2
The Whitley Point
Record Book
The Whitley Point record book, as I shall now call it, is in four parts:
- The Docket Book of three Justices of the Peace--William G. Haydon, Amos Waggoner
and William W. Davis--covering the period June 28, 1834, through April 16, 1850;
- An Estray List, with entries describing stray farm animals found by the settlers
and held for their rightful owners, commencing in June 1837 and continuing into the
mid 1850's;
- The store account book of Amos Waggoner from February 28, 1845, until the business
was sold, June 17, 1846;
- A fragmentary record of mortgages to secure loans, from February 1848 until 1861,
and notes on a few bounties awarded for killing wolves.
As already noted, the record book is entirely handwritten. Although some of it is
not difficult to read or decipher, much is obscure or faded. In order to facilitate
study, the first thing was to prepare a clean typescript. The results have been checked
and proofread, but it is inevitable that errors of misreading or transcription have occurred.*
As I struggled to decipher the record book, I had to adopt certain conventions. The
original spellings, including errors in spelling, have been pres
erved in order to
make the printed text conform to the original. An index has been added for ease of
study. When lines of
* To facilitate research and correction of errors, photocopies of the record book have been placed in the files of the University of Illinois Library at Champaign, and the Moultrie County Historical and Genealogical Society in Sullivan, Illinois.
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text were crossed out in the original, they also have been preserved,
with the editorial note that they had been crossed out.
Names presented particular difficulty. Often the semi-intelligible scrawl of a hurried
frontier justice or clerk can b
e deciphered--or at least intelligent guesses can be
made--particularly as similarities in word patterns or phrases reappear throughout
the record. But scrawled names are much harder to make out. Moreover, many names in the
record were spelled differen
tly in different places--sometimes even on the same page.
This was due, no doubt, to a certain casualness on the part of the writers; but perhaps it was also due to inherent ambiguities in how to record the sounds of names. The
language of the frontier
was evidently more a spoken than a written one; and the
intent of the recordkeepers, after all, was to make sure the person on trial or the
purchaser on credit could later be correctly identified. Thus, the record is of interest in
part for what it sug
gests about the way names and words were pronounced in this frontier
community. In any event, the convention I adopted was to preserve what seem to be
incorrect spellings, even when they differ from spellings elsewhere recorded in the
Combined Histo
ry of 1881, or the U.S. census records, or I.J. Martin's Notes, or
other passages in the record book itself.
In a technical sense, referring to the book as the "Whitley Point" record book is
imprecise. It is, more accurately, a recor
d made by the Justices of the Peace and
a storekeeper who conducted business at Whitley Point. The jurisdiction of the justices
extended throughout their district, and there were at least two districts per county (infra,
at 34). Thus, during the
first nine years of the judicial record (1834-1843), the
Whitley Point justices resolved disputes for a broad section of Shelby County, and
after that (1843-1850) they did the same for residents of the new Moultrie County. When
Sullivan was establishe
d as the new county seat in 1845, the voting precincts were
made coextensive with the two justice districts--Sullivan and "Whitley Creek." (38) Thus,
it is clear that the Whitley district covered more te
rritory than the area immediately
adjacent to Whitley Point, which although the first, was certainly not the only settlement
in the southeastern part of Moultrie County during the 1830's and 1840's.
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Three other small nearby villages were Nelson, about four miles to the north and three
miles west on the Kaskaskia River; Essex, two miles to the south; and Shanghai, about
five miles west of Whitley Point and a quarter mile south of Whitley Creek, near
the earliest Waggoner family settlement. (See Illustration 7, p. 16.)
The first settlers of Nelson--the Purvis family--arrived in what is now East Nelson
Township in 1830 and settled near the Kaskaskia. In 1833, a water-powered saw and
grist mill was built by James and John G. Purvis; and in 1835 the town of "old" Nelson
was laid out by Philip Vadakin near a ford crossing the river, and stores and a blacksmith's
shop were built. However, because of the developers' inability to perfect title to
the land, about 1837 the buildings were moved half a mile east to a new vill
age, "East" Nelson. (39) When Moultrie County was separated from Shelby in 1843, East Nelson served
as the first county seat of Moultrie County for two years until 1845, when the seat
was moved to the n
ewly-surveyed town of Sullivan.
