WESTERN ILLINOIS was still a sparsely settled region when John Vertrees, Jr., son of old Captain John of the Revolution,
cast his lot here more than a hundred years ago. He was the grandfather of another John, John Eaton Vertrees, who
established the Vertrees store in Pittsfield, and whose daughter, Miss Lillia, is the present proprietress of the
Vertrees book store.
John Vertrees, Jr., on January 2, 1800, in the Severns Valley in Kentucky, had married Nancy Haycraft, the daughter
of pioneer Samuel Haycraft, founder of Haycraft's Fort, near the present site of Elizabethtown. West of Elizabethtown,
in Hardin county, Kentucky, was established Vertrees's Settlement, which still appears on the map as the town of
Vertrees (on some of the very old maps as "Vertries"), Kentucky. Here it was that John Vertrees, Jr.,
and his wife, Nancy, settled after the death of the elder John in 1802. Here it was that their thirteen children
were born, in the period from 1800 to 1824.
From the large family Bible of Jacob Sneed Vertrees, Perry pioneer and one of the eight sons of John Vertrees and
Nancy Haycraft, is obtained the record of pioneer John's children, the data being copied by former Mayor Herbert
H. Vertrees of Pittsfield, a great grandson of John and Nancy.
The children and their birth dates, according to this family record, follow:
Samuel Vertrees, born November 28, 1800; Rebecca, born October 23, 1801; Joseph, born March 15, 1804 (it was this
Joseph who married his double cousin, Lucinda Chenoweth); Miles Hart Vertrees, born January 30, 1806 (named for
that Vertrees and Chenoweth kinsman, Miles Hart, who fell in gallant defense of his Kentucky home against the Indians
who carried his wife and children into captivity); Amelia, born February 2, 1808; Margaret, born April 8, 1810;
John, born May 4, 1812; Jacob Sneed (grandfather of Miss Lillia and Herbert Vertrees and of Mrs. Louise Shoemaker
Butterfield of Griggsville), born July 9, 1814; Charles M. (named for his uncle, Charles M. Vertrees, who quarreled
with Dan'l Boone and founded the Indiana branch of the Vertrees family which figures in Booth Tarkington's story
of "The Turmoil"), born August 21, 1816; Nancy Vertrees, born January 24, 1819; Thomas, born February
25, 1820; Daniel H. (named for that other uncle, Daniel Hart Vertrees, who fell in pitched battle with the Indians
in the pioneer days of Kentucky), born May 6, 1821; and Mary Ann Vertrees, born January 22, 1824.
The children of John Vertrees and Nancy Haycraft were all Kentucky born. Samuel, the eldest, and Rebecca, second
of the children, so far as the records disclose, never came to Illinois. Both married in Kentucky and of them the
family annals contain no further account.
It was in 1832 that John Vertrees and Nancy, his wife, accompanied by their children, came to western Illinois and settled in what is now Brown county (then Schuyler). They made their settlement in present Elkhorn township, just north of the Pike county line. An old marriage record shows that the address of John and Nancy Vertrees came up over the old Indian trail with the Chenoweths, Jacob Van Meter and James Hackley, noted pioneers at Perry. All settled in the same neighborhood, the Chenoweths south of the Pike-Brown county line, the Vertrees (at first) north of it. Neighborhoods were large in those days.
John and Nancy settled in the wilds of the McGee Creek country seven years before there was any Brown county. The region was then included in Schuyler county, which had been erected out of the attached territory of Pike county on January 13, 1825. It was not until February 1, 1839 that Brown county (that part of old Schuyler south of Crooked Creek) was cut off and the county seat established at Mt. Sterling. The seat of justice for all this region had previously been at Rushville, present county seat of Schuyler.
A story of those pioneer days is still told in the McGee Creek country, handed down from generation to generation, but lacking now some of the intimate detail that it doubtless possessed in the earlier tellings. As the story goes a young son of the Vertrees (probably the boy Daniel, who was 11 when the family came to Illinois) had a pony or small horse that he was accustomed to ride after the mail, a real adventure in those far-off days when the mails did not penetrate to these remote settlements.
