A WINTER TEMPEST roared in the wooded gullies of the McGee country. It was deep in the winter of 1828-29. Settlers
on the Prairie remained close indoors. In the double log cabin of the Abraham Scholls, a great log fire beat back
the cold. The family huddled within the circle of its warmth. William Howerton Wilson, who had married the girl
Matilda, was there with the rest. Growing restless, he took down a gun, molded some bullets and prepared to face
the blizzard.
"Where are you going?" inquired the family. "Hunting." replied Wilson. His companions laughed.
‘You will get nothing on a day like this," they told him. Wilson, undismayed, went out into the winter storm.
He started in a northwesterly direction from the Scholl cabin, towards the south fork of McGee. He took the low
ground, somewhat sheltered from the wind. A ridge extended to the creek from the west, where it joined another,
forming a point at the foot of which was a branch. Nearing this point, Wilson sheltered himself behind a tree and
loaded his gun. While he was thus engaged, an "antlered monarch of the waste" rounded the point, paused
and looked down into the gully. It was a perfect target. At the crack of Wilson's gun the animal tumbled into the
branch.
Wilson re-loaded. As he did so, another deer stalked around the point, paused and looked down at the comrade in
the branch. Again Wilson's gun cracked and a second deer tumbled down the embankment onto the body of the first.
Coming up against the wind, deer kept rounding the point, one after another, each paused to look down at the carcasses
of those that had gone before, until Wilson's gun had spoken four times and four deer lay dead at the bottom of
the branch. Returning home, Wilson hitched a horse to a sled and going to the scene of slaughter, loaded the four
deer and returned to the Scholl cabin to show his "kill" to the astounded inmates who had warned him
it was no day for hunting.
Wilson's grandson, John S. Wilson of Baylis, remembers hearing his grandfather tell of this hunt in the midst of
a great winter storm and that his grandfather stated this was the most deer he ever bagged in a single day.
Mr. Wilson remembers also that his grandfather told of killing a panther, with the aid of three dogs, near the
spot where he bagged the four deer. He says his grandfather pointed out the tree the panther went up but that it
has long since been washed out. Members of the early Carpenter family, he says, also killed a panther or "painter"
on the same creek.
This early Wilson did much to conquer the wilderness. He is reputed to have carried one end of the chain when the
Quincy road was surveyed from Griggsville. Handy with a broad-axe, he hewed out of the native timber the framework
from the old Scott Temple flouring mill that was erected adjacent to New Salem in 1856-57. He got out the framing
timbers for a number of buildings that once stood on South Prairie. John Wilson relates that a barn built of timbers
hewed by his grandfather still stands on the Prairie.
Milling was one of the most disheartening chores of early times. Mills were few in the 1820a and 1830s. Oftentimes
it took two days, sometimes three, to get the milling done. One early settler reported it took him three days to
get his grist, "a day to go, a day awaiting his turn, a day to come back." Some of the earliest comers
had to go to Edwardsville, 80 miles away, to mill. Some went to mill on Bear Creek, above present Quincy. Sometimes
the wait at the mill was so long that the settler had to use his precious grain for his food and return without
the prized meal.
William Wilson, with his great Conestoga wagon, drawn by oxen, solved the milling problems of many of the early
settlers on Griggsville Prairie. He hauled their corn to mill and brought back the precious meal. Once Wilson started
with a great load of corn to Rider's Mill in Adams county, northwest of present Wilson's Ford in Fairmount. The
mill was run by Captain Samuel Rider, his brother Jason, and Ezra Doane. Captain Rider, who is buried at Griggsville,
long plied the Illinois river and claimed he was "as good a miller ad he was a sailor." Jason Rider was
Pike circuit clerk 1872-76. Ezra Doane was father of Alfred R. Doane of Pittsfield.
Wilson had two yoke of oxen to his load. A storm came up when he was out on the trail and a downpour made the prairies
almost impassable. The wagon burrowed nearly to the axles. It was late at night when Wilson reached McGee and forced
the wild stream at a point ever afterward known as Rider's Ford, being the favored crossing to Rider's Mill. This
was some distance below present Wilson's Ford. Wilson reached the mill after nightfall. One of the mill proprietors
put up and fed Wilson's oxen while another prepared some supper for their customer. Next day they ground his corn
and Wilson returned to Griggsville Prairie with meal for the settlers
William LeGrande Wilson, first child of William H. Wilson and Matilda Scholl, and a grandchild of Abraham and Tabitha
Noe Scholl, was born at his grandfather Scholl's home near modern Griggsville. December 23, 1829. The news of the
new settler on the prairie was generally noised about by Christmas Day, and he was the recipient of several Christmas
gifts from the early settlers, one of them, it is remembered, being a jar of sweet pickles from Mrs. Sarah Coffey,
who with her husband Nathan and a large family of children had just arrived from the east and settled a short distance
north of the Abraham Scholl and William H. Wilson cabins, on Section 3, Griggsville township, at the summit of
the hill which was later christened "Coffey Hill," and is still called by that name. The jar of sweet
pickles for baby Wilson was one of the treasured possessions Mrs. Coffey had brought from the east.
