Playing by the immigration rules…

Immigration, especially on the GOP side of the political spectrum, is a hot political topic as the 2016 Presidential race begins. The GOP, which has snatched the mantle of the Know Nothings, the Dixiecrats, and pro segregationists, is angry about those who immigrate without following the rules and some are angry about immigrants in general, legal or illegal.

“My ancestors played by the rules,” their argument goes. “Today’s immigrants should too.” Hard-core anti-immigrationists would just as soon deport all immigrants, leaving behind only ‘true’ Americans, all of whom, of course, including Native People, are also either immigrants or or their descendants.

Anyway, it got me to wondering about the procedure all those legal immigrants had to follow when they arrived, especially during the heyday of European immigration. Turns out, if you were a European, there really weren’t a whole lot of rules.

The earliest arriving ancestor I know about was Baltzer Lantz, my five-times great grandfather on my Grandmother Holzhueter’s side, who stepped off the ship Phoenix, probably in Philadelphia, in 1750. Since there was no United States yet, Baltzer didn’t have a problem fitting in, since Pennsylvania was filled with Germans. He was a mason by trade who helped build forts on what was then the Pennsylvania frontier during the last of the French and Indian wars before settling down and raising his family in Lancaster County.

When my ancestors arrived in the U.S. in the late 19th Century, they disembarked at Castle Garden in New York harbor. This is a view as it would have looked about 1855.

My dad’s Matile ancestors arrived in the U.S. in 1867. Henri Francois and Verginie (Ducommun-Dit-Veron) Matile, my great-grandparents, were among 126 passengers who sailed to the U.S. aboard the Harvest Home, a 598-ton wooden-hulled bark-rigged (three masts, with square sails on the fore and main masts and a triangular fore-and-aft sail on the mizzen mast) vessel of U.S. registry. Traveling from Switzerland’s canton of Neuchâtel, they embarked at LeHavre, France with their six children, and sailed for the port of New York, arriving Aug. 3, 1867.

Wilhelm and Fredericka (Tesch) Holzhueter, great-grandparents on my mom’s side, immigrated to the U.S. aboard the fast steamer Eider in 1885. The Eider was a new ship, many times larger than the Harvest Home that brought the Matiles to the U.S. Launched Dec. 15, 1884 in Glasgow, Scotland, she was a 4,719-ton iron-hulled ship with four masts and two funnels for her single steam engine. The Holzhueters and their three children were among 1,250 passengers and 167 crew on the voyage, arriving at the port of New York from Bremen, Germany on April 26, 1885.

Ellis Island is by far the better-known immigrant gateway to the United States, but it didn’t open until 1892, well after all my European ancestors arrived.

During that era, immigrant ships debarked their passengers at Castle Garden in New York harbor—Ellis Island wouldn’t open for business until 1892. There were no visas at the time, and passports really weren’t necessary, either. Henri and Virginie only had to give their names, ages, occupations, and places from where where they’d come. Wilhelm and Fredericka, on the other hand, answered a fairly long battery of questions that included everything the Matiles had been asked, plus a few more—whether they could read and write (yes), whether they had ever been in prison or an almshouse (no), and others. They also had to undergo a cursory health inspection before they were allowed to leave Castle Garden and make their way to Illinois where they first settled with my great-grandmother’s relatives before making their own home amongst the other Germans who had settled on Aurora’s Far East Side in what was then nicknamed Dutchtown.

Baltzer was never naturalized. Seeing as how he got here before the country was established he was grandfathered in. But Henri Matile did go through the naturalization process, as did my Holzhueter great-grandparents, and all became citizens.

That process, too, was straightforward and not at all complicated. Immigrants had to live in the U.S. for five years, and for a year in the state in which they were wishing to be naturalized. With the residency requirements out of the way, they could file a declaration of intent to become citizens. A couple years later (the time varied from one to three years depending on the state) they could file their second petition for naturalization. They were then required to sign an Oath of Allegiance that pledged their allegiance to the United States. After that, they were sworn in as U.S. citizens by a judge in their local court, and a certificate of naturalization was issued to them.

And just like that, they could pay taxes and vote.

My ancestors were fortunate they were white, European Protestant Christians. Catholics from Ireland and Southern Europe weren’t treated nearly as politely, and Asian people were treated even worse, starting with the Chinese exclusion acts, the first passed in 1879 and pretty much going downhill from there.

None of my ancestors could speak English when they arrived. Henri Matile, his wife, and children spoke only French. Baltzer Lantz and the Holzhueters spoke only German. And, in fact, Henri spoke only French at home for the rest of his life and the Lantzes and Holzhueters only spoke German. That was why my grandmother, a descendant of Baltzer Lantz and Pennsylvania Dutch through and through got on so well with my Grandfather Holzhueter—both families spoke German at home even though the Lantzes had lived in Pennsylvania and then Illinois for 150 years before my grandparents’ marriage—in our neighboring city of Aurora, Lutheran churches held German-language services right up to the 1960s.

So, yes, my ancestors came to America, started new lives, and were engaged in their communities while still retaining their cultural identities that seemed to mix pretty well with everyone else in the melting pot. And they all followed the immigration rules. It’s just that there weren’t many rules to follow, back in the day.

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Crowdsourcing the fate of the St. Charles Experiment…

From what I read on the Internet these days, crowdsourcing is all the rage among the cool kids. Apparently, you can visit a crowdsourcing web site and solicit funds to make that movie on the history of darning needles you’ve been hankering after for years, or persuade people to fund that new invention you’ve come up with to do the Popeil Pocket Fisherman one better.

Thinking about that in the shower this morning, I had an idea to try to do some crowdsourcing historical research.

So here’s the deal: Back in the 1840s, a fellow that some might have called a crackpot, but others may have called a visionary, decided to build a steam boat here in northern Illinois on the Fox River, and then sail it down to Ottawa where the Fox empties into the Illinois, down the Illinois to Grafton where it empties into the Mississippi, down the Mississippi to the Ohio, then up the Ohio and eventually all the way to the St. Lawrence River in Canada. No small plans did this gentleman make. I related the story here once before, but I never get tired of telling people about it, so I’ll let the Oct. 2, 1840 edition of the Illinois Free Trader at Ottawa lay out the entire story:

 Fox River Navigation — Arrival

of the Bark “St. Charles Experiment.”

On Tuesday evening last Mr. Joseph P. Keiser and lady arrived at our steamboat landing in a beautiful bark, six tons burthen, from St. Charles, Kane county, Illinois. Mr. K. left St. Charles on the 18th inst. amid the smiling countenances of a large collection of citizens of that place who had assembled to witness his departure on this hazardous and novel enterprise. He descended Fox River without much trouble, notwithstanding the low stage of the water at present and the dam at Green’s mill, &c, might be considered by some as presenting insurmountable barriers.

The St. Charles Experiment would have steamed past Starved Rock on its voyage own the Illinois River to the Mississippi in October 1840.

The “Experiment,” we believe, is the first craft that has ever descended this beautiful stream this distance, save, perhaps, the frail bark of the Indian in days gone by. The distance from St. Charles to this place is about eighty miles by water, passing through a section of country which, in point of fertility, is not surpassed by any tract of country in the Union, and to the enterprise and exertions of Mr. Keiser belongs the honor of first undertaking and accomplishing the navigation of Fox River, which winds its meandering course through it.

