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McLean County, Illinois
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BIOGRAPHIES
(Source: 
The Good Old Times in McLean County, Illinois
Written by Dr. E. Duis
Publ: Bloomington: The leader Publishing and Printing House
1874

A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
  ALBERT YOUNG PHILLIPS was born April 14, 1812, at Huntsville, Alabama.  His father's name was Glenn Phillips and his mother's name before her marriage was Leah McCord.  Albert Y. Phillips is of Scotch and Irish descent.  Glenn Phillips was a soldier in the war of 1812 and fought at the battle of Horse Shoe Bend under Andrew Jackson against the Creek Indians, and died of hardship, exposure and want of food.
     When Albert Y. Phillips was about fourteen years of age the family moved to Overton County, Tennessee, and there Albert resided until the fall of 1830, when he came to Illinois.  He arrived at Twin Grove, in what is now McLean County, November 8, 1830.  He did very little during the succeeding winter, which was the one of the deep snow, but kept his toes warm in the house as well as possible.
     In April, 1832, the Phillips family went to Indian Grove, which is now in Livingston County, but there alarmed for fear of Indian troubles during the Black Hawk war, and went to White Oka Grove.  The Kickapoo Indians at Indian Grove were quiet during the Black Hawk war, but the whites were suspicious and fearful of them.  This anxiety was increased by the freaks of an Indian, named Turkey, who alarmed the whites by appearing among them with his face painted a blood red color.  But the Kickapoos were friendly, polite and well behaved.  They conducted themselves as gentlemen should.  They attended church and listened to the preaching.  At one time they listened to the exhortations of a Methodist preacher, named Walker, whose sermon was interpreted to them by Peter Cudjoe, who had married an Indian woman.  Mrs. Phillips says she was glad to have the Indian women come to see her, and thought them quite good looking.  They had regular features and would have been considered remarkably fine women, if the copper-colored tan could have been removed from their cheeks.
     In September, 1832, Albert Phillips and his brother, Calvin Marion, and a man named Andrew Barnard, moved to Indian Grove to the old Indian town, which the Kickapoos had abandoned during that fall.  The men started with little to eat, as they expected to be joined by their families and by others on the following day.  But the families were detained and did not come for a week, and the three men were obliged to live during that time on honey and hog potatoes.  These potatoes grew wild on the creek bottoms and along the sloughs.  They were little black things about the size of an egg, and could be boiled or roasted but had a flavor very different from Irish potatoes.  They were tubers, grew from three to six inches apart, and had two or three potatoes to a stem.
     The deer, which had been killed off during the winter of the deep snow, became numerous a few years later, and had a bad habit of eating up the settlers' corn.  They would eat the corn from the cob without tearing off the husk or breaking down the stalks, and the patch would appear a fine field of corn, when a deer was killed, it was very common to tie it to the horse's tail and in this manner have it dragged home.  In the fall of the year the necks of the bucks became as large as their bodies and very hard and gristly.  Mr. Phillips tells of a man, named William Popejoy, who fired at the neck of a dear, which was lying in the grass.  The deer jumped up, looked around and laid down, and Popejoy shot it in the eye and killed it.  He tied it to the tail of his horse, and brought it home, and when it was dressed, the ball was cut from the neck, in which it had only penetrated two inches and was flattened in the gristle.  Mr. Phillips saw this himself.
     The following story, which Mr. Phillips tells of Nicholas Jones is a very remarkable one, but is confirmed by nearly all the settlers in Money Creek timber.  It seems that Nicholas Jones once shot a deer in the neck and stunned it.  He went up to it, and not having a butcher knife, neglected to cut its throat, but tied it to his mare's tail and started home.  When he had gone only a few steps across Money Creek, his mare stopped and Jones felt a decided jerk.  Looking around, he saw that the buck had come to life and was trying to gore the mare with its antlers.  He whipped his horse into a run and went home, but could not stop running for a moment for fear of the deer.  He ran his horse around the wagon, all the time calling to his wife: "Oh, Jane!  fetch the butcher knife, the butcher knife, Jane, quick, the butcher knife!"  At lat the deer's antlers became tangle in the wagon wheel and it was killed.
     Albert Phillips is five feet and ten inches in height, is rather sparely built, is a very industrious man, loves humorous stories and is very hospitable and kind.  He married Margaret Moats, February 17, 1850.  She is the daughter of Jacob and Sarah Moats, of Money Creek timber.  They have had no children.  They married late in life, nevertheless their weeded life has been very happy.  But they advise young men and women to get married early.
† Source:  The Good Old Times in McLean County, Illinois - Written by Dr. E. Duis - Publ: Bloomington: The leader Publishing and Printing House - 1874 - Page 640
  ELIJAH PRIEST was born Sept. 10, 1812, in Muskingum County, Ohio.  His father's name was James Priest, and his mother's maiden name was Hannah Anderson,  James Priest was a great hunter after deer and bear.  On one of his hunting excursions the old gentleman cornered a bear by the root of a tree.  It began hugging his hunting dog, and he killed it by striking it on the head with an axe.  The fat on the ribs was nearly four inches thick, the fattest bear he ever killed.
