Historic Highways of America Volume VIII Part 1

Historic Highways of America.

Vol. 8.

by Archer Butler Hulbert.

PREFACE

This volume treats of five of the early campaigns in the portion of America known as the Mississippi Basin--Clark's campaigns against Kaskaskia and Vincennes in 1778 and 1779; and Harmar's, St. Clair's, and Wayne's campaigns against the northwestern Indians in 1790, 1791, and 1793-94.

Much as has been written concerning Clark's famous march through the "drowned lands of the Wabash," the important question of his route has been untouched, and the story from that standpoint untold. The history of the campaign is here made subservient to a study of the route and to an attempted identification of the various places, and a determination of their present-day names. Four volumes of the Draper Ma.n.u.scripts in the library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin give a vast deal of information on this subject. They are referred to by the library press-mark.

Turning to the study of Harmar's, St. Clair's, and Wayne's routes into the Northwest, the author found a singular lack of detailed description of these campaigns, and determined to combine with the study of the military roadway a comparatively complete sketch of each campaign, making use, in this case as in that of Clark's campaigns, of the Draper Ma.n.u.scripts.

A great debt of thanks is due to Mr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, for a.s.sistance and advice; to Josiah Morrow of Lebanon, Ohio, the author is indebted for help in determining portions of Harmar's route; and to Francis E. Wilson, President of the Greenville Historical Society, many thanks are due for help in questions concerning the pathway of the intrepid leader known to the East as "Mad Anthony" Wayne, but remembered in the West as the "Blacksnake" and the "Whirlwind," because he doubled his track like a blacksnake and swept over his roads like a whirlwind.

A. B. H.

MARIETTA, OHIO, September 14, 1903.

Military Roads of the Mississippi Basin

The Conquest of the Old Northwest

CHAPTER I

THE CLARK ROUTES THROUGH ILLINOIS

On the twenty-fourth of June, 1778, George Rogers Clark, with about one hundred and seventy-five patriot adventurers, left the little pioneer settlement on Corn Island, in the Ohio River, opposite the present site of Louisville, Kentucky, for the conquest of the British posts of Kaskaskia and Vincennes in the "Illinois country."[1]

The boats running day and night, the party reached Clark's first stopping-place, an island in the Ohio near the mouth of the Tennessee River, in four days. Just below this island was the site of old Fort Ma.s.sac--now occupied by Metropolis, Ma.s.sac County, Illinois--built probably by a vanguard from Fort Duquesne, a generation before, when the French clearly foresaw the end of their reign on the upper Ohio.

Here, almost a century before that, was the old trading-station of Juchereau and the mission of Mermet--the subsequent "soul of the mission of Kaskaskia," as Bancroft describes him. The situation was strategic on two accounts: it was a site well out of the reach of the Ohio floods, and it was near the mouths of both the Tennessee and c.u.mberland Rivers--valleys known of old to the Shawanese and Cherokees. As a coign of vantage for traders and missionaries, it had been of commanding importance. It was, likewise, near the Ohio terminus of several old buffalo routes across Illinois, roads which became connecting links between Kaskaskia, on the river bearing that name near the Mississippi, and the mission at Fort Ma.s.sac. The old paths of the buffalo, long known as hunting traces, offered the traveler from the Ohio to the old-time metropolis of Illinois a short-cut by land, saving thrice the distance by water, and obviated stemming the swift tides of the Mississippi. One of the princ.i.p.al backbones of Illinois was threaded by these primeval routes, and high ground between the vast cypress swamps and mist-crowned drowned lands of Illinois was a boon to any traveler, especially that first traveler, the bison. This high ground ran between Kaskaskia and Shawneetown, on the Ohio River, the course becoming later a famous state highway. Its earliest name was the "Kaskaskia Trace."

Clark's spies, sent out to Illinois a year before, undoubtedly advised him to land at Fort Ma.s.sac and, gaining from there this famous highway, to pursue it to Kaskaskia. His plan of surprising the British post necessitated his pursuing unexpected courses. It was well known that the British watched the Mississippi well; therefore he chose the land route.