The object of Mr. K’s enterprise is somewhat of a novelty. His design is to travel by water to the river St. Lawrence, in Lower Canada, by the following route: From St. Charles down Fox River to its mouth at Ottawa; thence down the Illinois to its mouth; thence down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio; thence up the Ohio river to Beaver, Pa.; thence by way of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal to Akron, O.; thence on the Ohio Canal to Cleveland; thence on lake Erie to Buffalo, N.Y.; thence on the Welland Canal to Lake Ontario; and thence to the river St. Lawrence.

This route will doubtless prove arduous to our friend, but he is in fine spirits and considers his worst difficulties ended by having successfully descended Fox River at the present stage of the water. He has our best wishes for a safe and pleasant journey, hoping that he may be able to inform us of his safe arrival at his distant destination.

So far as I’ve been able to tell, the St. Charles Experiment is the only steamboat to have ever navigated the Fox from the river’s northern reaches to its mouth at Ottawa.

And here’s my historical crowdsourcing question: What the heck ever happened to Mr. K, his lady wife, and the St. Charles Experiment? Did they make it to the Mississippi? Did they actually steam up the Ohio to the canal system, puff through Akron, and into Lake Erie?

Perhaps some hardy researchers with access to microfilm newspaper files in towns along the route of the St. Charles Experiment will check for the period starting in early October 1840 and see if a strange craft from a town on the Illinois prairies stopped by to say hello on its journey to Canada.

I’ve wondered about the fate of the Keisers for many years now, and would like to put a “-30-“ at the end of their story. Can any of you loyal readers of historyonthefox add to the tale?

Fear’s not a bug; it a feature of our modern system

So I see by this morning’s news that the doc in New York who had contracted Ebola while treating patients in West Africa has fully recovered.

So far, we’ve had an Ebola epidemic consisting of one aid worker, a missionary, three doctors, and an NBC cameraman who brought the disease home with them from West Africa, all of whom fully recovered. In addition, one visitor brought the disease with him from Liberia and subsequently died. Two nurses were infected while caring for him and also fully recovered. Thus ends the great Ebola epidemic of 2014.

While the country was never in danger from Ebola, it certainly was from the panic, ignorance, and cowardice displayed by a huge chunk of the U.S. population and their political leaders.

Ebola is one of the viral hemorrhagic fevers that afflict mankind by interfering interfere with the blood’s ability to clot. The viruses can also damage the walls of the body’s tiny blood vessels, causing them to leak. That can result in death, often made all the more frightening because of the mystery of what’s happing.

This, of course, was not our first go-round with viral hemorrhagic fever in this country, only the most recent. Given the scientific illiteracy of the modern United States, however, no one—least of all the politicians and media blowhards trying to make political hay out of the unreasoning fear they were busily propagating—remembered what had gone before.

There aren’t a lot of viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHF), but the list includes some of the most frightening names in modern medicine: Dengue, Ebola, Lassa, Marburg, and Yellow Fever.

Here in the U.S., our VHF experience was mostly with Yellow Fever, a disease that could honestly be nicknamed The Slaves’ Revenge.

There was no Yellow Fever in North or South America until the virus was brought here from Africa in the bodies of slaves, starting in the 16th Century. The Yellow Fever virus is transmitted only by the bite of an infected mosquito, although it would take hundreds of years for medical researchers to figure it out.

The disease was as horrifying as it was mysterious. Those stricken suffered high fevers, chills, nausea, muscle pain (particularly in the back), and severe headaches. After that first phase, most victims then suffered through a second, more toxic stage that causes severe liver damage resulting in the jaundice that gives the disease its name, and a painful death.

Yellow Fever was apparently brought to the Caribbean islands and South America by African slaves imported by the Spanish. It didn’t take it long to spread north. The first outbreaks in what would eventually become the United States took place in New York City in 1668 and Philadelphia in 1669. At least 25 major outbreaks followed, including a major one in Philadelphia in 1798—then the nation’s capital. The city was evacuated by the national government as nearly 10 percent of its population perished.

Periodic Yellow Fever outbreaks continued throughout the balance of the 18th and into the 19th centuries, with Louisiana and Florida suffering periodic flare-ups, some of which had effects and caused fear right here in Kendall County. For instance, on Sept. 19, 1878, the Kendall County Record’s Oswego correspondent, Lorenzo Rank, noted: “George W. Avery Jr. is selling out his house and furniture on the 28th inst.; he is bound for the yellow fever lands.”

In the Nov. 21 edition of the Record, Rank noted “L.N. Stoutemyer, an Oswego boy, now one of the editors and proprietors of the New Orleans Times, apparently has been the one that stood the hardest siege with the yellow fever without surrendering. About a week ago his friends here received word that for the first time in 43 days he sat up a little while.”

And what about George and Ed Avery and their families, who had headed to the “yellow fever lands” in 1878 and 1879? In the Oct. 19, 1882 Record, Rank reported of George’s brother, Ed: “The sad intelligence was received last week that Ed Avery had died at Pensacola, Florida from yellow fever.”

One of the worst of these periodic Yellow Fever outbreaks occurred in 1879 in Memphis, Tenn. It began with just one patient in August of that year, a steamboat crewman named William Warren who brought the disease with him from New Orleans, where a periodic outbreak was then on-going. Although officials had attempted a quarantine of steamboats coming north from New Orleans, Warren managed to evade it, before landing in a Memphis hospital, where he died, but not before Tennessee mosquitoes picked up the virus from him and spread it, first to a Memphis food stand operator on the waterfront, and then to dozens and then hundreds of others.

That’s when the panic hit, and residents began fleeing for their lives. Well over half the city’s 47,000 residents headed to rural areas outside of town, only to be met with “shotgun barricades” manned by small townsmen terrified they’d spread the disease to their families. Even so, the exodus led to the spread of the disease to Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, although in none of those areas did Yellow Fever boil up with the ferocity it did in Memphis.

As if the disease wasn’t horrible enough, if it didn’t kill those it struck, the medical care of the day often did, with the normal treatment being bleeding and dosing with purgatives that often led to death through dehydration.

The black residents of Memphis, most too poor to flee what homes they’d made there, became the backbone of those who kept the city from disintegrating. That was because while blacks were no more or less susceptible to contracting the disease, their death rate was only about 7 percent of those who came down with Yellow Fever. Medical historians suspect that was because the African-American population had built up some immunities to the disease over the centuries. As a result, according to “Yellow Fever in Memphis 1878 by Robert A. Dunn, “The African-American survivors in Memphis became the glue that held the city together, caring for the sick and dying, burying the dead, and taking over may positions in the Memphis police, fire, and other city services.”

After the epidemic was stopped by the first frost in the autumn of 1878, Memphis found itself bankrupt, with the State of Tennessee taking control of the city’s finances. Not only were the city’s debts paid off, but low-lying, swampy areas in the city were drained, trash and debris cleaned up, and an innovative sewer system was installed that, for the first time separated sanitary sewer lines from storm sewers. Those initiatives combined—despite another Yellow Fever outbreak in 1879 that caused 600 deaths—to stop further major outbreaks, although no one really knew why.

It wasn’t until Dr. Carols Findlay suggested that Yellow Fever was actually spread by mosquito bites that the medical profession began taking a serious look at the idea. Then Walter Reed, a U.S. Army doctor working to defeat Yellow Fever during the construction of the Panama Canal, proved conclusively mosquitoes were the culprits.

Under the direction of Army doctors, mosquitoes were eradicated in Cuba and Panama, and with them went Yellow Fever. Similar efforts in the United States eliminated the disease from New Orleans and other low-lying cities that had been periodically afflicted with Yellow Fever.

