A YEAR'S COURTSHIP

Rose Eden & Ivory Martin

Forward

Drawing clipped from a newspaper by Rose Eden and sent to Ivory Martin with her letter of February 9, 1886:

"I enclose you a picture and as you are a judge of art I want to know your opinion of it. It is for my crazy quilt, so you must return it."

Ivory replied the same day:

"You ask what I think of 'Stolen Sweets' as a work of art. I think it is well suited for a crazy quilt; at least I believe a few such specimens would fit me for an insane asylum. Please do not send any more that are so suggestive, so long before I see you."

Copyright @ 1997 by R. Eden Martin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission of R. Eden Martin.

< B>ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In preparing the introduction and endnotes to this volume, I have enjoyed the assistance of Janet Shuman Roney, who supplied several of the pictures from the archives of the Moultrie County Hi storical & Genealogical Society, and Martha Schrodt, who provided information about George Snapp, one of the characters in the play. Also, John Hoffmann, Director of the Illinois Historical Survey in Urbana, gave me valuable editorial advice and en couragement.

The letters which make up this volume were saved and loosely organized, over twenty years after they were written, by Ivory J. Martin. After he died in 1953, the letters and boxes of other family papers were kept successively by his two daughters, Olive Martin and (after Olive died) Mabel Martin George. After Mabel's death in 1989, the boxes of papers were kept by her son, John George, and then by his son, John Martin George. In 1996 the latter John undert ook to go through all the boxes and to identify and place in chronological order all of Ivory and Rose's letters. The result of this effort--three large binders of their neatly-organized correspondence--made it possible for me to turn their handwriting into print. John M. George and Philip Martin helped decipher some of the more difficult passages.

I think Ivory and Rose would be pleased that three generations of their descendants had taken loving care of the written ev idence of their year's courtship. They might be less pleased that another descendant had exposed their very private expressions to the public eye; but the editor takes some comfort from the fact that Ivory was the first to save and order the letters, a nd that he therefore must have intended, or at least expected, and perhaps even hoped, that they would someday be read.

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Introduction

This book is the record of a year's courtship that took place over a hundred years ago between my grandmother, Rose Eden, and grandfather, Ivory J. Martin. Both lived most of their lives in or near Sullivan, Illinois, a small town in the east-central part of the state.

Rose Eden was born in Sullivan on November 2, 1858, the second daughter of John Rice Eden and Roxana Meeker Eden. Her father, John R. Eden, was a lawyer and would later serve five terms in Congress. He was born in Bath County, Kentucky, in 1826, and his family moved to frontier Rush County, Indiana, in 1831 when he was five years old. He worked on the family farm in the spring, summer and fall, and went to a log cabin school in the winter until the age of 18, when he began teaching in a neighborhood school. After teaching six or seven years, he decided in 1850 to become a lawyer, and became what we might now call an intern in a small firm in Rushville, Indiana. After two year s study, in 1852 he moved to Shelbyville, Illinois, and was admitted to the bar in June of that year. The committee of lawyers designated to examine him as to his qualifications consisted of Abraham Lincoln, David Davis (whom Lincoln would later appoint to the Supreme Court of the United States), and Samuel Moulton, a local lawyer. John R. later told his family that when the committee met him in a hotel room, Lincoln flopped himself onto a bed, saying to the others

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that they could examine John R., but he (Lincoln) was going to sleep--which he proceeded to do.1 In any event, John R. was found to be qualified, and a year later, in August 1853, he moved a few miles north to the n ew town of Sullivan, where his older brother, Joseph Edgar Eden, had recently settled.