Here, at the mouth of the Tennessee, his men brought in a canoe full of white traders who had recently been in Kaskaskia; certain of these were engaged to guide Clark thither. The party dropped down to Ma.s.sac Creek, which enters the Ohio just above the site of the old fort, and in that inlet secreted their flat-boats ready to begin their intrepid march of one hundred and twenty miles across country.[2]

As this little company of eight or nine score adventurers drew around their fires on Ma.s.sac Creek, they little dreamed, we may be sure, of the fame they were to gain from this plucky excursion into the prairies of Illinois. It was impossible for them to lift their eyes above the commonplaces of the journey and the possibilities of the coming encounter, and see in true perspective what the capture of Illinois meant to poor Kentucky. It is not less difficult for us to turn our eyes from these general results, which were so brilliant, and get a clear insight into the commonplaces of this memorable little campaign--to hear the talk of the tired men about the fires as they cleaned the heavy clods of mud from shoes and moccasins, examined their guns, viewed the night, and then talked softly of the possibilities of the morrow, and dreamed, in the ruddy firelight, of those at home. Of all companies of famous campaigners on the Indian trails of America, this company was the smallest and the most picturesque. Clark had but little over half the force which Washington commanded at Fort Necessity in 1754.

Little Ma.s.sac Creek is eleven miles in length but drains seventy square miles of territory. This fact is a significant description of the nature of the northern and central portions of Ma.s.sac County. From the Cache River a string of lakes extends in a southeast and then northeast direction to Big Bay River, varying in width from one to four miles; around the lakes lies a much greater area of cypress swamps and treacherous "sloughs" altogether impa.s.sable. The water of these lakes drains sometimes into the Cache and at other times into the Big Bay--depending upon the stage of water in the Ohio.[3]

There were three routes from Fort Ma.s.sac toward Kaskaskia; one, which may well be called the Moccasin Gap route, circled to the eastward to get around the lakes and swamps of Ma.s.sac County; it pa.s.sed eastward into Pope County, where it struck the Kaskaskia-Shawneetown highway.

This route ran two and one-half miles west of Golconda, Pope County, and on to Sulphur or Round Spring. From thence through Moccasin Gap, section 3, township 12, range 4E, Johnson County; thence it ran directly for the prairie country to the northward. As noted, this route merged into the famous old Kaskaskia and Shawneetown route across Illinois--what was known as the Kaskaskia Trace--in Pope County. It was this course which in earliest times had been blazed by the French as the safest common highway between Kaskaskia and the trading and mission station (and later fort) at Ma.s.sac. The trees along the course were marked with the proper number of miles by means of a hot iron, the figures then being painted red. "Such I saw them," records Governor Reynolds, "in 1800. This road made a great curve to the north to avoid the swamps and rough country on the sources of the Cash [Cache] river, and also to obtain the prairie country as soon as possible. This road ... was called the old Ma.s.sac road by the Americans."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKETCH MAP OF PART OF ILLINOIS Showing Routes of George Rogers Clark]

The second route circled the Ma.s.sac County lakes to the westward, cutting in between them and the canyons of the Cache River, near what is familiarly known as Indian Point (section 33, township 13, range 3E, Ma.s.sac County), or one mile south of the northwest corner of Ma.s.sac County; thence, running north of northwest, it crossed the Little Cache (Dutchman's Creek) one and one-half miles north of Forman. Thence the route is up the east side of the Cache and through Buffalo Gap, section 25, township 11, range 2E, Johnson County, to the prairie land beyond.

The third route follows the second through Ma.s.sac County.

It is important to note here that the Illinois of Clark's day--as is partly true now--was composed of three kinds of land: swampy or "drowned" lands, prairie land, and timber land. Being practically a level country, the forests became as prominent landmarks as mountains and hills are in rugged districts. Routes of travel clung to the prairies; and camping-places, if water could be had in the neighborhood, were always chosen on the edge of a forest where wood could be obtained.

Between wood and water, of course the latter was the greater necessity.

The prairie district in Illinois does not extend below Williamson County, and famous Phelps Prairie in that county is the most southern in the state.[4] Both routes from Fort Ma.s.sac made straight, therefore, for Phelps Prairie, in which the town of Bainbridge, Williamson County, now stands. Here the two routes joined again; or, rather, the Buffalo Gap route met, in Phelps Prairie, the Kaskaskia Trace, as the "Old Ma.s.sac Road" had met it in Pope County. The former point of intersection was on the "Brooks place," section 9, township 9, range 2E, Williamson County.[5] The Buffalo Gap route was known as the "middle trail;" the third route northwest from Fort Ma.s.sac pursued this path to a point on the Cache above Indian Point; thence it swung westward, keeping far south of the prairie land, pa.s.sed near Carbondale, Williamson County, and crossed the Big Muddy River at Murphysboro.[6] It was known as the "western trail." Not touching the prairie land, it is plain that the route could be used only in the driest of midsummer weather.

