Thompson

Chapter 22

Pike Roads Followed Ancient Buffalo Trails; Military Tract Lands Rewarded 1812 Soldiers


ATLAS, STANDING so utterly askew with the world, doubtless followed a pattern set in prehistoric times by some bull leader of the bison hordes that came that way, blazing a trail between the two great rivers that was furrowed through ensuing centuries by the vast herds that once roamed these prairies. Centuries passed and upon the path of the buffaloes were the footsteps of the redskins, gliding single file upon the trail to war or to the chase. Centuries before the first white men came, the trail that in 1823 was to become the base line for the platting of Atlas became an artery of the western wilderness, along which pulsated its rich and varied life.

As the centuries passed, the trail broadened. Upon it in time were the feet of the early traders, trappers, hunters and coureurs de bois. French, English and Americans succeeded one another upon the trail as the nations followed each other in dominion over the great inland valley. The trail widened into a cartway, then into a wagon road over which flowed the life of the early settlements. Then came the engineers and surveyors of modern times, following the trail of the ancient bison leader with ribbons of concrete, mute testimony to the cunning of the prehistoric brute that first blazed the line of least resistance from river to river in the vast movement of the shaggy hordes between the plains of the southwest and the buffalo grounds near modern Peoria.

Many famous Illinois roads grew from the ancient buffalo and Indian trails. Alvord, in "The Illinois Country," says: "The French )in the 17th and 18th centuries) found on the prairies the trails of the Indians and the well-beaten tracks of the buffaloes, wide enough for two wagons to pass. These the government gradually developed; one ran from Cahokia to Peoria and from there to Galena; another ran to the mouth of the Tennessee; there was also a well-worn road connecting Peoria and Detroit."

The ancient bisons' fording place on the Mississippi was succeeded in 1821 by James McDonald's Ferry, as their fording place on the Illinois was followed in the same year by Garret Van Dusen's Ferry, later known as Phillips' Ferry when Van Dusen sold his claim to Nimrod Phillips. Thus the path of the buffaloes became the road that led from ferry to ferry as the earlier trail had led from ford to ford. This road became known as the McDonald's Ferry road, leading from the Mississippi river at a point opposite Louisiana, to early Phillipsburg, site of Phillips Ferry, later Griggsville Landing, now Valley City, on the Illinois river.

At the foot of the Mississippi bluffs this famous trail was intersected by another that had also been developing through the centuries. This trail, leading into the north, became known in the early years of Pike county history as the Fort Edwards road, leading from Ferguson's Ferry, near the mouth of the Illinois river, to Fort Edwards, built by Major Zachary Taylor on the present site of Warsaw in September, 1814, as the most westerly outpost of the United States. Here at the intersection of these two famous trails, Atlas was founded in 1823 by William Ross and Rufus Brown, the site of the earlier Ross's Settlement being incorporated in the new plat.

The trails that intersected at the site of Atlas extended southwesterly, northeasterly, northwesterly and southeasterly from the town square. The first cabins paralleled the trails and to this day all the buildings in Atlas stand with the roads but not with the world, making directions in Atlas a snare and a delusion. Not even those who live there are always agreed as to direction. A stranger who once stopped in Atlas to inquire which way was south, related that one of the natives told him, with a generous sweep of the arm that took in one-quarter of the horizon, "she's somewhars off thar."

Not only are directions difficult in Atlas, but locations, descriptions and designations of properties are equally confusing. Few in Atlas can read their titles clear. In deeds of record to lots and parcels of land in the town, there are many and various errors in description. Few own the properties they think they own, when descriptions in the deeds are checked against the original plat of the town. Atlas is peculiar unto itself in its system of lot and parcel identifications.

The town was platted by William Ross and Rufus Brown in March, 1823. The McDonald's Ferry road, now paved U. S. Highway No. 54, was taken as the base line, that part of the road within the town's boundaries being named State street. The Fort Edwards road, now known as the Mississippi Valley Scenic Highway, was taken as the Principal Meridian, and that part of the road within the town was named Main street. The town was laid off into 120 lots, each 86 by 60 feet, with the corner lot of each of the four blocks cornering at the intersection of the two roads being left vacant and unnumbered, these four lots forming the four corners of the town square, in the center of which the roads met. Each lot was numbered and described according to its relative location north or south of the Base Line and east or west of the Principal Meridian. Thus, the lot on which the old log court house stood, across the street southeasterly from the present W. J. Hillman brick residence at the crossroads, was Lot No. 1, one south of the base line and two west of the meridian. The Hillman house, site of Rufus Brown's early log tavern, is Lot No. 1, one north and two west.

