ATLAS (formerly called Ross's Settlement) was still the county seat of Pike county when Samuel Hardin Lewis, Joseph
Barnett and James Galloway brought their families to the Bay Creek country in what is now Pleasant Hill township,
in the spring of 1832. The present public square in Pittsfield was then a treeless waste, given over to tall prairie
grass, interspersed with patches of Hazelbrush. The site of present Pleasant Hill was a dense wilderness, known
as "Bear Thicket."
The Lewis, Barnett and Galloway families established their homes in the northern and northeastern sections of Bay
Creek, now Pleasant Hill township. James Galloway, then 39 years of age, was a son-in-law of Samuel Hardin Lewis,
being the husband of his eldest daughter, Ursula Lewis. Ursula Lewis was said to have been the first white child
born in Upper Louisiana (now Missouri), following the Louisiana Purchase. She was born in the District of St. Charles
in 1803.
Children of Samuel Hardin and Mary (Barnett) Lewis included Ursula Lewis, Samuel Hardin Lewis, Jr., Lycurgas C.
Lewis, John Warner Lewis, Chedister Barnett Lewis and Martha Damaris Lewis. The last named daughter was usually
known by her middle name, spelled "Damarius" in the Pike county marriage license and other official records,
but written "Damaris" by her descendants in the Pacific Northwest. The name has been perpetuated among
Galloway family descendants in Pike county.
The Lewis, Barnett and Galloway families belonged to a group of pioneers out of old St. Charles county, Missouri,
particularly out of that section of the district of St. Charles that since 1818 has been embraced in Lincoln and
Pike counties. Among the early settlers from Missouri were the families of Thurman (or Thurmon), Sinklear (Sinclair),
Collard, Cannon, Buckaloo, Wells, Capps, Harlow, Hubbard, Sconce, Mackey, Venable, Zumwalt, Sitton, Yokem, Jones,
Harpole, Kerr, Bailey, Spears, Steele, Turnbaugh, Turner, McElfresh, Barton, Holland, Emert, Lilies, Ferguson and
McCoy. Most of these families had become established in the Bay Creek country a hundred years ago. Some of them
were intermarried before coming to Pike county; others after their arrival here.
James W. (My Lord Coke) Whitney, an early settler in Pleasant Hill township and first clerk of the Pike circuit
and county courts, stated in the township records in 1859 that a majority of the settlers of that time were from
the counties of Lincoln and Pike in Missouri. Most of them had originally migrated to Missouri from Virginia or
North Carolina by way of Kentucky or Tennessee. Some of them had been on the Missouri border in old forting days
during the Indian war of 1812-15. Some had settled in the St. Charles wilderness before the Louisiana Purchase,
on Spanish grants arranged by Daniel Boone with the Spanish authorities.
The Pleasant Hill country in the time of these early settlements was a wild region. My Lord Coke Whitney, in the
old township record book, has this to say:
"The township when first settled was famed as a stock range and its equal could hardly be found in the country.
Horses, cattle and hogs could be reared and fattened and fitted for market upon the range with little or no feeding,
during summer or winter. The cry of the wolf announced to the timorous sheep that here there neither was nor could
be an abiding place for him. The wolves were so destructive that little or no attempt was made to keep sheep and
the early settlers were more frequently clad in buckskin than in sheep's wool."
The first winter the Jones brothers (Belus and Egbert) lived on their farm about four miles southeast of modern
Pleasant Hill the wolves killed three of their cows, several of their calves and would have destroyed all of their
hogs if they had not built heavy log enclosures in which to shut them of nights.
The pioneers of this region had other annoyances than those experienced from the depredations of wild animals.
Indians were present in large numbers and made frequent raids on livestock and other property of the settlers.
They were of the Sauk and Fox. In those days they were encamped along the numerous creeks, a considerable body
having their tepee abodes on Bay Creek. Prowling savages and the lack of stockades on the Illinois side of the
river is supposed to have caused the abandonment of earlier settlements made in the days of the territory, one
of which is believed to have been a Lewis and Zumwalt settlement dating back to the spring og 1815.