At the age of 12 LeGrande Wilson started carrying the mail between the early post towns of Griggsville and Kinderhook.
At the new town of Griggsville, the Kinderhook route connected with the early stage route from Meredosia to Pittsfield.
The address of the Abraham Scholls, Wilsons, David Johnsons, Shelleys, Coffeys, Currys and other settlers on Griggsville
Prairie at this time was Meredosia. In Draper Manuscripts, Madison, Wisconsin, is a letter from D. B. Denton, son
of Rachel Scholl Denton (Abraham Scholl's sister), dated at Merry Oaks, Kentucky, January 18, 1853, in which he
says: "I do not know for certain that any of mother's brothers or sisters yet survive; if so, it is Abraham
Scholl. He lived in Illinois a few years ago. If he is living he is some ninety years old. A letter addressed to
him, Meredosia, Ill., Morgan County. If you can get a letter to him and he is living, he will answer you."
Note: Abraham Scholl had died December 24, 1851.
His earliest address, in the latter 1820s, had been Quincy. Later mail came by stage from Meredosia.
The early postoffice at Griggsville, where the mail for Philadelphia, Worcester and Kinderhook was turned over
to young Wilson, consisted of a goods box, divided into compartments, tacked to the wall in the log house of the
postmaster. Mrs. Sarah Jones of Griggsville, now in her 92nd year, remembers the early goods box postoffice in
Griggsville, kept by Postmaster Samuel Laird, grandfather of Harry Laird.
John Wilson of Baylis remembers his father saying there were only six houses on the mail route from Griggsville
to Kinderhook when he carried the mail. One of these was Joab Shinn's, east of present New Salem. The site of modern
New Salem was still wild land, on which the prairie grass interspersed with hazel thickets grew to an immense height.
It was six years later, December 2, 1847, that William F. Hooper and Joab Shinn laid out the town of New Salem.
Shinn told of having once seen 40 deer feeding at one time on the site of modern New Salem.
The next settlement after Shinn's was at Philadelphia (known also as New Philadelphia), bustling metropolis of
the early day and the largest town on Wilson's mail route. There were three houses in Philadelphia. The celebrated
"Free Frank" was proprietor of this early Pike county town, which at one time was a place of great promise.
Free Frank laid out the town a century ago, September 16, 1836. He platted the town into 144 town lots. 141 of
them still unsettled when Wilson carried the mail. Main Street, over which went the mail, divided the town into
equal parts, north and south. Paralleling Main Street were King Street, a block north, and Queen Street, a block
south. The town was bounded on the north by North Street and on the south by South Street. The center of the budding
metropolis was at the intersection of Main and Broad Streets. Paralleling Broad Street and intersecting Main were
Green, Ann and Canton Streets, with Maiden Lane bounding the town on the east. The plat of this early town is recorded
in Volume 9, Page 182 of the Deed Records of Pike County.
The coming of the Hannibal & Naples Railroad (predecessor of the Wabash), in 1869, doomed Philadelphia. The
railroad missed Free Frank's town by more than half a mile. The once promising town soon fell into decay, losing
even the dignity of a post town. An order vacating the town site was filed May 14, 1885. A country school house
bearing the name of the early town still stands a short distance east of the century-old settlement.
It has been said that "the first white man in Hadley township was a colored man." Free Frank, the first
settler in Hadley after the Indians had been driven westward, had been a slave. He and his wife, Free Lucy, and
Free Ben and Free Sally, the freed slaves of Tabitha Noe Scholl, had known slavery together in Kentucky. Uncle
Ben and Aunt Sally, according to numerous Scholl descendants, had come with the Scholls to Illinois in 1825. Free
Frank with his wife and three children arrived here in 1829, having spent the preceding winter across the river
in Greene county.
The story of Free Frank is one of the classics of this region. Born a slave in the Carolinas in 1777, at the age
of 18 he was sold to a planter in Kentucky, where he remained in slavery for many years. At length, while working
for this master, he started hiring his time, paying his master so much per annum. On this purchased time, he began
making saltpetre on his own account and selling it at good prices. In that way, by hard work and strict economy,
he at last saved enough money, after paying his master for his hire, to purchase his own freedom, which he did
at a cost of $800, thus becoming a free man. He worked on and saved enough to buy his wife Lucy, paying also $800
for her. At that time they had 13 children; three others were born to them in Kentucky after they became free.
