Exploring the ‘treeless land’ with Jolliet and Marquette

This year, Illinois will celebrate it’s Bicentennial. In December 1818, the U.S. Congress formally approved establishing the State of Illinois. And with its change in status from territory to state, Illinois was finally allowed to send two senators and a representative to represent the state’s people and their interests at the national capitol.

By the time Illinois became a state, Europeans had visited and settled in what the colonial French called the Illinois Country for nearly a century and a half. The first Europeans to arrive in Illinois did so illegally—that is, in violation of the Royal French colonial government’s prohibitions. Those earliest visitors were seeking riches, both mineral and in furs, and they found a bit of both.

The Indian way of life began to change as soon as those European influences began to reach Illinois. Thanks both to trade among the tribes and those hardy French freebooters, European influences reached Illinois well in advance of any permanent settlers.

The route taken by the Jolliet and Marquette expedition of 1673. They were the first Europeans to travel through and report on northern Illinois.

As such items as glass beads and brass cooking pots were traded for furs in the East, they began working their way west through the extensive web of Indian trading routes. Gradually, this trade became formalized, with the great trading nations of the west, the Ottawas and Chippewas, trading the grain and furs of the western tribes to the Iroquois and Hurons of the east for European trade goods.

The role of middleman between the western tribes located around the Great Lakes and the Europeans (primarily Dutch, French, and English) was hotly contested. This economic rivalry brought on a number of wars between the Huron and Iroquois, resulting in the eventual destruction of the Huron Tribe.

The first legal penetration of the area now known as Illinois was made by an exploration group led by Louis Jolliet in 1673. Jean Talon, governor of New France, had decided to investigate the reports carried east by French missionaries and traders about a great river to the west of Lake Superior, called “Great Water” or Mississippi, by the Indians.

Talon appointed Jolliet, an experienced mapmaker and explorer, to command an expedition to determine whether this river emptied into the Pacific Ocean. If it did, reasoned Talon, the French would have discovered the long-sought Northwest Passage.

An interpreter familiar with many Algonquian dialects was considered necessary for the expedition, and to fill this post Talon and Jolliet picked a studious intellectual Jesuit, Father Jacques Marquette—at the time the expedition left, Marquette could speak six different Indian languages. Just as importantly, Marquette was easily available. His regular post was at the Mission of St. Ignace at Michilimackinac, located on the strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, the major crossroads of the western fur trade.

A sculptor’s vision of geographer and explorer Louis Jolliet.

The exploration party, consisting of Jolliet, Marquette and five French voyageurs in two canoes, left the strait between the two lakes on May 17, 1673—345 years ago this month—and set a course down the western shore of Lake Michigan to Green Bay. At the Bay, the party turned up the Fox River to the portage to the Wisconsin River (today’s Portage, Wis.), then down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi.

As the party traveled south, Jolliet became convinced that hopes the mighty river’s course did not lead southwesterly to Gulf of California, offering a transcontinental passage to the Pacific Ocean as had been hoped. Instead, his navigational observations affirmed the Mississippi bore almost straight south to the Gulf of Mexico. Accordingly, upon reaching the Arkansas River in July, the party reversed its course and headed north once again. They were also encouraged on this course because the Indian villages around the Arkansas River’s mouth were in possession of Spanish trade goods, and given the small size of the French expedition, the last thing they wanted to do was get involved with hostile Spanish colonials.

So back up the Mississippi they paddled. When the explorers reached the mouth of the Illinois River, they decided to ascend it to Lake Michigan, probably on the recommendation of a friendly group of Indians who probably suggested the route as a shortcut back to the lake. They therefore became the first Europeans to see the rich Illinois River Valley, and their opinion of it was very favorable.

Noted Jolliet in an account written after the trip:

“At first, when we were told of these treeless lands, I imagined that it was a country savaged by fire, where the soil was so poor that it could produce nothing. But we have certainly observed the contrary; and no better soil can be found, either for corn, for vines, or for any other fruit whatever.

“The river, which we named for Saint Louis, which rises near the lower end of the Lake of the Illinois [Lake Michigan], seemed to me the most beautiful place; the most suitable for settlement…There are prairies three, six, ten, and twenty leagues in length and three in width, surrounded by forests of the same extent…A settler would not there spend ten years in cutting down and burning the trees; on the very day of his arrival, he could put his plow into the ground.”