Ebola is particularly dangerous because it’s spread by its animal hosts, not easily controlled insects, which means it can not only spread from animals to humans but from humans to other humans. Fortunately, as the recent nine-person epidemic in the U.S. showed, it’s not really easy to get Ebola. Someone has to be in close contact with a patient in the final phases of the disease when the victim’s body is producing astonishingly huge numbers of the Ebola virus and then be directly exposed to the victim’s bodily fluids.

Given the problems exposed in the Texas healthcare system with the outbreak in Dallas, it’s fair to wonder whether any further exposures would have occurred in the case of the Liberian patient had he been seen at a modern hospital in, say, New York or Chicago. And as for the New York doctor infected, but now recovered, the healthcare system in that state did what they were supposed to do, and they, like all the other hospitals treating cases, not only prevented any further transmissions but also cured the guy.

The problem, it seems to me, is not that Ebola got to the U.S., or that it was so easily contained. It’s that there’s a horrible, on-going Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and there’s a chance it could spread to, say, the crowded megalopolises of India or Bangladesh or Brazil. That could be a catastrophe of literally unimaginable proportions, something that should be encouraging us to move with all possible dispatch to stop the epidemic at its source as quickly as possible.

 

 

Sea captains! In Kendall County?

When I was a youngster, I was besotted with sailing ships. I built models of the  Sir Thomas Lipton International Fishing Challenge Cup racer Bluenose, the U.S.S. Constitution, and (my masterpiece) the famed clipper ship Cutty Sark.

My most prized possession, a 1958 Christmas present, was my well-thumbed copy of the National Geographic’s Men Ships and the Sea, a collection of true sea stories, the end papers of which featured a full-rigged clipper ship, with all the sails labeled.

We spent hours virtually every summer day on the river back in those days, polling our scows up and down the Fox’s muddy stream, fishing and landing on and exploring nearby islands. One summer, I saved every penny I could and bought 2” diameter poles at Alexander Lumber that I fashioned into a fore-and-aft sailing rig for my scow. I manufactured leeboards and somehow talked my mother into sewing a sail. My little catboat rig actually worked, though tacking across the shallow main channel of the Fox was a real challenge.

During those years I read everything I could that was sailing-related, including C.S. Forester’s wonderful Hornblower saga. Nowadays, what with arthritic fingers and hands, holding books has become a chore, so I rely more and more using the Kindle apps on both my iPhone and MacBook Pro. And imagine my joy when I discovered electronic versions of the Hornblower books! I’m reading them again, in chronological order, using the uBooks app on my iPhone with its nifty auto scroll feature. Every morning during my 21-minute cardio maintenance Nu-Step routine, I let uBooks scroll as I furiously pedal, which makes the time speed by.

So given my fascination with things nautical, I was not a little surprised to run across accounts of two captains with direct Kendall County connections during my epic transcription project. Back when I was editor of the Ledger-Sentinel here in Oswego, I transcribed interesting news items from the Kendall County Record’s “Oswego” news column for our monthly “Yesteryear” feature. I also relied on a bunch of transcriptions Ford Lippold did during 1976, as he sat down at the Oswego Public Library with his portable typewriter transcribing from their microfilm collection. But those transcriptions were extremely incomplete. So when I retired from the news biz in 2008, I decided to fill in the gaps. Over the next five years, I transcribed thousands of news items, mostly dealing with Oswego, from microfilm in the Little White School Museum’s collections. As of this morning, the 70 or so pages of transcriptions Ford and I did prior to 2008 have ballooned to more than 4,700.

But I digress.

Two captains of Great Lakes ships either lived in or had direct connections to our small northern Illinois farming county of Kendall, Capt. John Raleigh and Capt. Frank Huyck. Capt. Raleigh actually owned a 155-acre farm near Yorkville in southwestern Oswego Township, along what is today Ill. Route 71, just south of Van Emmon Road. Every fall, when shipping on the lakes was interrupted by cold weather, Capt. Raleigh would leave his ship and head to his farm. As the Kendall County Record reported on Nov. 10, 1897: “Captain John Raleigh came home Saturday for the winter.” The following April, the Record noted: “Captain Raleigh is away on the lakes for the summer.”

While skippering the steam propeller passenger and freight ship Iowa, Capt. John Raleigh rammed and sank the yacht schooner Hawthorne in August 1896. Photo courtesy http://steamshipphotos.com

Capt. Raleigh was apparently not a flawless skipper. August 13, 1896, the Wayne Weekly Breeze reported that “The schooner yacht Hawthorne, owned by McConnell Bros., was sunk off the Government breakwater at the entrance to the Chicago harbor Wednesday night by the single screw propeller [steamer] Iowa of the Goodrich Transportation Line. Capt. Martin Henderson of the yacht and a crew of four were taken off the wreck by the tug Gardner. The big steamer, in charge of Capt. John Raleigh, was on her maiden trip, and proceeded on her way to Grand Haven.” But he must have been good enough, because he enjoyed a long, and relatively successful career.

Capt. Raleigh eventually retired from the lakes, and moved to Yorkville, turning the farm over to his son Ray. He died in 1915 in Chicago at the age of 70 and is buried in the Oswego Township Cemetery beside his wife, Melissa.

Undated photograph of Capt. Frank Huyck. (Betty Cornwell collection)

Capt. Frank Huyck, on the other hand, apparently never lived in Kendall County, although he visited here frequently after marrying a local girl.

On Feb. 13, 1889, the Kendall County Record reported in its “Oswego” column that “The marriage of Miss Helen Samse to a Mr. Frank Huyck of Sheridan, N.Y. will take place Wednesday at the residence of her parents, Chas. Samse. Helen marries a seafaring man, the mate of a Lake steamer.”

Although busy as first an officer and then as a captain aboard steamers on the lakes, Capt. Huyck managed to get back to visit friends and family once in a while. The Record reported on Sept. 2, 1891 that “Capt. F.B. Huyck came from off the lakes one day to make his wife and baby, who are summering here, a visit.”

By 1903, Capt. Huyck was in command of the Chemung, a passenger and freight steamship owned by the Union Steamship Companies. But in September of that year, the American Association of Masters and Pilots struck against several shipping companies, including the Union Steamship Companies. The companies managed to break the strike a month later and all of the strikers were blackballed from further employment—the captain of the Chemung among them. It would be three years until Huyck would find another job with a Great Lakes shipping company.

In 1906, thanks to his friend, Capt. William Reed, Huyck was offered a job as first mate aboard the steamship Amasa Stone, an ore freighter hauling iron ore from Minnesota’s Messabi Range to steel mills in Ohio. The ore freighter, only a year old, was owned by the newly formed Mesaba Steamship fleet, which was operating under the management of Pickands, Mather & Company. After serving aboard the Stone for a year, Huyck was given command of the brand new freighter Cyprus, whose job it would be to haul coal and iron ore. The 7,400 ton Cyprus, launched on Aug. 17, 1907 at the American Shipbuilding Company, Lorain, Ohio, measured 420 feet in length and was 52 feet wide on the beam.

Louis Pesha photo of the brand new Cyprus, under the command of Capt. Frank Huyck, in the St. Clair River, upbound for Lake Superior, on September 22, 1907. (William Forsythe collection)

One of three sister ships, the Cyprus’s cargo hatches were covered with brand new, recently patented, mechanical covers. Unlike the old wooden hatch covers, the new patent Brousseau telescoping hatch covers could be mechanically retracted using small on-board steam engines much faster and more economically than the old hatch covers. The new hatch covers were considered so superior to the old wooden ones, that the ships with them were not issued canvas tarpaulins used to securely seal the old wooden hatch covers.

