PIKE COUNTY, as we have seen, was reduced to its present boundaries by enactments of the fourth legislature sitting
at Vandalia in January, 1825. On January 10, 1825, Calhoun county was struck off on the south. Three days later,
January 13, 1825, the legislature, by one act, set up the counties of Adams, Hancock, Warren, Schuyler, Mercer,
Henry, Knox and Putnam, the first five of which were erected out of Pike county territory. These acts gave to Pike,
Calhoun, Adams and Hancock their present boundaries, included with Warren the present county of Henderson, gave
to Mercer, besides its present area, the part of Rock Island to the north of it, included with Schuyler the present
county of Brown, and attached Hancock to Adams, and Mercer to Schuyler until the organization of these attached
counties could be completed. The site of Chicago, once in Pike county, then in the attached portion of Fulton,
which was struck off from Pike, now passed to Putnam county. And thus, at the beginning of 1825, Pike county, mother
of 32 counties and six parts of counties, was reduced to its present territorial status, with an area of 756 square
miles.
Nicholas Hansen sat as the representative from Pike county in the legislative session that thus split up the great
county into a number of counties. John Shaw, Hansen's great antagonist, had challenged Hansen's seat, but Hansen
was seated over Shaw's protest, Shaw having charged fraud. Hansen had the backing of the Ross party at Atlas and
in the contest proceedings in the House, Capt. Leonard Ross, then leader of the Ross party, appeared before the
bar of the House and gave testimony in support of Hansen.
Shaw, defeated by the Ross party, then launched a drive in the legislature for the erection of a new county, resulting
in the formation of Calhoun, of which, at Shaw's instance, Coles' Grove, Shaw's home town, was made the seat of
justice, the name being changed to Gilead. Shaw, defeating the attempts of Hansen in the legislature to block this
move, thus succeeded in wresting the county of Calhoun from the territorial domain of the Rosses.
At this session of the state legislature (1824-26) we find Nicholas Hansen, stormy petrel of the county seat war,
participating in legislation of great moment. At this session the judiciary was reorganized by the creation of
both supreme and circuit courts, and the state was divided into judicial circuits, providing two terms of circuit
court annually in each county. Heretofore the circuit courts had been ruled by justices of the state supreme bench.
Hansen also sought to make the offices of constable and justice of the peace elective, but in this he was unsuccessful.
In this session, in January, 1825, we find the first attempt to establish a free school system in Illinois, in
the passage of a bill introduced by Joseph Duncan, afterwards a member of Congress, and, in 1834, elected governor
of the state. Under this bill there was nominally appropriated $2 out of each $100 received in the state treasury,
to be distributed to those who had paid taxes or subscriptions for the support of schools. So small was the aggregate
revenue of the state at that time (little over $60,000) that the sum realized from this law, radical as it seemed
at the time, would have been not much more than $1,000 a year.
This radical move of 1825 in behalf of free education antedated by a number of years Abraham Lincoln's revolutionary
proposal to the state legislature that all school teachers be required to pass examinations, which proposal, in
Lincoln's own handwriting, is preserved in the archives division of the state public library at Springfield just
as it was turned over to the Secretary of State by the clerk of the House of Representatives.
With the erection of the county of Calhoun, John Shaw and the Shaw party passed from the arena of Pike county politics
and Nicholas Hansen's county seat mission in the state legislature ended. Atlas, no longer threatened by Shaw and
his powerful following, now reigned unchallenged as the seat of government of the new Pike county. With Atlas safe,
Hansen, its great legislative defender, stepped out of the legislative picture, his resignation occurring during
the first session of the fourth legislature.
Hansen's resignation left the Pike county seat vacant and on December 12, 1825, a special election to fill his
seat was held in the district comprising the counties of Pike, Fulton, Calhoun, Adams and Schuyler. In this special
election appears a new opponent of John Shaw, arising in Shaw's own county and out of his own party, namely, Levi
Roberts, an early settler in what is now Calhoun, and who, in December, 1820, in a petition signed by 52 persons
then residing on the bounty lands for a new county to be erected thereon, had been recommended to the General Assembly
"as a fit person to fill the office of Recorder of said county," the petitioners further reciting that
they were "satisfied that his appointment would be satisfactory to the inhabitants generally."