Although he didn’t realize it, Jolliet’s words would be echoed a century and a half later in emigrants’ guidebooks luring pioneers to the Illinois prairies.

At the time the party traveled through the Illinois River Valley, the Illinois Indians were in the process of moving to the upper reaches of the river in large numbers The Indians’ village of Kaskaskia was located across from Starved Rock and numbered some 74 cabins in 1673. By the next year, the village had grown to 100-150 cabins. In 1677, Marquette’s Jesuit colleague Father Claude Jean Allouez reported that the village had grown to 351 cabins.

The reports of the Jolliet-Marquette expedition, as well as those of such missionaries as Father Allouez, were clear testaments to the richness of the Illinois River Valley. And the reports of large concentrations of Indians living in the area seemed to make it an ideal location for a centralized trading post to cater directly to the Indians, thus removing the Iroquois, Ottawa, and Chippewa middlemen from the profit equations of the French fur traders.

It would take a strong man with the right connections to make this move, but in 1666, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle had arrived in New France, burning with the desire to make his fortune. It was a case of the right man being on the scene at the right time.

 

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The ultimate sacrifice of Elwyn Holdiman—a Memorial Day update

Last November, I wrote about the discovery that one of my distant cousins, Elwyn Holdiman, was killed in action during World War II.

A pretty typical Kendall County farm boy, his story was uncovered during our annual salute to local veterans down at the Little White School Museum here in Oswego, where I serve as the volunteer director. We do a lengthy special exhibit on the topic as the nation celebrates Veterans Day each year, and last year we discovered Elwyn Holdiman’s story. You can read about it here.

Elwyn Holdiman attended classes at the one-room Squires School, located in Oswego at the corner of old Douglas Road and U.S. Route 34. He’s the tall kid in the back row circled in red.

But recently, the surprising reach of the Internet was brought home to me once again when a resident of the Netherlands ran across that blog post and contacted me concerning Holdiman’s death.

Werner van Osch, who created and maintains the 7th Armored Division Memorial Holland web site at http://www.7tharmoredmemorial.nl/index.php, contacted me to volunteer some more detailed information about Elwyn Holdiman’s death in combat back in October 1944.

Holdiman was a member of Company C of the 17th Tank Battalion, which itself was assigned to the 7th Armored Division. In the autumn of 1944, the 7th Division was part of Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army that was fighting in Holland in support of Operation Market Garden, the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to leapfrog over strong German positions using British, American, Canadian, and Polish airborne troops, along with Dutch resistance forces, to seize militarily vital bridges.

In fighting that was a small part of the Battle of Canals on Oct. 29 against the German 9th Panzer Division a couple miles from Heusden west of the Asten/Meijel Road, Cpl. Holdiman’s Sherman tank was destroyed by enemy fire while Company C was supporting an infantry push.

After reading the 17th Tank Battalion’s after action reports, I concluded that Holdiman had been killed in action, along with the rest of the crew. Four casualties were listed with the tank’s destruction, including Holdiman; 2nd Lt. Robert W. Denny, the tank’s commander; loader and machine gunner Pvt. Michael Ferris; and Tec 4 Leo W. Goers, the tank’s driver.

According to the report on Company C filed by the 17th Tank Battalion about the action on Oct. 29: “This Company did an excellent job but they lost Lt. DENNY who had just recently been Commissioned from the ranks, he had previously been a Platoon Sergeant in the same Company, Lt. DENNY was an excellent leader and his loss is a great loss to the Company. ‘C’ Company lost four tanks in this action and they definitely knocked out five German Tanks.”

A U.S. Army M-4 Sherman Tank, the standard Allied tank of World War II. Cpl. Elwyn Holdiman was killed in action when the Sherman Tank in which he was a crew member was destroyed by enemy fire on Oct. 29, 1944.

But the documents supplied by Werner van Osch show that I didn’t have the story quite right. Granted, the four soldiers killed I originally listed indeed died in that violent action. But a fifth member of the tank crew, Pvt. Frank Velus escaped with his life. The official documents also reported what happened after the four members of the tank crew were killed in action.