As stated heretofore, there is evidence that Samuel Hardin Lewis's youngest daughter, Martha Damaris Lewis, was
born in what is now Pleasant Hill township in the spring of 1815. She may have been the first white child born
within the present bounds of Pike county. Victor Wayne Jones of Seattle, Washington, a great grandson of Martha
Damaris Lewis, says: "Uncle Isaac Collard (Isaac Newton Collard, son of Felix Collard and Damaris Lewis) said
that his mother, Martha Damaris Lewis, was born in Pleasant Hill township. She was born April 2, 1815. If that
is true, it would made the Lewises very early settlers of Pike county. Maybe they were the earliest settlers in
the region. We understand that they came from near Troy, Missouri, to Illinois."
The Lewises, Barnett and Galloways came across the bottoms in ox-drawn wagons, bringing their belongings from their
earlier settlements in Missouri. They opened their farms with ox teams and great wooden mold-board plows. Their
first wagons were on wooden wheels, sawed from sycamore logs. Their ways were hard. They had to grind corn in hominy
blocks and in small hand mills. A horse mill was later erected on a stump near Pittsfield. The first water mill
of any consequence in the Pleasant Hill region was erected by Elisha Harrington in the fall of 1827, on the southwest
quarter of Section 8. According to the old township record book, the power to operate this early mill was obtained
by cutting a race across a bend of Six Mile Creek and erecting a dam in the bend to back up the water into the
race which carried it to the mill. This mill superseded in large measure the hominy-block and spring pole and the
hand and horse mill. One of the Zumwalts built the first water mill on Bay Creek in the early 1830s.
The Barnetts, intermarried with the Lewis and kindred families since the early family settlements in America, had
come to the Missouri border in pioneer times, at the instance of Daniel Boone. They had come with the Lewis and
other early Missouri families in the closing years of the 18th century and were well established on this western
frontier at the time of Jefferson's purchase. Accompanying the Lewis and Galloway migration to Illinois in 1832
was Joseph Barnett, nephew of Mrs. Samuel H. Lewis, who in Missouri (in Pike county), on December 23, 1831, had
married Mary Fry, the ceremony being said by the Reverend James W. Campbell. Joseph Barnett was accompanied to
the new settlement by his father, Joseph Barnett, Sr., who died in the early days of the settlement.
Hannah Barnett, a sister of Mary Barnett Lewis, had married Elijah Myers, a native of Virginia who settled in Kentucky
and emigrated thence to the Missouri frontier, becoming later a pioneer of what is now Lincoln county. He was a
millwright and worked at his trade a part of the time while superintending his farm. In 1845 he and his wife returned
to Kentucky and there the wife died. Elijah Myers after his wife's death went to the state of Texas and died there.
Elijah Myers and Hannah Barnett had a daughter, Margaret Myers, who in Missouri married Eli Hubbard, a son of Charles
Hubbard, one of the pioneer settlers in what is now Pleasant Hill township, where his life ended. Eli Hubbard was
born in North Carolina, coming with his parents by way of Kentucky to Missouri in an early day. There he spent
his early married life, coming thence to Illinois more than a hundred years ago and settling in Pleasant Hill township,
of which he was one of the pioneers, being also one of the founders and proprietors of the town of Fairfield, now
Pleasant Hill.
Eli Hubbard in 1853 went with a team across the plains to Oregon, where he bought land and engaged in farming.
He later became a preacher in the Baptist church in Oregon Territory. He died on a farm near Salem, in the state
of Oregon. He was one of several of the characters of this history whom we will need to follow as pioneers from
Pleasant Hill to Oregon Territory.
William G. Hubbard, Pike county veteran of the Civil War, born at Troy in Lincoln county, Missouri, December 1,
1829, and long a prominent farmer in Barry township, was a son of Eli and Margaret (Myers) Hubbard and a grandson
of Hannah (Barnett) Myers.
Others of the pioneer Pleasant Hill settlement who preceded the Lewis, Barnett and Galloway families in their removal
from Missouri were the earliest representatives in Pike county of the families of Thurman, Collard and Cannon.
Isaac Thurman had come over from Missouri into what is now Pleasant Hill township about the year 1825, accompanied
by his wife, whose maiden name was Lydia Cannon, and by her children, the Collards, they being stepchildren of
Isaac Thurman. The families of Lewis and Collard had intermarried "back east," and here in the west,
in Missouri and in Pike county, Illinois, there were further inter-family marriages.
