PRESENT PIKE COUNTY was a part of the great county of Madison when the Rosses arrived in western Illinois in 1820.
Madison county had been erected pursuant to a proclamation of Ninian Edwards, governor of the Illinois Territory,
"done at Kaskaskia the 14th day of September, 1812, and the Independence of the United States the thirty-seventh."
Nathaniel Pope was then Secretary of the Territory. The vastness of the county of Madison may be gathered from
the following words of Governor Edwards' proclamation, to be found in the "Territorial Records of Illinois,"
on Page 26:
"By virtue of the powers vested in the Governor of the Territory, I do hereby lay off a county or district
to be called the County of Madison, to be included within the following bounds, viz: To begin on the Mississippi,
to run with the second township line above Cahokia (about five south of present St. Louis) east until it strikes
the dividing line between the Illinois and Indiana Territories; thence with said dividing line to the line of Upper
Canada; thence with said line to the Mississippi; and thence down the Mississippi to the beginning. I do appoint
the house of Thomas Kirkpatrick to be the seat of justice of said county."
The bounds of Madison county were altered in 1815, when Edwards and White were created counties of Illinois Territory,
and again in 1817, when Bond county was cut off its eastern edge. The present sites of Pittsfield, Jacksonville,
Springfield, Quincy, Rock Island, Galesburg, Galena and Edwardsville were all in Madison county up to January,
1821.
Prior to 1812, when Madison county was erected, present Pike county was a part of St. Clair county, defined in
1801 as a county of the Territory of Indiana, names of places now unknown being used in defining the boundaries
of that great wilderness domain. Some of these points not found on modern maps include "Sink Hole Spring,"
identified as a point in what is now Monroe county, about nine miles south and one mile west of the present city
of Waterloo; "Great Cave," or "Great Cave on the Ohio," located below the Saline Lick, near
the present village of Cave-in-Rock, Hardin county; and "Great Kennomic River," a small stream flowing
into the southern bend of Lake Michigan, in Lake county, Indiana, about 18 miles east of the present Illinois state
line.
Before 1801, when St. Clair was set up as a county of Indiana Territory, the land that is now Pike lay in the vast
unorganized region of the Northwest Territory. Across the Illinois river, from 1790 on, was St. Clair county, first
erected in that year as a county of the Northwest Territory. But all the present Illinois region between the Illinois
and Mississippi rivers remained unorganized until included in St. Clair county of Indiana Territory in 1801.
True, as early as 1779, Pike county was part of a county of Virginia, this representing the earliest period of
county organization in Illinois. This county, known as the "County of Illinois," was established by legislative
enactment of Virginia after the conquest of Vincennes and Kaskaskia by George Rogers Clark in 1778. The act establishing
the County of Illinois, its boundaries vaguely defined but doubtless the largest county in the world, embracing
what are now the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, was passed in October, 1778 and proclamation
of the act was made June 17, 1779. Captain John Todd, appointed "county lieutenant commandant" by Patrick
Henry, then governor of Virginia, organized the government with the county seat at Kaskaskia, located about six
miles above the mouth of the Kaskaskia river. But the machinery of county government was never effectually set
up, and it soon ceased to run. On March 1, 1784, Virginia ceded all the territory north of the Ohio to the United
States, and in 1787 the region of which Pike is a part came under the famous "Ordinance of 1787" for
the government of the Northwest Territory, one of the most admirable achievements in American legislation.
Thus, empires rose and fell and nation succeeded nation in control of the land now is Pike, Indians, French, English,
Americans, one after another, over the centuries, occupied the wilderness scene, each tribe or race in turn giving
way to its successor. Along the great rivers that sweep the county's shores on east and west swept the tides of
conquest through thousands of years. Along these mighty arteries pulsated the life of the great inland valley.
Century after century they carried the commerce of Indians. Along their courses floated the war bands of the tribes;
their shores resounded with the war whoop, and the sounds of savage butchery; their banks guided the footsteps
of migrating nations. White men followed the routes long known to the Indians. Explorers, traders, missionaries,
settlers came, following the ancient Indian and buffalo trails.
