REV. R. C. DUNN AND
FAMILY.
Dr. Charles C. Dunn, was
a native of England, but emigrated to America in early manhood,
and settled in Augusta, Georgia, where he was married to Miss
Reljecca Moore, and where their five children— Columbia
A., (Mrs. Tillson), Augustus A., Richard C., William E., and
Caroline K., Mrs. O. H. Smith) were born.
Mrs. Rebecca Dunn was of Puritan descent, though
born and reared at the south, and when after a few years of
married life, she found herself a widow, with her live small
children dependent in a great measure upon her efforts for
support, and looking to her for guidance and control, she
courageously took up her burden, and from that time, lived a
life of self-sacrifice and devotion to her family.
In the summer of 1831, she removed the family to
Cincinnati, to join an only brother, Augustus Moore Esq.,
who had preceded them a year or two, and whoever showed himself
a true brother in all her difficulties.
Their aim in coming north was to remove their families
from the influence of slavery, under which they felt it would be
impossible to rear them properly.
In Cincinnati they resided on a farm near the city,
belonging to Mr. Moore, which was also the summer
residence of his family. Here the children enjoyed some
advantages of education and society, and attended the second
Presbyterian church, under the pastorate of the late Dr.
Lyman Beecher, with which church several of them united.
But the growing boys needed more room.
Such an opening the fair prairies seemed to offer, and in the
spring of 1836, Augustus, then only eighteen, came into
township 12, 5, then a part of Knox, but now West Jersey
township, in Stark county Illinois, and entered a hundred acres
of land, three miles south of the village, which then consisted
of two or three log cabins, and the family used often,
laughingly to remark, that they resided three miles from where.
After arranging for the erection of a log cabin, he
returned for the family, which arrived in September of the same
year, moving from Cincinnati with all their effects, in two
covered wagons.
The hardships and privations of a pioneer life, at that
early period were formidable, even when there was the strong arm
of manhood to combat them; what must they have been to this
family of women and boys? Mrs. Dunn's
resolution and courage in this, entitles her to rank as a
pioneer woman of Stark county, and shows her a worthy daughter
of our patron saint, Mollie Stark of revolutionary
memory, Alas! there are no Washingtons now to recognize and
reward such merits. Each of the family went to work with a
will, at whatever they had strength or ability to perform.
One of the daughters taught school, taking her pay of $1.50 per
week, in such articles as her patrons could share and the family
could use—stocking yarn and flannel, meat, flour and dried
fruit, the latter article brought all the way from their former
residences in Ohio or New Jersey, and brought out only on
special occasion—any and everything except money; while the
younger daughter turned her attention to the outer adornment of
the heads of the mothers, bleaching and retrimming their paper
bonnets and occasionally swimming her horse across the swollen
river, in her millinery excursions.
The brothers commenced improving their land, but with
the inexperience of boys, and the lack of any remunerative
market, they succeeded in doing a vast amount of hard work,
which never brought them the looked for return. Says one
of them: "Our ten years of farm life was a failure!" Not
so when the crop produced ripened out, in after years, into men,
hardened by toil, and schooled in poverty and self reliance to
accomplish such results in shaping and moulding society in its
formative state, laying broad and deep the foundations of
intelligence, temperance, liberty and religion. "Those who are
to help the perplexed and toiling men of their times, must first
go down into the conflict themselves."
Augustus married young, and on the organization of the
county in 1839, was elected the first sheriff, though lacking a
few days of his majority at the time of the election.
Subsequently he studied medicine, and settled in Cambridge,
Henry county, where he took an active part in public and social
life, and met with marked successed in his profession.
At the commencement of the rebellion he enlisted and
was elected captain of company D, 112th regiment of Illinois
volunteers. He had a portion of his left hand shot off in
a skirmish at Kelley's Ford, Tennessee; was afterwards in the
battle of Franklin, struck in the forehead by a fragment of a
shell, breaking the frontal bone, which wound resulted in his
death four years afterwards, on the 2nd day of March, 1869, aged
fifty-one.
He had removed to Chicago at the close of the war, but
his remains were interred at Cambridge, which had long been his
place of residence. Thus closed the life of one of our
brave and loyal soldiers, and a noble generous man.
Richard Chapman, was about sixteen at the
time of their removal to this county. His early
educational advantages had been slight and desultory. At
first we find him in a little school in Augusta, Georgia, taught
by his mother, to eke out their scanty support.
