CHAPTER SEVENTY

WHITE COUNTY

P. 558 ORIGINAL PHYSICAL FEATURES—

WHITE COUNTY AND ITS SPONSOR—

EARLY VISITORS—

CARMI, THE COUNTY SEAT—

ENFIELD—

EARLY DAY WILD PIGEON ROOST

       White was first included in Knox county; then it became a part of Randolph; then of Gallatin; then it was organized on the 9th of December, 1815, and included beside its own territory that of Hamilton, Franklin and part of Jefferson. It is now bounded on the south by Gallatin, on the west by Hamilton, on the north by Wayne and Edwards, and on the east by the Wabash river.

       Its area is 507 square miles and its population is 23,052. It has but one large town or city and that is Carmi, but it has a host of smaller towns. It has the Wabash on the east, the Little Wabash flowing from north to south through its center, and Skillett Fork coming into the county from the northwest. In addition there are smaller tributaries to these larger streams, and thus the county is abundantly supplied with water courses. This, fact may account for the early settlement of the county.

ORIGINAL PHYSICAL FEATURES

       When the whites came to this county it was heavily timbered. The growths were oaks, hickory, walnut, hackberry, elm, ash and poplar. There were, however, considerable prairie area. Peck gives three—Big, Burnt, and Seven Mile. Big Prairie lay between the Little and the Big Wabash. It was nearly circular and about three miles in diameter. In 1836 this prairie was all in a high state of cultivation, the soil being sandy and of great fertility. Burnt Prairie lay in the northwestern part of White and extended into Wayne. This prairie also was circular, two miles across, and had rich soil and many settlers in 1836. Seven Mile Prairie was seven miles west of Carmi.

       Carmi is reported in Peck to be a flourishing town of four stores, a saw and flour mill combined, a neat brick court house forty feet square, two stories high, and neatly finished. There were fifty families, two lawyers and three doctors. In 1820 the population of the county was 4,828.

WHITE COUNTY AND ITS SPONSOR

       From the earliest days White was intimately associated with Gallatin on the south. In the Indian disturbances of 1811 to 1814 Gallatin P 559 county furnished a number of prominent men. At that time Gallatin m­eluded parts or all of a dozen counties in that quarter, and so it happens that often when we read of men from Gallatin we forget that credit ought to be given to other counties.

       Isaac White, a prominent public spirited man who was in charge of the salt works at Equality up to 1811, was intimately associated with what is now White county. Isaac White was a personal friend of Gen. Harrison and it thus happened that Harrison was anxious to have White accompany him on his expedition against Tecumseh’s forces in 1811.

       This Captain White did and was killed in the battle of Tippecanoe. This was a great loss to Illinois and especially to the southeastern section of the state. The general assembly named White county in memory of Captain Isaac White.

EARLY VISITORS

       In 1817 Morris Birkbeck made his first visit to the territory of Illinois. He did not come by water to the Illinois country, but overland. On the morning of July 26, 1817, he breakfasted at New Harmony, Indiana, which is some ten or twelve miles northeast of Carmi. He crossed the Wabash and started west, and seven miles out he came into Big Prairie, which was the first prairie he had seen. He stopped at the home of Mr. Williams. The White county militia were having “muster.” There were thirty men present, but only twenty guns. The great fields of corn were very attractive to Birkbeck. He says the Big Prairie had been settled about four or five years when he was there. On August 1 he was at Bagley‘s, which was at the present Emma post office on the Little Wabash. From here he went north and west. He crossed Skillett Fork at a shoal. He speaks disparagingly of the country about Skillett Fork. On August 2 he had reached the edge of Seven Mile Prairie on his way over to the English Prairie.

       Ferdinand Ernest, a German traveler, was in Carmi in July, 1819. He describes the road from the mouth of Little Wabash to Carmi as a delightful ride. He says the effects of the terrible storm or cyclone which passed through the county from west to east, between Carmi and New Haven in 1813, could be plainly seen.

CARMI THE COUNTY SEAT

       Carmi, the county seat of White county, is a city of 2,883 people. It occupies, very nearly, the geographical center of the county. It was laid off by Lowry Hay in November, 1816. The town grew slowly. It was several years before the court house was completed. The first court house was demolished in a storm in 1824 and it was four years before another was built. The last court house is a magnificent building for a small city. The city is well provided with all modern improvements. The city is located on the west side of the Little Wabash and its growth must be in one general direction—away from the river. Carmi is a railroad center of some importance. It is the junction of the Louisville & Nashville and the Big Four. Carmi formerly had the shops of the Louisville & Nashville, but these were moved up to Mt. Carmel and this has been an unfortunate thing for Carmi. P 560

       Mr. W. D. Hay, who has given a good deal of attention to the matter of local history, is to be given credit for collecting matter about the early schools, etc., which follows.

        The first school house in Carmi was a log house and stood in what is now R. F. Stewart’s pasture. General Ed. Baker, who was killed at the battle of Ball’s Bluff in 1861, was a teacher in. that school house. Judge William Wilson, Dr. Josiah Stewart, and General James Rateliff started a private school near Carmi, in which Hon. Charles Devens, attorney general in Garfield’s cabinet, was a teacher. A school was taught by a Mr. Taylor in a small log house erected for a dwelling at a point between Liberty and Centerville. This was about 1830.

ENFIELD

       Enfield is situated ten miles due west of Carmi. That locality was settled as early as 1813. Thomas Rutledge came in that year and built a cabin. Peter and James Miller came from Kentucky in 1816 and settled near the present site of Enfield. In 1814 John Morgan built a cabin about where the railroad crossing is. Here he was wounded and scalped by Indians soon after he settled there.

EARLY-DAY WILD PIGEON ROOST

       Mr. Hay has written an account of a wild pigeon roost in White county that will preserve a bit of local history to posterity. In an early day, probably from 1840 to 1870, the wild pigeon was a semi-annual visitor to many localities in Illinois. The writer remembers a wild pigeon roost in Greene county just after the Civil war. In White county there was one roost just at the south edge of White, a few miles west of New Haven; another a short distance northwest of the town of Enfield. The latter was the larger and the one used the longer, In the spring of the year the pigeons would go north to rear their young. In the fall they would return in great swarms that blackened the sun. They would feed on the acorns and other mast through the day and late in the afternoon they would begin to gather for the night’s roosting. They lighted upon the limbs of the great white oak trees. They clung to each other just as bees do when they “settle” after swarming. They weighted the great trees so that limbs broke, killing thousands of birds. People came many miles to see these pigeon roosts. Many people would kill them with long poles, hauling away their “catch “in wagons. The noise of the birds’ wings, the breaking limbs, and the chattering of the pigeons, could be heard for miles. Mr. Hay says that no pigeons have been seen in the Wabash valley since 1874.

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