Essex, two miles south of Whitley Point in the northeast quarter of Section 23, had
a later beginning--in 1837--and is linked to a figure who appears frequently in the
Whitley Point justice record. Ebenezer Noyes
was born in Massachusetts in 1807. Moving
west with brief stops in Ohio and Kentucky, he arrived at Whitley Point in 1835 and stayed
at Haydon's tavern, where he met Ann Maria, one of the proprietor's daughters, whom
he married in 1837. Noyes acquired
thousands of acres of central Illinois farmland,
including hundreds of acres south of Whitley Point. By 1836 he had determined that
projected east-west and north-south rail lines would likely cross two miles south
of Whitley Point. He therefore planne
d and platted a new town to be built at that
place and named it Essex, after his home county in Massachusetts. The plat was recorded on
December 4, 1836, in Shelbyville.
Lots were sold in the spring of 1837, and buildings were erected, includi
ng a blacksmith
shop and a store. I.J. Martin later wrote that Noyes had marked out a road with ox
plows from Kickapoo Point near Charleston past Essex to Sand Creek, northeast of
Shelbyville, with markers along the way to attract travelers. (40) When work stopped on
the railroads after the Panic of 1837, work also stopped in
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building the town of
Essex. After the Illinois Central obtained a charter in 1851 and rights to state
land, and it became clear that two railroads would pass through what is now Mattoon (the north-south
Illinois Central and the east-west line then know
n as the Terre Haute, Alton and
St. Louis), Noyes sold his Essex interests and purchased land in Mattoon (founded
in 1855), where he built a fine hotel near where the rail lines crossed and named it the Essex House. (41)
The village of Shanghai west of Whitley Point was established about 1845, and consisted
at an early date of a store, blacksmith shop, and a stopping place on an early north-south
stage coach route. Willis Whitfield was a stor
ekeeper in the 1850's, probably in Shanghai. (42) I.J. Martin remembered the place "as a little town of a half dozen houses and shops." (43)
Not
surprisingly, residents or owners of property in all three villages of Nelson,
Essex and Shanghai appear in the Whitley Point justice docket book.
The original settlers of Nelson--the Purvis family and Philip Vadakin, who laid out
the "old" t
own--and many of the residents and businessmen of the "new" East Nelson
are parties in legal actions brought before the Whitley Point justices.*
The founder of nearby Essex, Ebenezer Noyes, likewise was a party in suits before
the Whitley Point
justices. The Combined History notes that Henson & Linn kept a
store (owned by Noyes) at Essex for a time, and that John Baldwin ran the blacksmith
shop.
* According to the Combined History, the "old" Nelson businessmen included James and John G. Purvis, operators of the saw and grist mill, Philip Vadakin, Dr. Montague, Joseph Rodgers, Samuel Martin, Hugh M. Elder, and A. Richardson.
Jonathan Dazey, who helped lay out the "new" East Nelson, also appears in the docket book, as do other "new" East Nelson businessmen James Elder, Samuel Egbert, Whitney and Morton, Joseph Duncan, Ewing and Prentice, William Snyder, and Felix Landers. (Se
e infra, Index to Whitley Point Record Book.)
Two miles northeast of Nelson was the small village of Juliann, laid out in 1837 by Thomas Purvis (a relative of the Purvis brothers who operated the mill at Nelson) and Albert Killian. Thomas Purvis also operated a mill, and maintained a tavern or inn on
a stage road. By 1875 when the first atlas of Moultrie County appeared, Juliann was gone. (Dixon, G. and Roney, J., "The Juliann Community," Moultrie County Heritage, Vol. V, No. 3, August 1977, pp. 63 66.) Both Thomas Purvis and Albert Killian (a
s well as other Killians) appear in the judicial record. (See infra, Index to Whitley Point Record Book.)
