition of his paying a tax of one dollar, besides
Clerk's fees, and in other respects complying with the Laws in such Cases provided. And that the following list
of rates be established at that Ferry, to wit: For a single person, 12 1/2c; single horse, 12 1/2c; cattle over
one year old, her head, 12 1/2c; every hog, sheep or goat, 3c; every four-wheeled carriage, 50c; every two-wheeled
do., 37 1/2c."
Van Dusen at the same session of the commissioners' court was granted a license to keep an inn, or tavern, in the
house in which he resided at the ferry. The commissioners also fixed the rates he might charge at his tavern.
Van Dusen operated the ferry until the spring of 1824, when he sold out to Nimrod Philips, who prior to that time
had resided on the east side of the river in what is now Scott county. Philips had come up from Kentucky early
in the 1820s with various of his brothers and their families and the family of his son-in-law, Jesse Elledge, pioneer
Baptist preacher.
Other ferry licenses granted by the Pike county commissioners, sitting in the log court house at Coles' Grove in
January, 1822, included one to Ossian Ross who was licensed to operate a ferry across the Illinois river "immediately
below the mouth of Spoon River." This was opposite present Havana. Another license was to Thomas Ferguson
to operate a ferry at the lower end of what is now Calhoun county, then known as Ferguson's Ferry. Other ferries
over which the Pike county commissioners then exercised control were across the Mississippi river at Fort Edwards
(now Warsaw) and across the Illinois at Fort Clark (now Peoria). McDonald's Ferry at Louisiana, Missouri, also
was started in 1821 and licensed by the commissioners, whose control extended then to the shore of Lake Michigan
and the Wisconsin and northern Indiana lines.
The license to Van Dusen and his assignment to Nimrod Philips are in the following words:
"Know all men by these presents, that by the authority, and in pursuance of an order of the County Commissioners'
Court entered of record on the 11th day of January, A. D. 1822, License and permission is hereby given and granted
unto Garret Vandusen to keep a ferry across the Illinois river direct from the house where he now resides, in all
respects according to the laws of this state. In witness whereof I set my hand and the seal of said court this
12th day of January, 1822 and of the Independence of the United States the forty-sixth. - J. W. Whitney, Clerk,
Etc."
On the reverse side of the license is this notation:
"I hereby assign the within License to Nimrod Philips this 24th day of April 1824. Witness my name, G. Vdusen."
License and assignment were recorded May 25, 1825, on Page 381, Volume 6, Deed Records of Pike County.
On June 8, 1824, the second set of county commissioners, namely, Ebenezer Smith, James Nixon and William Mettz,
meeting in the new county seat town of Atlas, granted to Nimrod Philips a license to keep a tavern in his house
at the ferry, recorded as follows:
"Ordered that a tavern license be and is hereby granted to Nimrod Philips to keep a Tavern in the house where
he now resides, for the term of one year, on condition of his paying a tax of one dollar, and that the following
rates be established, to wit: Victuals per meal, 25c; horsekeeping per night, 37 1/2c; lodging per night, 12 1/2c;
whiskey, per half pint, 12 1/2c; rum and gin per do., 25c; French Brandy per do., 50c; Wine per do., 37 1/2c."
In 1825 Nimrod Philips, secured a ferry license also from the commissioners' court of Morgan county (which then
included present Scott county), the license being granted at a session of the court held at Mt. Pleasant, the high
knoll north and west of present Lynnville, where was the justice seat of Old Morgan before Jackson was laid out.
The record of this license, found in the files of the commissioners' court of early Morgan county, is as follows:
"Nimrod Philips of Pike County in the State of Illinois did at the last term of the County Commissioners'
Court of Morgan County make application for a ferry, which was granted him, to cross the Illinois River below the
mouth of the Mauvaisterre Creek, opposite the present residence of the said Philips, and whereas the said Nimrod
Philips has filed in the office of the Clerk of said County Commissioners' Court of said County his bond and security,
duly executed according to law, therefore Be it known that the said Nimrod Philips is hereby licensed and permitted
to keep a public ferry to cross the Illinois River at the above described place in said County of Morgan.
"In testimony whereof, I, Dennis Rockwell, Clerk of the County Commissioners' Court of Morgan County, have
hereunto set my hand and affixed my private seal (there being no seal of office provided) at Mt. Pleasant this
4thday of March A. D. 1825. - Dennis Rockwell, Clerk."
Philips Ferry, so long a port of entry for Pike county settlers, was merely a landing on the wild Illinois shore.
