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November 2005: When Black Hawk Came to Hampton
Last time we talked about when McNeal and Thompson came to create the place we now call Hampton. How they started a business of selling wood to the steam boats for fuel and how this place got its start as a settlement. Soon other settlers started arriving, one was Rinnah Wells. He was to become well known in the area. Most of the early settlers had started out in New England, and Wells was from Massachusetts. He got here via a trip down the Ohio River with stopovers in Shawneetown and Fairfield, Illinois, finding McNeal who had come from Canada over the Great Lakes, and Thompson, from Kentucky. Rinnah Wells lived in Hampton for a time, then went to the lower county where he was a prominent citizen and involved in many activities including starting the Black Hawk War, but that’s another story.
Rinnah was a typical member of the Wells clan, meaning he had numerous offspring (11 in his case). Some of his kids stayed in Hampton and made great contributions to our town's history. Both McNeal and Thompson married Wells’ daughters. Of the others that lived here the most notable was Lucius. He was an active, ambitious, man and could be designated “Hampton’s Main Man”. For one thing he built a ferry across the river which served our area well with trade across the river. Many of the settlers moving further west also found it useful. The ferry was probably located in the North end of town, near what is now the Forrest Preserve. Wells lived in that area, somewhat more inland in what is today’s Forrest Preserve. There is a bill from Wells in Francis Black’s records. We’ve had a column about it. It deals with some 1850 business Black had that used the ferry. You can read it by going to the Historical Society web site: HamptonHistory.org. I find it interesting that a vestige of the ferry still exists. If you cross the river at that point you’ll find a road that goes up over the Bluff to McCausland or some such place. Anyway, it’s called Wells Ferry Road. An echo from 170 years ago.
Lucius was Hampton’s first school teacher. The area was filling up with New England born settlers, people relatively well educated for the time and with a strong interest in education. He conducted it in his own cablin.
Lucius got into the milling business early on. He built a mill close to the ferry and near his home. It was a water powered mill, and used both for grinding grain and sawing wood (with different machinery for each, of course). They had a large mill wheel and when the mill was to be used they shoved out into the current which turned the wheel and supplied the power. The story is that Wells used the first wood that came from the mill to build himself a house right beside his mill and his ferry. The house, probably built in 1834, still exists. It is the home of Nancy and Roland Bartscher, though it has been remodeled over the years and looks nothing like it did originally. The Bartcher’s gave a section of wall showing the sheeting and 2 x 4’s where the lathe was attatched to the Historical Society where it is on display. The pioneers couldn’t wait to get out of their log cabins and into a real house. This was the first one in Hampton.
We could continue with Lucius Wells and his efforts to help form Rock Island County, including his tenure as the first Supervisor on the first County Board, but the title of this piece referred to Chief Black Hawk so we’ll go to that. Last time we mentioned the tribe of Mesquakie that Pike encountered while looking for the source of the Mississippi When McNeal, Thompson, and the rest got here, that village was still there. Actually, what is now 1st Avenue, Hampton was called the Galena Trail and was the highway between Galena and St Louis. It had been an Indian trail centuries before either of those places existed. In those times when Indians traveled, in cool weather they would cluster around cabins at night, simply because they were warmer. Typically, when the settler came out and saw them he went crazy, running for the musket to protect his family from the bloodthirsty savages. Actually, the Indians had no concept of private property. The Great Spirit had placed the earth here for everyone to use. When the white man built a cabin or a fence and said no one could be near it, that was totally ridiculous. Made no sense at all.
It seems that Henry McNeal was more tolerant than most settlers. He reached some sort of agreement with the Indians, a sort of “If you don’t hassle me, I won’t hassle you” kind of thing. In any case, one day Chief Black Hawk himself came to his cabin and gave him a spoon, carved from and elk horn by Black Hawk himself, as token of his appreciation for McNeal’s treatment of his people. The spoon is in the Museum at Black Hawk State Park. We have a copy of it in Brettun & Black. We don’t know the date of the gift. It had to be between 1828 when McNeal and Thompson arrived and 1832 when they went to war against Black Hawk. In any case the spoon is a symbol of what can happen if people agree to be tolerant.