Holdiman’s family was initially informed he was missing in action on Nov. 11, 1944. Then after the deaths of the four members of the tank crew were confirmed, the Army officially reclassified him as killed in action on March 10, 1945.

The combat situation was apparently pretty fluid in that area of Holland as the Allies pushed the Germans steadily back. The British Royal Army was assigned to control the area, and when they moved in and secured it, they found the burned out tank on a secondary road in a peat bog just south of the road between Miejel and Asten.

According to a report filed by Royal Army Chaplain A.I Dunlop, the remains of Lt. Denny, badly burned, were found a couple yards from the tank, while the remains of Pvt. Ferris were twenty yards from the tank and were unburned. According to his report, the chaplain helped remove Holdiman’s burned and maimed body from the tank for burial. Dunlop added that Tech 4 Goers’ body was so badly burned the British didn’t remove it from the tank but left it in place.

The conditions being what they were, the British troops didn’t have time to identify the three bodies they’d recovered. They did, however, take the time to bury them in shallow graves next to each other, arranged with Ferris first, then Holdiman, and then Lt. Denny. The British soldiers erected crosses over the three, with the cross over Holdiman’s body carrying the inscription: “Unknown American soldier, K/A Oct/Nov ’44.” They forwarded reports about what they’d done—it would be up to the U.S. Army to handle further activity concerning the dead G.I.’s.

In September 1945, four months after the end of the war in Europe, U.S. Army Graves Registration personnel, with the help of a local Dutch family, located, recovered, and identified the three bodies from the hasty graves in which Holdiman and his three comrades had been buried. Holdiman was identified by the single dog tag that he still wore around his neck, even in death. The three were then removed to a U.S. military cemetery. Holdiman was reburied in plot KKK, row 11, grave 273 at the U.S. military cemetery at Margraten, Holland.

In early December 1947, the U.S. Army notified the Holdiman family that families of the nation’s war dead were invited to request the repatriation of their bodies from the sprawling European military cemeteries. The Holdiman family immediately requested that Elwyn Holdiman’s body be returned to the U.S. for burial in the family plot at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. In January 1948, the U.S. Army approved the Holdimans’ request.

Cpl. Edwyn Holdiman’s body was repatriated from Holland in 1948 and was reburied at Lincoln Memorial Park in Oswego Township in the family plot.

Cpl. Holdiman’s body was disinterred on Aug. 11, 1948, and readied for shipment back to Kendall County. His body was loaded aboard the USS Carroll Victory at Antwerp, Belgium for the trim back across the Atlantic on Oct. 29, 1948. The ship arrived back in the U.S. on Nov. 16.

After some minor repairs to the casket of damage sustained in shipping were completed on Dec. 10, Holdiman’s body was sent west to Illinois by train. Accompanied by a military escort, it was delivered on Monday, Dec. 13, 1948 to the Healy Undertaking Company on Downer Place in Aurora. His funeral was subsequently held at Lincoln Memorial Park in Oswego Township, where he was buried in the family plot.

As we look towards celebrating another Memorial Day, at a time when the nation’s young men and women are still fighting and dying in foreign battlefields, it is an excellent, and fitting, time to recall other young people of other generations—like Elwyn Holdiman—who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country and the fight for freedom and in defense of the Constitution.

Galena Road and its bridge are artifacts of the Fox Valley’s pioneer past

Busy Galena Road will be closed for a while this summer while contractors working for Kendall County replace the bridge across Blackberry Creek.

As it’s name suggests, Galena Road was one of the major routes to the lead mining region around the far northwestern Illinois boom town. Looking at a map, it might seem a bit odd to area residents that a road from Chicago to Galena headed west and a bit south from Chicago, then sharply dipped farther southwest across Blackberry Creek before finally turning northwest towards the lead mining region.

After all, why go southwest to get northwest? And therein lies a historical tale.

From the Aurora-Montgomery area, the old Chicago to Galena Road bent southwesterly to the ford across Blackberry Creek. The modern road still follows the same route.

Although the routes from Chicago to Ottawa were already major thoroughfares by the early 1830s, only sporadic—and difficult—travel was undertaken between Galena and Chicago. Granted, some commercial overland travel began as early as 1829, but there was no surveyed road until 1833.