But it apparently didn’t take long before the crews of ships with the Brousseau covers became concerned about them. Cyprus made her first voyage on Sept. 7, 1907, up to Lake Superior to load iron ore, and then back down the lakes to Fairport, Ohio. She loaded with coal and headed back upbound to Duluth, Minn., where she delivered the coal before steaming farther north to load with Mesabi iron ore.

While loading ore at Superior, Wis., Huyck was overheard to declare to the Cyprus’s first mate, John Smith, that “I’ll never make another trip without tarps!” Huyck reportedly complained the patent hatch covers did not seal completely around the hatch coamings, which could be dangerous during one of Lake Superior’s frequent strong storms.

On Oct. 10 1907, the Cyprus with Capt. Huyck on the bridge, steamed out of Superior on her way downbound to the southern lakes with 7,100 tons of Mesabi iron ore in her holds. By 10 the next morning, the weather was worsening. The Cyprus was sighted 10 miles south of Stannard Light, west northwest of Whitefish Bay, where she was observed to be rolling in the light swells. When the Cyprus passed the steamer George Stephenson towing the barge Magna through worsening weather conditions about noon, the Stephenson’s Capt. Harbottle, noticed the discharge from the Cyprus‘s bilge pumps was stained red, suggesting that by then the increasingly rough seas were washing over the ship’s decks, over the Brousseau hatches’ low 6” coamings, and into the cargo holds, where the water mixed with some of the soft iron ore before being pumped overboard.

The surface conditions continued to deteriorate, with ships seeking shelter wherever they could. Huyck apparently decided to try to get to the shelter of Whitefish Bay. But like another ore freighter some 60 years in the future—named the Edmund Fitzgerald—the Cyprus wasn’t able to “put 15 more miles behind her” to reach the bay’s shelter. At 7 p.m., Huyck ordered the crew to prepare to abandon ship as she continued to take on water as waves crashed across her deck. At 7:45 p.m., the Cyprus slowly rolled over into the cold waters of Lake Superior and sank in 460 feet of water.

Wreckage of the only Cyprus liferaft to reach shore with the ship’s sole survivor, Second Mate Charles Pitz. Capt. Huyck and two other crewmen clung to the storm-tossed raft until overcome by hypothermia in Lake Superior’s frigid waters.

By about 2 a.m. on Oct. 12, the Cyprus’s only surviving life raft, carrying Huyck, First Mate John C. Smith, Second Mate Charles Pitz, and Wheelsman George Thorne, was within sight of the rocky Lake Superior shoreline, despite being flipped over four times by the high waves. Each time, the increasingly exhausted men had managed to clamber back aboard the raft, but when it overturned a fifth time, hypothermia and exhaustion took their toll and only Pitz was able to get back aboard and ride the raft to shore near the Deer Park Life Saving Station, located a little over 16 miles east of Grand Marais, Mich., where he was rescued. Pitz was the only survivor of the Cyprus.

Lake Superior kept Capt. Huyck’s body until finally giving it up a day later when it washed up at the Two Hearted River Life Saving Station at the mouth of Michigan’s Two Hearted River.

After the sinking other ships with Brousseau’s patented hatch covers were all issued tarps. The covers were soon replaced by other telescoping hatch covers invented by Capt. Joseph Kidd. Kidd noted that his hatch covers, as opposed to the Brousseau covers, were “practically water-tight or as nearly so as possible when in place.” In contrast to Brousseau’s hatches, which featured only 6” coamings, Kidd’s hatches had 9″ to 12” coamings, another feature designed to keep water from washing into ore ships’ cargo holds. Kidd’s hatches, though somewhat modified, are still in use today.

Capt. Huyck’s body was taken back to his hometown of Sheridan, N.Y. for burial, where his wife, the former Helen Samse, moved with her children, thus ending one of Kendall County’s more colorful encounters with sea stories.

In a fascinating historical sidelight on the wreck of the Cyprus and Capt. Frank Huyck provided by William Forsythe,

“In August 2007, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) sent its research vessel David Boyd to perform a side-scan sonar search near Deer Park, Mich., in Lake Superior. They found a solid target and expected it to be the D. M. Clemson, a mystery ship since her sinking in 1908. Everyone was surprised one week later, on August 18, 2007, when the Shipwreck Society’s Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) swam down to film the stern and found the words “CYPRUS FAIRPORT.” The ROV’s dive occurred 100 years and one day after the Cyprus’ launching at the American Shipbuilding Company in Lorain, Ohio.”

For more on the story of the Cyprus and her skipper, go to http://www.boatnerd.com/pictures/historic/Cyprus/

 

After 180 years, the roads from Chicago to Ottawa still drive growth

Just 180 years ago this week, transportation history was made when the first stagecoach drove west out of Chicago on its way to Ottawa, the sometimes head of navigation on the Illinois River.

From its earliest days, Chicago owed its wealth—in fact, its very existence—to transportation. The Lake Michigan water highway, plunging deep into the interior of North America, brought the earliest French explorers to the Chicago portage. Throughout the colonial and pioneer era, the lake acted as a north-south superhighway for traders, soldiers, and settlers.

But while Lake Michigan penetrated deeply into what would one day become the Midwest, there was no direct link from the lake to the vital Mississippi-Ohio river system. The sluggish Chicago River emptied into the lake amid marshes and sand dunes, but it did not, except during floods, connect with any of the south-flowing rivers in the area. Instead, the earliest travelers paddled their canoes up the Chicago River to the overland portage to the Des Plaines River. From there, the route flowed south to the confluence with the Kankakee River where the Illinois River forms and then down to the Mississippi.

While that route was passable—for most of the year—for canoes and small boats, it was totally unsuitable unusable for steamboats. Instead, the head of steam navigation on the Illinois River during periods of high water was Ottawa. During the rest of the year when the river was shallower, Peru was as far as the steamboats of the 1820s and 1830s could get.

Because of this gap in water transportation from the lake to the Illinois, the road from Chicago to Ottawa was a major economic engine driving development, both in Chicago and its hinterland throughout northern Illinois.

The branch of the Chicago to Ottawa Trail known as the High Prairie Trail was probably first used by the region’s Native American inhabitants. While the Indians’ permanent villages were located along the Fox River and other area streams, winter family hunting camps were scattered along the banks of the Illinois River. It’s likely the trail from the lakeshore at Chicago to Ottawa was forged by these groups as they made their fall trips to the Illinois and spring journeys back to the Fox, DuPage, and DesPlaines rivers.

In the late 1820s when white settlement began in earnest in northern Illinois, the overland route from Chicago on the lake to Ottawa became economically significant. Goods were sent by steamboat up the Illinois and offloaded at either Peru or Ottawa for overland shipment to Chicago. In return, the growing variety of goods, ranging from timber cut and milled in Wisconsin and Michigan forests to grain and livestock grown by farmers in Chicago’s outlying area was shipped back south to be transported down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

The two branches of the road from Chicago to Ottawa were the High Prairie Trail that passed through Plainfield, Plattville, and Lisbon and the road’s western branch that linked Naperville, Oswego and Newark as the road headed southwest.

As it evolved, the trail from Chicago to Ottawa consisted of three main branches, the eastern, central, and western. Two of the three—the western and central branches—passed through Kendall County. The eastern branch followed the course of the DesPlaines-Illinois River, looping about 10 miles east of Kendall County’s borders.