Atlas, as platted by Ross and Brown, is bounded northerly by Atlas street, southerly by Milan street, with Pearl street paralleling State through the northern section of the town, and Italy and Decatur streets paralleling Main street near the easterly and westerly edges. The town square, laid out in the center, was 180 by 220 feet. State and Main streets were made 60 feet wide and the other streets 50 feet.

The original plat of Atlas was made in 1823 by Abner Young, early settler at Atlas. In June, 1825, William Ross and Rufus Brown, "proprietors of the Town of Atlas," certified the plat before James W. Whitney, J. P., and had the plat recorded pursuant to "an act to provide for the recording of Town Plats," approved by the state legislature January 4, 1825, Nicholas Hansen, then county recorder, recording the plat on June 13, 1825, which original plat is now to be found in Volume 5, Page 294, of the Deed Records of Pike County.

The simple record set out upon the plat in the hand of Nicholas Hansen reads as follows: "Atlas, Seat of Justice for Pike County, Illinois:

"The annexed plat was laid off by William Ross and Rufus Brown on the Northwest quarter of Section 27, 6S 5W, 1823."

The ground upon which Atlas stands was owned by Captain Leonard Ross, when, as captain of the Ross wagon train, he reached that spot in the late summer of 1820. Captain Ross, when he reached there that year, already owned seven quarter sections of land (1120 acres) in the Military Tract. Through the years 1818 and 1819, at his home in Hancock, County Berkshire, Massachusetts (of which county Pittsfield is the county seat), he had been buying the bounty patents of soldiers of the War of 1812, in which he himself served with such exceeding gallantry.

Most of the military bounty patents held by Ross when he arrived here were titles to quarter sections lying far to the north of the present bounds of Pike. One of them lay in what is now Henderson county, west of the present city of Monmouth; another was in present Hancock; another in present McDonough; another in the present county of Adams; another in what is now Calhoun, near modern Batchtown. Two of them lay in present Pike county, in what is now Atlas township, one of them comprising the northwest quarter and the other the southwest quarter of Section 27, upon which Atlas stands. Captain Ross, therefore, had the entire west half of section 27 upon which to choose a site for his settlement.

Ross, however, had not expected to stop here. It was not in the plan to stop so near Alton. Rather it had been planned to push some 40 or 50 miles farther up the Mississippi bottom to the north, to a tract of land lying in what is now Adams county and east of the present city of Quincy. This tract Ross had bought in 1818 from Zachariah Fellers, Sr., of Green Bush, County Renssalaer, New York, paying $100 for the 160-acre bounty patent. All of these early patents of 1818 and 1819 running to Leonard Ross are of record in longhand in Volume 1 of the Deed Records of Pike County, all of these lands being parcels of the Military Tract lands that lay in original Pike county. These deeds were recorded at Coles' Grove, April 23, 1821.

The beauty of the location on Section 27 in Township 6S 5W was such that the Rosses changed their plans and established themselves on the site of present Atlas. Leonard Ross, shortly after locating his family in the new settlement early in 1821, purchased another 160-acre tract farther west, in Section 12, Town 6S 6W, from Patrick McCarty, a soldier of 1812 then living in the county, McCarty being designated in the patent running to Ross as a "soldier in the Light Dragoons of Little John's Company." McCarty had made improvements upon his "quarter," Ross giving him $250 for his claim.

Others of the Rosses, notably Clarendon, had purchased from soldiers of 1812 various quarter sections in "the Tract appropriated by Acts of Congress for Military Bounties." Most of these holdings lay to the north of present Pike county, many of them being acquired when Illinois was still a Territory. The Rosses evidently had been preparing for several years for their bold adventure into the west.

Enroute up the Mississippi bottom from the point where they crossed the Illinois near the stream's mouth, the Ross wagon train passed the site of Captain Leonard's most southerly tract, near present Batchtown. The region thereabouts was uninviting and the party moved on up the bottom, penetrating deeper into the Military Tract.