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Joseph Withington, later Mayor of Mattoon, started his career as a clerk in the Henson & Linn store. (44)*
Similarly, many of the farmers living near Shanghai make their appearance in the Whitley
Point justice record.**
Later these early villages died out--as did the business establishments of Whitley
Point. Their demise was due to the establishment of new towns--Sullivan (1845), and
later Mattoon (1855)--and to shifts in transportati
on flows due to new roads and later
railroads.*** As already noted, Essex was gone by the mid-1850's. Shanghai, like the others,
declined as Sullivan grew. It was reported to be a ghost town by the mid-1870's. (4
5)
East Nelson, the first county seat, survived the longest. After the county seat was
shifted to Sullivan in 1845, many of the business establishments in East Nelson moved
to Sullivan, although a small village continued in the old location.
Renamed Farlow
after the brothers who kept the remaining store and blacksmith shop, it declined
still further after Allenville was established in the 1890's. All vestiges disappeared in
the late 1960's when the federal
* Others who bought lots in Essex were Samuel Smysor, George Monson, Peter Kirk, Israel Ellis, Joseph Munson, Daniel Ellington, Joseph Hendricks, Henry S. Apple, and Hiram Radley. Noyes and many other Essex businessmen or investors appear
in the justice record.
After Essex died out in the early 1850's, a new town was started about one mile south of Essex, on the line of the new Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis railroad. A house and store were erected in 1855 by L. Waters, and the town was laid out in 1860 by Sim
eon Ryder and P.C. Huggins. (Combined History, p. 210.) The town was first named Summit because it was at a high point on the rail line. The 1875 Atlas of Moultrie County shows the Whitley Point Post Office as having been moved to the Summi
t rail station (p. 25). Because another Illinois town was also named Summit and to avoid confusion, in late 1881 or early 1882 the town was renamed Gays.
** Those living near Shanghai who appear in the judicial record include many of the early Waggoner settlers, the Edwards family, Daniel Brown, Wright Little, and the Hostetlers. (See infra, Index to Whitley Point Record Book.)
*** The Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis, completed in 1854, passed through Moultrie County south of Whitley Point at Summit (later Gays). The east west Decatur, Sullivan and Mattoon line was completed in 1872. And the north south Chicago and Paducah bran
ch of the Wabash was finished in 1873. (Combined History, pp. 32 33.)
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government established a conservation area around Lake Shelbyville. (46)
The Whitley Point record book which encompasses the judicial and commercial activity
of these several neighboring villag
es is almost--but not quite--written consecutively,
with early entries at the front and later ones at the end. The first part consists
of the docket entries of the justices, with the record of new cases made consecutively.
But each case would typically
contain several entries, covering the period from initiation
to conclusion. Thus, space would be left for subsequent events to be recorded as part of the record of each case.
Within the section recording mortgages, however, the entries themsel
ves bounce around,
with the recorder using whatever blank space in the book was available to enter the
required details.
The Waggoner store account record is organized by customer name, with all entries
for each customer recorded on his or her
account page (or a carryover page). One
might have expected these pages to appear in chronological order, with the storekeeper
starting a new page whenever a new customer came in and purchased on credit. Thus, the first
listed customer, John Martin, m
ade his first credit purchase on March 11, 1845. The
second customer, Daniel Davis, made his first credit purchase on April 19, 1845.
So far so good.
But the fourth listed customer, Andrew Scott, made his first credit purchase on March
16. And
the sixth, John Edwards, made his on March 12. Several pages later, David
Harrison made his first credit purchase on February 28--apparently the first recorded
credit transaction. A fair inference is that the shopkeeper at the outset knew who his
cust
omers would be and assigned them pages in nonalphabetical sequence. Within that
non-pattern, groups of persons with the same family name, thus presumably related,
appeared together. For example, William Baker, Eum Baker, Joseph Baker, David Baker, and J
esse Baker, appear on pages 26 to 28 of the store accounts (infra, pp. 221 222).