The central branch, called the High Prairie Trail, was the most heavily traveled. The northern stretch of the High Prairie Trail was established in 1831 by the Cook County Board during the county’s first year of existence. Cook originally included all of today’s Cook and DuPage counties, plus most of Will. The county road paralleled and sometimes directly followed today’s Odgen Avenue (U.S. Route 34) from downtown Chicago to Bernard Lawton’s inn and tavern at the DesPlaines River ford (at today’s Riverside), and from there in an almost direct route southwest to Walker’s Grove (today’s Plainfield) at the DuPage River ford. From there, the road followed a series of moraine ridges across the prairie into LaSalle County (then including all of LaSalle, Kendall, and Grundy counties, plus all the land north of there to the Wisconsin border) where it ran southwesterly through what would one day be Plattville and Lisbon to the tiny Holderman’s Grove settlement and then on to Ottawa.

For the first two years of the official route’s existence, there was only the occasional traveler on the road to stop at Abraham Holderman’s tiny inn at the southern tip of Big Grove. But in 1833, things began to pick up. That year, Dr. John Taylor Temple was granted the U.S. Post Office’s contract to carry mail from Chicago on the High Prairie Trail via Plainfield and Holderman’s to Ottawa, where it would be sent by steamboat to St. Louis. Meanwhile, mail that had come north by riverboat would be carried northeast up to the port of Chicago.

Temple’s first coach clattered out of Chicago on Jan. 1, 1834, with an ambitious young lawyer, John Dean Caton, at the reins.

Moving buildings,from houses to taverns, was common during the 19th Century. All the movers needed was a supply of log rollers and a few yokes of oxen.

News that Temple’s new stage line would start carrying mail and passengers spread quickly. Traveling the new road from Chicago southwest in 1833, Daniel Platt of New York (his family had established Plattsburg) arrived in what would one day become Kendall County and established an inn at Plattville, while Levi Hills and family, more New Yorkers, arrived and bought Holderman’s inn. A year later, Hills hitched up several yokes of oxen and using logs as rollers moved the log tavern out of its grove out onto the prairie to the site of what soon became the village of Lisbon, apparently to better serve stagecoach travelers.

The western branch of the Chicago to Ottawa Trail used the same route as the High Prairie Trail until it crossed the Des Plaines at Lawton’s. From there, it headed to Capt. Joseph Naper’s settlement (modern Naperville) on the DuPage. From there, the road crossed the prairie to Oswego, where it turned south and followed the Fox River to Yorkville. From Yorkville, the road turned southwest down the Fox River to the hamlet of Pavilion and then to the Hollenbacks’ settlement at Newark before joining the High Prairie Trail just north of Ottawa.

Today, the western branch of the Chicago to Ottawa Trail is still an economic engine for Kendall County. The U.S. Route 34 corridor—which follows almost the exact course of the historic old road—has spurred the growth of towns along its route due to its direct connection to Naperville and the rest of the collar counties.

Today’s ‘quake’ a false alarm, but…

So today I get a text from my daughter. Which a year and a half ago would have been really big news because here at the Matile Manse, we did not text. But after the younger Matiles insisted, we figured out how to do it and then we bought iPhones for each other for Christmas last year. Which has made the process lots easier—no more punching thousands of buttons to text “How are you? I am fine.” In fact, we don’t need to punch ANY buttons at all since the brain that lives in our iPhones lets us talk to it to create emails and texts alike.

Anyway, I get this text asking if we felt the earthquake. To which I replied no, and by the way when did this happen. About 12:30 or thereabouts, she said. But no quake did we feel, and now it turns out it was probably some guys dynamiting in a quarry over east of us.

But it could have been an earthquake, since we live just about on top of the Sandwich Fault. Making the story more believable, there have been a couple other minor quakes here in the Midwest during the past few days.

One of these days, though, and it’s only a matter of time, we’re likely to feel the effects of The Big One. Really. Right here in God’s Country. Because it’s happened before.

What may have been the strongest earthquakes ever to hit North America struck along the mid-Mississippi River Valley during the winter of 1811–1812. Tremors from a succession of quakes pounded the area not once but three times. Fortunately, very few folks were living in what was then called the Illinois Territory, but even with so few residents (scattered Indian villages, widely scattered white settlements in the south, a few French traders at Peoria, and a few soldiers at Ft. Dearborn) deaths did occur.

A 19th Century artist’s depiction of the power released when the New Madrid Fault slipped in 1811, sowing chaos up and down the Mississippi Valley.

The first quake, measuring an estimated 8.5 on the old Richter Scale (now superseded by the Moment Magnitude Scale (MMS), on which it measured 8.2), struck about 2 a.m. Dec. 16, 1811. The second tremor rumbled through the area about six hours later, and measured the same 8.2 on the MMS. A third quake, with an MMS rating of 8.1, struck on Jan. 23, 1812. The most powerful of the three tremblers, estimated by some seismologists to have registered as high as 8.3 on the MMS, hit the by then well-shaken residents of the Mississippi Valley on Feb. 7. In comparison, the hugely destructive 1906 San Francisco Earthquake measured 7.7 on the logarithmic MMS scale, meaning the Illinois quake was about six times as powerful.

Future Illinois Gov. John Reynolds, a young man in his early 20s when the quake hit, said in his 1879 history of Illinois that the quake caused so much noise and shaking of the family’s log cabin that his father thought Indians were attacking.

The series of quakes was felt as far away as Washington, D.C. Richmond, Va. residents out walking when the quake struck found it difficult to stand as the shock passed.

The final and most powerful of the series of disturbances had its epicenter near New Madrid, Mo., then a small frontier hamlet, which was destroyed. A number of houses and other buildings were destroyed or damaged at St. Louis. The power of the uplift quake created temporary waterfalls on the Mississippi River, and changed the course of the river itself, creating the great looping Kentucky Bend. Temporary dams of fallen and uprooted trees and subsidence of sections of riverbank suddenly tumbling into the stream, along with the sudden uplift caused the great river to flow backwards for a period of minutes. One flatboat crew reported their craft was carried back upstream at a pace faster than a man could walk.

Artist Gary R. Lucy’s evocative portrait of the New Orleans, the first steamboat on the upper Mississippi, depicts a calmer voyage than that the boat completed during the winter of 1811 when its crew witnessed the great earthquake. See more of his wonderful work at http://www.garylucy.com/

As it happened, one of the very first steamboats on the Mississippi, the New Orleans, was steaming downstream when the quake hit, and the account by its crew, when they finally reached New Orleans after a harrowing voyage on a river that had suddenly become foreign to even the most experienced pilots, left a valuable eyewitness account.

In fact, boatmen up and down the river frantically tried to cope with the vast changes in the landscape that took place as they watched. No one knows how many of them perished during the series of quakes.

A request sent to Washington, D.C., dated January 13, 1814, by William Clark, he of Lewis and Clark fame and then the governor of Missouri Territory, asked for federal relief for the “inhabitants of New Madrid County.” Historians say this was quite possibly the first example of a request for disaster relief from the U.S. Federal government.

The central United States is far from any active volcanoes or any other of the more common guides to the possibility of earthquakes. So how did the 1811-1812 quakes happen, and could they happen again?

Eons ago, a failed rift in the plate on which North America rides became the Mississippi Valley, while cracks radiating from it became fault lines, the most active of which is the New Madrid Fault. It is that fault that slipped causing the great earthquake of 1811-12.

