Alton, Illinois

“ Alton is an incorporated town, situated on the bank of the Mississippi, two and a half miles above the mouth of the Missouri, and at the place where the curve of the Mississippi penetrates the furthest into Illinois, 18 miles below the mouth of the Illinois river. For situation, commerce, business of all kinds, health, and rapidity of growth, it far exceeds any other town on the east bank of the Mississippi, above New Orleans. ”

“ In one of these pretty nooks, nestled at the foot of a bluff, is the town of Grafton, from whose balconies the inhabitants obtain a fine view up the Mississippi. This town is only a few years old, but expects soon to rival Alton, as most of the travelling from the interior to the Missouri towns opposite, is through it. It has already laid out upon paper a railroad to Springfield, the capitol. The rapid tide of the ‘father of waters,’ presented a great contrast to the languid Illinois. ”

“ At Alton the bishop found before him 58 churches, five in course of erection; 30 stations visited by 28 priests; six young men studying for the ministry; two female academies, and a population of about 50,000. This population was made up of old French settlers, some Kentuckians, but especially of Irish immigrants driven away from their country by famine, and Germans, by political disturbances. In Illinois they were finding fertile prairie to till, and railroads to build. ”

“ The principal road through the township is the Lexington and Bloomington road. It enters the township from the southwest, with the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroad. Afterward, it passes a short distance north, and then one mile cast; thence one mile north and one-fourth mile west; thence one-half mile north ; after that, one and one-half miles east; one and one-fourth miles north again, and from this point, in a northeasterly direction, through the remainder of the township. Another much-traveled road, is the one leading north from Towanda village. ”

“ The Republican party in Illinois profits by the feeling of the German révolutionnaires; and Lincoln may be ever so poor and so humble, nevertheless the Republican party has drawn to itself some of the richest and most powerful interests in the country; interests which are far-sighted enough to see that if the Republican party can be put into power the mercantile ambition of the North to control the South and the whole country will be realized. No human being could have been a greater orator than Douglas was at Alton ”

“ The site of Portage des Sioux is about seven miles above [34] the town of Alton, and five below the embouchure of the Illinois. Its landing is good; it contains three or four hundred inhabitants, chiefly French; can boast a few trading establishments, and, as is invariably the case in the villages of this singular people, however inconsiderable, has an ancient Catholic church rearing its gray spire above the low-roofed cottages. Attached to it, also, is a "common field" of twelve hundred arpens—something less than as many acres—stretching out into the prairie. ”

“ Possessed by a similar delusion, Illinois, for years, strove to legislate Alton into a vast commercial mart. But, in spite of their unequaled geographical positions, Cairo and Alton still languish in obscurity, while St. [Pg 146] Louis and Cincinnati, twin queens of this imperial valley, succeed to their grand heritage.
Nature settles these matters by laws which, though hidden, are inexorable. Even that mysterious, semi-civilized race, which swarmed in this valley centuries before the American Indian, established their great centers of population where ours are to-day. ”

“ He was returning from Vandalia, Illinois, then the capital, and his first term in the state legislature, to the backwoods village of New Salem that had been his home for four years. The last twenty miles of the journey, from the town of Springfield, he made on a hired horse. The landscape through which he rode that April morning still holds its enchantment; the swift, bright river still winds in and out among the wooded hills, for the best farming lands lie back of the gravelly bluffs, on the black loam prairie. But three-quarters of a century ago central Illinois was an almost primeval world. ”

“ Alton, this old town that I had visited so many times before, was crowded with people drawn from the surrounding country, from across the river in Missouri. As to the temper of the audience, it rather favored Douglas. I saw the leering, ugly faces that I had seen in the lobbies of the hotels in St. Louis years before at the railroad convention, when Captain Grant was lounging there and planters swarmed at the bar and cursed Yankees and nigger-lovers. ”

“ Alton has a bank, a public library, a fire department, an opera house, a weekly newspaper, express, telegraph and telephone service, and is the principal shipping point and trading center for the northwestern part of the county. ”

“ As a man of great perfection on account of your connection with the Chicago and Alton Line
Though the emigrants may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in a high æsthetic band
You always must remember that you are a valued member of the railroad of the land.
And everyone will say,
As you walk your stately way
If he's a sample of the Alton Road, the Alton Road, oh, me!
Why, what a very cultivated sort of road the Alton road must be!
[Pg 33]
"Conceive me if you can
A commonplace young man."
[Pg 34]
A most unique young man, who runs the car young man, polite to the ladies etc. ”

“ IN traveling over the great fertile prairie State of Illinois, and viewing its many railroads, its many beautiful cities and towns, its school houses, its churches, its broad fields of waving grain, its orchards bending under their load of golden fruit, its vast population of industrious and intelligent citizens, its mills, and its factories, one can hardly realize that nearly all of this great improvement has been made in the last sixty years, but such is the case. ”

“ Illinois is where things grow; the corn, the wheat, the hay, the oats, the fruit, the vegetables, the horses, the cattle, the hogs; the eggs don’t grow on bushes in Illinois, but they come as near to it as they do in any other State. And not only these things, which have been mentioned, grow in Illinois, but brains grow in Illinois too; and if they are about to be bothered to find a man who is smart enough for President, tell them not to be uneasy, that Illinois can furnish five hundred, if that many were needed. Yes, Illinois is where things grow. ”

“ Like many New England preparatory schools, Alton possessed an appearance of age out of proportion with fact, an appearance largely due to the maples that shaded the walks and the ivy that grew almost to the eaves of the older buildings. Not that Alton was a new school, for it was not, but it was younger than many; younger, even, than its principal rival, Kenly Hall, over at Lakeville. ”