He early developed that love for work which marked all
his future course, and which was the secret of his success.
At the commencement of the rebellion he enlisted and
was elected captain of company D, 112th regiment of Illinois
volunteers. He had a portion of his left hand shot off in
a skirmish at Kelley's Ford, Tennessee; was afterwards in the
battle of Franklin, struck in the forehead by a fragment of a
shell, breaking the frontal bone, which wound resulted in his
death four years afterwards, on the 2nd day of March, 1869, aged
fifty-one.
He had removed to Chicago at the close of the war, but
his remains were interred at Cambridge, which had long been his
place of residence. Thus closed the life of one of our
brave and loyal soldiers, and a noble generous man.
Richard Chapman, was about sixteen at the
time of their removal to this county. His early
educational advantages had been slight and desultory. At
first we find him in a little school in Augusta, Georgia,
taught: by his mother, to eke out their scanty support.
He early developed that love for work which marked all
his future course, and which was the secret of his success.
After acquiring some of the rudiments of learning, we
find him imparting them to their house servants; often, for the
sake of secrecy, as it was a penal offence, going under the
house, which was, southern fashion, set on stilts; and this he
looked back upon as one of the proudest acts of his life, even
when he had taken a prominent part in educational matters, both
in the county matters, both in the county and state. In
Cincinnati he attended a few terms in log school houses, but
with little promise of his future scholarship; bit he enjoyed
the pleasures of boy life, roaming the woods, hunting, trapping
and swimming, while his zeal for work developed into a passion
for gardening, which remained with him through life. Indeed his
love for the beautiful, both in nature and art, was always a
source of exquisite pleasure, while disorder and lack of harmony
were sources of torture.
After the removal to Illinois, his days were full of hard
work, but the evening spelling schools and debating societies
which he assiduously attended, gave him the elementary drill in
language and its use, in which he became a critical scholar, and
with the few books to which he had access, were all his
advantages, until 1840, when he spent a year at the academy at
Galesburg, working for his board and tuition.
This Was followed by a year or two of farm work, during
which every leisure moment was devoted to study, and when a new
frame house was to take the place of the log cabin, rising
before light in the long days of summer, to dig the cellar, and
after light proceeding to the harvest field, and doing his day's
work.
In the summer of 1843, he entered college, working his
way through, with but little assistance from friends, and often
walking across the bleak prairies to visit his home.
In 1847, he was one of the three which formed the
second class graduated by Knox College, and in 1850 received the
degree of master of arts.
It was on the 10th of May, 1847, that Mrs. Rebecca
Dunn, having removed to Galesburg that she might make a home
for those of her children who were studying there, passed to her
rest, leaving a memory ever cherished by her family with the
most sacred reverence and affection.
For several years, after closing his college course,
Mr. Dunn traveled and taught, and in the routine of the
school room acquired that practical knowledge of educational
matters of which Stark county subsequently reaped the advantage.
Oct. 31, 1850, after an acquaintance of a year in the school
room, he was united in marriage with Miss Sarah A. Marvin,
who shared his fortunes and his cares through the remainder of
his life.
Mr. Dunn had decided on the profession of law,
and had made considerable progress in his preparation, when his
attention was called to his duty to engage in the ministry, and
laying aside his ambitions and aspirations in that direction, he
gave himself to his Master's service in a whole souled
consecration.
Untempted by dazzling openings which were presented,
even after he had commenced his studies in the Union Theological
Seminary of New York, which he entered three weeks after his
marriage, and relinquishing all his anticipations of a home for
three years, he lived over again the self-denials and struggles
of his college life.
His ministerial life opened with a pleasant year of
labor in western New York, but with several urgent openings for
labor at the east, his heart longed for the west. It had
been the center of all his hopes and plans, and thither he
resolutely turned his face.
After filling the pulpit of the Congregational church
of Peoria for three months, there followed a period too painful
to be recalled, only as it gave a coloring to all his future
life, and furnishes a key to explain what has been misunderstood
by many. A period of candidature, in which for months
every door of labor, however humble was closed against him, his
way wholly hedged up, and his beloved west rejecting him.
This produced serious doubts as to his call to the ministry, a
morbid sensitiveness as to the acceptability of his labors, and
an unwavering determination never to be placed in such straits
again; and while there was no drawing back on his part from the
service of the church, it led to a more full consecration of all
his talents in the service of his blaster, in whatever way he
might be used; looking directly to the leadings of Providence
for work and wages, and doing with his might, what his hands
found to do.