Along the great water courses came the early Frenchmen, Jolliet and Marquette and LaSalle and Tonti, bringing the
beginnings of a new life into the wilderness. Along the romantic Illinois, the canoes of the Five Nations pursued
the fleeing tribes of the Illinois Indians. And along those same ancient lands of travel, when the waters were
high and those of the lakes and the Mississippi basin were intermingled, proceeded many a mackinaw boat, loaded
to the gunwales with precious furs. Generation after generation of natives appeared upon the wild scenes of savage
life, roamed forest and prairie and glided over the beautiful, placid Illinois and Mississippi rivers in their
log and bark canoes, and passed away. Still the advance of civilization, the steady westward tread of the Anglo-
Saxon disturbed them not. The buffalo, deer, bear and wolf roamed the prairie and woodland, the Indian their only
human enemy.
But nature had destined better things for "God's meadows," as these fertile regions were early called.
During millions of years she had fashioned them in her laboratory; inexorable forces had uplifted and depressed
them, flooded and drained them, crushed and scraped them, molding them to a form ideally adapted for the home of
the highest order of men.
Such is the history of the region into which William Ross and his three brothers and their families, together with
the families of Samuel Davis, William Sprague and Joseph Cogswell came in the late summer of 1820, seeking homes
on the bounty lands in this then far west. Here between the two great rivers settlements were still sparse. The
only white settlements in the Military Tract, north of the region of Coles' Grove, were those of Ebenezer Franklin
and Daniel Shinn, near present Atlas; John Wood and Willard Keyes, farther up the bluff; and, still farther north,
Justus J. Perrigo, near present Marblehead. Jean B. Tebo and one, possibly two other French- Canadians had shacks
along the Illinois river. Fifty or more settlers, some of them with large families, had log homes or canvas domiciles
in the lower half of what is now Calhoun.
The pioneer Ross immigrants hailed from western Massachusetts. The Rosses, originally of the village of Monson,
Mass., had resided in Pittsfield, in that state, since 1805. Other members of the party were from that locality.
Cogswell was from Berkshire, Mass.
Coming down the Ohio river, which bore the early tide of immigration from the east, the Rosses landed at Shawneetown,
ancient Illinois port of entry, coming thence by wagon across the southern part of Illinois, following the early
trail from Shawneetown to Kaskaskia, ancient seat of government for both territory and state, and the first permanent
settlement in the valley of the Mississippi, and thence to the town of Edwardsville, following in the footsteps
of two future governors, Edward Coles and John Wood, who had come that way the year before. Ahead of them, too,
by just a few months, had come Daniel Shinn, with his wife and eight children, and the six-year-old John Webb,
traveling in the first wagon that entered what is now Pike county, a circumstance that made a more open trail for
the Rosses. At Edwardsville, Shinn had left most of his family while he pressed on into the wilderness.
From Edwardsville, where Coles also had stopped, the adventurers headed in a northwesterly direction, coming presently
to the site of Upper Alton, where then there was but one house, that occupied by Major (later General) Hunter.
Here the men encamped their families and they themselves continued on into the depths of the wilderness, coming
at length, after weeks of weary travel, to an Indian encampment near the mouth of the Illinois river.
Here they faced a hazardous undertaking, the crossing of the Illinois. They finally secured canoes from the Indians
which they lashed together and, with puncheons laid across the canoes, ran their wagons onto these improvised decks
and, causing their horses to swim alongside, landed in what is now Calhoun. From this point, the wagon train of
the Rosses proceeded slowly over but poorly broken trails from the Illinois bottoms to the western bottomlands
of the Mississippi, when they turned north, and passing not far from the French settlement at Cap au Gris, headed
up the bottom trail that had lately been broken by John Wood and Willard Keys who had gone north from Cap au Gris
with two ox teams and carts in February preceding. After several weeks of slavish hardship, suffering all the travail
of the early trail, our pioneers came at last to the beautiful expanse of bottom land, backed by picturesque river
bluffs, that was destined to become the seat of a vast empire in the early history of the state.
From the relations of early travelers in this section, we can picture the scene of enchanting beauty that lay spread
out before the little group of adventuring settlers in the late summer of 1820.
The gorgeous colorings of the primeval prairies have disappeared beneath the sod turned over by the deep-cutting
plow. No longer is the eye permitted to feast upon such scenery as greeted the first comers to this region. But
the vivid pictures of the ancient landscape, preserved upon the written page by admiring visitors, enable us in
imagination to reconstruct these beauties.