Major Roberts, a soldier of the War of 1812, had settled near present Brussels, making the journey from Ohio in
a keel boat and landing at the present site of Bloom's Landing, on the Illinois river. Levi Roberts it was, who,
in the famous Shaw-Hansen legislative contest in 1822, supplied the affidavit in Shaw's favor upon which the pro-slave
legislature based its ouster of Hansen. Now, in 1825, we find Roberts contesting with his former ally, Shaw.
In this special legislative election in December, 1825, Shaw, upon the basis of returns certified to the secretary
of state and auditor of public accounts at Vandalia, defeated Roberts by a vote of 118 to 112. The certified returns,
now on record in the Centennial building in Springfield, show that Roberts carried Pike county over Shaw by a vote
of 56 to 11, and Adams county by a vote of 39 to 14; while Shaw defeated Roberts in Fulton county by a vote of
25 to 1, and in Calhoun by a vote of 68 to 16. The fifth county in the district, Schuyler, which then embraced
present Brown county, was still in a wild state and sparsely peopled, and the few votes cast there in the election
were not reported by messenger until after the abstracts of the poll books had been made up and forwarded to Vandalia.
The vote of Schuyler, cast in favor of Roberts, was sufficient to overcome the lead of six held by Shaw on the
certified record, and Roberts was seated. The status of the Schuyler vote, however, was doubtful, and Shaw contested
the seating of Roberts, making the third contest waged by Shaw in the House of Representatives for the disputed
seat from this legislative district.
The House Journal for 1825-26 shows that the seat, contested by Shaw, was, on January 6, 1826, four days after
the convening of the second session of the 1824-26 Assembly, declared vacant. The seat was occupied in the succeeding
legislature by Henry J. Ross of Atlas.
Thus the long series of legislative rivalries that agitated the whole state passed into history, but out of that
tumultuous period developed, as we have seen in former chapters, a bitter aftermath of civil and criminal suits
that packed the early Pike county courts at each recurring court term up to the year 1830.
Nicholas Hansen was judge of the probate court of Pike county 1821-22, succeeding Abraham Beck, first probate judge,
who died immediately following the first session of the court opened at Coles' Grove on May 23, 1821. Even the
records of that first session appear in the probate court record in the fine small hand of Hansen, he transcribing
the records of the first session from the manuscript left by Beck. Hansen presided as probate judge up to and including
the last session of the court held at Coles' Grove in November, 1822. He was succeeded by William Ross, who opened
the first term of probate court at Atlas in 1823.
Hansen transcribed the first letters of administration issued in Pike county, dated May 23, 1821, and issued at
the instance of Beck, these letters being directed to John Shaw as administrator of the estate of Pierre Bourke,
a deceased Frenchman. The French were still numerous in southern Pike county in 1821. As these early French, linking
the period of French occupation of the west with that of the American, were gathered to their fathers, many of
them leaving no widow or next of kin in the state, their estates were usually administered by John Shaw or Levi
Roberts, both of whom had long dwelt among the French habitants and knew intimately their way of life, being in
turn trusted by the French of both low and high degree.
The next letters of administration issued in the Pike probate court were those in connection with the estate of
Abraham Beck, the first probate judge who had issued the first letters in the early Frenchman's estate, the Beck
letters being issued by Hansen.
Hansen, following his resignation from the state legislature in which he had sat as the first Pike county representative
in 1822, continued to practice at the Pike county bar for a number of years. In the records of the September term
of the county commissioners' court in 1825, Hansen's delicate and distinguished script is again in evidence, he
serving as the clerk of that court when George W. Britton, who succeeded James W. Whitney, changed his residence
to Adams county. At this term of the commissioners' court (September 5, 1825) the first school district in Pike
county was erected, School District No. 1, at Atlas, the order of the court being as follows:
"On reading and filing the petition of sundry citizens of the County of Pike praying to be formed into a school
district agreeably to the boundaries therein set forth: Ordered, that the said petition be granted and that the
citizens residing therein are hereby formed into a school district to be called ‘School District No. 1.'"
Hansen, who clerked this session of the court wherein was set up the first school district in the county, had just
sat in the fourth state legislature that had passed the first legislation in behalf of a free school system in
the state.
Hansen was for many years a Pike county justice of the peace, a proud calling in those early days. He often officiated
in early Pike county weddings. His last wedding record is that of May 7, 1829, uniting John Foster and Malinda
McMullen.