It was at this juncture, that the Rev. S G. Wright,
of Toulon, who had been his pastor in the earlier times, and
ever after a warm friend, decided to leave his charge for a
year, and take an agency from the Illinois Home Missionary
Society, and transferred his field of labor to Mr.
Dunn, and in January, 1855, he again became a citizen of
Stark county.
While his position as pastor of a church made large
drafts upon his time and strength, both in pulpit preparations
and pastoral visiting, being most of the time the only minister
of that denomination in the county, his field extended over its
whole area, and he generally had at least one out post, at which
he had regular appointments.
The inhabitants, either in settlement or immigration,
were but very few of Congregational preferences, and the church
has always taken radical grounds in all matters of reform, yet
steady progress marked its growth, and at the close of the
twelve years labors, he felt that he could congratulate them on
their prosperity. But he never forgot that he was a man, a
citizen and a neighbor. In his own words: "I felt that I
was not only a member of the Congregational church, and its
pastor, but a member of the community, and interested in all its
interests, in schools, in trees, in public works, in literary
matters, in moral enterprises, in railroads, in all things."
"My heart, and time, and purse have been drawn out for every
object of charity or of public enterprise;" he could truly
record— "I have spoken to the public in various forms and
addresses several thousands of times. I have canvassed the
county for schools, for temperance, and for the country. I
have gone-to all parts, attending funerals and weddings,
picnics, conventions and meetings of every sort."
Mr. Wright was commissioner of schools when he
passed his work over to Mr. Dunn, and after acting
as deputy for him until the close of the term, he was elected
his successor, which office he held for three terms, six years,
doing a vast amount of labor, visiting schools by day and
lecturing in the evenings, examining teachers, giving counsel to
teachers and school officers, making out reports, &c., con
amore, the compensation never exceeding $200, per annum, and
often less.
He was also trustee of the town corporation, and
president of the board two years. His wide acquaintance in
the county led to his nomination and election to the assembly
for the 80th district, comprising the counties of Peoria and
Stark for the session of 1865. There he was chairman of
the committee on education, and on the special committee to
visit Champaign, with a view to the location of the Industrial
University.
In October, 1866, Governor Oglesby
tendered him a commission as trustee of the hospital for the
insane, the duties of which he faithfully performed until his
death. The same year the republican party in the county
were a unit in striving for his nomination
to the state senate, and about the same time Senator
Yates, in behalf of the collector of the port of New
Orleans, tendered him the position of deputy collector of the
same port, with a salary of $3,000 and perquisites, which he
declined.
After a pastorate of twelve years, Mr. Dunn,
feeling that a change would benefit the church, he resigned the
charge, not without a severe struggle, so firmly had his heart
entwined itself with his life's work, for this was his only
regular pastorate.
After a few months of secular work, receiving a
pressing call from the Congregational church of Oneida, Knox
county, he spent a year of delightful and successful labor with
them, receiving all the encouragement and affection which a
minister could ask, and there, in the prime of his usefulness
and success, "with his harness on," as he had ardently desired,
he was called to receive his crown."Let alt
the ends thou aims at
Be thy Country's, God's and Truths."
A short but severe
attack of spinal menengitis, lasting but a few days, terminated
in his death, May 24th, 1868, and in the forty-seventh year of
his age.
His health began to fail towards the close of his
college course, but during the second year in the seminary,
entirely gave way, and from that time he never saw a well day,
or passed a night of quiet restful sleep. This will seem
impossible to those who have witnessed the amount of work he
performed, or listened to the pleasantries in which he so often
indulged.
Another drawback was his meager and unreliable income,
which always kept him straightened and in debt, with heavy
interest, and yet so averse was he to alluding to his needs, so
promptly were his obligations met, and so liberally did he
respond to all calls upon his purse, that most supposed that his
means were ample, and few dreamed of the Spartan self-denial and
rigid economy he was obliged to practice in his expenses.
His especial gift was in attracting the young, in whom
he took the warmest interest, laboring in every way for their
improvement. The sabbath school was his especial delight.
The following spring, his family, wishing that their
dear departed ones might sleep side by side, removed his remains
to the cemetery in Toulon, and this his third and last coming to
Stark county was not to work, but to rest, in hope of a glorious
resurrection.
Source: Stark County and It's Pioneers - Published 1876
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