But there are those other faults as well, including one that diagonally splits Kendall County, running from Oswego (home of the Matile Manse) northwest to Ogle County. This dual fault, called the Sandwich Fault Zone by geologists, has been mostly dormant in historical times. A second fault system that cuts through nearby LaSalle County and extends southeast to the Wabash River—called the LaSalle Anticlinal Belt—is a bit more active. A September 1972 earthquake measuring 4.2 on the Richter Scale was related to the LaSalle Anticline.

Since Illinois and Missouri are in the middle of the North American tectonic plate, earthquakes here are not caused by our area colliding with another plate. Rather, quakes here are more due to stresses caused as the North American plate is thrust westward as new crustal material wells up out of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The gigantic stresses caused as the North American Plate is forced into the Pacific Plate sometimes cause the ancient faults along the Mississippi River to move, causing earthquakes.

So what would happen to us if another similar quake happened today? Well, we’d get shaken pretty well, and tall buildings in Chicago would sway and likely shed some structural panels. Here in Kendall County, damage would likely be minimal for buildings, including bridges, built on bedrock and in areas underlain by gravel. Homes and commercial buildings built on less stable soils, however, could be seriously damaged by “liquefaction,” as groundwater forced up through the soil momentarily liquefied it. For cities farther south, including St. Louis, Mo. and Springfield here in Illinois, the impact would be very serious indeed.

Today’s ‘quake’ proved to be a false alarm. But it’s been 202 years since the last Big One hit the Midwest. What has happened once could well happen again. And when it does, I suspect there won’t be a bit of doubt what has happened.

The saga of Capt. Henry Detweiller…

We drove down to Peoria this past weekend to help a friend celebrate his 70th birthday. Which doesn’t seem old at all now that both of the inhabitants of the Matile Manse are getting close to the same milestone.

Lots of folks who go to Peoria wonder what’s playing there. Me, I can’t help but think about Capt. Henry Detweiller.

Detweiler is a human historical link between  the old Frink and Walker stagecoach line, naval operations on the Mississippi during the Civil War, and the annual Illinois State Cross Country meet that so many Kendall County student-athletes have attended during the last several decades, which is held at the Peoria park named in his honor.

Capt. Henry Detweiller (1825-1903) was one of Illinois’ pioneer rivermen, learning the trade of riverboat pilot and serving with everyone from stagecoach company operators to the U.S. Navy’s brownwater fleet during the Civil War. He was the namesake for Peoria’s Detweiller Park.

Henry Detweiller was an almost-prototypical resident of Illinois during the pioneer era. He grew up fast and in doing so rubbed elbows with some of the most famous of the state’s residents, eventually becoming a respected Peoria riverboat pilot, businessman, and politician.

Like most Illinois residents of the 1830s, Henry Detweiller was born somewhere else—in his case at Lorraine, France on June 19, 1825. His father, a Bavarian transplant, was a farmer, miller, and freight hauler. He married Catherine Schertz of France, and the couple had several children. But the senior Detweiller suffered reverses during the Napoleonic wars and was financially strapped when he died in 1832.

Five years later, Catherine Detweiller and her four children—three daughters and young Henry—immigrated to the United States. After landing in New York, they traveled west to Peoria where Catherine’s older son owned an inn. Henry worked for his brother and, off and on, went to school. But it was the stories the riverboat captains and pilots told when they stayed at the inn that most interested him. Henry badly wanted to become a riverboat crewman, but, as he wrote years later: “My brother was strongly opposed to let me go on the River, and forbid all the Captains to let me go on their boats.”

Deciding on direct action, he stowed aboard the steamer Motto as she was leaving the Peoria riverfront. Gawking at the steamboat’s engine, young Henry was spied by Capt. Grant, the boat’s master, who said, “Hallo youngster, what in the Devil are you doing here, and who told you to serve on this boat?” After hearing the youngsters’ story, the captain agreed to let him travel to St. Louis and then back to Peoria, but no further. And Henry’s brother again strongly advised him to find steady employment ashore. Angered at his brother’s attitude, Henry left the inn to work in a Peoria shoe store.

Realizing steamboats could speed both passengers and mail during the Illinois Rivers’ three ice-free seasons, Frink & Walker purchased the small steamboat Frontier to connect with his stages at either Ottawa or Peru, depending on the depth of the river. Henry Detweiller learned the riverboat pilot’s trade aboard her. (Illustration from By Trace & Trail, Oswegoland Heritage Association, 2010)

For the next year, he waited for an opportunity to join a riverboat crew. That’s when John Frink entered the picture. By 1840, Frink and his partner, Martin O. Walker, were well on their way to dominating the stagecoach business in Illinois. Detweiller met Frink while working at his brother’s inn and later asked him for a job. Frink and Walker decided a passenger steamer would be a natural compliment to their stage business. During much of the year, the Illinois River was free of ice and boats could usually ascend as far as Peru, and sometimes as high as the rapids at Ottawa. Stage passengers and mail arriving from points north (including towns here in Kendall County) could transfer to a steamer for quick passage downriver to Peoria and then on to St. Louis. When the boats couldn’t run due to low water or ice, stagecoaches ran the entire distance.

Frink and Walker bought the small steamer Frontier, whose shallow draft allowed her to run as a daily mail packet between Peru (and sometimes Ottawa) and Peoria. Most steamers didn’t sail until their passenger list and cargo deck were full, but packets like the Frontier sailed on regular schedules, full or not. On April 13, 1840, Frink agreed to hire Detweiller as a pilot trainee to learn the river from experienced pilot Milton Hasbrouck. His pay was $10 a month—a nice raise from the $6 a month he was making ashore clerking at Samuel Voris & Company.

Riverboat pilots, as Mark Twain noted, were the kings of river culture, memorizing the locations of shallows, bars, sunken islands, and snags to safely steer their fragile boats on the nation’s rivers. Henry was soon appointed second pilot, but then in 1842, disaster struck. In the early morning hours of Sept. 2, the steamer Panama ran into and sank the smaller Frontier just above the tiny village of Little Detroit at the extreme north end of Lake Peoria. Quick action by Hasbrouck ran the Frontier ashore before she could sink in the river, saving all of the 40 or so passengers aboard as the crew of the Panama helped carry everyone to safety.

On Sept. 2, 1842, the Frontier was steaming up through the narrows of Peoria Lake when the large steamer Panama suddenly swerved to avoid a sandbar, colliding with the smaller steamboat. The Panama took off passengers and crew. After salvaging what they could the crew allowed the Frontier to sink.

Frink and Walker immediately built a new steamer, the Chicago, on which Detweiller again sailed as second pilot until she was withdrawn from service in 1844. That’s apparently when Detweiller left Frink and Walker to make his own way. He continued as a second pilot until 1847 when he was appointed captain of the Gov. Briggs. In 1848 and 1849 he was first pilot on a variety of boats, going on to become one of the most experienced pilots and captains on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. During the Civil War, Detweiller joined the U.S. Navy’s river fleet, where he was involved in the Vicksburg campaign and running cargo past Confederate forces down the river to New Orleans.

With the advent of railroads, river traffic waned, and Detweiller decided to retire ashore and concentrate on the ice business. Described as an “ardent Republican,” the former riverboat captain served six terms as Peoria City Treasurer, and was one of the city’s most solid citizens upon his death in 1908. And Detweiller Park? Capt. Detweiller’s last surviving son, Thomas, bought the rugged land that’s now Detweiller Park and donated it to the city as a lasting memorial to his father–and a grueling test for generations of Illinois high school athletes including dozens from here in Kendall County.