The evidence that Clark's guides took the middle trail is overwhelming; the western trail was too wet and did not touch any prairie--this utterly excludes that route from the list of possibilities. According to Clark's _Memoir_, on the third day out the party reached a prairie where the chief guide became confused; Clark's command to him was to discover and take them into the hunter's road that led from the east into Kaskaskia. There can be no doubt that this "hunter's road" which came from the east was the Kaskaskia-Shawneetown trace, which the Old Ma.s.sac Road joined in Pope County, or that the middle trail was the one which the party had been following; the junction of the middle trail on the Brooks Place, above mentioned, is in Phelps Prairie and about a three days' march from Fort Ma.s.sac. The junction of the trail pa.s.sing from Fort Ma.s.sac eastward of the Ma.s.sac County lakes with the Kaskaskia and Shawneetown trace is not more than a day's march from Fort Ma.s.sac and is not in a prairie. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Clark's brave band stole northward on the middle trace, the Buffalo Gap route. Clark would not have commanded his guide, under pain of death, to find the Kaskaskia Trace if the party had been traversing that trace and had merely missed the way. Every implication is that the Kaskaskia Trace was the goal sought and not yet found.

The first day's march of about eighteen miles was a hard one, pa.s.sing over the winding trail which skirted the southern side of the marshes that flanked the sloughs and lakes of Ma.s.sac County, but finally leading to the bluffs, near the Cache River, where, probably on Indian Point, the first night's camp was pitched.[7]

The first taste of the swamps of Illinois was not discouraging, and on the day after, June 29, the march was resumed. The route today was on the top of the watershed between the Cache River on the left (west) and Dutchman's Creek on the right. Buffalo Gap was pa.s.sed today, a mile south of the present Goreville, Johnson County. Camp was pitched this night, after a twenty-mile march, probably at the spring two miles north of the present Pulley's Mill. The route all day was along the buffalo trail or hunter's road from which Buffalo Gap received its name.[8] This gap, like Moccasin Gap to the eastward, was a famous portal to the prairie country for the bison, Indian, and white man. Two old-time state roads were built through these two gaps.[9]

Pushing forward from the spring near Pulley's Mill on the morning of June 30, the Virginians ere long came into the prairie lands lying in Williamson County. Phelps Prairie was reached first, the path entering the southern portion of the prairie. Here it was that "John Saunders, our princ.i.p.al guide, appeared confused, and we soon discovered that he was totally lost." These Illinois prairies are almost treeless, save near the water courses; the gra.s.s in the old days grew rank and high and one could tell his course only, perhaps, by the stars, if the pathways were obscured. The paths in these prairies are overgrown in the summer time,[10] and it is probable that this is why Clark's guide, attempting to find the Kaskaskia Trace, lost his bearings. The important landmarks in these prairies were the forests which often bounded them and in many instances extended into them. These extremities of the forests were and are still known as "points," and many of them are yet landmarks in Illinois history. A spring beside a point in a prairie made an ideal camping-spot known to half a continent in the olden time.

Clark's campground in Phelps Prairie was, without doubt, at a spring just west of Bainbridge.

Northward from Phelps Prairie two routes ran to Kaskaskia: a wet and a dry route. The one which we may call the highland route led north through Herrin's Prairie and swung around to the Mississippi by heading such streams as Pipestone, Rattlesnake, and Galium, crossing the Big Muddy River at Humphry's Ford, section 30, township 8, range 2E.[11]

This was the dry route, the preferable one the year round. Another shorter course ran northwest and crossed many of the streams which the highland route headed. There can be little doubt that Clark's guides chose this latter course. By Clark's _Memoir_ we know it to have been a dry season, and the shortest, and probably the least traveled, course would best suit his plan of surprising Kaskaskia. The shortness of the time (four days) in which the distance to Kaskaskia was covered from Phelps Prairie almost precludes the possibility of his having used the longer watershed route.