What was the Military Tract? The government, at the close of the war between the United States and England in 1812, laid off a tract of land in Illinois for the soldiers of that war. The land thus appropriated was embraced in the region between the Mississippi ans Illinois rivers, and south of the north line of present Mercer county. Its northern boundary, therefore, ran east from the Mississippi river to Peru on the Illinois river, and a little south of the middle of Bureau and Henry counties. The tract embraced three and a half million acres and one of the most fertile regions of the globe.

Many of the soldiers claimed their quarter sections but at first only a few of the boldest braved the hazards of the wilderness to possess them. Many of them sold their "quarters" to speculators, some of them exchanging a patent to a fine "quarter section" for a horse, a cow, a watch, a gun or a saddle. Many deeds of record in Pike county show considerations of $25 and $30 for 160-acres tracts. It is related that an old shoemaker of New York City bought several as fine quarter sections as there are in Pike county with a pair of shoes. He would make a pair of shoes for which the soldier would deed him his "patent quarter" of land.

Leonard Ross in 1818 bought the quarter section upon which Atlas stands for 62 ½ cents an acre. For the same price he bought the entire 1,120 acres of military lands of which he was possessed when he arrived here, his deed for each 160 acres showing a consideration of one hundred dollars. Thus, for $100 per quarter section, the Rosses, Leonard, Clarendon, William and Henry J., had acquired before leaving the east some of the finest "prairie quarters" in Illinois.

The patent to the quarter section on which Atlas stands was issued by the United States to William C. Carey, an 1812 soldier, April 30, 1818, he having "deposited in the General Land Office a warrant in his favor." The patent was issued at the instance of James Monroe, then President of the United States, "in pursuance of Acts of Congress appropriating and granting lands to the late Army of the United States, passed on and since the sixth of May, 1812." Carey sold his quarter section to Leonard Ross, at Hancock, County Berkshire, State of Massachusetts, on November 3, 1818 for a consideration of "one hundred dollars current money of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." Illinois was still a Territory. Not until December 3, 1818 did it become a state. The deed from the soldier Carey to Leonard Ross was recorded November 1, 1819.

The patent to the quarter section immediately south of that on which Atlas stands was issued by the United States to William Green on February 20, 1818, who sold it that same year to Leonard Ross for $100. This land has lately been possessed by the Adams and Long families.

On January 1, 1821, in Alton, Leonard Ross deeded to William Ross and Rufus Brown the "equal undivided one half" of the 320 acres comprising the west half of Section 27 in present Atlas township, for a consideration of $200. Leonard thus recovered all he had paid for the two quarters and still had a half-interest in the half section. In the deed executed before James W. (My Lord Coke) Whitney, then a justice of the peace at Alton, Leonard Ross described himself as a resident of Alton, in Madison county, State of Illinois, and William Ross and Rufus Brown, founders and proprietors of the early town.

At Alton, in the winter of 1820-21 were gathered many who were to become noted in early Pike, erected on January 31 that winter. There were all the Rosses of the first settlement, namely, Leonard Ross, his daughter Charlotte (the belle of early Atlas, for whom the town came near being named), his sons, John Jay and Orlando W., and John Jay's wife, Adelia Maria; William Ross and his wife Nancy; Clarendon Ross and his wife Roby, and their son, Schuyler G.; Henry J. Ross and his wife Hopestill; Elizabeth Law, a relative of the Rosses; Joseph J. Cogswell; William Sprague and his wife and their children, James, Laura and Nancy; Jeremiah Tungate and his wife and their two sons, Jeremiah, Jr., and William; Samuel Davis of Stanstead, Canada (1812 soldier and noted bee hunter of early days) and his large family; all of these, excepting the Tungates having been members of the Ross wagon train from western Massachusetts. William Ross's wife, Nancy, died that February, a few days after reaching the log home her husband had built for her the fall before, her life in the new settlement being brief indeed.

Ross, following his wife's death, returned east, accompanied by Rufus Brown, and on August 1, 1821, we find both Ross and Brown in Rensselaer county, State of New York, where Ross married Ednah Adams and Brown wound up his affairs at Stephentown, his old home in County Rensselaer. Following Ross's marriage, he and his bride, accompanied by Brown, returned to Ross's Settlement where, early in 1823, he and Brown laid out the first town in present Pike county.