One time, according to the story, the Vertrees boy was ill from being "stung by an adder," and a neighbor boy, whose name is now forgotten, took the pony and rode away for the mail. It was a good day's ride, but when the shades of night began falling in the McGee Creek country and the boy had not returned, a vague uneasiness possessed the family. In the morning the riderless pony was found grazing near the Vertrees cabin, A search was made back along the trail and at last the torn and partially eaten carcass of the boy was found. It was evident that a panther had sprung upon the youthful rider, who had been dragged from the pony and partially devoured. Somewhere in the McGee Creek region, according to the legend, is a nameless grave in which the mangled corpse was laid to rest, another victim of wilderness times.
There is a story also of an adventure of old Mother Vertrees (probably the reference is to Nancy Haycraft Vertrees, the old Haycraft Fort pioneer and wife of John Vertrees) who once while binding in the field behind the reaper bound a deadly rattlesnake in a sheaf of grain. It will be recalled that Rebecca Burlend, Pike county pioneer of 1831, was the victim of a similar experience while binding grain in the Blue Creek country in Detroit township.
Nancy Vertrees is reputed to have had much knowledge of "wilderness medicine." She could concoct salves and ointments from roots and fibers of wild plants and could brew "teas" to allay illnesses incident to a new land. So widely was she known for her art that she was sometimes called many miles from home to cure a "white swelling" or an attack of "ager." Once, it is said (although this must refer to an incident in Kentucky), she was called to attend a sick child at a great distance from her home and with a wide river to cross. Her own youngest child was then of too tender age to be left alone so, mounting her horse, she took her child with her, and, arriving at the river and finding no means of crossing, she set her steed to the current and swam the wild stream, bringing succor as quickly as possible to the suffering child, whose life was saved by her knowing ministry.
So, from out of the lives of these old pioneers, gleams now and then a radiance that is almost divine.
Nearest neighbors of the Vertreeses in those pioneer days were the Vandeventers, Ravenscrofts and Varners. The Vandeventers had come eight years before the Vertreeses (1824) and had established the first settlement in what is now Versailles township. The town of Versailles was established four years after the Vertreeses came (December 2, 1836), by Henry Casteen, Cornelius Vandeventer; A. D. Ravenscroft and Dr. Isaac Vandeventer. Ravenscroft erected the first building, a frame store, in 1836, and a hotel followed. For years the Ravenscroft store was the Vertrees trading point.
Another neighbor family in the early settlement was that of William McFarland; this family later intermarried with the Vertreeses. McFarland was a brother-in-law of Cornelius Vandeventer, who in 1824 had come with his three sons, William, Peter S. and Elihu, from Ohio. Reaching their destination in what is now Brown county, they planted a crop of corn in the early summer of 1824 in a clearing that had been left by a squatter by the name of Shepherd who the year before (1823) had cleared a space in the wild land, erecting thereon the first human habitation in present Brown county, a rude round log cabin.
William McFarland and his family had emigrated from Ohio with the Vandeventers, but, taking the central route, they had stopped at Springfield and there William McFarland died. After a lengthy search, Vandeventer located the McFarland family and then came on to present Brown county where he planted his crops. He returned for his family and the McFarlands in the spring. That was the start of the first settlement, now known as Versailles, where descendants of these pioneers of more than a century ago still reside.
Brown county, which was set up seven years after the Vertrees settlement; was named for General Jacob Brown, a distinguished soldier of the 1812 war.
John Vertrees later established his home in Perry township in Pike county and there we find him and his wife, Nancy Haycraft Vertrees, in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In Pike county, John and Nancy were members of that notable pioneer settlement which included Charles Dorsey (great grandfather of Mrs. Dot Dorsey Swan), Caleb and William Browning, the Reverend Jesse Elledge (grandson of the Boones), Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth (whose wife was a sister of Mrs. Vertrees), Nicholas and Solomon Hobbs, John McFarland, Edward Boone Scholl (another Boone grandson and founder of Booneville, now Perry), Jane Vandeventer, Ira Kellogg, William Meredith and Jacob and Nathan Bradbury. Also in this community dwelt several sons of John Vertrees and Jacob Chenoweth, together with their families.
Pioneer John Vertrees in 1836 acquired title to the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 19, near present Dexter school, west of Perry, which in 1839 he deeded to Ira Kellogg. He also acquired a 40 in Section 28, southwest of Perry, which in 1840 he deeded to Solomon Hobbs.