On the first day of July, then, the little army moved from near the present Bainbridge along a well-known trail which crossed Crab Orchard Creek at Greathouse Crossing[12] (section 2, township 9, range 1W)[13]

and the Big Muddy at Marshall's Shoals, section 6, township 9, range 1W, southwest of De Soto, Jackson County.[14] It is possible that camp, on the night of July 1, was pitched at Greathouse Crossing; if so the day's march was not a long one. From the Big Muddy the trail struck to the watershed between the Beaucoup and its tributaries on the north and the tributaries of the Big Muddy on the south, running near the present Lenan in Jackson County. The course now was a watershed route from the Big Muddy to the St. Mary River, and is marked today by the significant names of such high alt.i.tude towns as Shiloh Hill, Teacup k.n.o.b, and Wine Hill. Through these places an ancient highway has coursed from times to which the memory of white men runneth not to the contrary. Water was scarce on the highest grounds, but springs, here and there, were well known, and at one of these, probably near Lenan (section 15, township 8, range 3), the adventurers paused, on the night of September 2, and built their evening fires.[15]

The end was now almost in sight; two days more and the immediate basin of the Mississippi River would be reached, and the success or failure of the daring raid be decided. It can be easily imagined that it was a silent and eager body of men which, on September 3, strode forward over the rolling hills of Randolph County on the old trail. Their excitement must have been intense. The old trail from Lenan entered Randolph County near the center of section 12, township 7, south of range 5W and pa.s.sed over Teacup k.n.o.b in section 5 and near the present Wine Hill P. O.

Pushing on over the hills, the St. Mary River was reached at the site of what became the "Old State Ford," near Welge Station (formerly Bremen Station) on the Wabash, Chester and Western Railroad--section 1, township 7S., range 6W.[16] Here the last camp of the march was pitched on the night of July 3--the "glorious Fourth" was to see the little invading army lying quietly on the outskirts of quaint old Kaskaskia.

From the state ford on the St. Mary, the course was the highland route running near Diamond Cross.[17] Here, on the watershed between the tributaries of the St. Mary and the Kaskaskia, lay the worn Vincennes Trace running northeast from Kaskaskia to the Wabash. It is probable that Clark entered this highway before the Kaskaskia River was reached.[18] And at the end of the journey awaited victory; Governor Rochblave was completely surprised, and Kaskaskia was captured by the perilous feat of actually marching up to it and taking possession of it with the a.s.sumed arrogance of a powerful conqueror.

From the moment Kaskaskia was in Clark's hands he turned his attention to Vincennes, and in July, through the cooperation of the French priest Gibault, the inhabitants were induced to proclaim themselves American subjects and to hoist an American flag. Captain Helm of Clark's little army was posted at Vincennes with a guard, and Helm it was who was captured in the fall by the British Lieutenant-governor Hamilton of Detroit. The latter had pushed his difficult way up the Maumee and down the Wabash to seize the revolted town.[19] Throughout the winter Clark feared a swift advance from Vincennes; and, to save himself from being captured by Hamilton, Clark desperately resolved to capture him. By February 5 a new "grand army," of four companies, possibly one hundred and sixty strong, well-armed, but without tents and horse, save a few packhorses, departed from Kaskaskia on the desperate journey across the swimming prairies and flooded rivers of Illinois for Vincennes.[20] Had one man dropped from the ranks each mile, not one of the one hundred and sixty would have reached the Wabash. Few expeditions in American history have been recounted more than this; it is strange that the route of this immortal little army has never been carefully considered--for the story of the route is almost the whole story of the campaign.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUTCHINS'S SKETCH OF THE WABASH IN 1768, SHOWING TRACE OF THE PATH TO KASKASKIA [_From the original in the British Museum_]]

Crossing the Kaskaskia River February 5, 1779, Clark's army lay three miles from Kaskaskia, for two days, "to tighten belts."[21] It is impossible to determine how much was known of their path onward. To many it had been well known for nearly a century--an old watershed prairie route marked out by the buffalo and followed by missionaries--the Appian Way of Illinois. The difficulty in studying this route, it should be stated at once, arises from the fact that while Kaskaskia was formerly the metropolis of western Illinois, the rise of St. Louis across the Mississippi had the effect of altering previously traveled routes. What has been ever known as the St. Louis Trace, coursing across Illinois from Vincennes to the Mississippi, became in the nineteenth century what the old Kaskaskia Trace had been in the eighteenth century, just as what had been the "Old Ma.s.sac Road" became known as the St. Louis-Shawneetown Road. As a result, the later Kaskaskia travelers followed the St.

