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Please Don't Quote Me

By Caralee Aschenbrenner

I am confused! Family, friends and acquaintances will say, “Nothing new.” For instance, growing up hearing both Cherry Grove and Georgetown sometimes appeared to be two different entities or all one, which? Overlapping? Then, grown up, searching for historical tips in a plat of what I thought to be Georgetown was labeled “Town of Cherry Grove.” Oh, my (part of it seen here). Deeper reading for years and years finds that Cherry Grove preceded Georgetown by twenty some years, Georgetown not emerging until the mid-1850s and then only a part of Cherry Grove (township).

 

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And were they cherry trees? Not plum that named with their pretty blossoms, the Plum River? Confusion as I say. But the Cherry Grove people are among the most interesting and clever in their developing the wilderness.

Legend has it that the earliest of settlers were volunteers who came to the Northwest during the Black Hawk War, liked what they saw and came to back to lay claim to land. They were from the American Bottoms in Southwest Illinois and had been there for several decades, restless, and wanting a new challenge. They were among those pioneers who wanted to live only as close to their neighbors as to see their chimney smoke, if that. Tom Crane is said to be the first, perhaps in 1830, wanting a walkabout, he liked a ridge with a Big Spring near its bottom and a view to the south that was prairie times prairie. Crane’s Run emanated from the spring to the northwest and flowed into the Plum River. Due to the fact that the Native Americans were a little spiteful, he built a fort like those they had in the American Bottoms; an abatis which was logs with their tops and branches chopped to a point and slanted outward to repel climbers. It’s described as only large enough to enclose the cabin (two room with fireplace in between them), and a garden. It lay on the north side of the ridge now the Georgetown Road in Section 25, Freedom Township. A state archeologist with pencil drew a hasty sketch to show just what was the north ridge.

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And to enhance this view of the site Crane’s Fort, the late Russell Poole, Polo, actually stepped off the original survey of the 1st appointed surveyor, Levi Warner’s notes that are listed in the Carroll County History, 1968, page 11. Other incidental clues place it to the east of that now is Harvest Road and west of the residence/barn of 23051 Georgetown Road, the farm of Ray Lower/David Shaulis, their one-time residence.

Courthouse records also show a Big Spring almost an acre in size, but it has long since been drained by tiling and even the run no longer burbles. Think of it, we here in the calm and serene Northwest with a fort in our midst. Adventure. Excitement. Danger. There were reports of local kids digging bullets out of the upright logs but then again it may have been bug nests!

Shortly after the Black Hawk War from which Crane’s Fort was inspired, Crane sold the old house to Samuel Hitt, a businessman somewhat extraordinaire who invested in many projects including Mt. Morris College and other such in Ogle County, set up George Harris hired to manage the blockhouse, reference says (?) it was, and for years it welcomed “newcomers and wayfarers.”

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It’s said Harris didn’t plan to be a “settler” and he was inclined to be a manager staying only a couple years at Crane’s Fort inn, then moving on down the Run and over the hilltop, set up n Plum River’s edge in Section 7, Freedom, with his own stage stop but soon moved to the new county seat and served as postmaster there.

There was much history made at the Fort site there on the east side of the county. Meetings to plan the future were part of it and because it was a stage stop on the Peoria/Galena trail (via Dixon) travelers and tramps found it until about 1846 when the trail bent elsewhere though some traffic remained.

Francis Garner who is said to have filed his claim to land to the east of Crane’s and took up the livery business. He moved north in 1834. That barn was razed a short time ago as time passes but the double-porched residence, an inn, shown here went the way of other humble early landmarks. The Garner family, however, still reside in Lanark probably making them among the longest continual residents of the county. Oh, yes, the Cranes and the Garners were related by marriage. (Sometimes the name is spelled “Crain” which I like the best!).

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Meanwhile, another character of interest was George Swaggart who came from the Bottoms in about 1833 and built a cabin just to the west of Crain. His wife died in 1834 and a burying ground was begun for her, now the Freedom Cemetery, extant in the fields in Section 25. It has been known, too, as the Wolf Cemetery. The late Dorothy Guentner said she had been told that Mrs. Swaggart was buried in the northeast corner of the original plot. Time and neglect have ravaged the site after a hundred seventy-five years. Mrs. Swaggart could gain some notice for being the first in the county to be interred in a cemetery while her husband, George gathered some notoriety by, it is believed, being married five times including divorcing one of them, an unusual thing in the early nineteenth century. Swaggart invested in several early projects including the mill site that became Mt. Carroll and his name was applied to the grove to which he moved after Crain’s neighborhood. Swaggart’s Grove became Arnold’s Grove ever after when he sold out.

The Stover family, of course, were movers and shakers of their time. You’ve heard about them from time to time here; Dan Stover having begun his way to wealth in Lanark with a plow and planter factory but needing a larger employment force, moved to Freeport where by manufacturing windmills, too, that spanned the globe because of their quality, he became famous. Emanuel Stover, it is believed, took over the site that had been the Fort and platted a town as market/depot for the proposed railroad. “Stoverton” didn’t go beyond the drawing board.

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While Harris managed the Fort/inn, a “modern hotel” replaced it higher on the ridge and was quite commodious but with prospective railroads and different stage runs, the “Cherry Grove House” was moved to the new Lanark a couple miles south and was used as a livery barn for the Tabor House hotel.

Emanuel Stover, too, moved to the burgeoning town, buying a healthy size acreage that became an “addition” to Original Town. He promoted all the right projects including moderating the argument that arose over the site of the school.

The railroad company offered a block at the track’s edge to the east of the main north-south street. Opposite that of the city park they’d donated a block west of main (Broad). Besides being too close to the railroad, for safety sake, the city leaders didn’t like certain stipulations in the railroad’s proposal either so Stover offered land in his addition to settle the problem. And maybe, just maybe, give prestige to Stover’s Addition?? The Eastland grade school sets at the site yet today. Emanuel Stover married the country neighbor girl, Sarah Moffett, who’d been born in Carroll County, a mark of honor in the Old Settler’s Association and otherwise.

Her father was Garner Moffett who had a claim to the west of the Fort (1835), living, it is thought, in the cabin building by Swaggart, it’s first owner, until 1846-1848 when an impressive brick house was raised, shown here in its last days. History books say of Moffett, “A man of fair talents and some degree of culture—kindly and genial.” He filled several positions of trust including the state Constitutional Convention of 1848 that was revising the state’s constitution ... “He was always elected by large majorities notwithstanding he was a Democrat.” (?) He died in 1856, however, not yet fifty years of age “respected and regretted by everyone.”

A source gives that he rode throughout the area on horseback, evangelizing, preaching the gospel besides working at the many other deeds for which he was known. He often took little Sarah with him in the saddle, she learning and appreciating the place where they lived and the individual with whom she helped found a town. A town on the prairie when both Stoverton and Georgetown didn’t pan out one as their platters had hoped. Lanark, 1861.

—Next week: GEORGETOWN.

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