There was nothing there save the rude ferry and the Philips cabin. The writer will here permit the reader to see
Philips Ferry through the eyes of his great grandmother, Rebecca Burlend, as she saw it when she landed there,
with her family, from England, in the fall of 1831.
John and Rebecca Burlend, with their five children, had left their native village in Yorkshire in August, 1831,
enroute to Liverpool, where on September 2 they embarked upon the waters for the long voyage to America, arriving,
after a storm-tossed trip of two months and a few days, at New Orleans on the first Sunday in November. From New
Orleans they proceeded by boat up the Mississippi to St. Louis, a journey of twelve days, thence by a small river
packet that plied the Illinois. They were to disembark at Philips Ferry on the Illinois river, which place would
be only about two miles from the home of their fellow-countryman, George Bickerdike, whose letters to his brother
John in England, telling of a land here in the interior of North America that was "flowing with milk and honey,"
had induced the Burlends to forsake their hard lot as English tenant farmers to seek a new life in the western
world. Thus, as they proceeded up the Illinois, the thoughts of our English emigrants were filled with visions
of Philips Ferry, the end of their long journey, and eagerly through the gathering night they strained their eyes
for the lights of the city which they expected to find upon the shore of the river. They little knew what lay ahead.
Mother Burlend tells the story of disillusionment:
"Just at nightfall the packet stopped; a little boat was lowered into the water, and we were invited to collect
our luggage and descend into it, as we were at Philips Ferry; we were utterly confounded: there was no appearance
of a landing place, no luggage yard, nor even a building of any kind within sight; we, however, attended to our
directions, and in a few minutes saw ourselves standing by the brink of the river, bordered by a dark wood, with
no one near to notice us or tell us where we might procure accommodation or find harbour. This happened, as before
intimated, as the evening shades were rapidly settling on the earth, and the stars through the clear blue atmosphere
were beginning to twinkle. It was in the middle of November, and already very frosty.
"My husband and I looked at each other till we burst into tears, and our children observing our disquietude
began to cry bitterly. Is this America, thought I, is this the reception I meet with after my long, painfully anxious
and bereaving voyage? In vain did we look around us, hoping to see a light in some distant cabin. It was not, however,
the time to weep; my husband determined to leave us with our luggage in search of a habitation, and wished us to
remain where we then stood till he returned. Such a step I saw to be necessary, but how trying. Should he lose
himself in the wood, thought I, what will become of me and my helpless offspring? He departed: I was left with
five young children, the youngest at my breast."
Note: The family picture thus presented on the wild shore at Philips Ferry included John, then nine years old,
who was later killed on the old Santa Fe trail when returning from the Mexican War; Hannah, eight years old, who
married Thomas Dalby and lived to her ninetieth year at Griggsville; Sarah, three years old, who married Francis
Allen and became the mother of Francis E. (Frank) Allen of Pittsfield, former Sheriff David F. Allen and the late
Mrs. Lottie Thompson; Charlotte, who married Daniel Burns and became the mother of the late Mrs. Hannah Murphy,
Mrs. Sarah Welty and Mrs. Martha Hall; and William Burlend, the infant in the picture, who died at Griggsville
in 1900, leaving many descendants, numerous of whom still reside in and around Griggsville. One daughter, Mary,
had been left in England. She married Luke Yelliott, in England, just one week after the marriage of Queen Victoria.
The Yelliotts also came to America and settled in Pike county in 1842. The Burlends also left a son in England,
Edward Burlend, schoolmaster and Victorian novelist and poet, who published his mother's story of early settlement
in Pike county, Illinois, in England, in 1848.
Continuing her story of the Philips Ferry landing, Mrs. Burlend says:
"When I survey this portion of my history, it looks more like fiction than reality; yet it is the precise
situation in which I was then placed. After my husband was gone I caused my four eldest children to sit together
on one of our beds, covered them from the cold as well as I could, and endeavored to pacify them. I then knelt
down on the bare ground, and committed myself and little ones to the Father of Mercies, beseeching him ‘to be a
lantern to my feet, a light unto my path, and to establish my goings.' I rose from my knees considerably comforted,
and endeavored to wait with patience the return of my husband. Above me was the chill blue canopy of heaven, a
wide river before me, and a dark wood behind. The first sound we heard was that of two dogs that came barking towards
us, so as greatly to increase our alarm; the dogs came up to us, but did us no harm, and very soon after I beheld
my dear husband, accompanied by a stranger, who conducted us to his habitation, whither our luggage was shortly
after removed in a waggon."
Which brings us to the Philips cabin and an introduction by Mrs. Burlend to Mr. and Mrs. Philips of the Philips
Ferry family, so intimately a part of early Pike county history.