Coming to Pike county, Illinois, with their three free-born children, in 1829, they went to work with a vim in
the new land. Whenever enough money was laid by, Free Frank journeyed back to Kentucky and purchased one or more
of his children. Thus he continued until he had purchased all of his living sons and daughters and two of his grandchildren,
the whole, including himself and wife, costing over $10,000.
To conform to the custom of the times, the Illinois State Legislature in 1837 gave Free Frank a surname, namely,
McWorter, and he was ever afterward known as Frank McWorter, After he had been thus recognized by the legislature,
it was necessary for him to re-marry his wife, in order to conform with the law. Accordingly, on March 9, 1839,
Free Frank and Free Lucy presented themselves before Esquire John Neeley, a Pike county justice of the peace, and
were re-married. When Squire Neeley asked McWorter if he would live with, cherish and support his wife, the old
man is said to have replied, "Why, God bless your soul! I've been doing that for the last forty years!"
Old Frank McWorter was remembered in the early settlement as a reputable, worthy citizen, kind, benevolent and
honest. He labored hard on his Hadley acres, accumulating little by little until he owned a considerable body of
land. It is said that Abraham Scholl, who loathed slavery, took a kindly interest in the old man and his struggles
to free his family from the galling yoke of southern slavery. McWorter not only purchased his own freedom and that
of his wife and children, but left provision in his will to buy grandchildren, which was faithfully done by his
sons, Solomon and Commodore, whom he named as executors.
The will, on file in the Pike county court house, after bequeathing all property for equal division among the children
after payment of honest debts, contains the following reservation: "I reserve enough to buy my grandchildren
in bondage six in number at a reasonable price." The will was made August 15, 1846 and was witnessed by George
G. Shipman and Mary and Sarah Thomas. The son Solomon, one of the executors, carried out this provision to the
letter. Solomon had himself been born in slavery, in Kentucky, in 1815, and remained there a slave until 1835,
when his father purchased him and brought him to Illinois.
Free Frank died September 7, 1854, at the age of 77.
His wife survived until 1871, dying in her 99th year at the home of one of her daughters, on the old place in Section
22, Hadley, where they first settled in 1829. Some of their descendants still live in Hadley township, in the vicinity
of the vanished town of Philadelphia, founded by their noted forebear.
West from Free Frank's settlement, Wilson, the early mail carrier, touched next at the present site of Barry, where
a town named Worcester had been laid out on July 4, 1836 by George Bartlett and John E. Birdsong, agents for Calvin
R. Stone of the firm of Stone, Field & Marks of St. Louis. There was a log house just east and north of present
Barry and another on the site of the modern town; also a saw-mill, operated by B. D. Brown and Josiah Lippincott,
located northeast of the present public square in Barry.
Among the very few settlers who got mail on Wilson's route was Joshua Woosley, first white settler in Hadley township,
who came in 1830, cut logs and built the second house in the township, the first being Free Frank's. Woosley located
on section 15. He used the first grain cradle in the township, charging a bushel of wheat per acre for cutting.
This new method of harvesting wheat was a great curiosity to the settlers, who are said to have journeyed from
far and near to see it.
Woosley once related that in the spring of 1831 he and a neighbor, Mr. Bradshaw, broke some prairie sod together.
They "tied up a yoke of oxen to a big bar-share plow with hickory bark, not having chains sufficient or any
other better article." The plow needing sharpening, he had to go to Atlas, a distance of 20 miles, to have
it done. The change for the work was small, as he related that his total bill for the work, dinner, drinks, etc.,
was only "ninepence" (12 ½ cents).
Woosley related also that during his early settlement there was only one mill within 20 miles of him, and it was
a slow horsepower. He told of having had to wait as long as five days at this mill, to get his turn at the grinding.
The Woosleys and Scholls had known each other in Kentucky. Woosley, a native of Tennessee, had gone with his father,
Nathan Woosley, to Kentucky in 1814 and in 1828 he followed the Scholls into the west and settled on Sugar Creek
in Sangamon county, Illinois, removing thence in 1830 to Pike county.
Young Wilson was seldom burdened with mail, which consisted mostly of a few letters, folded and sealed, on which
the postage was "two bits." No newspaper was yet printed in Pike county and few came in from the outside.
News a month old was read eagerly.
John Wilson says his father told of frequently encountering deer, sometimes in considerable droves, along his mail
route. Sometimes wolves followed him on the trail, on which occasions Mr. Wilson remembers his father saying that
he made his "old hoss rack awful fast."
The mail went three times a week. Wilson, leaving Griggsville, after the arrival of the stage from Meredosia, went
to Kinderhook, stayed all night there, and returned to Griggsville the following day.
The town of Kinderhook, another of Pike county's century-old towns, had been laid out April 9, 1836. Chester Churchill
and Bridge Whitten were proprietors of this early town.