At some point the storekeeper then went back to the beginning of the record book--prior
to the justice of the peace docket entries--and created an imperfect alphabet
ical index
for the store accounts.
The Estray Lists--recording the stray animals found by description, location, date,
and appraised value, as well as the name of the
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finder--appear following the store
records even though the earliest estray record, in January 1837, predates the earliest
store record by eight years. Other estray records are written in no particular order,
wherever the recording party could fi
nd a blank page, or even a blank portion of
a page. This meant that the owner of a missing animal, if he wanted to search the
record thoroughly, would have to look through the entire book.
Finally, there are two records of bounties claimed and
awarded for the presentation
of wolf scalps. They appear at the beginning and end of the volume.
Given the contents and form of the record book, we know when it was written, and why.
But who were the three men who wrote it--or wrote in i
t?
The initial entries in the first part of the record, the docket book of the justices,
were made by the tavern-keeper, William G. Haydon, which leads to the first transcription
problem. The manuscript is faintly identified as "William G. Hayd
en's Docket Book" (infra, p. 4); but the first entries in 1834 and those continuing for five years,
until September 1839, are signed by "W.G. Haydon J.P." So many of these signatures
appear, and they appear so clearly to be "Haydon," that I have
adopted that spelling
here (though preserved the other where it appears in the record). The Combined History
spelled the name "Hayden" (72). And the U.S. census for 1860 lists "William G. Hayden"
as a 67-year old gardener living in Sullivan. But I.J. Martin in his Notes spelled
it "Haydon". (48) And the "Haydon Family Bible" (49) spelled
it "Haydon," which should be dispositive.
William G. Haydon was a prominent and versatile man. He was born on March 28, 1793,
and married Elizabeth Long on June 24, 1813. (50) As already note
d, Haydon settled just
south of the first settler, John Whitley. He later bought Whitley's property and
about 1834 built the log structure that served as a tavern and inn. I.J. Martin wrote that
Haydon "bought the entire town at the time the Whitleys moved away." (51) That same
year at the age of 41 he began serving as Justice of the Peace and made his first
entries in the docket book. In addition to being a tavern-keeper and justice, Haydon ran a
s
tore, post-office and school. (52) In one of his last entries as a justice, dated September
11, 1839, Haydon records that certain papers were "returned before me at
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my school house." (53) In 1843, he was one of the first venire of grand jurors in the newly-created Moultrie County. (54)
Haydon had three sons
--John, Ben, and William, Jr.--and seven daughters. One of the
daughters, Harriet, married Daniel Ellington, the first storekeeper. (55) Another married
Ebenezer Noyes, the prominent landowner and found
er of the town of Essex. (56) Although
the store entry section in the last third of the volume commences in February 1845,
by which time Haydon is no longer a justice, there are a couple of fragmentary
notations
of what appear to be earlier store transactions--e.g., in 1837 and 1838 (57)--perhaps
made at a time when Haydon was runnig the store. Later, as already noted, Haydon and
his wife Elizabeth w
ere listed in the 1860 U.S. census as living in Sullivan, with
Haydon's occupation shown as "gardener." He died November 9, 1867, at the age of
74. (58)
Haydon passed on the responsibilities of
Justice of the Peace to Amos Waggoner in
the fall of 1839. With them he passed along his docket book. The passing on of docket
books by retiring justices to their successors seems to have been governed by practice
rather than statute. Abraham Lincoln
explained this in a letter to his friend and political
associate, Henry C. Whitney, an attorney who traveled with him on the judicial circuit
and later wrote an account of their life on the circuit. In his letter of December 18, 1857, Lincoln wrote to W
hitney:
...I know of no express statute or decisions as to what a J.P. upon the expiration
of his term shall do with his docket books, papers, unfinished business &c. but so
far as I know, the practice has been to hand over to the successor, and to cease
t
o do anything further whatever...and I...suppose this is the law. I think the successor may
forthwith do, whatever the retiring J.P. might have done...the view I take I believe
is the common law principle as to retiring officers and their successors, to
which
I remember but one exception, which is the case of Sheriffs and ministerial officers of
that class.