Wrote Flagg in his "The Far West," in Thwaites' "Early Western Travels": "The touching,
delicate loveliness of the lesser prairies, so resplendent in brilliancy of hue and beauty of outline, I have often
dwelt upon with delight. The graceful undulation of slope and swell; the exquisite richness and freshness of the
verdure flashing in all of its native magnificence; the gorgeous dyes of the matchless and many-colored flowers
dallying in the winds; the beautiful points and promontories of the woodland shooting forth into the mimic sea;
the far-retreating shadowy coves, going back in long visits into the green wood; the curved outline of the dim,
distant horizon, caught at intervals through the openings of the forest; and the whole gloriously lighted up by
the early radiance of morning- all these constituted a scene in which beauty unrivaled was the sole ingredient."
"Most of the open prairie ," says Alvord in "The Illinois Country," "was covered with
high beard grass, usually interspersed with tall growing flowers, such as prairie dock, cup plant, and compass
plant, a number of gaudy sunflowers, several species of ox-eye, and large purple patches of ironweed, often mixed
with various thoroughworts, asters and ragweed. Indian plantain, leafcup, horseweed and hyssop were abundant, while
dragonhead, prairie clover, blazing star, milkweed, orange lilies, and wild roses added to the gorgeous coloring.
Among the lower grasses flourished large areas of black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers and bright bur marigolds.
"Many of the prairie flowers," says Alvord, drawing from Flagg's story of "The Far West," "grew
in compact masses of vivid color, giving the appearance of a glorified patchwork quilt flung over the land. In
the spring strawberries, bearing abundant scarlet fruit, were scattered far and wide; wild phlox added gay splashes
of blue and pink. The blue phlox, the Greek valerian and the bluebell were usually found in the more moist areas.
Wild garlic was abundant. The blue iris made a rich spot of color, and the unicorn plant and the beardtongue occasionally
grew in huge patches. For acres at a stretch the summer fields glowed with vivid goldenrod."
Most beautiful in the rich moist woodlands were the nodding cypripediums or lady's slippers (called also moccasin
flowers), dainty, orchid-like blossoms with labellums resembling a slipper or moccasin. The last lady's slipper
found growing wild in Pike was observed on the Frank Allen remote woodland pasture, northwest of Toll Gate school
house in Detroit township in 1897. Transplanted, this lady's slipper is still blooming annually (1935) in a garden
in Pittsfield.
Like the cypripediums, many another flower dear to the early settlers has disappeared from our prairies and woodlands.
Numerous species of prairie clover, false wild indigo, rosinweed, mountain mint, loosestrife, etc. have vanished
with the original prairies, while a few of the strawberry, stargrass and blue-eyed grasses remain with us as sweet
reminiscences of the past.
The woodlands, too, were a revelation to the early settlers and to European travelers who penetrated this region.
"Nothing," wrote Ridgway, "so much surprises the European on his first entrance to the western country
as the grandeur and beauty of many of the trees, and more particularly if he happens to arrive in the spring; not
fewer than ten species produce a profusion of beautiful blossoms and the underwood consists of some of our finest
flowering shrubs." And he mentions, among others, the lovely blossoms of the magnolia, the tulip tree, the
horse chestnut, the azalea, and the dogwood. "Here and there," writes Alvord, quoting the Hilgard manuscript
in the Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois, "on the black prairie appeared groups of persimmon
trees, forty feet or more high, bearing a large sweet fruit; the tree differed markedly from the ‘old field' persimmon
of later times." This author also mentions various haws, shingle oaks, maples, American redbud, wild plum,
prickly ash, honey locust, the Ohio buckeye, the Kentucky coffee tree and clumps of pawpaw. "Surrounding these
trees were thick shrubs, cornel, hop tree, spicebush, buttonbush and hydrangea, while over them climbed luxuriant
growths of wild bean, moonseed, passion flower and grapevine."
As the pioneer Rosses paused, wearied from the rigors of the trail, and looked out upon the primeval landscape
at Atlas, yet unsullied by the hand of the white man, we may well believe, as tradition has it, that some member
of the party involuntarily exclaimed "at last!" whence, eventually, the name "Atlas." Certain
it is, that the Rosses, "gazing spellbound," as Col. Ross once related, were of one accord in electing
this beautiful spot to be the end of their far journeyings.