Louis Trace--much-traveled, broad, and hard--as far westward as Marion County, and then turned due southwest to Kaskaskia. Therefore it is necessary not to confound the ancient Kaskaskia trace to Vincennes with the later Kaskaskia trace which was identical for some distance with the more northerly St. Louis Trace.[22] At the same time it is easy to err in separating the older and newer routes too widely in the attempt not to confound them. The newer St. Louis Trace runs across from Indiana (Vincennes) to Missouri (St. Louis) through the Illinois counties of Lawrence, Richland, Clay, Marion, Clinton, and St. Clair. The course is practically that of the old Mississippi and Ohio (now the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern) Railway. The route pa.s.sed over the best course between the points, as proved by the railway surveyors and engineers.

But many rivers blocked the way; the first of these from Vincennes was the Embarras--so called, as in the case of many streams, because the great floods left deposits of driftwood which seriously impeded navigation. West of the Embarras came the petulant Little Wabash and the Big Muddy, draining thousands of square miles of swamp and prairie, and, in rainy seasons, uniting and spreading out five miles in width. West of the tributaries of the Little Wabash come those of the Kaskaskia. A few smaller Wabash and Mississippi tributaries, such as the Bonpas and St.

Mary are headed by this trans-Illinois route, but it was not, in one sense, a watershed route, crossing the Embarras, Little Wabash, Fox, Beaucoup, and Kaskaskia and their tributaries.

These streams flow southward. Kaskaskia lay some fifty miles south of St. Louis and the later St. Louis Trace. The route of the more ancient Kaskaskia Trace to Vincennes, therefore, ran some seventy-five miles in a northeast direction; then, turning due east, it ran about one hundred miles to the Wabash. For the first seventy-five miles it was a watershed route, coursing along the highland prairies between Three Mile, Plum, Crooked, Grand Point, and Racc.o.o.n Creeks--all tributaries of the Kaskaskia River--on the west and north, and the heads of the St.

Mary, Beaucoup, and Big Muddy Rivers on the east and south. This backbone line of prairie land runs straight northeast through Randolph and Washington Counties, cutting into corners of Perry, Jefferson, and Marion Counties. But here in Marion County the backbone, which had been accommodatingly trending eastward, turned quickly to the north to avoid the treacherous Little Wabash; at this point the old trace divided into two courses both of which ran to Vincennes. One course, probably that known later as the eastern half of the St. Louis Trace, pa.s.sed through the center of Clay, Richland, and Lawrence Counties, crossing both the Little Wabash and Big Muddy a short distance above their junction, the Embarras near Lawrence, and the Wabash at Vincennes. The other branch of the Kaskaskia Trace pa.s.sed through the northern portion of Wayne, Edwards and Wabash Counties, crossing the Little Wabash and Fox some two miles above their junction, the Bonpas River, near Bonpas, and the Wabash, two miles above St. Francisville. From this ford the route led up the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Wabash about nine miles to Vincennes. By any route, at any time of year, the journey across Illinois was a hardship no thinking man would undergo, save only on the most important mission; in the winter season--with the Wabash a surging sea, the Little Wabash a running lake, Crooked Creek treacherously straight, water frozen on the prairies, the "points" of timber swampy mora.s.ses--all communication landward was cut off, with the beavers and blue racers swimming for the high ground.

In their right mind, Clark's adventurers would probably not have faced the wilderness into which they strode on the morning of February 7 on any private affair of life or death. Two magnetic influences drew them on; these Americans had brought to Illinois the spirit of 1775, a breath of a boasted freedom that was half license, in which the hot-headed French exulted. Believing the Americophobite British, the inhabitants of Kaskaskia had feared the barbarian Virginians more than any savages; Clark made capital of this in securing Kaskaskia, and later, by the kindness with which he treated the inhabitants and the freedom he gave them, accomplished a moral victory as sweeping and as picturesque as his military achievement. The proposed plan to carry to reconquered Vincennes the blessings of liberty enjoyed at Kaskaskia under Virginian rule appealed strongly to the impressionable _habitants_; to Clark's own patriot soldiers the Vincennes campaign was the very acme of frontier adventure. Again, the young, daring Clark--quiet, resourceful, irrepressible--was a potent factor in pushing these men out on a journey of such unparalleled hardship. True, it is difficult to look beyond the later George Rogers Clark, of soiled reputation, to the cool, brave youth of twenty-seven years who led these men through the prairies of Illinois in 1779. To dim the brilliant l.u.s.tre of such days as these was a heavy--if not the heaviest--price to pay for indiscretions of later years. Yet, as the records of this handful of men are studied, and especially when the track of their memorable march is picked out and followed, one can fancy the clear, bright picture of the Clark of 1779 and, happily, believe for the moment that there is no connection between him and the later Clark whom the Spaniards knew. It is plain that the French were charmed by the dashing Virginian and his Vincennes chimera.