From Scotland to Illinois: Isabella Harkness’s account.

Well, here we are in March, also known as Women’s History Month. In honor of the month’s designation, I started looking back through our collection of manuscripts and diaries down at the Little White School Museum here in Oswego and among other treasures came across the account Isabella Harkness left of her family’s early travels from her native Scotland to the Midwestern prairies in northern Illinois.

Isabella Harkness, the oldest of 10 children, was born 18 May 1825 in Bowden, Roxburghshire, Scotland to Andrew and Janette Penman Harkness. When she was 15, the Harkness family immigrated from Scotland to New York State, settling near Lake Champlain. In 1846, the family moved to Crown Point, N.Y. on Lake Champlain.

Looking for a better life, Andrew Harkness moved his family west to Kendall County, Illinois between 1849 and 1850. Andrew and Janette and their living children all went in 1849 except daughters Isabella and Margaret, and one son, James, who stayed behind at Crown Point.

In 1850, the three adult siblings still living in New York moved west to Illinois to join the family.

Isabella Harkness in an undated portrait taken many years after her exciting trip from Crown Point, New York, to Kendall County, Illinois in 1850.

Isabella’s short handwritten journal includes a brief account of the family’s move from Scotland to the United States, and a longer, day-by-day diary of the Harkness siblings’ 16-day trip from Crown Point up Lake Champlain by steamboat, on by rail to the Erie Canal, and then to Buffalo by canal boat. At Buffalo, they boarded a steam packet for Chicago. They then traveled west by horse and wagon, arriving at the Harkness farm in Kendall County on 21 May 1850.

Isabella worked as a domestic “hired girl” for two farm families during 1851, the account of which is found in her 1851 diary, a copy of which is also in the collections of the Little White School Museum at Oswego. On 4 March 1852 she married John Dunn, a native of England, born 18 May 1825 in Bowden, Roxburghshire. They bought what is now known as the Ament farm in 1854 where Isabella, despite getting a somewhat late start in life for her family, bore nine children.

John Dunn died on 21 December 1901, and Isabella followed on 11 April 1915. They are buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Yorkville, Illinois.

Here is Isabella’s story. I have only changed it by adding punctuation and capitalizing words at the beginning of sentences; otherwise, this is Isabella’s story just as she wrote it:

Introduction

I was born in 1825, May 18 about 45 miles south from Edinburgh in Scotland. There being a large family of us, I was the oldest, and Father thought that by removing to America he would be better able to provide for us, so on the 1st of April 1840, we embarked for America. On the 27th of the same month we landed at New York

We settled in the Northern part of the State of NY in the bosom of a wild American forest. It was but very thinly settled our house being 8 miles from any other house. We lived there 6 years. Then we moved to Crown point on Lake Champlain, and there we buried a brother aged 3 years and 7 months, and a Sister 5 years and 4 months. They both died in 1847. In 1849 the family all left Crown Point excepting a brother & Sister & myself to go to Illinois. From that time I lived in a respected family to do house work and sewing until May 1850 when I also started for the West.

I.H.

A journey from the State of NY to Ills

The time has now arrived that I must leave Crown Point and go to that far distant West. I have bid my acquaintances and associates farewell perhaps for ever. I have looked for the last time at the Brick Church that stands on the green, where I have sat and listened with deep interest to the good and solemn voice of our dear Minister Mr. Herrick.

I have been into the graveyard and looked at the two graves of our departed Brother and Sister and picked a few of the remaining rose leaves that grow by the side of their graves. There was nothing but silence there. I took the last lingering look hoping to meet them in a better and brighter worked above where we shall meet to part no more.

Monday May 6th 1850

I went down to the Lake accompanied by James and Margaret. It was about 10 o’clock. We waited until 2 and the boat did not come. We went to Mr. Hammonds. We was very tired.  After we eat some dinner we went and lay down and slept about 2 hours, and felt quite rested. We did not go to bed again that night. About 12 o’clock we called up Mr. H. and James. We made some tea and felt quite refreshed.

Tuesday 7th

We went down to the Lake about 1 o’clock in the morning and went on to the Burlington. The boat was very much crowded. We got to Whitehall about 7 in the morning and stopped a little while at the Phoenix Hotel. We went on to the [railroad] cars at half past 7 and had a very pleasant ride. The seats were cushioned and made very comfortable. We got to Schnectady [Schenectady] about 2 in the afternoon and went to Fowler’s Hotel and took dinner. We stayed their all day as the Canal Boat was not ready. Margaret & James went out a shopping and bought a few articles.

Wednesday 8th

A typical Erie Canal passenger packet boat of the 1850s. Packet canal and steamboats sailed on regular schedules. Regular cargo vessels of the era only sailed when they had full cargoes.

We went on to the Canal Boat called William H. Edda, and took Breakfast. The boat started at 1 o’clock. It was very pleasant. I went up on deck and looked all around and saw a great many new places. We was very much [unreadable]. We got along very well. At night there was 18 berths put up for the Ladies. I believe they were all filled.

Thursday 9th

We are still on the Canal boat. It is very cold and rainy and the wind blows. It is very unpleasant.

Friday 11th

This morning when we got up we had got to Utica. We hurried off from the boat as they wanted to weigh it. It is still very cold. It snowed some. About 3 o’clock we got to Rome.

Saturday 11th

It is quite pleasant today. About noon we got to Syracuse and saw where they make salt.

Sunday 12th

It does not seem much like Sunday. Every thing is going on just as any other day. We have come through Clyde, Lyons, Newark. Margaret and myself and 2 or 3 others got off and walked about 2 miles and then we came to Palmyra. We closed the day in singing some hymns.

Sailing across the aqueduct over the Genesee River in Rochester, N.Y. was one of the more spectacular experiences of Erie Canal travelers. This photo of the aqueduct was taken about 1897. It was later converted into the Broad Street Bridge. (Rochester Public Library collection)

Monday 13th

It is very pleasant and warm to day. I have been up on deck most all day. We have come through Rochester. It is a very large and beautiful place. We crossed the Aqueduct over the Genesee river. In the after noon we came through Brockport. How pleasant it is to see the peach trees all in blossom.

Tuesday 14th

It is very pleasant again this morning. There was a little girl about 2 years old fell over-board. The Agent jumped over and got her out. She was not hurt but wet and frightened. We have come through Medina and Middleport and Rynels Basin. How pleasant it is to see the trees looking green and some of them white with the blossoms. About sun-down we got to Lockport where went through 5 locks all close together.

Wednesday 15th

This morning when we got up we had got to Buffalo. We went to the Merchants Hotel and took breakfast. It is a very large building. There is winding stairs goes clear up to the top of the house

The Empire, seen here in an 1850 illustration, was similar in design to the Key Stone State and other better quality steam packets that traveled between Buffalo and Chicago.

I went out and walked up and down several streets until I blistered my feet. We went on to the Steam Boat in the morning. It was called the Key Stone State. It was the largest and most splendid boat I had seen in a great while. We had a cabin passage and every thing as comfortable as we could wish for.

Thursday 16th

It is very pleasant this morning. There is no wind and the boat goes very smooth.

Friday 17th

Last night we had a hard storm and several of the windows are broken. In the forenoon we was on the river St. Clair, in the afternoon we got on to Lake Huron,  The lake began to be very rough. A great many of the passengers were sea sick. James & Margaret were both sick. I did not feel sick at all.

Saturday 18th

This morning the lake is still rough. I feel a little sea sick to day. This after noon we came to Machinak [Mackinac] where they catch a great many fish.