Sullivan had been established in 1845 as the county seat of the then-new county of Moultrie (set apart as a separate county in 1843). As the center of justice for the new county, Sullivan offered attractive prospects for a bright, energetic younger lawyer--particularly since there was only one other lawyer practicing in the county when John R. relocated in 1853. However, his practice was not confined to Sullivan. He rode the circuit with other pioneer lawyers, traveling from county seat to county seat, following the circuit judge as he convened court in the different locations. One of the judges before whom Eden frequently appeare d was David Davis, one of his law examiners. Prominent lawyers with whom he practiced were U.F. Linder, O.B. Ficklin, Charles Constable, and, of course, Abraham Lincoln.2

Not long after moving to Sullivan, John R. Eden met his future wife, Roxana Meeker, born in 1834 in Marysville, Ohio. Her father, Ambrose Meeker, was a blacksmith and farmer who had moved with his wife, Hannah (Hartwell) and famil y from Ohio to Illinois in 1846 and settled in Sullivan in 1848. Roxana's mother died shortly after their move, so at the age of 14 she was compelled to take on the extra household duties that devolved on her as the oldest daughter. She soon met the ri sing young attorney, and they were married in August 1856. John and Roxana had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood: Emma, Rose, Walter, Belle and Blanche.

Rose, the second daughter, was born on November 2, 1858. As she spent her childhood during the years of the Civil War, her father, a Democrat, moved up the professional and political ranks. In 1856, the year of his marriage, John R. Eden had been elected States Attorney for the Seventh Judicial Circuit , comprising nine central Illinois counties, and he served in that capacity for four years while, at the same time, building his own private law practice. In November 1859 John R. became political editor of the first newspaper published in Moultrie Cou nty--the Sullivan Express, owned at that time by J.H. Waggoner. The paper was a strong supporter of the Stephen Douglas

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wing of the Democratic party. Eden's political talent and writing ability are said t o have given "the paper prominence among the journals of Central Illinois, and made for himself a reputation as a strong and vigorous writer of political articles."3 In 1860 Eden was nominated by the Democrats for a place in the state legislature, but was defeated in the heavily Republican district by a few votes.

In 1862 the Democrats in the Seventh Congressional District made him their candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, and he was elected, taking his seat in the thirty-eighth Congress in March 1863. In 1864 he was renominated,4 but was defeated by the Republican candidate, and returned to Sullivan in March 1865 shortly before the end of the war. At that t ime Rose was not quite seven years old.

About 1868, when Rose was ten years old, John R. bought from his father-in-law a farm two miles southwest of Sullivan, and the family lived there one year. John R., who always kept cows and hogs, took care of the farm along with h is law business, and slaughtered and cured his own meat. Roxana took care of the children and was kept busy with household chores. She did all her cooking on a wood stove, saving the ashes for use in making soap. Rose's younger brother, Walter, remembe red her fall preparations for the winter:

"Every fall she would make up twenty gallons of apple butter, and about ten gallons of mince meat--and the mince meat was rich with plenty of good meat. She always had a pantry full of jams, marmalades and jellies. Every meal we had hot bis cuit and several different kinds of preserves. We always filled up the cellar with the finest kind of winter apples out of our orchard on the farm." 5

During the next few years, her father built his law practice--first in Sullivan, and then for two years--1870-1871--in nearby Decatur. Rose attended public school in both places and also studied music privately, learning to plan t he piano well. In 1872 the family moved back to Sullivan into a large new house on McClellan Street, six blocks west of the courthouse square. Rose's brother later speculated that John R. moved the family back to Sullivan not because his law practice w ould improve but because his Congressional prospects would be brighter.6

In 1873 or 1874, at the age of 15, Rose entered the Bastion Seminary, a private secondary school operated for a few years by a minister, N.S. Bastion, three blocks southeast of the Sullivan courthouse

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square. In the Bastion school, the boys sat on one side of the schoolroom and the girls on the other.7 Ro se's brother, Walter, later remembered carrying his lunch to the Bastion school during the fall term--a lunch consisting of "bread, butter, sausage, hard boiled eggs, pickles, and some sort of jam or marmalade. Later the winter fried ham took the place of sausage. Every fall Father would slaughter about ten fat hogs, so we always had plenty of sausage, ham, and bacon."8

