JUNE 27, 1828, ON THE FAMOUS Atlas Trail is a Dearborn wagon, one of those odd covered carriages of the early period.
In the horse-drawn vehicle is a couple on their way to Atlas, the early county seat, to be married. They are William
Howerton Wilson, the first Wilson in Pike county, and Matilda Scholl, the fifth daughter of Abraham and Tabitha
(Noe) Scholl.
The Atlas Trail was a branch of the old Philips Ferry road, which divided on the knoll where later arose the town
of Griggsville, one branch angling off to the southwest to Atlas, the ancient county seat, the other continuing
northwest to the rival town of Quincy. On the Atlas Trail, out from the present site of Griggsville, the first
house was the log home of Joel Moore, on Bay Creek, two miles north of present Pittsfield. Near Moore's house,
on the creek bank, was his log water-mill.
Joel Moore was the first settler in what is now Pittsfield township. He was a soldier of the War of 1812. The musket
he carried in what war is now in the possession of his descendants, the Windmiller family, at Pleasant Hill. Moore
settled on what is now known as the old Jacob Windmiller farm on Bay Creek. Most of his numerous progeny are buried
in a little family plot a short distance west of the Bay Creek bridge on the present Maysville road. Joel Moore
died in 1852; his wife Sarah in 1846. Both are buried there, not far from the old Atlas Trail. Moore did the first
milling and kept the first tavern in what is now Pittsfield township.
The next settlement on the Atlas Trail at the time when William Wilson and Matilda Scholl went to Atlas to get
married was at Colonel James Seeley's, where Guy Edmonds now lives on U. S. 54 between Summer Hill and Atlas. It
was three miles from Seeley's to the town of the Rosses, which had become the county seat after a long and bitter
contest with Coles' Grove, the first seat of government of the vast county that reached to the shores of Lake Michigan.
Between Colonel Seeley's and Atlas there was yet no settlement in 1828.
It was 22 miles by the early trail from the site of modern Griggsville to the county seat at Atlas. Seven miles
out from Griggsville knoll was the Joel Moore house. Twelve miles farther on the trail was Seeley's. These were
the only settlements on the Atlas Trail in 1828. On the Quincy branch of the trail, from the knoll where Griggsville
now is, it was 30 miles to the first house where lived John Wiggle, a German, who formed the nucleus for the large
German settlement that afterward settled in that part of Adams county. (The foregoing from the recollections of
Asa Hinman who traveled these trails as early as 1829.)
John Wilson of Baylis, 71-Year-old grandson of William H. and Matilda Scholl Wilson, remembers having heard his
grandfather tell of his wedding day and of the slow horse-and-buggy trip to Atlas. The creeks were up; a summer
freshet had come down from the hills and at Bay Creek they had to wait for the creek to run down before they could
risk fording it. Matilda's mother often forded these creeks on her horse as she rode to and from Atlas, to which
place she had to go for materials for her loom.
At Atlas, the June term of the county commissioners' court was in session. Garret Van Dusen, the noted Knickerbocker
of early days in Pike county, was then one of the commissioners. He was likewise a justice of the peace. A marriage
license, the 15th issued in the county, was written out in longhand by William Ross, clerk of the commissioners'
court, and Van Dusen then said the service that united the first of the Pike county Wilsons with the house of Scholl.
This license, along with many others of the early licenses, was destroyed in the fire that swept the clerk's office
in Atlas in the bitter winter of 1830-31, when snow fell to an average depth of three feet over the Pike county
country and much of the wild life of the period perished of starvation and cold.
William Howerton Wilson had come to the Illinois country with the Abtaham Scholls in 1825. As related in a former
chapter, he had left a sweetheart (one of the Lincoln girls) in Kentucky. This early romance was blighted by the
perfidy of the Lincoln girl's brother, and later, Matilda Scholl, with whom he had traveled the long trail from
Kentucky, having blossomed into young womanhood, he became devoted to her. Matilda was 17 at the time of her marriage,
she having been born in Clark county, Kentucky, June 27, 1811. She was 14 when the family settled in Pike county.
William Howerton Wilson was born in Independence in Grayson county, Virginia, September 1, 1806. His grandson,
John Wilson, recalls that in referring to his birth date he always said he was born in 1806, the "year the
frogs were so bad." He was a son of Spencer and Anna (Howerton) Wilson. The father was born in Grayson county,
Virginia, and was (probably) about 20 years old at the outbreak of the American Revolution. The family went to
Kentucky in a very early day and settled in the neighborhood of present Barbourville, where the boy William grew
up. The family was also located for a time in Barren county, Kentucky. Spencer Wilson, the father, is believed
to have been a soldier in the Revolution. The boy William was in his 19th year when he came to Pike county, arriving
here March 18, 1825.
William Wilson had taken a "squatter claim" in the northwest of Section 11, two miles north of present
Griggsville and across the road from the north end of the Scholl claim. This claim was on the upland adjacent to
Coffey Hill. John Wilson states that his grandfather walked to Edwardsville, then the land office for the sale
of public lands in this district, to enter this claim.