Sunday 19th

we are now on lake Michigan. in the afternoon we got to Millwakie [Milwaukee] and all the families that came with us all the way left us here. But we have formed new acquaintances but still they are strangers to us. After they had all left the boat, it was so much lighter and the wind blew and tossed it up and down. The lake was very rough, so much so that the piano, and tables, and sofa, were moved out of there places. They had to fasten them to keep them from being broken to pieces. We was all sea-sick and glad to lie down on the carpet.

Chicago about 1850 in a panoramic view from Lake Michigan. Illustration from History of Chicago. From the Earliest Period to the Present Time. (3 vols. Chicago, 1884-1888) by Alfred T. Andreas.

Monday 20th

We had got all most to Chicago. We could not eat much breakfast. The Lake was still rough. We are glad now the boat has got to Chicago. We soon got a man to carry us to Mr. Wrights. They had been expecting us, and received us very kindly. In the afternoon we went out and called on a few of our acquaintances that had left Crown Point a few years before.

Tuesday 21st

We are now about 50 miles from our new home. We had to travel the rest of the way in a wagon. The roads were very dusty. When we got to Naperville we stopped at the New York house and took dinner. The road seemed very long to us. When we came within a few miles of the place we saw some children that appeared to be coming from school. We asked them who was there teacher as we knew that Sarah was teaching. They said her name was Harkness and that she boarded at the next house. She did not know us at first but soon found out and got into the wagon and road home with us.

When we got in sight of the house we saw Betsy with a pail in her hand watering her flower beds. She threw the pail and ran to meet us. She was like to tears and all to pieces. Christina was also glad to see us, and little Mary said now the “dils have tum”  they all appeared to be happy and enjoying good health.

Steamboating on the Mighty Fox…

The Fox River of Illinois is a beautiful stream. It rises in southern Wisconsin northwest of Milwaukee and then flows generally south for 202 miles to its mouth on the Illinois River at Ottawa. The Fox River’s watershed drains some of the richest agricultural land in the world, and that made it a prime area for the pioneers who moved west in the 1830s looking for land to farm.

But the Fox was never known as a reliably navigable stream. While it drained lots of prairie wetlands, in most summers, even during the colonial era in Illinois, the Fox was so low as to prohibit its navigation, even by canoes.

In a letter back to headquarters in Canada on Jan. 2, 1699, Catholic missionary Jean Francois Buisson de St. Cosme described part of his journey from Quebec to the Mississippi River to establish a mission to the Illinois Indians in which the party he was with had hoped to use the Fox—then known by it’s Algonquian name Pestekouy, meaning buffalo—as a shortcut to the Illinois:

On the eleventh of October we started early in the morning from the fort of Milouakik, and at an early hour we reached Kipikaoui, about eight leagues farther. Here we separated from Monsieur de Vincenne’s party, which continued on its route to the Miamis. Some savages had led us to hope that we could ascend this river [the Root River] and after a portage of about two leagues might descend by another river called Pesioui [Fox River], which falls into the River of the Illinois about 25 or 30 leagues from Chikagou, and that we should thereby avoid all the portages that had to be made by the Chikagou route. We passed by this river [Root] which is about ten leagues in length to the portage and flows through agreeable prairies, but as there was no water in it we judged that there would not be any in the Peschoui either, and that instead of shortening our journey we should have been obliged to go over forty leagues of portage roads; this compelled us to take the route by way of Chikagou which is distant about twenty leagues.

Not that the Root-Fox portage was never used, however. It is prominent on maps drawn of the southern Lake Michigan region in the early 1800s, suggesting that it was used, at least during periods of high water. But any suggestion that the Fox was a regular route for either Native American canoes or those of the fur trade voyageurs is not substantiated by the historical record. Had the route been at all viable, it would have been much more favorable than the Chicago portage, which could be as long as 60 miles, depending on waterflow conditions.

The settlers, instead of using the Fox as a transportation route, made use of its fall in order to grind their grain and saw the wood they needed for homes, farm buildings, stores, and other purposes. As a result, dams dotted the river early on to create the waterpower the new settlements needed. So even if our pioneer ancestors had wished to use the Fox as a transportation route, they’d have been disappointed. And except for one example, the navigation of the Fox from its upper waters to the Illinois River never came to pass. But, as happens quite often, there’s that one remarkable exception.

By 1840, the Fox had been dammed at many locations, but that didn’t stop an adventurer living in the riverfront community of St. Charles, Ill. from dreaming of taking a steamboat trip down it. And so we come to the story of the steamer St. Charles Experiment and its builder and captain, Joseph Keiser. Here, I’m going to let the editor of the Illinois Free Trader at Ottawa take up the story, as told in the paper’s Oct. 2, 1840 edition:

Fox River Navigation — Arrival
of the Bark “St. Charles Experiment.”

On Tuesday evening last Mr. Joseph P. Keiser and lady arrived at our steamboat landing in a beautiful bark, six tons burthen, from St. Charles, Kane county, Illinois. Mr. K. left St. Charles on the 18th inst.. amid the smiling countenances of a large collection of citizens of that place who had assembled to witness his departure on this hazardous and novel enterprise. He descended Fox River without much trouble, notwithstanding the low stage of the water at present and the dam at Green’s mill, &c, might be considered by some as presenting insurmountable barriers.

The “Experiment,” we believe, is the first craft that has ever descended this beautiful stream this distance, save, perhaps, the frail bark of the Indian in days gone by. The distance from St. Charles to this place is about eighty miles by water, passing through a section of country which, in point of fertility, is not surpassed by any tract of country in the Union, and to the enterprise and exertions of Mr. Keiser belongs the honor of first undertaking and accomplishing the navigation of Fox River, which winds its meandering course through it.

The object of Mr. K’s enterprise is somewhat of a novelty. His design is to travel by water to the river St. Lawrence, in Lower Canada, by the following route: From St. Charles down Fox River to its mouth at Ottawa; thence down the Illinois to its mouth; thence down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio; thence up the Ohio river to Beaver, Pa.; thence by way of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal to Akron, O.; thence on the Ohio Canal to Cleveland; thence on lake Erie to Buffalo, N.Y.; thence on the Welland Canal to Lake Ontario; and thence to the river St. Lawrence.

This route will doubtless prove arduous to our friend, but he is in fine spirits and considers his worst difficulties ended by having successfully descended Fox River at the present stage of the water. He has our best wishes for a safe and pleasant journey, hoping that he may be able to inform us of his safe arrival at his distant destination.

So down the Fox went Mr. and Mrs. Keiseer, somehow getting the Experiment across the low dams, probably close to a dozen, eventually getting to Ottawa with their “bark.” Of course, in this case the Experiment was not your usual bark—a three-masted sailing vessel with square sails on the fore and main masts and fore-and-aft sails on the mizzen. In this case, “bark” was used in more the generic sense of a vessel of any type, and which was in fairly common usage in the 19th Century.

But technical discussions aside, it sure would be interesting to find out whatever happened to Mr. and Mrs. Keiser on their proposed trip to the St. Lawrence River from St. Charles, Illinois. Did they make it? Did they quit part way through? And what did the Experiment look like, anyway?

So far, I’ve not had the opportunity to check out any of the newspapers farther along the Experiment’s route on the Illinois, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. Maybe someday, I’ll be able to scratch this historical itch. In the meantime, could all you history-obsessed folks out in Internet Land keep an eye out for the St. Charles Experiment for me?