Although her father was occasionally absent on political or legal business, Rose was part of a large extended family, In addition to her three sisters and two brothers (Hartwell, two years younger, who later died at the age of nineteen; and Walter, four years younger), Rose frequently visited her maternal grandfather, the blacksmith, Ambrose Meeker, and also her father's two sisters and their families. One aunt, Nancy Jane Sampson, lived with her husband and three sons on as farm about five miles south of Sullivan near the little settlement of Bruce. The other aunt, Juliana Moore, lived nearby with her husband Jim and several sons and two daughters. Jim Moore farmed, raised sugar cane and operated a cane mill, with which he made sorghum molasses for his neighbors.9

Despite h is unsuccessful bid for re-election to Congress in 1864 and an unsuccessful run for Governor of Illinois in 1868 as the Democratic Party's candidate, John R. Eden's political career was far from over. He was again elected to Congress in 1872, and was r e-elected in 1874, 1876 and 1884. As a result, Rose was to experience a broadening of social and cultural horizons that would have been inconceivable had her father remained a small-town lawyer in rural Illinois. At some point in the Congressional term to which he was elected in 1876, John R. brought Rose and Emma, her older sister, with him to Washington D.C., where they enrolled in the Academy of the Visitation. The Academy, located in Georgetown a few miles west of the Capitol, conducted its clas ses in a new three-story building rebuilt in 1873. Rose met students from different parts of the country and studied literature, history, science, art, music and languages -- French and German. She was a fine student, winning prizes in French, rhetoric and music and graduating as valedictorian in June 1879 not long after her father's fourth term in Congress expired.

Rose's valedictory poem, printed by the Academy, hints in conventional tones at the breadth of her frien dships and studies. After refer-

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ring to the lovely oaks on the school grounds and the "dear old Convent wall" and "hallowed chapel," she continued:

Yet what are these, but charms that call to mind
The faithful friends long in our hearts enshrined?
Soon, some will roam mid Southern orange bloom;
Some hear the surging of Atlantic's tide;
Others mid Western prairies' sweet p erfume
Or in the ice-bound Northern climes abide.

Here have we pored with her o'er History's page,
Roamed hand in hand through favored walks of Art.
And worshiped all that Science can impart;
Here soared on high with Albion's poe t-sage,--
With honored scions of Columbia's tree,--
And viewed with pride our nation's jubilee.

Following her graduation, Rose re-entered the Academy for a post-graduate course. But her stay in Washington was soon to be at an end, and by late 1879, at the age of 21, she found herself back in the small central Illinois town w ith her family.

For the next five years--the first half of the decade of the eighties--Rose contented herself with her literary interests, her music, her family and her church. An amateur poet, she was a member of the Twe nty Club, a literary club in Sullivan that had for its purpose "improvement and social culture." She was a fine amateur pianist and gave piano lessons to local children. And she was a devout member of the Sullivan Christian Church, which provided socia l opportunities as well as religious instruction. But despite occasional suitors, Rose avoided serious romantic entanglements. The years passed and Rose moved beyond the age at which most of her contemporaries had found their life's partners. Probably there were few young men in rural central Illinois who shared her literary interests or her passion for music.

Ivory Martin was one of the few in Sullivan who could hold his own with her on literary ground.

Born on November 7, 1859, he was named John Ivory -- the "John" after his father and grandfather, and the "Ivory" after a family friend. He explained later that most of his friends called him "Ivory," so when he was 19 years old, he simply began writing his name "Ivory J."

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Ivory--also known as I.J.--was the fourth child of his parents, John Neely and Rachel Elvina Martin, but the first three had died in infancy. Two other younger children survived to adulthood: a brother, Joel Kester, and a sister, Nancy. Ivory's family lived in the rural settlement once known as Whitley Point, about ten miles southeast of Sullivan, in the southeast corner of Moul trie County. His father was a farmer and carpenter, and had built the one-room house in which they lived. When Ivory was born his father, John Neely, had 20 acres of land where the family's house was located; later he managed to accumulate a total of 1 40 acres, enough for a small farm. During Ivory's childhood, his father worked as a carpenter--sometimes acting as a contractor on small jobs, and at others working for wages. He also raised sheep, which he usually sold for about $2 each. During much o f the 1870's, John Neely supported his family by cutting down trees in the Whitley Creek timber and making railroad ties and timbers used to build houses and barns. During that period he was also several times elected Justice of the Peace.

