A Humble Beginning For Knox County
by Tom Wilson

   In 1828 a voyager named Daniel Robertson left his home in the east and eventually reached what is now Henderson, Illinois in the northern section of the current Knox County. Robertson marked his place in history by building a home shelter and thus became the first white man to settle in what would become Knox County.

   Other settlers followed close behind, arriving from Virginia, Kentucky and the Carolinas. As the others arrived they found great timbers and fertile plains, built shelters and thus a new Illinois civilization begun. The parade of hearty souls included Jacob Gum, a Baptist minister who preached the first sermon in the county. Into the settlement was born the first white child to Mrs. Zephaniah Gum. The first death among the early settlers was 17-year old Phillip Nance. Nance is buried in a lone grave on farmland six miles north of Galesburg.

   The settlement grew rapidly in size and numbers made it necessary to form a county government. Henderson, currently located north of Galesburg became a Thriving trading post and became the unofficial county seat for one year. The village included 5 stores, 3 wagon factories, a blacksmith shop, a gristmill and even a distillery. The population reached a peak of 1,000 residents for a short time. It should be noted there were originally two areas known as Henderson. One was the early settlement north of Galesburg and the other named Henderson Town that eventually changed to Knoxville in 1837.

   When Knox County was first incorporated it was connected with Fulton County for judicial and governmental purposes. Knoxville became the first official county seat. Many of the early settlers who lived in Henderson moved to Knoxville and created an angling road laid out between the two communities. The first state road laid out in what is now Knox County was from Vandalia, passed through the eastern portion of the county and ended in Galena. There was no bridge over the Spoon River until 1839, thus the river was either forded or ferried.

   In 1836 a multitude of additional settlers moved into the county from the east. The largest colony coming from New York founded what is now Galesburg and established Knox College. Knox County was first laid out into sixteen townships. It was not until 1841 that complete legal records began to be kept when a Stephen A. Douglas arrived in Knoxville to preside over the district court.

   Rapid changes occurred when a new fangled contraption called a railroad slowly made its way west from Chicago. When the railroad originally reached the vicinity of Wataga, it was the intention to turn west through Henderson and onto the Mississippi River. This all changed abruptly when a fellow named Gale donated land further south and this was the beginning of the end for the continued growth of Henderson and Knoxville and an added beginning for Galesburg.

   Incidentally, Knox County, Illinois was named in honor of General Henry Knox. The General was originally an American bookseller from Boston and became Chief of Artillery for the Revolutionary Army and later Secretary of War in President George Washington?s first cabinet. Henry Knox appeared to be a 'designated' person to have places named after him. Forts in Kentucky and Maine were named in his honor along with Counties in Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. As an added touch, Knoxville, Tennessee is also named for him.