Lydia Cannon's first husband was John Collard, whom she married prior to the Missouri settlement. They established
their home in Christian county, Kentucky. By this first marriage there were four children, namely, Felix Alver,
Isaphena, Rachel and John Jasper Collard. John Collard, the father, died in 1818, the year that Illinois became
a state. John Jasper, later a county clerk of Pike county, was then a baby one year of age, and Felix Alver, the
eldest child, was only eight. John Jasper became the maternal grandfather of Alvin T. Brant of Pittsfield. Felix
Alver married Demaris Lewis, youngest daughter of Samuel Hardin and Mary (Barnett) Lewis, and, if Lewis family
traditions are correct, probably the first child of white parentage born in Pike county, Illinois.
Lydia Cannon, following the death of her first husband, John Collard, married his brother, Isaac Newton Collard,
by whom there was a son, John Collard, who was a soldier in the Civil War. Isaac Newton Collard lived but a short
time following his marriage to his brother's widow, his death occurring in 1822. His widow then married Isaac Thurman;
by this marriage there were several children, among them Ephraim, Elijah C., George W. and Kesiah (Kizzie) Thurman,
the latter of whom married Samuel Hardin Lewis, Jr., the eldest son of Samuel H. and Mary (Barnett) Lewis.
Among these early Pleasant Hill families we encounter some intricate and almost irreducible relationships arising
from intermarriages among the Lewis, Collard, Thurman, Cannon and Sinklear families. Already we have Felix Alver
Collard and his half sister, Kesiah Thurman, marrying Damaris and Samuel Hardin Lewis, Jr., who were sister and
brother. Later, we find Lydia Cannon Collard Thurman, following the death of her third husband, Isaac Thurman,
marrying a fourth time, her fourth husband being Jehu Sinklear, whose daughter by a former marriage, Margaret A.
Sinklear, married Isaac and Lydia Cannon Collard Thurman's son, Elijah C. Thurman.
A daughter of Elijah C. and Margaret (Sinklear) Thurman is Alice Thurman Parsons, wife of A. O. Parsons of Auburn,
Washington. Jehu Sinklear, who married Lydia Thurman, was Mrs. Parson's grandfather on her mother's side and Mrs.
Thurman was her grandmother on her father's side, so that the marriage of Jehu Sinklear and Mrs. Lydia Thurman
created some intricate relationships for Mrs. Parsons.
Mrs. Parsons, who is still living in Auburn, state of Washington, is 80; her husband 84. She married A. O. Parsons
April 11, 1876. Their only child, a son, Ralph W. Parsons, has been a conductor on the Northern Pacific Railroad
for 37 years. He resides in Auburn. He began railroading on the Chicago & Alton line through Pleasant Hill,
being one of two gatemen carried by the train in those days as checkers on the conductor. Train crews then comprised
a conductor, two gatemen and a brakeman, engineer and fireman. Ralph Parsons married as his first wife Miss Lizzie
W. Thomas, daughter of the late Dr. J. Smith Thomas and Mollie S. Wells of Pleasant Hill. They were married December
20, 1898, at Pleasant Hill. Mr. Parsons, a native of Louisiana, Missouri, was then a resident of Seattle, Washington.
Jehu Sinklear and Mrs. Lydia Thurman were married at Pleasant Hill October 16, 1851, with the Reverend David Hubbard,
grand old pioneer of the Martinsburg and Pleasant Hill Baptist churches, officiating. Jehu Sinklear and his wife
Lydia were pioneer members of the Baptist church congregation at Martinsburg, whence emanated the Baptist church
at Pleasant Hill, to which church they transferred their memberships in 1857. Jehu Sinklear died soon thereafter
on October 3, 1857. He was father by an earlier marriage of William C. Sinklear, Sarah Sinklear (wife of John Mackey),
Mary Sinklear (wife of Jesse Griffeth), Margaret Ann Sinklear (wife of Elijah C. Thurman), G. W. Sinklear, Louisa
Sinklear (wife of William Griffeth), and Walter W. Sinklear.
This elder generation spelled the name "Sinklear" and it so appears in the old records. A later generation
changed the spelling to "Sinclair."
Lydia Sinklear, widow of Jehu, known in all the Pleasant Hill community as "Granny Sinklear," following
the death of her husband, went to live with her daughter, Kesiah Thurman Lewis, wife of Samuel Hardin Lewis, Jr.,
at whose home she was residing as late as 1867. She died September 12, 1869. She was a sister of Sheriff Ephraim
Cannon of beloved memory, who was the second settler in what is now Pittsfield township, where he located near
the "Y," west of present Pittsfield, soon after Joel Moore, first settler in the township, had reared
his cabin on Bay Creek, north of the present town.