Virtually all of Galena’s early transportation needs were met by steamboats and, much more laboriously, keelboats using the Mississippi River system. But shipping lead from the mines in the Galena region to market via the river system, and returning with food, clothing, and other necessities was an expensive and time-consuming process in those early years.

Galena, Illinois in the early 1840s was a bustling boom town built on lead mining. The illustration above shows lead smelters at work across the Galena River from the town.

Few steamboats of the era ran on regular schedules. Instead, they awaited full cargo holds and passenger cabins before sailing. In addition, low water levels, flood conditions, or winter ice could delay the shipment of goods, sometimes for months at a time. Keelboats were even worse in terms of time and expense. Although by the 1830s, steamboats were quickly replacing keelboats, they still made their slow ways up the Mississippi’s swift current.

Well aware of the limitations of river traffic, in August 1829 Galena businessman J.G. Stoddard decided to try to ship a ton and a half of lead overland from his growing, but relatively isolated, town to Chicago. On the return trip, the wagons would bring supplies Stoddard planned to sell to miners at a hefty profit. According to the Galena Advertiser of 1833, this was the first time an overland trip by wagon had been attempted from the Mississippi to Lake Michigan.

Milo M. Quaife, in Chicago Highways Old and New, reported that Stoddard’s wagons traveled overland using the following route, one that (with a few modifications) later became known as “The Southern Route” from Galena to Chicago: The route ran from Galena 80 miles south-southeast to Ogee’s (later Dixon’s) Ferry across the Rock River. After crossing the river, the route extended east-southeast 60 miles to the former site of the Fox River Mission on the Fox River, where the river was forded. From there, the wagons turned northeast to Capt. Joseph Naper’s settlement and the DuPage River ford, and then across the prairie to Laughton’s tavern and store on the Des Plaines River—modern Riverside—for the final ford before the last leg to Chicago.

Ogee’s Ferry was named for Joseph Ogee, the first ferry operator at the ford across the Rock River. Ogee, a Canadian, was allowed by the Winnebagoes to begin ferry operations in 1828, just a year before Stoddard’s wagons passed. Ogee also established a store and post office at the ferry, which was on the main road from Galena to Peoria. The ferry, tavern, and post office operation was purchased by John Dixon in 1830. The city of Dixon now stands on the spot.

Said to be an image of Methodist missionary and circuit riding preacher Jesse Walker. (Image via findagrave.com)

The Fox River Mission was established by the Rev. Jesse Walker on land purchased from the Potowatomi Tribe, on behalf of the Methodist Church, in Section 15 of Mission Township, LaSalle County (T35N, R5E). The purpose of the mission was to teach the local Native Americans a variety of skills, including farming, plus educating Native American children at a mission-run school.

Walker reported to the Rock River Conference of the Methodist Church in 1825 that he had established the mission, after some confusion about the proper location, and that it included a large, two story house, built of hewn logs, measuring 50×30 feet. The house was divided into apartments for the mission staff (which mostly consisted of Walker’s extended family). The mission also included a blacksmith shop, a poultry house, a spring house and “other conveniences.”

Walker’s son-in-law, James Walker, came that same year and brought with him a horse-powered corn grinding mill. Soon after, however, James Walker moved on to a patch of timber on the DuPage River where he established a new settlement, first called Walker’s Grove, and later renamed Plainfield.

Jesse Walker reported that by 1826, the mission had 40 acres of land under cultivation, seven acres in pasture, and one acre planted in garden crops to provide food for the staff. The cost of the venture was $2,034, of which the U.S. Government had pledged to pay two-thirds since the mission staff promised to use their blacksmith to service the needs of the local Native Americans.

Although by the time Stoddard’s journey took place, the Fox River Mission had been abandoned by the Methodists, the buildings were then still standing, and would have provided some welcomed shelter after a lonely trip across the rolling Illinois prairie.

Further, it is likely the Stoddard party’s route was also planned to take advantage of an already-familiar trace across the prairie (possibly a branch of the Great Sauk Trail). Juliette Kinzie described virtually the same route Stoddard’s party took in an account of an 1831 trip from Fort Winnebago near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to Chicago with her husband and a few others.