The 1950's  
Peter Gorham

    I was born in Galesburg, Illinois on July 11, 1945.  I lived until the age of six in a one-story insulbrick-sided house on the east side of Olive street, between North and Grove.  For many years as an adult I would go out of my way to drive by that old house and I’d park in front of it for just a minute or two and reminisce.   It was here that my first glorious memories of life were formed.  About ten or fifteen years ago that Olive Street house burned to the ground.  Now I just park in front of the empty lot from time to time and reminisce for a minute or two.
     Our family moved to 814 N. Prairie Street in 1951.  This was my home until I left Galesburg after graduating from high school in 1963.  My vaguest dreamlike memories – like the memory of the horse drawn milk wagon stopping on the brick street in front of our house once a week – were on Olive Street.  But my Tom Sawyer childhood took place on Prairie Street.  
     The decade of the Fifties is sometimes referred to as being “repressive.”  However, I consider that decade to have been an unparalleled experience of great and creative freedom of expression.  It was repressive in the sense that I had to go to church on Sunday; I had to help with the dishes after every meal; I had to work around the house on Saturday mornings; I had to study every night until I finished my lessons, which I couldn’t lie about or fake because my mother – a teacher – checked up on me; and I had to respect my elders, even if they didn’t deserve it.  
     I also had to deliver the Register-Mail six days a week to all of the houses on the west side of Prairie street between Dudley and North streets.  My older brother Mike delivered simultaneously to the east side.  We delivered on foot, even when it was below zero or above one hundred degrees or raining or snowing.  
    But aside from these and a few other minor Fifties’ repressions, I was given total freedom to do whatever I wanted to do; to come and go at will; to play baseball all day long in neighbors’ back yards or in the Hitchcock school yard; to hunt multi-colored butterflies during the day and the beautiful green Luna moth at night; to generally wander around the town like a nomad, discovering endless treasures on the odyssey of youth.
    The first thing I would do when the huge bundle of one hundred or so Register-Mail newspapers was dumped in a pile on our terrace each afternoon, was to carry it to my front porch, hurriedly remove the twine holding the bundle together, and pick up the top paper and turn to page two.  This is where the news would be of what had happened to Elvis Presley since yesterday.  He’d have gotten into a fight; he’d have unbuttoned his shirt at a concert; he was almost kicked off the Ed Sullivan Show for moving his hips suggestively; he was about to be drafted into the army and sent to Germany.  
     The next thing I did after reading about Elvis was to fold the newspapers into eight-inch square projectiles which my brother and  I – both accomplished throwers – could sail expertly from the sidewalk onto the porches of houses, rarely missing.  This allowed us to conduct the entire five-block delivery of newspapers without having to trudge through wet grass or snow-filled yards, like the mailman had to do.
    Each day Mike and I, who competed with each other in every conceivable aspect of life, had a contest to see which of us could finish our paper route first.  We started by walking north with our canvas bags strapped over our shoulders, full of folded newspapers, tossing them on porches all the way to Dudley Street.  Then we turned around and went back south and delivered them all the way to North street.  Whoever delivered his last paper first,  won. The single rule that we had tacitly agreed to follow was this: we couldn’t run but could only walk.  To run – or at least to be seen running – was to be disqualified and to lose that day’s contest.        
    There were unforeseen variables to our success each day.  For example, if a customer would be sitting on his porch we would not throw the paper, for fear that it might hit him in the eye or knock him down.  Rather, we were compelled by the law of Respect Your Elders to walk  the newspaper up to the porch and hand it to him.  Then, of course, if he wanted to have a conversation with us, we would have to stand there politely listening to him at full and rapt attention, often giving him the mistaken notion that what we most wanted to do in life at that moment was to stand and listen to an old retired man who had nothing to do but opine.  Just one unforeseen delay like that could result in losing the contest for the day.
    There were a few places on our paper route where Mike and I would lose sight of each other.  One was at the gorgeous stone home on the southwest corner of Prairie and Losey.  Back then it was the District 205 Board of Education offices.  I was required to go in the front door and hand the newspaper to the secretary.  Then I had to go around back to the carriage house and deliver another paper to Mr. Sloan who lived there and was the groundskeeper.  When I disappeared from my brother’s sight, he immediately started running to get ahead of me.  That would have been unfair except for the fact that I also immediately began running at the same time to get ahead of him. When I emerged from the south side yard, having just slowed to a walk again, and gazed down Prairie Street, I saw my brother magically far ahead of me, also having slowed to a walk just in time not to be seen running.  
    Once, at this very spot, as I went behind the Board of Education, Mike let fly a newspaper from the sidewalk toward the porch of what is now the Fahnestock Bed and Breakfast on the southeast corner of Prairie and Losey.  That house had a tricky porch for a newspaper thrower to hit accurately.  There was a relatively small opening between the porch floor and the porch’s roof, requiring expert aim, which Mike usually had.  However, this day, being in such a hurry to start running as soon as I disappeared, he threw the newspaper hastily and it landed on the roof.  So he threw another one hastily and it also landed on the roof.  He got so mad at himself that he threw newspaper after newspaper onto the roof intentionally.  When I hurriedly came around the south side yard of the Board of Education building and emerged again onto Prairie Street, I looked south, as usual,  to see how far ahead of me my brother had gotten.  He was nowhere to be seen.  Finally, I saw him throwing all of those newspapers onto the roof of Mr. Weinberg’s house.  Eventually a paper landed on the porch and he angrily moved on.  This meant, of course, that I’d won the contest for that day, because there would be five or ten houses at the end of his route which he had no papers left to deliver to. The phone would ring at our house all night long with angry customers calling to complain that they hadn’t gotten a newspaper that day.  My mother made Mike go out and buy papers with his own money and deliver them again in person, in the dark.  Those papers on Mr. Weinberg’s roof laid up there for as long as I can remember. 
    We played this newspaper-delivery game every day for years, never keeping track of the score or even remembering it day to day.  And yet,  to win or lose the contest on any single day created a very significant amount of exhilaration or disappointment, which lasted maybe five minutes and then was gone.  It was gone quickly because once our paper route responsibilities were over for the day, we were totally free again to turn our attention to something else.
    Often what we wanted to do next was to walk on toward town and climb up into one of the maze of abandoned warehouses across from the Presbyterian Church (the warehouses are all gone now, it’s just a huge parking lot) and catch pigeons which roosted there.  When the pigeons saw us climbing up the stairs to the second floor where they perched on the open rafters, they’d all start flying around the warehouse madly, looking for a broken window.  We’d sweep them right out of the air into our paperbags and carry them home, cooing.  We’d put them into cages  and study them for awhile.  But in a short time we’d let them go, when the thrill of catching a wild animal and subduing it had been replaced by the sense of guilt and compassion for having taken away a creature’s freedom.  And when it dawned on us that their survival was now up to us.

