Pioneer Life in Hillsboro

As I write this in the spring of 2005 Hillsboro, Illinois is a quiet, charming, and well kept small town with a population of about 4,500.    It is off the beaten path with the nearest Interstate highway passing through Litchfield about 10 miles to the west.    Hillsboro sits mostly atop a wooded hill overlooking the nearby farmland.   Butler is a village of perhaps a hundred residents about 2 miles northwest of Hillsboro.  The economy of the Butler/Hillsboro area is primarily tied to supporting the nearby farms.  I'm told that some residents commute daily to jobs in Vandalia, Springfield, and even St. Louis (a 65 mile one way commute) as they prefer to live the less stressful rural lifestyle which Hillsboro has to offer.

When Israel and Margaret Seward arrived in the Butler/Hillsboro area however it was a very different place then it is today.   The following describes some of the hardships they had to endure as they struggled to make a life for themselves on the Illinois frontier.

From:  “Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois” edited by Newton Bateman, LL.D. and Paul Selby, A.M. and “History of Montgomery County” edited by Alexander T. Strange, Volume 11. Illustrated – Chicago – Munsell Publishing Company, Publishers, 1918.

“When the pioneers of Butler Grove Township came here they found Indians and the wildest of conditions prevailing.  Wild game was plentiful but the settlers were in danger of attacks from wolves and other denizens of the forest and prairies, and every inch of land had to be either cleared of forest growth or cleared of the heavy sod, the later being almost as difficult a task as the former.”

From: “History of Bond and Montgomery Counties, Illinois.”  Edited by William Henry Perrin. Illustrated.  Chicago:  O.L. Baskin & Co., Historical Publisher, Lakeside Building.  1882.

Page 182:

“For a number of years after the first settlements were made in the wilderness, life possessed few pleasures and comforts, and was hard in the extreme and often dangerous.  The people were exposed to danger, and were forced to undergo the most arduous toil to maintain life.  The following extract from an article by Mr. Collidge will give the reader some idea of the life led by the early settlers until civilization and prosperity improved the times.  The article referred to says: ‘The earliest houses or cabins were of logs, one story high, and usually of one room.  The door was frequently made of split stuff, and the openings for light sometimes were defended by a frame or rude sash, with oiled paper for glass, but more usually the opening was closed only by a solid shutter.  In the summer, this was left unclosed; in the winter, the cabin was lighted down the chimney or through an open door.   In such a residence we have seen the entire family of father and mother and well grown boys and girls and the occasional guest sleeping on the floor….  The kitchen utensils were a pot for boiling potatoes, a bake-kettle for bread and a skillet for frying meat……. Chairs or seats were made at home, strong, durable and weighty, but not luxurious.  The pantry was a rustic shelf or two in a corner, with a bit of cloth before them……..  A tea-kettle was a superfluity, and irons were supplied by a couple of flat stones.  The hearth was the naked earth; the chimney was outside the house’.”

Pages 183-184:

“After 1830 wagons began to be seen.  Prior to this, the ox-cart was the universal vehicle of transportation………   These carts were not built for rapid movement.  A yoke of oxen usually lounged onward at the rate of a mile and a half and hour, and five days was the usual time for a trip to St. Louis.”

“The plague of insects was intolerable to man and beast.  A green-headed fly was the most formidable pest.  In the heat of the day, horses were frantic, and for safety were put in stables.  Cattle would dash through thickets of hazel brush to dislodge their tormentors or stand midside deep in pools of water.  The people would at times maintain ‘smudges’ to drive away mosquitoes, and cattle would seek and stand in the smoke for hours for relief.  With the increase of land cultivation, there pests have disappeared.”

“Instead of our gay chandeliers, and coal oil lamps, were candles of tallow or wax, and an old-fashioned affair, dignified by the name lamp, that was stuck in a crack in the wall and held lard in a heart-shape sheet-iron basin in which was a wick which burned well and gave a torch-like glare.”

“The clothing for both sexes was made at home.  If of cotton, the cotton was raised, picked, ginned, carded, spun, woven, colored and cut and made at home.  If of wool, the sheep were raised, the wool clipped, picked by hand, carded, spun, colored, woven and made up at home.  All members of the household, male and female, men, women and children, were usually employed in some part, if not all parts of the manufacture.  It is true that men and boys frequently wore clothing either made entire of the dressed skins of animals or had their clothes ‘foxed’ with them…………    Boots were nearly unknown, and shoes were indulged in as a luxury only by grown up people, while moccasins made at home sufficed for the smaller members.  However, as soon as tanning could be done, and it was also often done at home, it was not infrequent that the shoe-maker went from house to house with his implements, and made the shoes for the family.  There are no doubt many now living in the county who never wore boots until they were nearly grown, and perhaps, never saw any until nearly grown.”

“Additional to other troubles and trials of the pioneers in the early period of the country were prairie fires.  These fires have always been a source of terror to people living in a prairie country, and much damage and loss of property and even of life have resulted from them.  The tall prairie grass, from four to six feet high, when dry, with strong winds prevailing, presented combustible matter only surpassed by kerosene, gunpowder, etc.  ‘In time of peace prepare for war’, is an adage that was very generally observed by settlers living on the verge of the prairies, and later in the prairies themselves.  As soon as the grass began to die and dry up in the fall of the year, preparations against fire were made by burning or plowing roads around fields and farms.”

Page 186:

“This tendency to independence and self-government, led to the formation of Montgomery County, when there were but a few hundred people within it present circumscribed limits.  It was set off from Bond County, by act of the Legislature, passed at the session of 1820-21 and approved on the 12th of February of the later year.”

Page 221:

[As of 1882]  “Hillsboro is beautifully situated on high rolling ground, commanding a fine view of the surrounding country, and on the Indianapolis & St. Louis Railroad, some sixty-five miles nearly northeast of St. Louis and about two hundred miles southwest of Chicago…….  It is a city of about two thousand inhabitants, and is noted for its intelligent and enterprising inhabitants, for its excellent schools and handsome and spacious churches.”