JACOB SNEED VERTREES, who built the first house on the site of present Perry (known in early days as Booneville),
was born in Elizabethtown, Hardin county, Kentucky, July 9, 1814. He was the fifth son and eighth child of John
Vertrees, Jr. and Nancy Haycraft. His father was away in the second war with the British when he was born. Sixteen
days after his birth, 3000 Americans at noted Lundy's Lane defeated the seasoned British troops whom the great
Wellington had so often led to victory.
Jacob Sneed Vertrees was next in order of birth after the third John Vertrees (third in America) who fought against
the famous Indian, Black Hawk, in the uprising of 1832.
These Pike county Vertreeses came of a warrior race that had engaged the red men in many a bloody encounter on
the early American frontiers. Their kinsmen had reddened the soil of early Kentucky with their blood. Their uncle
(their father's brother), Daniel H. Vertrees, had fallen in battle with the Indians, and another of their father's
brothers, Charles M. Vertrees, was long in captivity among the Shawnees. Their illustrious grandfather, Captain
John Vertrees of the Revolution (later Judge John Vertrees of the early Kentucky courts), fought the Indians and
the British in the old Virginia colony and later, in 1778, in the time of the Revolution, marched with George Rogers
Clark through the western wilderness to attack the Illinois villages, a memorable campaign resulting in the capture
by the Virginia "Long Knives" of Kaskaskia and old Vincennes.
Jacob Sneed Vertrees's maternal grandfather, the elder Samuel Haycraft, whose history has been related, was also
a soldier of the Revolution. His descendant, Mrs. Mary Louise (Shoemaker) Butterfield of Griggsville, possesses
the official record of his Revolutionary service, obtained by her mother, Anna Vertrees Shoemaker (daughter of
Jacob Sneed), in her lifetime.
In the old forting days of Kentucky, when that wilderness Indian-haunted land was first being settled by the followers
of Daniel Boone, the elder Samuel Haycraft, ancestor of all the Pike county Vertrees, established a home in the
beautiful Severns Valley in what is now Hardin county, Kentucky, near the site of present Elizabethtown. Neighboring
settlers in those old Indian days were the families of the elder Hinson Hobbs, the elder Jacob Van Meter and the
elder John (Captain John) Vertrees. Around these four pioneer families centered the thrilling history of the Severns
Valley for a great many years, beginning in 1779. For common defense against the Indians, these four grand old
pioneers, whose original land entries cornered near present Elizabethtown, on a hill above a mighty spring, built
at the four corners a rude fortification known as Haycraft's Fort. Within this enclosure the four families, later
joined by others, lived in the early years of the valley settlements.
Jacob Sneed Vertree's mother, Nancy Haycraft, born in Haycraft's Fort September 11, 1781, was the first born of
the children of Samuel Haycraft, Sr. and Margaret (called Peggy) Van Meter, she a daughter of the old patriarch,
Jacob Van Meter, and his wife Letitia. The Van Meters (a family famous in early Kentucky history) came down the
Ohio river out of Virginia to Kentucky in 1779, during the Revolutionary War.
Nancy Haycraft's father died in Hardin county, Kentucky, October 15, 1823; her mother, April 12, 1843. Nancy had
married John Vertrees (son of Captain John) in Kentucky January 2, 1800. Mrs. Arthur W. Butterfield of Griggsville
has the following record of her great grandmother Nancy Haycraft Vertree's family, showing the following brothers
and sisters in order of birth:
John Haycraft, born March 30, 1784, died February 8, 1857; Letitia, born December 15, 1785, died January 15, 1804,
never married; Amelia, born August 27, 1787, married Johnathan Shepherd, died October 1, 1866; Mary (Polly), born
April 15, 1789, married Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth of the early Perry settlement, died July 27, 1868; Elizabeth
(Betsy), born March 16, 1791, married Isaac Morrison of early Pike county, died September 22, 1868; Rebecca, born
April 15, 1792, married Addison Shepherd, died March 23, 1871; Margaret (Peggy), born November 12, 1793, married
Thomas B. Williams, died March 25, 1873; Samuel (the historian so often quoted in this history), born August 14,
1795, married Sarah B. Helm, died December 22, 1878; and Presly Nevill (named for General Presly Nevill, son of
Colonel John Nevill, who, as exciseman in the Allegheny county following the Revolutionary War figured largely
in the Whiskey Rebellion, and in whose home the elder Samuel Haycraft was raised), born April 8, 1797, married
Elizabeth Kennedy, died February 17, 1889.
On October 19, 1836, at Perry, occurred a wedding that united here in western Illinois the grandchildren of two
of the early settlers in the wild Severns Valley of Kentucky. On that day, Jacob Sneed Vertrees, grandson of Captain
and Judge John Vertrees of the Severns Valley, married Nancy Hobbs, granddaughter of the elder Hinson Hobbs, another
of the original four-family settlement at Haycraft's Fort. The Rev. Calvin Greenleaf, first regular Baptist pastor
at Griggsville, officiated.