Ivory's parents were both devout Baptists and were loyal members of the nearby Lynn Creek Church, which had been founded in 1829 by William Harvey Martin, a brother of Ivory's great-grandfather. Ivory's sister, Nancy, later wrote , "I was born on a Baptist bed, fed from an Association table, lived by the Bible, and was taught to abide by its rules. My parents lived their religion." Neither parent had more than a few years of common school during the winter months at a nearby log school. However, despite his lack of schooling, John Neely liked to read. According to Ivory, during the last two years of his father's life, when he was in his late 80's, he read "carefully and attentively a six volume copy of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."

Ivory received the usual smattering of country school education--occasional summer school terms in a nearby one-room school from the age of seven to nine, and fall and winter terms after that (commencing after the autumn farm work was concluded). During this period he was able to read a few serious works of history from his grandfather Martin's library. However, his only formal school study occurred over a two and one-half year period--the school years 1874-75 and 1875-76, and a summer term in 1876. Ivory later described his academic awakening as follows:

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Until my fourteenth year, I had never taken school very seriously. I could write and read fairly well, and had studied the arithmetic text until I knew the simple processes very well. While I neglected school, I had become a steady reader o f books, and I think Mother noticed it. Anyway, just before school began in the fall of 1874, Father asked me what new books I would need for school, and said I might start at the beginning of the term, as they would gather the corn without my help. I was elated and felt like I was starting a new life. I told him I would need a grammar (I had not studied it before), a history, and an advanced geography. We went to town in a day or two and bought them.

Ivory's teachers during 1874-75 and 1875-76 were Polk Rose, "the wisest and, in most things, the best teacher I ever had"--and Gideon A. Edwards, "an excellent teacher," with broader knowledge "especially in history and literature."
< BR> His schooling continued briefly beyond those two years:

Then in the summer of 1876, I attended a six-weeks summer term in Sullivan and had for teachers Mr. Rose, Henry L. Boltwood (the most scholarly man I ever knew), and Eunice J. Bastion [wife of the founder of the Bastion Seminary]--as fine a group of instructors as could be found or wished.

In the fall of 1876, five weeks before Ivory became 17 years old, he began teaching in a primary school in nearby Coles County. As Ivory explained much later:

I passed the teachers' examination in March 1876 and was promised a certificate as soon as I reached my 17th birthday. However, I was offered a contract to teach in a school in Coles County, and neglecting to write my age on the examinatio n paper, I was given a license to teach in that county, and began my first school five weeks before I was seventeen.

Ivory's then six-year old sister, Nancy, later remembered the trauma of his departure:

When he was packing his trunk to move down to his boarding place (a cousin of ours), I felt like we were giving him up for good. I stayed with him until he packed two trunks, one with clothes and one with books and school supplies. Then he took me on his lap and we sat there, neither one speaking until it grew dark. We knew he would be gone before I woke up next morning.

During that first year as a school teacher, 1876-77, Ivory taught at the Wade School in North Okaw, in neighboring Coles County. In

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1877-78 he taught closer to home, at the nearby s mall community of Bruce, in the south part of Moultrie County, and lived with his parents on the family farm near Whitley Creek. During 1878-79 and 1879-80, Ivory taught at a school near Arthur, in the northern part of Moultrie County. In 1880-81 he wa s back at Bruce, closer to home. And from 1881-83 he taught at a school near Loxa, Coles County.17

These seven years (from the age of 16 to 23) of teaching the lower grades in a succession of small country schools while living with neighboring families or at his parents' home must have worn thin, although his teaching left plenty of time for his own reading. Ivory later told his children that with the first money he earned as a teacher, he subscri bed to a set of encyclopedia and read each volume through soon after it arrived so that he could be ready for the next volume. He also used his free time to read widely in English and American literature, especially poetry. During the latter two years of teaching, Ivory was able at the same time to attend Lee's Academy at Loxa, where he took courses offered by Captain Lee, said to be a graduate of West Point. That was the end of his formal schooling. Impatient with the low pay and lack of opportunity for advancement, he decided to make a fresh start.