The Wilsons were of Scotch descent. They appear to have come to America from Scotland just prior to Spencer Wilson's
birth. Abraham Key Wilson of Lincoln, Nebraska, 75-year-old grandson of William Wilson and Matilda Scholl, has
an impression that Spencer Wilson, William's father, was of Scottish birth. The records, however, indicate that
Spencer was born in Grayson county, Virginia.
Of his grandfather, A. K. Wilson has written as follows: "I can never get over the idea that Grandpa was the
one man that was just right in every way and I do wish I had reduced to writing the many important things he told
me. I think he told me that his father was born in Scotland. I know Grandpa spoke some words with a slight Scotch
accent, and he used to sing us many songs that were of Scotch folk-lore. He sank them right, too."
"It ain't the funniest thing a man can do--
Existing in a country when it's new,"
remarks the First Settler in will Carleton's poem. Doubtless William Wilson and his bride came to realize the
truth of the First Settler's observation. But there was determination in the makeup of those old pioneers. The
northern woods rang with the strokes of William Wilson's axe. He was an adept in the hewing of timber and getting
out foundation materials for the early cabins, barns and mills. One of the structures for which he hewed the framework
still stands on South Prairie. He hewed the beams for the early mill that stood one mile northwest of Wilson's
Ford on McGee. He once walked from his cabin north of Griggsville, "in the dead of winter," to the town
of Jacksonville to get a chopping axe, crossing the Illinois river on the ice. He paid $3.50 for the axe.
In 1827 and for three or four years thereafter, William Wilson and Ben L. Matthews (later Captain Benjamin L. Matthews
of Civil War fame and father of Colonel Asa C. Matthews) operated a flatboat in partnership between Philips Ferry
and Galena. The flatboat was floated down the Illinois river to its mouth and then poled up the Mississippi to
Galena. John Wilson states his grandfather Wilson and Ben Matthews boated the first cargo of cattle into Galena
from which, in 1816, John Shaw, another Pike county pioneer, boated out the first cargo of lead ore from the famous
mines. On one of these flatboat trips they were once forced, because of rough weather, to tie up for some time,
at Flint Hills, Iowa, later the site of Burlington. A. K. Wilson recalls that on one of these boat trips to Galena
in 1828, his grandfather and Ben Matthews saw John Quincy Adams at Government Island. Mr. Wilson says that his
father, LeGrande Wilson, and Colonel Asa C. Matthews attended school together at the old Shelly school, north of
Griggsville.
The wilderness was still untamed when William Wilson and Matilda Scholl "set up for themselves." Wilson
threw up his cabin of felled logs, 20 by 16 feet, the usual dimensions. He laid a floor of "puncheons"
— logs split into planks. Then, one above another, the logs, drawn to the spot by oxen, were rolled up into place,
notched and fitted at the corners. Two stout young trees, cut down entire, were set up at both end walls with their
branches trimmed in a crotch to support the ridge pole. The roof was laid of bark slabs like shingles, and held
in place by a log for weight, called a "weight-pole." The spaces between the logs were chinked with clay.
Sometimes this clay chinking was knocked out in summer, for ventilation, and filled in again in winter to keep
out the cold.
Thus the early cabins were builded. In such manner arose the first Wilson home on Griggsville Prairie. In similar
fashion the double log cabin of the Scholls was erected in 1825. The Scholl house was a spacious one for its day.
Jacob E. Scholl of Chicago remembers the double cabin of the Abraham Scholls. The log structure was still standing
in his boyhood.
The first Wilson cabin comprised but one room (true of most of the earliest homes), "answering the purpose
of the kitchen, dining room, nursery and dormitory." In daytime the house was all living room. At meal time,
it was all dining room. On Sunday, when company came, it was all parlor. And at night, it was all bedroom.
The wardrobe was simple; food was plain but plentiful — usually, not always. Corn, above all, was staple with the
early whites as with the Indians before them. It was foremost, even among the great, the wealthy. At the marriage
of Captain Leiper, one of the first settlers at Nashville, "the great delicacy for the ladies was roasting
ears"; dozens of ways were devised to vary the flavor of the ever-present item of diet, cornmeal, "Boiled
in water, it forms the frontier dish called mush, which is eaten with milk with honey, molasses, butter or gravy.
Mixed with cold water, covered with hot ashes, the preparation is called the ash-cake; placed upon a piece of clapboard
and set near the coals, it forms the journey-cake; and covered with a heated lid, a pone or a loaf; if in smaller
quantities — dodgers. Let paeans be sung all over the mighty West, to Indian corn — without it, the West would
have been still a wilderness!" Thus wrote one of the early chroniclers of the pioneer.