Hansen came to this western county from Albany, New York, locating here in a very early day. He was the orator
of the day at the first Fourth of July celebration in the Military Track, held at Atlas in 1823. He was related
to the celebrated New York Van Rensselaers. He was still living at Schenectady, New York, shortly prior to the
Civil War, Major Charles J. Sellon having had word of him in 1859.
And what of John Shaw, the famous "Black Prince" of early days, the most colorful character that has
ever appeared upon the Pike county stage? Whence came he? Whither went he? The answers to these questions are shrouded
in obscurity.
John Shaw was a soldier in the War of 1812. As early as the outbreak of that war he was in the vicinity of the
site of Coles' Grove, which he later settled. In 1813 he was stationed at a frontier fort on the Missouri side
of the Mississippi, opposite Cap au Gris, now the site of the West Point Ferry in lower Calhoun. Indians canoeing
down from the north sometimes fought with soldiers of the garrison. One such encounter occurred in 1813 between
a war party of Indians and 13 soldiers from the garrison, who had crossed to the Illinois side of the river. This
battle occurred in what is now Calhoun. Twelve of the soldiers were killed in that battle, John Shaw, the thirteenth,
being the sole survivor.
Shaw, at the close of the Indian wars, continued to frequent this region. He was on the ground when Illinois Territory
became a state. He had explored much of the southern part of the great domain that became Pike county, before its
erection as a county. Early in 1821 he began clearing his first farm at Coles' Grove, now Gilead.
Shaw became the great land owner in the south, as John Wood did in the north. He owned much land in what is now
Calhoun, in the vicinities of Coles' Grove (Gilead), Hamburg, Belleview and Guilford, the latter, once a promising
village, now no longer in existence. Shaw, in 1825, when his town of Coles' Grove was made the seat of justice
of the new county of Calhoun, donated to the county commissioners an 80-acre tract and 12 lots in Coles' Grove.
Speaking of his early efforts, Shaw once said: "In the early part of 1821, I commenced clearing and settling
up a farm between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, at a point where Gilead is now located. Year after year
I extended my farming interests until I cultivated 1200 acres of land in one year and had nearly 400 head of cattle."
At Coles' Grove, John Shaw became the most noted and influential man of his day. Denomination the "Black Prince,"
because of his tremendous sway over the early community, his fame spread throughout the new state. Coles' Grove
became noted chiefly as the home of the "Black Prince." Over the French and half-breeds, then numerous
in that region, he exercised a tremendous influence. His power over those rude people was such that for years they
did his political bidding. Through them he controlled election after election in the early days of our history.
Affidavits submitted to election authorities and still a matter of record affirm that in excess of 80 illegal votes
were cast in the Shaw-controlled precincts in elections in which the total vote of the vast county, legal and illegal
combined, was less than 200.
In addition to farming and stockraising. Shaw engaged in merchandising, conducting stores both in Coles' Grove
and in Hamburg. He was also an early miller, and the first settlers at Atlas went to his mill. He was charged in
early days not only with doctoring poll books but also with forging deeds, even by the quire. This practice, it
was alleged, grew out of the demoralization in the matter of titles to lands in the Military Tract. For years there
was a title chaos here on the bounty lands, a condition that made a fertile field for the operation of "land
sharks," the most notable of whom was one Toliver Craig, who was alleged to have recorded forty bogus deeds
in one day.
John Shaw owned the land on which Hamburg now stands; there, in the late 1820s, he founded the town of Hamburg,
moving his residence there from Gilead. In 1830 a postoffice was opening at Hamburg and Shaw became its first postmaster,
a position he filled for many years. In 1838 he was granted a license to operate a ferry across the Mississippi
river at Hamburg. He operated a store in that town, the records showing that on March 5, 1835, upon payment of
a $5 license fee he was granted a license to sell goods for a period of one year. He had conducted a store almost
continuously even prior to that date.
Shaw has already been seen as the central figure in the exciting legislative drama of the 1820s. He first appears
in the official circuit court records of Pike county as an official court interpreter in the trial of the two Indians,
Pemesan and Shonwennekek, at Coles' Grove, on October 3, 1821. This trial took place at the first term of circuit
court in the county, beginning on October 1, 1821. Shaw was appointed interpreter in the trial by Justice John
Reynolds, of the state supreme bench, who presided in the log courtroom. Shaw, long a sojourner among the tribes
and experienced in their ways during the period of the Indian wars, spoke the tongues of both the Indians and the
French, which stood him in good stead when he aspired to the political dictatorship of his day.
