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May 2007: Potpourri
The title of this piece means that it is a collection of unrelated topics. They represent what I’ve collected for future columns, but none of them seemed enough for a complete column. So you can regard this month’s column as a spring housecleaning of my files
The Wells family is very significant in the history of Hampton, and also in our personal history since my wife is related to this group. She is also related to the McNeal’s who are credited with being the first Caucasians to live here. We’ve related before how Henry McNeal and Joel Thompson, a couple of rambunctious kids from Galena were the first settlers. They were closely followed by the Wells. The McNeals had come from Canada and followed the Great Lakes to get here, while the Wells families came from Massachusetts and followed the Ohio River pathway to the West, with stopovers in New York, Ohio, Indiana, and southern Illinois, finally landing in Hampton. The four brothers: Rinnah, Joel Sr., Elijah, and Ira, along with sisters Polly and Asenith, settled here around 1828.
One account describes the brothers as being “of a large, athletic, build and broad gauge”. Rinnah settled here and later on the site of present day Moline. Ira settled in Zuma Twp. Elijah moved to Henry County. The brothers all together had 18 or19 kids. Joel had died in Southern Illinois before completing the journey. Sisters Polly and Aseneth had no children of their own, but didn’t need them because they cared for the 7 children of the deceased.
The Wells were noted for civic participation as Postmasters, Justices of the Peace, teachers, township supervisors, etc. They farmed, operated ferries (remember our own Wells Ferry), taught school, ran a hotel, started a sawmill, and helped establish schools and churches. This family has provided a lot of history to our area.
Let us take a new tack in our Potpourri. Go to March 9, 1858. It is a significant date in the history of this area, though I suspect few of you have heard of it. But it was the day the ice almost wiped out our area. It was the spring a monstrous ice jam occurred. With heavy winter freezing and weather that alternately thawed and froze, the jam occurred downstream from Rock Island. Several days before March 9, it started with loud sounds as ice piled up below Rock Island. The river was full of floating ice, some as big as houses. People congregated on the shore. They built bonfires on the shore and watched all night. As the ice piled up downstream, the flooding began. Giant blocks of ice hit buildings so hard their foundations crumbled. Deere & Co and other businesses were damaged. The wagon bridge from Arsenal Island was wiped away by the ice. Soon the ice was piled so high between Rock Island and Davenport neither city could see the other from the opposite shore On the morning of the second day the snapping and snarling of the ice grew louder, then, with a roar heard as far away as Muscatine the gorge broke and tons of water and ice rushed downstream, leaving the area upstream to lick it wounds and repair the damage. Hampton also flooded but nothing like further downstream. Heagy relates how Black’s Store’s basement filled up with water overnight before the breakout.
Didja know we had a Revolutionary War battle fought in our own backyard? It was right here in Rock Island County. (Though there was no Rock Island County back then). Only recently has the story come to light. I doubt if any of the History books have it yet. We’ve all heard about George Rogers Clark and his daring expedition up the Ohio River to capture the British fort at Kaskakskia. It’s one of the most exciting events of the Revolutionary War. That by itself did not complete the job. And that, as Paul Harvey says is the rest of the story.
The Sac & Fox (Mesquakie) Indians had a long trade relationship with the British. Therefore, they became allies. The British, together with the two Indian tribes, joined together for an attack on the settlements around St Louis. Clark beat off the attack but being a man who believed in carrying war to the enemy, ordered Lt Col John Montgomery to pursue the enemy up the Illinois river and the Rock river to destroy Saukenauk, the Main camping ground oft the Sac Montgomery, described by historians as “an Irishman full of fight” set out to carry out the order. He was reinforced by a number of Spaniards (Spain had just declared war on England) and two companies of French settlers from around St Louis. Montgomery was woefully short of supplies. When an appeal was sent to Virginia governor Patrick Henry, his terse reply was: “you need expect no help or supplies from this state”. He didn’t approve of expeditions to punish Indian tribes. Montgomery took the rebuff like a good soldier and proceeded on his way. All the way to Saukenauk. It was not a small battle with some 700 Indian warerooms, men with a good reputation for combat. Montgomery won the battle and burned Saukenauk. For some reason, mention of this did not come to light until recently. In any case, for good or for bad, our area has the distinction of being the site of a Revolutionary War battle.