Kinzie described the route as south to Ogee’s Ferry, east-southeast to the Fox River, east-northeast to Naper’s settlement, and then on to Chicago. Unfortunately, the Kinzies’ guide, though claiming familiarity with the area, missed “The Great Sauk Trail,” and the party reached the Fox River well north of the old Fox River Mission. According to Kinzie’s narrative, the party crossed the Fox south of modern Oswego during a raging storm instead of using the good ford a mile or so to the north, and then went on to stay at Peter Specie’s cabin in Specie Grove. From there, they were guided to Chicago by John Dougherty, one of the area’s earliest settlers.

As Stoddard’s venture suggests, some overland travel did take place from Galena to Chicago in the 1820s, but there was no surveyed road until 1833. That year, surveyors working for the State of Illinois ran the line of what would become known as the southern route of the Chicago to Galena Road, the first government road connecting the two thriving towns.

The southern route to Galena followed virtually the same route as the High Prairie Trail to Ottawa until it crossed the Des Plaines River and passed Laughton’s tavern. The stretch from the lakefront at Chicago to Laughton’s was called the Berry Point Trail. The Laughtons’ tavern was probably located on or near the site of the modern Riverside Metra Station, 18 Bloomingbank Road, North Riverside. The inscribed granite boulder in the Ottawa Trail Woods Forest Preserve that supposedly marks the trading post site, about two miles away, was apparently placed in error according to researcher Philip Vierling. (See the EarlyChicago web site encyclopedia listings for “Laughton” for more information on this interesting early pioneer family.)

Then at Brush Hill just west of Laughton’s, the Galena Road branched off, turning more westerly towards Capt. Joseph Naper’s settlement on the DuPage River. Brush Hill (renamed Fullersburg in 1859) was located on what is today U.S. Route 34 at York Road just west of the DuPage-Cook County line. After crossing the DuPage at Naper’s, the road extended west across the Oswego Prairie to the Fox River ford, located about 200 feet north of the Kane–Kendall County line in present-day Montgomery, where it crossed the river.

According to the U.S. Government survey map of Aurora Township, the Fox River ford was located in the extreme southeast corner of Section 32, near the border with Oswego Township. After the road crossed the river, it continued west and then cut through the extreme northwest corner of Section 6 of Oswego Township.

The route then bore even farther southwesterly to the Blackberry Creek ford, which is where we pick up the story of the Blackberry Creek Bridge again.

The ford was located in the north half of the southeast quarter of Section 10, T37N, R7E. Blackberry Creek must have been difficult to ford, since the road ran so far south instead of crossing on a more direct line from the Fox River ford at Montgomery. The notes that U.S. Government Surveyor Eli Prescott took as he and his crew surveyed back and forth across the creek if October 1837 described the Blackberry as “Deep & sluggish,” suggesting fords suitable for wheeled vehicles were few and far between. As a result, the surveyors laying out the course of the Galena Road bent it southwest to access what appears to have been a rare ford across the Blackberry.

After the area had become sufficiently settled and bridges were built across the Fox Valley’s streams, local road commissioners decided to stick with the long-established route of the Galena Road. And to this day, Galena Road still bends far south to cross Blackberry on a bridge at the old ford, a route that has not changed for the past 185 years.

After crossing the creek, the Galena Road finally turned northwesterly through what would become the village of Little Rock before stretching across the prairies to John Dixon’s ferry on the Rock River and on north to Galena.

As surveyed, the distance was 102 miles, the survey crew describing the route from Chicago to Dixon as “high and dry prairie.” The only expense, they optimistically suggested, would be bridging occasional streams, adding they calculated the total cost would likely not exceed $500 for the entire 102-mile route.

It wasn’t long until the McCarty brothers managed to reroute the Galena Road through the new town they were building and which they called Aurora. Their actions, including wresting a post office from Montgomery, led directly to Aurora’s growth at the expense of Montgomery. (For more on this topic, see “U.S. Mail was the Internet of the 1830s.”)

But even so, the route of the road from Chicago to Galena was not changed, and its course—including the bridge across Blackberry Creek—still remains an artifact of the Fox Valley’s pioneer era.