In 1883 at the age of 23, Ivory moved to nearby Sullivan, the county seat of Moultrie County, to take a job as deputy county clerk under then clerk, Charles Shuman. The county clerk served as clerk of the county court, the judicial arm of the county, as well as clerk of the administrative branch of county government, the board of supervisors. Basically the clerk was responsible for maintaining records used in assessm ent and collection of taxes, vital statistics, licenses, election registers and returns, and bonds. Two years later, after the expiration of his term in the clerk's office, Ivory's career took a new direction when, in 1885, he purchased a one-third int erest in, and became editor and manager of, the local newspaper--the Sullivan Progress, a direct lineal descendant of the Express, whose political editor 26 years earlier had been John R. Eden. Ivory's initial business partner in the newsp aper venture was William W. Eden, a nephew of John R. After a few years, W.W. Eden's interest was transferred to Charles Shuman, Ivory's former employer in the clerk's office.

The Progress in 1885 was a seven-column folio daily newspaper, printed with hand-set type and said to be "a model of typographical

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neatness."20 Its offices were located on the third floor of a commercial building on th e northwest corner of the courthouse square. Unable because of the distance to continue to live with his parents on the farm, Ivory took a room at the Eden House, a three-story brick hotel owned by Joseph E. Eden, brother of John R. The hotel, built fi ve years earlier following a fire which destroyed its predecessor, was located on the west side of the courthouse square on Main Street, near the newspaper office. It had forty sleeping rooms, a dining room (but no bar), and parlors, and was considered to be a fine hotel for a small Illinois town.21

In 1884 John R. Eden had been elected to his fifth term in Congress, his term commencing in the spring of 1885. However, this time he had chosen not to take to Washington either his wife, Roxana, or their 27-year old daughter, Rose. They remained behind, living in the Eden family home on McClellan Street.

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In 1885, when Rose Eden and Ivory Martin commenced their year's courtship, Sullivan was a small country town of somewhat more than 1000 people. It was described in an atlas published ten years earlier,22 as "a flourishing village ... situated near the center of the county, some two and a half miles west of the Okaw." As the county seat, Sullivan was the judicial and administrative heart of the county; and the courthouse square formed the center of the sma ll business district.

The courthouse itself in 1885 was the second such structure, the first having been destroyed by fire in 1864.23 The new building, built in 1865-66, was 50 feet square and 30 feet from the stone foundation to the eaves, with another 38 feet to the top of the dome--making it an imposing structure. The streets surrounding the courthouse were not paved until 1894.

The north side of the town square had once been known as "sod-cor n row"--a series of "groceries" which sold liquor by the drink. Ivory later remembered that,

Most of the quarrels along this row were settled by the disputants
themselves in 'fair fights.' There were at first no licensed saloons.
Whiskey was sold at the groceries. 24

By 1885 sod-corn row had disappeared, thanks in part to the advent of liquor licensing. In its place was a row of structures anchored on the west end of t he block by the Titus Opera House. Built by J.B. Titus in 1871 and located on the second and third stories of the building, the opera house consisted of an auditorium, balcony and box seats, and was said to accommodate 800 people.25 The opera house, considered one of the finest in central Illinois, provided a place for lectures, plays, and musical entertainments put on by traveling companies and local performers. The first floor of the building consisted of a general store. In the second floor corner of the building was located the law office of Eden & Clark, John R.'s. On the third floor of the same building could be found the office of the publishers of the Sullivan Progress.