The record Clark left of the expedition--written ere the gra.s.shopper was a burden or those were darkened who stood at the windows--clearly implies that the expedition was launched with a levity that it is sure all did not feel, though it may have been perfectly a.s.sumed; and as the days pa.s.sed we shall see that Clark hurried on in order to get his men too far to turn back. His diplomatic endeavors, throughout those marvelous fifteen days, to lure his men on, to lift their thoughts from their sufferings and incite them to their almost superhuman tasks, are perhaps without parallel in the history of marching armies in America.

Departing from the two days' camping-place, three miles from Kaskaskia, the course, for almost the entire first day, lay through thick forests, which have quite disappeared since that time, on the watershed between the Kaskaskia tributaries on the northwest and those of the St. Mary on the southeast.[23] Fortunately the journey at the outset was comparatively easy; the weather was warm for the season, though rainy. A good march was made on the seventh through the forests and out into Lively Prairie, half a mile northeast of Salem, Randolph County, where the course of the old trail is well known. Beyond this, Flat Prairie opened the way toward the "Great Rib," as the French knew the ridge in Grand Cote Prairie (_La Prairie de la Grande Cote_) on which the present village of Coultersville, Randolph County, stands. The first night's camp was pitched probably in Flat Prairie, between Salem and Coultersville.[24] The authoritative record for this day's march, as of all others, is the official Bowman's _Journal_:[25] "Made a good march for about nine hours; the road very bad, with mud and water. Pitched our camp in a square, baggage in the middle, every company to guard their own squares." On the eighth the record continues: "Marched early through the waters, which we now began to meet in those large and level plains, where, from the flatness of the country, [water] rests a considerable time before it drains off; notwithstanding which, our men were in great spirits, though much fatigued." By the eighth it would seem the little band had reached the lower plains in the northwest corner of Perry County, two and a half miles northwest of Swanwick, where the headwaters of the Big Muddy tributary of the Kaskaskia were crossed, and the prairie south of Oakdale, Washington County, at which point Elkhorn Creek was crossed at the famous "Meadow-in-the-Hole" of old French days. This region was also known as _Corne de Cerf_, Elkhorn Prairie, Elkhorn Point and Ayres Point.[26] Prairie, forest, and bottom land were not far apart here. The "Meadow-in-the-Hole" was a singular little meadow, fifty or sixty yards wide, located on a "dry branch" of the Elkhorn and thirty feet lower than the surrounding forests--at what is now Oakdale on the Elkhorn.[27] From the present Oakdale the pathway ran from Elkhorn Prairie through Nashville Prairie, circling half a mile to the north and northeast of Nashville, Washington County. Turning to the east here, it coursed onward to a celebrated "point" of woods called Grand Point, near the present Grand Point Creek, section 32, township 2, south range 1W, two miles and a half northwest of Richview, Washington County.[28] From thence it circled northeast through section 9 in Grand Prairie Township, the extreme northwest township of Jefferson County.[29] The second night's camp may have been pitched on Grand Point Creek, near Richview; and that of the ninth on Racc.o.o.n Creek, near Walnut Point, one mile north of Walnut Hill, Marion County. The old trail from Grand Prairie, Jefferson County, entered Marion County at section 32, Centralia Township, on the old Israel Jennings farm. Walnut Hill was two miles north of due east from the Jennings farm, through which, it may be added in pa.s.sing, ran the later famous St.

Louis-Shawneetown road.[30] Bowman's record for the ninth and tenth reads: "9th. Made another day's march. Fair part of the day. 10th.

Crossed the river of the Pet.i.t Fork upon trees that were felled for that purpose, the water being so high there was no fording it. Still raining and no tents. Encamped near the river. Stormy weather."