Shaw appears also in the first commissioners' court record, that of April 24, 1821, he with Leonard Ross and William
Ward having been named a member of the first court. Likewise, he appears in the proceedings of the first session
of the first probate court on May 23, 1821. The name of John Shaw, therefore, appears at the very inception of
the county, circuit and probate courts, and thereafter the records of these courts are dominated by his name until
the final separation of Pike and Calhoun counties in 1825.
On June 6,1836, John Shaw was appointed school commissioner of Calhoun county, with authority to sell section 16
(which had been given to each county for school purposes) and distribute the money obtained therefor to the schools.
Shaw, later named county treasurers of Calhoun county, was, on June 18, 1842, removed from that office for failure
to pay orders or to settle with the court. This was about the time of Shaw's disappearance from Calhoun county.
Shaw for many years was dominant in the political district of which Pike county was a part. As late as 1838 we
find the following reference to Shaw in connection with the political campaign of John T. Stewart of the firm of
Stewart, Edwards & Brown of Springfield, a shrewd lawyer who practiced at the Pike county bar in the early
days: "He (Stewart) was the first antagonist of Stephen A. Douglas in the Congressional race that the latter
made in 1838, and was beaten by eighty-odd votes, the noted ‘Black Prince' turning the election."
Hamburg became noted as the residence of Shaw, even as had Coles' Grove (Gilead). In 1834 the town was surveyed
by John Shaw's brother, James Shaw, a civil engineer. In an Emigrants' Guide of 1834 the town was described in
part as follows: "Hamburg, a landing on the Mississippi River in Calhoun County, and the residence of John
Shaw, Esq., ten miles northwest of Gilead." Shaw, founder and pioneer citizens of the village, became known
as the "Bashaw of Hamburg," being so denominated by Edwin Draper of Louisiana, Mo., in a letter dated
September 1, 1873 and read at a meeting of the Old Settlers' Association of Pike and Calhoun counties held that
year.
John Shaw's effort to change the Calhoun seat of government to Hamburg evidently was made a number of years prior
to the burning of the court house at Gilead (which occurred at the beginning of 1847) instead of following that
occurrence, as related by Draper in his "Recollections." It seems certain that John Shaw disappeared
from the ken of Calhoun people in the early 1840's, so that he could not possibly have actuated or participated
in the 1847 petition of Hamburg citizens against the fixing the county seat at Child's Landing, now Hardin.
John Shaw's steamboat is one of the mysteries of the Mississippi. One day in the early 1840s this steamboat, built
by Shaw and bearing his name, steamed away down the river, its owner on board, and neither boat nor owner ever
returned. Shaw and his boat became the great unexplained mystery of the river. Long did the people at Calhoun marvel
as to what became of John Shaw. Wherever men gathered, speculation was rife as to the fate of Shaw and his boat.
It appears that Shaw built his boat at Hamburg. He had become wealthy, but in this venture he sunk most of his
fortune. From far and near people came, bringing their produce to be shipped down the river to market. "And,"
wrote Percy Epler in a Chicago newspaper in 1891, "he loaded his boat and steamed down the Mississippi. This
was the last seen of John Shaw. Whether he succeeded in selling the cargo, or whether the nameless boat fell into
the hands of the government is not known to this day."
Sheriff John Lammy, in a thousand-word Calhoun county history presented in a centennial address at Hardin in 1876,
said:
"Shaw considered St. Louis too small a place for the patronage of his boat, so he steamed on down the river
to New Orleans, from whence it appears he never came back."
For ninety years, Shaw and his boat remained a mystery. Then George W. Carpenter of the Calhoun Herald at Hardin,
writing a "History of Calhoun County," in 1932, as his master's thesis at the University of Illinois,
since published in pamphlet form, discovered some of the writings of Shaw in the Wisconsin Historical Collection
that he wrote after his disappearance from Calhoun. Carpenter quotes Shaw in one of these articles as follows:
"But in 1841 I was induced to build a steamboat, and it was the first one on the river above St. Louis, and
it bore my name by special desire of my friends. And the total loss of the boat a year after caused me a lot of
$80,000. This so broke me up that in 1845 I came to Wisconsin ... and finally located at St. Marie."
This, then, is the last word from the famed "Black Prince," whose strong, forthright signature is attached
to countless official documents and records of early Pike county. Officials of Green Lake county, Wisconsin, site
of St. Marie, have been unable to find any record there of a John Shaw in any way answering the description of
the noted Pike county pioneer.