I have not had time to examine this subject fully, but I have great confidence I am right. (59)
On September 11, 1839, Haydon signed as "acting Justice of the Peace"; and on October
3, 1839, Amos Waggoner recorded his first entry as justice (60) and commenced a new
pagination of the docket record.
Waggoner was not quite 35 when he began serving
as justice.
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Amos Waggoner, born in North Carolina October 11, 1804, was one of the earliest settlers,
having arrived with his father Isaac Waggoner in early 1828 and others of the Waggoner clan. (61) His daughter, M
artha, in the passage already quoted later described their log cabin and Amos' abilities as hunter and provider (supra, p. 10). He and his
wife Narcissa Jay had twelve children, six of whom died in infancy.* In 1836, Amos
acquired land six miles west of
the Whitley cabins where he farmed and operated a horse-powered mill. (62) He was described as "a man of good natural ability, though like most
of the early pioneers he was self e
ducated." (63)
In addition to serving as Justice of the Peace, Amos Waggoner was also during 1845-46
the proprietor of the store whose records make up the latter part of the Whitley
Point Record Book. The name "A. Wa
ggoner" appears on the first inside page of the
book. In one of the store entries, for William Scott (64) on June 9, 1846, a balance of $5.911 2
is noted to be "due A. Waggoner." Another store record, a
n entry by a customer, C.
Baker dated June 27, 1845, directs "Mr. Amos Waggoner" to pay Thomas Breen 75 cents.
And other entries in June 1846 appear to indicate that "Amos Waggoner" was selling
out his interest in the store. (65) It is perhaps no accident that Amos' service as
Justice of the Peace also terminates in the spring of 1846--approximately the same
time he ceased to be the proprietor of the store. Nor is it likely a coincidence that in Febr
uary
1846 Amos Waggoner mortgaged several of his horses and other property, evidently
to satisfy creditors. (66)
Later, after his terms as Justice of the Peace and following his short career a
s a
Whitley Point storekeeper, Amos Waggoner and his family moved to Sullivan in 1850,
where he operated a two-story frame hotel on the north side of the court house square.
One of his customers was Abraham Lincoln, who occasionally stayed in the Waggo
ner Hotel
when attending Circuit Court in Sullivan. A versatile worker, Amos also made wagons and operated a wagon repair
* Three sons of Amos and Narcissa--Dr. Edward E., Joseph H., and Frank M.--started The Sullivan Express, the first newspaper published in Sullivan (or Moultrie County), in 1858. Later, the eldest son, Edward E. Waggoner, in 1870 entered the mercant
ile business in Shelbyville with J.J. & W.L. Haydon--two sons of William G. Haydon. Joseph H. Waggoner was Circuit Clerk of Moultrie County for 16 years (Combined History, p. 177).
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shop. (67) After having served several terms as a justice
in Whitley Point, Amos Waggoner became in 1853 an associate justice of the County Court,
a position he held at the time of his death on January 23, 1854. (68)
William W. Davis was the third justice to record judicial business in the docket book,
commencing in early 1848 and continuing until 1861. The U.S. Census of 1850 lists
him as a
42-year old farmer from Kentucky with a wife, Harriet, and nine children.
Except for the census data and a reference in the Combined History to the Davis family
as being one of the early families in the Whitley Point area, we have no other inform
ation
about Justice Davis.
With this summary description of the Whitley Point Record Book and of what is known
about the early justices and the storekeeper who generated the 1845-46 accounts,
it remains to review the substantive material conta
ined in the record book--the contents
of the justices' records, the estray lists, the store accounts, and the mortgage and
miscellaneous remaining entries.
To make sense out of the justice records, however, some familiarity with the structure o
f the civil and criminal justice system in early Illinois may be helpful.
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