     Elijah Priest worked in the summer at the business of making charcoal and in the winter he worked in a furnace for melting ore into pig-iron.  This was, indeed, warm work, some warm, that the sweat ran down into his shoes and squirted out at every step he took; indeed, it was so hot, that water was poured on his clothes to prevent them from catching fire.  It was Mr. Priest's duty to clear out the hole in order to draw the melted ore from the furnace into the sand-bed to cool into pig metal.  The hole was stopped with clay, and when the furnace was heated and the iron melted, this clay became as hard as iron, and had to be drilled out.  Mr. Priest drilled it out while from two to four tons of melted iron were in the furnace.  If he allowed a particle to fall into the liquid metal, it would boil up and spit out melted iron, and a piece of clay as large as an egg would blow up the whole mass of metal.  The hands, who worked at the furnace, wore linen, and persons stood near and poured water over them.  Mr. Priest worked first in the Mary Ann furnace in Licking County, Ohio, and next in the town of Zoar, in Tuscarawas County.  The town of Zoar, as well as the furnace, was owned by a German, named Beimoner. This man provided for the entire town.  He employed men to herd the cattle, and women to herd the sheep and geese. Mr. Priest never saw any children in the place.
     On the eleventh of Sept., 1833, the day after he became of age, Mr. Priest married Rebecca Hinthorn, and in June, 1834, he started for the West.  He arrived at Money Creek timber on the west side, where he now lives, on the eighth day of July.  The journey was a warm and dry one, and he suffered greatly for want of water and food.  HE ran out of provisions near Big Grove, then called Pin Hook, now called Urbana.  He made many enquiries, and heard that a certain man had recently two sacks of meal ground at mill. Mr. Priest whished to buy some, and sent a little boy, named Henry Moats, to get it.  Henry came back empty-handed, but reported that the man had a big corn pone on the fire.  Mr. Priest offered to buy some meal, but was refused; then he stood by the fire, where the pone was cooking, and Henry immediately opened the door.  Priest was then about to walk off with the pone; but the man of the house saw that he must give way, and he allowed Priest a peck of meal.  When Mr. Priest arrived at Money Creek, timber, he would have given all he possessed to have been back in Ohio; but it was impossible to get away.  He immediately began farming and worked very hard.  He never bought a sack of four after his arrival here, as he always raised his own.  He was a man of great strength, and made sometimes three hundred rails in one day.
     Mr. Priest has done some hunting, for deer were plenty and easy to kill.  He once found a little fawn as he was out in the timber cutting a tree.  When the tree fell the fawn started from its hiding place and jumped into Mr. Priest's arms.  It was a pretty, spotted little creature, about two weeks old, and he took it home, and it became very tame, and ran all over the neighborhood.  It was distinguished from the wild deer by a tassel around its neck.  It was a doe, and when it grew up, he raised seven deer; but when game grew scarce, they were all killed by hunters.  The doe was killed by Samuel Ogden, who immediately informed Priest that it was done by accident.  But the parties, who killed the other seven, were never discovered. 
     Mr. Priest came to the West a poor man in the borrowed wagon, but has been very industrious, and has succeeded well.  Four years ago he was offered forty-five thousand dollars for his property, but did not consider it for a moment.  His property has been earned by his strong muscle and his good judgment.
     Mrs. Priest died some years ago, and on the eleventh of September, 1870, Mr. Priest married Mrs. Minerva McCurdy.  Her maiden name was Minerva Johnson.
     Mr. Priest
has had seven children, but four died in infancy, and three are now living.  They are:
     Sarah Priest, James Saulsbury Priest
and George Washington Priest.
    Mr. Priest
is about five feet and nine inches in height, and weighs two hundred and thirty pounds.  He is a man of extraordinary strength, and, in his younger days, scarcely knew what it was to be tired.  He has worked during his life without the benefit of an education, for an education would not be obtained where he lived in Ohio.  But in spite of these disadvantages he has been very successful, and owes nothing to anyone, except good will.  He is a very clever man to anyone who is disposed to deal fairly and do right with him; but to anyone who is disposed to cut up shines.  Mr. Priest is a very unpleasant customer.  His memory seems remarkably good, and in conversation he tells of many curious and strange incidents.  He is a man with a very strong constitution, and his temperate habits have preserved it unimpaired.  With his great strength and good health, he ought to live to be a centenarian and celebrate one hundred Fourths of July.
† Source:  The Good Old Times in McLean County, Illinois - Written by Dr. E. Duis - Publ: Bloomington: The leader Publishing and Printing House - 1874 - Page
645

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