At the east end of the block was the two-story brick Lewis building, the former home of the Earp Saloon,26 but now home to the City Book Store, managed by John P. Lilly, and also the Frederick photo-

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graph gallery. Dr. Lewis, one of several local physicians, kept his office in the bookshop and also sold a small stock of medicines and drugs. Other businesses located on the north side of the square included Andrews' "merchant tailo r" store, Spitler & Son's merchandise store, Ansbacher's bargain clothes, and Pike's jewelry shop.

A town pump, equipped with watering troughs for the horses, was located at the northwest corner of the square (opposit e a saloon where their owners could obtain their own liquid refreshment.

On the west side of the square, as already noted, was the Eden House. Also on the west side could be found retail dealers in dry goods, clothing, gr oceries and produce, and also the office of attorney Alvin Greene. On the south side were the Elder and Smyser business buildings, the three-story Corbin building housing the Corbin furniture story and coffin business, and Millican & Norvall, "deal ers in staples and fancy groceries, glass and queensware."27

And on the east side were a meat market, harness shop, Matt Layman's cobbler shop, the Brosam Brothers' bakery (where candy, tobacco and ice cream could also be purchased), McClure's grocery, Sona's marble shop (sellers of grave m arkers), and a hardware store. Above the latter could be found Mouser's law office. The post office was located a few store fronts east of the southeast corner of the square. Letters handled by the post office were not delivered to residences or office s, but were instead left in boxes at the post office to be picked up by the addressees. Alternatively, letter writers could pay local boys to provide messenger service for home or office delivery.

Although the streets we re unpaved and the sidewalks made of boards, the town did not lack improvements. In 1885, the new Mayor, William H. Shinn, planned and built a system of street lights--gasoline lamps on posts along each street leading from the courthouse--financed by s aloon license fees. "Each evening a policeman would make the rounds to light the lamps, and in the morning a similar trip was made to extinguish the lights."28 The City Police Department was likewise established in 1885.29

A little over a mile west of the courthouse were the depots for the two railroads serving Sullivan in 1885--the east-west Decatur, Sullivan, and Mattoon (later part of the Illinois Central), and the north- south Chicago and Paducah (later known as the Wabash, which would become part of the Norfolk & Western).

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Two blocks east of the courthouse was the First Christian Church, the church attended by Roxana Eden and her children. (John R. never joined the church.) With about 150 members it was one of the largest churches in town. Built in 1853, the one-room frame structure had two separate front entrances. The men entered on the right and sat in pews on the right side of the church; women entered and sat on the left. Married couples separated as they entered the church and sat separatel y during the service. When a small organ was added, the church lost several of its long-time members.30

Several of these places figure in the lives and correspondence of Rose Eden and Ivory Martin during their courtship year 1885-86.

During the spring of 1886, Rose's father--John R. Eden--was in a serious fight for the Democratic congressional nomination. After serving one term in the early 1860's and three terms d uring the 1870's, Eden had been reelected to a fifth term in the election of 1884, succeeding Judge Samuel W. Moulton, who had served two terms and decided not to stand for reelection in 1884. In that year, Eden defeated fellow Democrats Jesse Phillips of Montgomery County and State Senator Yancy of Macoupin County for the nomination, and then beat the Republican, H.J. Hamilin, in the general election.

In 1886 Judge Moulton decided to run again. Other Democratic candida tes were Judge Edward Lane of Montgomery County, State Senator Yancy of Macoupin, and State Senator Rhinehart from Effingham. Eden had the support of Moultrie and Fayette Counties, and was the second choice of the convention delegates from Montgomery a nd Macoupin. The Shelby County delegates were for Moulton, and Effingham was for Rhinehart. The strongest candidates were Eden and Lane. The outcome depended on the delegates from Montgomery County, whose delegation chairman was the Judge Phillips whom Eden had defeated two years earlier. Despite Eden's support within the delegation, Judge Phillips held no conference or consultation, but voted all the county's votes for Lane, who thus prevailed in the Democratic convention. Eden later gave him his f ull support in the general election. Lane was elected and served four terms in Congress.31

Rose's father experienced this defeat in his last campaign a few days before the marriage of Rose and Ivory , on June 30, 1886.

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