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Reflections
Hot weather, wetlands proved daunting to Kendall's first surveyors : Reflections : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisHot weather, wetlands proved daunting to Kendall's first surveyors
| by Roger Matile
| 6/9/2011
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By 1838, settlers were flooding into northern Illinois, especially the Fox Valley.
Much like the area's rapid population increase during the past two decades, most of the area's new residents during the early decades of the 19th Century journeyed here from the East. The port of Chicago welcomed hundreds of new arrivals in 1838, most of whom immediately set off west to claim land on which to settle. The Chicago of that era was a bustling boomtown whose fortune was being made from its location astride the route from the Great Lakes to the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. Like today's giant O'Hare International Airport, Chicago in the 1830s was the busy gateway to the west. While many Illinois settlers came west via land routes such as the National Road, more came via the Great Lakes route from New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
But upon arriving in Chicago, the era's farmer pioneers were appalled. In 1838, Chicago was a growing collection of small buildings surrounded by extremely unhealthy swampland bordering Lake Michigan. Malaria outbreaks were common, as were epidemics of typhoid fever and cholera. And thanks to its-literal-fleabag hotels, typhus was another hazard. Most settlers got out of town as quickly as they could, hitting the road west to the rich prairie lands along the DesPlaines, DuPage, and Fox Rivers.
The Chicago to Ottawa Trail was the major thoroughfare heading across the prairies west and south of Chicago. Roughly following the route of today's U.S. Route 34, the trail was the major route for goods being hauled from the port of Chicago to Ottawa, which was then the head of navigation for steamboats on the Illinois River.
One branch of the trail cut mostly west from Naperville to Oswego, where it then curved to follow the trail on the bluffs along the Fox River southwest to Yorkville. It was along this well-traveled road that many of the pioneers of Oswego, Bristol, and Little Rock Townships made their way, looking for a piece of land to call their own.
As they crested the rise on the Ottawa Trail dividing the DuPage River's drainage basin from the Fox River's, the pioneers sighted the broad expanse of the Oswego Prairie. Dotted here and there with small clumps of trees-mostly surrounding low wetlands-the grassland swept westwards until it ended in a wall of timber marking the course of the Fox River. To the southwest, more timber outlined the marshes and sloughs that marked the headwaters of the AuSable Creek. Looking directly south, they saw the rolling prairie stretching unbroken all the way to the DuPage River.
The lushness of the native prairie plants filling the grassland foretold rich harvests to come. The experienced farmers among the new settlers-and the majority were farmers-realized this rich land could be made to bloom with their crops as easily as it grew the big bluestem and other native grasses and forbs.
In the summer of 1838, James H. Reed and his surveying party, working alternately east and west, measured and mapped the balance of Kendall County that had not already been surveyed. Reed and his crew, consisting of John Tubbs, Charles James, James Hodgins, and Henry H. Hills were lucky to experience relatively dry weather for their summer survey. They were able, in fact, to directly measure the width of the Fox River at several points. On Aug. 11, 1838, Reed noted in his notebook that he successfully measured the width of the Fox River at the small village of Bristol: "Width of river 9.15 chains [601.92 feet] determined by chain measurement. Water in river low."
Even though it was a relatively dry summer, the survey had not been uniformly easy. The job was haunted by hot weather and the numerous wetlands dotting the area. Some areas simply could not be accurately surveyed. "Corner in pond," says one laconic field note describing why an official marker could not be placed. "Waubonsie Swamp (impassable)" says another of a large wetland, described as a reed swamp along the township's northern boundary in what is now Montgomery.
But while the land had been surveyed, It would take U.S. Surveyor Silas Reed until 1842 to release the official maps so the land could be sold at the Federal Land Office in Chicago. Until then, the land belonged to the government. Pioneers could settle, break the prairie sod, raise crops, and raise livestock. But they could not own the land they were using until it was officially put up for sale by the government.
Even though Reed carefully marked fields already being farmed by Dan Ashley, John Pearce, John Douglas, William Ellis, and the Townsend and Gray families among others in his survey notebooks, they were not yet owned by the farmers themselves. This quasi-legal squatting by early pioneers would not come to an end until the 1850s when the last of the land was finally sold at a Congressionally-mandated price of $1.25 per acre, payable only in gold.
Eventually, as more settlers moved onto the prairie, the dense stands of timber along the Fox River and its tributaries were cut to provide lumber to build their homes, farms, fences, and furniture. The wetlands were drained, and the native prairie grasses were plowed under, replaced by the settlers' row crops and pastures. The tiny hamlets of 1838 quickly grew as more farmers and their families arrived and required the services of the pioneer businessmen who peopled them.
By 1838, the area's Indians were gone, forced west of the Mississippi by government order. Kendall County stood on the brink of a heavy influx of new settlers, following which the old ways of those living on the prairie would be lost forever.
Today, given the area's population growth, those of us who are long-time residents of Kendall County have become used to changes as great as the ones experienced by the earliest settlers who had arrived before 1838. Our challenge is to try to keep those things we feel are important while incorporating new ideas that will make our communities even better places to live.
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