Taverns were early and rudimentary hotels in which "brawny, hard-breathing" men slept two and three to a bunk. So did Rufus Brown, who established the first tavern in Atlas. Two more Rosses, John and Jeremiah, followed their brothers in 1821. And he "never tilled no land." But his home was a favorite spot for other hunters and trappers. Tibault, Americanized as Teboe, built a cabin at the site of today's Valley City, from whose bank he operated a ferry. At about that time, Canadian-French trapper J.B. Zebulon Pike, an early explorer and soldier in the War of 1812, the county was said to have fewer than 100 white and French residents when organized.įrench trappers were among the first settlers in southern Pike County, later Calhoun County, and lived there until they were flooded out in 1818. As small as the band was, it was significant in increasing the population of Pike County. With no roads or trails to follow, the Ross crew marked the cottonwood, elm, hickory, oak, pecan and walnut trees as they went to guide their return. The horses, noosed at the neck, swam alongside. The pioneers lashed puncheons - the flat side of a split log - on top of two canoes to transport their wagons across the Illinois River. Hunter while they scouted northward for a settlement in the Mississippi bottoms. Alton was not yet organized, but there the Rosses and their fellow travelers left their families safely with a Maj. From there, the immigrants crossed Illinois' broad midsection by wagon to Upper Alton.
Flatboats ferried them down the Allegheny and Ohio rivers to Shawneetown in Eastern Illinois. Ross and his brothers Clarendon, Leonard and Henry J., along with Sam Davis, Will Sprague and Joseph Cogswell, had arrived in 1820 from Pittsfield, Mass. Chicago was at the time "a village of Pike County, containing 12 or 15 houses and about 60 or 70 inhabitants." The northern border was the same as the state's - from Lake Michigan to the tongue that stuck out into the Mississippi on the west. The Ross family was determined that Atlas would replace Cole's Grove as the county seat.įrom their confluence just below the belly of the west side of the state, the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers shaped Pike County's longitudinal borders. 31, 1821, had just reshaped the state map to make Pike the largest county in the 2-year-old state - larger even than the 3.5 million-acre military tract that was within it. Like the mythological character for whom it was named, Atlas held great promise. By 1821, Ross had built the first brick house in Pike County at Atlas - and greatly enlarged it two years later. William Ross' proclamation that his town of Atlas would be the star city in Western Illinois was much believed.
Is it coming down to the point we have to maintain our on lots? I would like to hear if more feel this way we need action on this matter our love ones deserve better the cemetery sure new how to take our money when the lots were purchased!! No doubt they need to hire more help and not just try to keep around the perimeter of the place tidy but for all who are in there!! Maybe they need things called mowers and weed eaters! Surely they don’t take pride in the grounds anymore.For all who observed such things, Col. Yes we do expect when we visit to see our loved ones resting places kept up is that so much to ask?Instead left there in tears and disgust for the owners. Read more the caretakers ought to be ashamed to treat the love ones of so many so poorly.
I have never seen it as bad as it is now. Born and raised in Alton and raised our children in Alton I’m 71 years old moved from the area 13 years ago came back to visit last weekend and was absolutely sickened to see my parents and grandparents graves plus our plots in knee deep weeds and not mowed.
0 kommentar(er)