“ The whole State lies within the great prairie region, and has the physical appearance of a broad plain sloping slightly toward the south and southwest. After Louisiana and Delaware, it is the most level State in the Union. The surface of the plain, however, is not so monotonous as it appears on the map, being broken by minor undulations in a series of low hills and broad hollows. In the extreme northwest there are hills rising to an altitude of more than 800 feet, but the average elevations range from 600 feet in the north to 300 feet in the south. The elevation of Chicago is 582 feet. ”

“ Chicago and New York: RAND, MCNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. Copyright,1898, by Rand, McNally & Co A YANKEE FROM THE WEST. CHAPTER I. MILFORD.
In his mind the traveler holds of Illinois a tiresome picture, the kitchen garden of a great people, a flat and unromantic necessity. The greatest of men have trod the level ground, but it is hard to mark history upon a plane; there is no rugged place on which to hang a wreath, and on the prairie the traveling eye is accommodated by no inn whereat it may halt to rest. Such is the Illinois as remembered by the hastening tourist. ”

“ No one can be surprised if our feelings prompt us to speak pretty highly of our native home, Illinois, the great fertile prairie valley between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, like a choice gem placed between the more hilly states on the East and the West. Illinois, the second and soon to be the first agricultural state in the Union; destined by her Creator to do a worthy share in feeding the world. Her merits and her charms have drawn on the intelligence and industry of every nation upon the globe.
[55]
Pioneer Work. ”

“ By this time, 1851, the passage of the bill to build the Illinois Central Railroad through Bloomington, closed to market all land lying between the west line of this township and Bloomington, and, of course, every one who wanted to buy land near the latter, then a growing young town, rushed into the towns of Range 5 in a hurry. The entire town soon filled up. Its history from that time (except what refers to the village) is a continued story of prosperity. ”

“ The financial crash of 1857 unsettled affairs greatly, and few settlers came in for ten years. From this settlement, near the Lexington line, to that on the south, around about Speed Stagtier's, was long an open prairie. It was not till the close of the war for the Union, when " Johnny came marching home " to make new alliances or renew Long broken ones, and new homes were needed, that this whole range of country for miles around Blue Mound, stretching out east to the county line, was filled up by the hardy, industrious, patriotic men who now live here. ”

“ No State of the American union has a history of more intense interest than our own. Its early chapters, indeed, savor of the romantic rather than of the real. I do not speak of the long-ago time when Illinois forest and prairie were the house and hunting-ground of the red men, and his frail bark the only craft known to its rivers. That period belongs to the border-land age of tradition rather than of veritable history. It is of Illinois under the domination of civilized men I would speak. ”

“ By the beginning of the Civil War the population of Illinois had increased to a million and three quarters. Obviously this change in little more than a generation represented only in small part the natural increase of the original settlers from Kentucky and Virginia. So rapidly, indeed, did the forces of progress act in Illinois that many of the old-timers packed up and moved on, as had happened during the previous generation among their parents, and Illinois in the following generation will be found strongly represented in the early migration to California, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. ”

“ This town, moving early in the matter, the legislature of Illinois, in February, 1855, chartered a company, called the Mount Vernon Railroad Company, whose immediate purpose was, with the aid of a mortgage on certain lands in Jefferson County, known as the 'swamp and overflowed lands,' to build a road from Mount Vernon, in Jefferson County aforesaid, to the Illinois Central. Such a road, of course, would run west through the estern part of Jefferson County, cross its western line, and connect soon after with the desired trunk of the Illinois Central. ”

“ Illinois is a State which has sprung up, as if by magic, to be one of the most fruitful in the West. It was settled by men from the New England States—men who carried with them those characteristics which have made the New Englander's career one of active enterprise, and successful progress, wherever he has been. Not many years ago the name of Illinois was nearly unknown, and on her soil the hardy settler battled with the forest-trees for space in which to sow his first crops. Her roads were merely rude and often impassable tracks through forest or prairie ”

“ They are the first to see the importance of such means of internal communication, and are more deeply concerned than others in their wise management. Illinois is more immediately affected by the bridges over the Chicago river and its branches than any other state, and is more directly concerned for the prosperity of the city of Chicago, for the convenience and comfort of its inhabitants, and the growth of its commerce. ”

“ The period from 1818 to 1830 saw the Indian title to a great fertile tract of land in Illinois extinguished, the price of all public lands lowered and the land offered for sale in smaller tracts, the right of preemption granted to squatters who had settled before 1830, considerable grants of land made to the state for internal improvements, the great salt spring reservations reduced. These changes did much to make Illinois a more attractive place for settlement. ”

“ RALPH A. ALLISON. Ralph A. Allison, the capable, efficient and obliging cashier of the Muscotah State Bank, was born and reared in the town where he resides. He was born July 1, 1889, at Muscotah, Kan., a son of Webster C. and Irene (Alexander) Allison, the former a native of Illinois, and the latter of Wisconsin. Webster C. Allison was born in 1861 on his father’s farm in Illinois, and was the son of John Allison, who was born and reared in Pennsylvania, and immigrated to Illinois in the pioneer days of that State. ”

“ Nor can it be forgotten that the deed of cession by which Illinois became part and parcel of the general Government, bears—as commissioners upon the part of Virginia—the honored names of Arthur Lee, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson. Is it to be wondered at, that a magnificent Illinois building adorns the grounds of the Jamestown Exposition,—and that Illinois hearts everywhere beat in unison with yours in the celebration of one of the epoch-marking days of all the ages? ”

“ We had to leave our homes and possessions on the fertile lands of Illinois to make our dwelling places in these desert wilds, on barren, sterile plains, amid lofty, rugged mountains. None dare come here to live until we came here, and we now find it to be one of the best countries in the world for us. ”