So William Wilson and Matilda Scholl settled down: "clearing a patch for some Indian corn and enclosing it
with a high brush fence to keep out the wild deer." Deer roamed prairie and woodland in large herds. Thomas
Kirgan, early settler in Fairmount, told of seeing 65 deer in one herd as late as 1835. John Hull, who came here
in 1836, bagged many a deer at various crossings on Bay Creek, northwest and north of present Center school house
in Newburg, where there was a large district of unoccupied rough timber land frequented by deer and wild turkeys
as late as the 1850s. "Many times," wrote the late Dr. A. W. Foreman in 1921, "I have seen him (Hull)
come by my father's house with a deer tied to the rear part of his saddle and laying across the back of his old
mare."
John Wilson relates that his grandfather Wilson had to fence his corn patch to keep the wild deer out. Hogs, too,
ran wild in the woods and fattened on acorns and the little corn that the settlers threw to them. Running thus
at large over the limitless prairies and woodlands, the domestic hogs became semi-wild in character and grew to
a large size. Mr. Wilson remembers his grandfather telling of one especially good year when a bountiful corn crop
sprang from the new ground and there were plenty of ears to throw to the half-wild hogs. That year, Mr. Wilson
relates, his grandfather killed 17 wild hogs, some of them two or three years old, and of such size as to dress
an average of 300 pounds. Thus he had more than two and one-half tons of hog meat on his hands. Says Mr. Wilson:
"He (grandfather) built a smoke-house and smoked it all and gave it away to the early settlers." Among
those sharing in the freely-bestowed meat was a nephew who had come from Kentucky.
For 31 years, William Wilson lived in the Griggsville vicinity. There his and Matilda's sons and daughters were
born. In 1856 they located on the banks of McGee Creek, on the Pike-Brown county line, in Section 4, Fairmount
township. For 80 years the McGee Creek crossing at this point has been known as Wilson's Ford. Here in the old
house on the hill, less than 200 yards south of the Pike-Brown county line, lives today a granddaughter of William
Wilson and Matilda Scholl, Mrs. Jane (Wilson) Beard, 62 years old last September 6. Up Snake Den Hollow, a short
distance away, lives her son, Frank Beard, who married Inez Jones.
Here on the hilltop above McGee, close to the barn on the old homestead, is a little plot containing a dozen graves
— the Wilson cemetery. Here are buried the pioneers, William and Matilda, and a number of their descendants. The
earliest grave there, marking the beginning of the Wilson cemetery, is that of William and Matilda's war dead,
their son Nelson M., who died in the Union camp near Pilot Knob, Missouri, February 24, 1863, aged 27 years, 2
months and 24 days. He had gone to war with the famous 99th in August, 1862. Before the writer, as this is written,
lie his letters from the battle camps in Missouri to his sister Amanda, mother of Dr. William Howerton Saunders
of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Amanda, the sister, is buried at Pleasant Grove, near Pittsfield.
The letters are mostly dated from Camp Houston in Texas county, Missouri, and most of them in 1862. The first letter
is from Benton Barracks, written when the Pike county soldiers reached there after their embarkation at Florence,
and is dated August 25, 1862. The 99th had been mustered in at Florence on August 23 and on the same day moved
to St. Louis, Mo., going into Benton Barracks on the 24th, where it received its equipment, being the first regiment
out of the state under the call of 1862.
Nelson's letter to Amanda, following his arrival at Benton Barracks, reads in part: "We went from Perry to
Florence. We left there on Saturday on board the Post Boy for Saint Louis. We arrived there Sunday morning. We
then marched out to the Barracks, a distance of five miles northwest of the steamboat landing. We drew our blankets
and bed-ticks yesterday evening. We expect to draw our clothing today. There is considerable more soldiers here
now. There is about 850 in our Regiment. I like the officers very well so far. We don't hear so much about the
country as we did before we left home. Passes and furloughs are played out."
The last letter from Nelson to his sister is dated January 5, 1863. Then comes to Amanda a letter from the commanding
officer of Company F (Nelson's company), Lieutenant Dan McDonald, conveying to the sister the news of her brother's
death. Thus he wrote to Amanda at Perry on February 26, 1863:
"Kind Ladie: Not knowing whether it is prudent or not but however I thot I would write you a few lines in
regard of your Brother's death. Well, this morning at half past eight we paid the last respects to him we could
pay. I had charge of his funeral myself. I had him buried as well as circumstances would admit of. I had a stone
put up at his head and feet so that his grave can be told any time. Mr. Walker from Perry was here and I had him
to go to the funeral and he praid and then made some remarks.
"Well, Miss Wilson, your brother was one of the best men in the Army. I know you will be very sorry of his
death when you hear it but you can not feel worse over his death than I do for I thot more of him than any man
in my company but he has paid the debt that we will all have to pay sooner or later.
"Nelson died on the morning of the 24th. We buried him in the morning of the 26th, 1863."
William H. Wilson, Nelson's father, later went to the scene of burial and had the body of his son taken up and
removed it to the old Wilson homestead, on the hilltop above McGee, where the first grave in the Wilson cemetery
was dug to receive it.