Nancy Hobbs was the only daughter of Hinson Hobbs and Sarah Shipman, pioneers in the region of old Fort Washington
(now Cincinnati, Ohio) and in Shelby county Kentucky. Hinson Hobbs was born August 27, 1771 and died August 14,
1821; his wife, Sarah (Shipman) Hobbs, was born November 21, 1773. The father founded the First Baptist church
in Louisville, Kentucky.
Hinson Hobbs and Sarah Shipman had four sons and one daughter: Solomon Hobbs (Illinois pioneer of 1829 who settled
at Perry in 1834); Nicholas Hobbs (also an 1829 Illinois pioneer and early settler at Perry); Elder David Hobbs
(ancestor of many of the Pike county Dorseys); Elder William Hobbs (pioneer Pike and Adams county preacher); and
Nancy Hobbs, who married Jacob Sneed Vertrees.
The stories of Nancy's brothers, Solomon, Nicholas and David and their families, have been related in preceding
chapters. William Hobbs, fourth of Nancy's brothers, was born in Shelby county, Kentucky, November 20, 1802. He
married Cyrene Garrett in Kentucky in July, 1828. She died November 1, 1856, and in 1868 William married again,
his second wife being Mrs. Cynthia McGee of LaHarpe, Illinois. She died in 1877.
William Hobbs was the father of the Reverend Charles Albert Hobbs and Mary Hobbs. Charles Albert was the father
of Dr. Charles A. Hobbs and Dr. Ralph Walter Hobbs; also of one daughter
William Hobbs was long in the ministerial service in western Illinois. Ordained to preach in 1838, he was pastor
at Kingston, Clayton, Perry, Hillsboro, Cedar Creek and Sciota Baptist churches, and also supplied at Griggsville
and in the old church at Quincy. He was home missionary in Kansas in 1861-63. His journal showed that he baptized
not less than one thousand persons. His late pastorate, undertaken when he was past 65, showed a record of nearly
three hundred additions to his flock.
Mary Hobbs, a daughter of William, was for a long time, near a half century ago, a postmistress at Griggsville,
along with Abbie Lawton, a sister of the noted Captain Lawton, who raised Company I, 33rd Illinois Infantry, in
the time of the Civil War and who suffered a spinal injury in the wild charge at Vicksburg which left his right
side paralyzed for the remaining nineteen years of his life. For many years he was custodian of field notes of
U. S. surveys, by appointment of Governor John M. Palmer, holding that position at the time of his death. Many
notables from the various state departments attended his funeral at Griggsville.
William Hobbs died February 13, 1884 at the home of his son, the Reverend C. A. Hobbs, at Batavia, Illinois. He
was buried beside the wife of his youth at Kingston in Adams county, where was his early pastorate.
Jacob Sneed and Nancy Hobbs Vertrees were lifelong residence of the Perry neighborhood. He was a builder, a carpenter.
Many buildings are yet standing in Pike county that were erected by him. He once told of a barn he erected on the
crest of the great Pike county divide, on which the raindrops that fell on the west side of the roof- comb found
their way to the Mississippi and those on the east side to the Illinois.
Jacob Sneed Vertrees built the square white house standing west of the old Baptist church in Perry and in this
house he lived many years. He also built the old Dr. Dunn house, standing west of the residence now occupied by
Mrs. Bertha Dunn.
This descendant of old Indian fighters was versed in many arts that were known to the followers of pioneer trails.
His grandson, former Mayor Herbert H. Vertrees of Pittsfield, relates having heard a story of how his grandfather,
caught away from home and compelled to make camp amid wintry surroundings, found himself without a single match
with which to kindle a fire. Taking a piece of ice, he fashioned it into a lens wherewith he was enabled to concentrate
the sun's rays with sufficient intensity to kindle a fire for his cooking.
Nancy Hobbs Vertrees also had the resourcefulness of the pioneers. Her ancestry coped with wilderness conditions
in Virginia, the Carolinas and in Kentucky. Her forebears blazed new routes to new settlements, joining with others
in the treks westward upon the early emigrant trails. Far back in the beginning of Kentucky history, close followers
of Daniel Boone, her people had braved the perils of the old Wilderness Road leading into Kentucky from the older
settlements of the east.
In creaking covered wagons, their children slung from the backs of packhorses in basket cradles made of hickory
withes, her forebears had come over the mountains, seeking a land that was called by the Indians "Kant-A-Yah,"
meaning "The Land of Tomorrow." Letitia Vertrees Sylvester, daughter of Jacob Sneed Vertrees's brother,
Charles M. Vertrees, has paid tribute to these early Kentucky settlers in her book, "My Kentucky Cousins."
Along with Nancy's forebears upon the Wilderness Road traveled another family by the name of Hanks, including a
young woman named Lucy Hanks, seeking, with her little illegitimate daughter, a haven beyond the mountains where
people maybe would not ask questions. With these trail comrades of the Hobbses traveled the destiny of a nation.
In Kentucky, Lucy's illegitimate daughter married a man named Tom Lincoln and in their humble cabin one snowy day
was born a man child whom they named Abraham, destined to become president of the United States.