 Those were the Fifties, and this is a representative snapshot of how I experienced them.  To me their repression was no more than having to learn responsibility, as painful as that can be sometimes.  Other than that those years were totally free and easy, in a way that the years have never been since and will never be again.  

Interview with Benita Moore
By Carin Franey

What a joy it was to interview local author Benita Moore who transcribed and edited the publication of “A Civil War Diary” which was a written journal by Dr James A Black.  I first had the pleasure of meeting her at her book signing at Perkin’s.  Benita happened to be my husband’s history teacher from high school.  She contacted him earlier in the summer to let him know about the book coming out.  Benita agreed to let me interview her for our history page of our website.



The book is about Assistant Surgeon James A. Black who takes the reader on a seldom traveled journey as he participates in the American Civil War.  Black and a contingency of Southern Illinois men enlisted in the Union Army October 6, 1861. The 49th Illinois Infantry Regiment was mustered into service. The journal covers the time span of January 1st, 1862 through December 31st, 1865.  During his military duty as a Union soldier he openly shares his observations, his joys, his concerns and his frustration as he provides the reader with remarkable insight into the daily life of a soldier in their camps and on their campaigns back one hundred and fifty years ago.
As Benita explained to me, “transcribing someone else’s written work from many years ago can be difficult.  It took over three years to edit and transcribe this journal.”  This is because Benita took the painstaking task of going through every line of every page of this journal.  Some of the hardest words for Benita to transcribe were people’s names.  She explained, “We had help through Richard Qualls, who ran off rosters names for us.  Then we would have to compare the name James had in his diary to the name on the roster.  This took a lot of time, but without this information, there would be a lot of misinterpreted or overlooked names in the book.  My primary goal was to have it printed just the way he wrote it.” She thought this would let readers feel how it was to live in this time period; even down to the actual writing.  She went on to say, “I wanted this book to be a primary source – so they can hear a personal experience.”
When I asked Benita what inspired her to publish this journal she had quite an interesting story.  “I was at my Aunt Lucille Black’s house and my aunt asked me if I wanted to look at a diary.”  Benita decided to borrow the material from her aunt and then began to read it.  Since Benita and her husband David were both history teachers, what do you think they wanted to do with this information?  They felt like they had to see this published instead of wasting away in someone’s attic.  They both understood the significance historically this would have in the literary world.   To have actual thoughts handwritten by a man who lived through the civil war is quite an historical re-incarnation.
In this book, Benita dedicated her book to her husband David because he did as much work on this publication as she did.  David, author of “Forgotten Valor”, was inspirational in helping Benita with the tedious tasks involved in transcribing written language.  Benita also acknowledges her brother Jack for helping to proof, Aunt Lucille for allowing us to use his journal, Howard Pursell who conducted the online research on Dr James Black and Richard Qualls who ran off the rosters for them.
You can meet Benita Moore at Burgland Drug Store for a book signing on December 10th, 2008 from 3-6pm.  This would be an excellent gift for any civil war or history buff this year.  At $22.50 for the hardback and the paperback for $15.70 this book would make a nice gift or stocking stuffer too.  Be sure to stop in at Burgland’s to meet Benita Moore and have “A Civil War Diary” personally signed by Benita.  For more information please go to Author House Book Store: Author House Publishing .

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