At Alton also that winter was another Ross, John, who later in 1820 had followed the trail of the earlier Rosses, reaching Alton late in the fall of 1820. This Ross brought with him his wife, Dorothy, and two daughters, Mary Emily and Elizabeth (Betsy M.), who attended the first school in Pike county, taught by their cousin, John Jay Ross, in Ross's Settlement, early in 1821. Mary in after years became the wife of Orlando W. Ross; Betsy married Stephen Gay, who, with Jonathan Fry, the famous early miller, built the first steam flouring mill at Pittsfield in 1849. John Ross accompanied the other Rosses to the new settlement in February, 1821, and a little later did some exploring in the neighborhood of modern Quincy, but returning to Atlas accumulated a large estate there and became county treasurer. He died at Atlas in 1832, leaving by far the largest estate that had been administered in the county up to that time.

Also wintering at Alton in 1820-21 were Rufus Brown and his wife Nancy, and Major Jeremiah Rose and his wife Margaret, and their baby daughter, then three years old. Mrs. Rose was a sister of Rufus Brown. In covered wagons the Browns and Roses had traveled down the Ohio river valley enroute from New York state, thence up the Mississippi to Alton, arriving there in the late fall of 1820. During the ensuing winter the famous partnership of William Ross and Rufus brown was formed. The brown and Rose families accompanied the Rosses to the Ross settlement in February, 1821, the Brown family continuing to reside there until the beginning of 1826, Brown becoming a commissioner of the new county in 1825. The Rose family, as we have seen in a former chapter, went from Atlas to the present site of Quincy in March, 1823, and occupied the bachelor cabin of John Wood which he had erected there in December, 1822.

Mrs. Margaret Brown Rose, the wife of Major Rose, was the first white woman at the site of Quincy and her daughter, five years old when the family reached Quincy, was the first white child there. In Woodland cemetery, at Quincy, is a stone marking the grave of an infant son of the Roses, born to them shortly after their arrival there, on which is inscribed the fact that he was the first white child born in Quincy. Rufus Brown, who kept the first tavern at Ross's Settlement and Atlas, also was the first tavern keeper in Quincy, his log tavern, erected on the south side of the Quincy public square in 1826, being a noted place in the early days of that town. Rufus Brown and his sister, Margaret Rose, were both charter members of the Congregational church in Quincy. Don Kingsbury and Mrs. Edith Kingsbury Daniels, brother and sister, living near Boston, Massachusetts, are so far as known the only direct living descendants of Margaret Brown Rose.

Atlas pioneers were wont to relate a thrilling tale of Margaret Brown Rose's baby daughter, an adventure that occurred in 1821 or 1822. It seemed that the child strayed one day from the log home in the settlement and became lost in the tall prairie grass that waved head-high over the bottoms. The child was found by a Sauk Indian and taken to the Indian encampment on the Sny. There the child was recognized by a squaw who had been nursed through a fever by a family in the settlement, whether the family of Rose or brown is not clear. The baby was at once returned by the Indians to her distracted family in the settlement. The child in after years became the wife of George Brown of the early Quincy business firm of Brown & Dimock.

Also at Alton in the winter of 1820-21 was James W. Whitney, the famed Lord Coke of early days in Pike. Whitney was then a justice of the peace for the county of Madison, and resided in a log house in Alton. The Ross settlement was in Madison county until January 31 that winter, when the county of Pike was created from Madison, Bond and Clark.

In February, 1821, only a few days after the creation of the new county, all of the foregoing pioneers who were met at Alton that winter, formed a great wagon train that set out over the now fairly broken trail for the new settlement at the site of Atlas. Arriving there, the Rosses and their comrades proceeded to occupy the cabins they had built the fall before, while the newcomers busied themselves in the erection of their own log homes. And then, amid these scenes of feverish activity the angel of death spread his wing over the rising community, taking Nancy, wife of William Ross, her death on February 12, 1821, being the first death of record in the county of Pike.

Meanwhile, down the Mississippi, rafting pine logs out of the far north, from what is now western Wisconsin, enters another upon the Pike county scene, John Shaw, the Black Prince, destined to challenge the rising town of Atlas.

(Note - While the author was at work on this history, which was then appearing in installments in The Pike County Republican, he learned of the personal narrative of John Shaw, taken down when the Black Prince was blind and in his old age. This narrative, which will appear in subsequent chapters, was said by Mr. Thompson to be "one of the most thrilling narratives that ever fell from human lips, constituting in this writer's opinion the most important ‘find' connected with the wilderness period in this section.")