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BIOGRAPHIES
Source:
Stark County and
It's Pioneers
Publ. Cambridge, Ill.
B. W. Seaton, Prairie Chief Office, Book and Job Printer
1876
AS ALWAYS... Biographies will be transcribed upon
request.
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Transcription
| THE SCOTCH SETTLEMENT AT ELMIRA Source: Stark County
and It's Pioneers - Published 1876 - Page 251 |
| MR. HENRY SEELEY Source: Stark County and It's Pioneers
- Published 1876 - Page 256 |
THE STURMS FAMILY.
This is a very large family. The writer had no
convenient means of ascertaining how many of this name
inhabited, and still do inhabit Stark county. One branch
of this genealogical tree seems to have taken root on LaSalle
Prairie, Peoria county, at an early day. From there (we
think) came Lewis Sturms, among the first names
mentioned in our annals, but who must have left again after a
few years.
In September, 1834, came Matthias Sturms,
or as he was familiarly called "Uncle Tias;" with him,
from the state of Ohio came his wife and ten children, one
son-in-law, Kirkpatrick, and one daughter-in-law, the
wife of my informant, Henry Sturms.
Of these children of Matthias,
we can record but little, save their names. The sons as we
recall them, were Henry, Nicholas, Samuel, Matthias and
Simon. His daughters became Mrs. Kirkpatrick
and Mrs. Peter Pratt.
Henry married a Miss Osborne, whose family
also became residents of the Sturms settlement, and her
father was noted among the first settlers as a successful bee
hunter.
We have elsewhere had occasion to speak of the
characteristics of this Sturms family; their very numbers
rendered them of importance in a new county, and as we
remember them in their prime; they were all stalwart, active
men, of rough exterior but kind at heart.
At the date of our visit to Henry now an old
man, we found him greatly changed. He is in straightened
circumstances, and this misfortune is heightened by the loss of
sight. Confinement to the house in consequence of his
blindness, has robbed him of his early vigor, and he seemed
sadly depressed in spirits, asserting that "he knew nothing that
could be of use to anyone." But as we strove to divert his
thoughts from the sad realities of the present, to recollections
of the past "when he was as well off as his neighbors," memory
seemed to awake once more, and he discoursed freely of the "good
old times."
He spoke of the encampment of Indians at Walnut grove
much as Mr. Seeley had done; thought "he and his
wife had seen five hundred pass their door in a single day; they
were not afraid, had been used to Indians in Ohio, and these
Pottawatomies were friendly to the whites." He told us of
hunting adventures without end, thinks he has killed deer at all
hours from sundown to to sunrise, averaging, at a good season of
the year, thirty a week. "He knew their licks," and
climbing a tree convenient to them, waited their approach and
shot them from his perch. "He would then tie them to the
tail of his horse with ropes carried for the purpose, and haul
them home."
Has dragged in three at a time in this way. To
the youthful reader, tins may sound like a very improbable tale;
our horses would certainly object to such proceedings. But
the Sturms were not the only men who brought their game
home in this fashion, as plenty of witnesses yet living can
testify. They say it required the knack of an experienced
hunter to do it successfully, "there was a great deal in knowing
just how to tie them on." Henry Sturms further
said that one Sunday morning some thirty years ago, as he and a
cousin were walking along the bluffs of Spoon river, he spied in
the water a slightly wounded buck; he immediately sprang upon
his back, jumping from an elevation of about ten feet, and
seizing the animal by the horns " ducked him " till he was
exhausted and breathless, falling an easy prey on the bank.
They considered it "bad luck" to carry fire arms on
Sunday, and on this occasion had in their possession no weapon
larger than a pen knife, so proceeded with great care and
deliberation to dispatch the poor beast with that; and finally
the two men dragged him home (but a short distance) in triumph.
These anecdotes will suffice to show something of the
life they lived, and the metal of which they were made.
This man is among those who think the undergrowth or
thickets with which our woods now abound are of quite recent
growth. He is sure all in the vicinity of Osceola grove,
have sprung up since his time. Grapes, plums and
crab-apples, he says were very scarce when he first saw the
Spoon river county, but wild strawberries were abundant.
It is curious that upon a matter so simple as this,
different opinions should exist, some old settlers protesting
that when they first saw these groves they were entirely clear
of undergrowth, others, as confidently asserting the opposite
state of facts.
Mr. Sturms remembers that in his early
hunting excursions he frequently came upon the remains of
buffalo, thinks they had once ranged through these parts in
large herds, hut had perished during "the winter of the deep
snow," an era we can not date
just now, but it occurred some ten or twelve years before the
settlement of the Spoon river country.
Our informant recalls several valleys containing acres
of land literally covered with the bones of these animals; one
of these lying between his own place and that of Mr.
Searles, in Osceola township. He described
particularly the peculiar construction of the shoulder bones,
which produce the distinctive hump of this species of buffalo,
and we conclude he must have gathered his facts from the
observation of the remains, as it is not supposable he ever
consulted books for such information.
He concludes the buffalo sheltered from the fierceness
of the storm in these narrow wooded valleys, but the snow which
fell to a depth of four feet on the level prairie, would drift
up those gorges and down the hills, and actually bury them
alive, and as the intense cold soon crusted it over, there would
be no escape from starvation. That the deer perished in a
similar manner, about the same time, is a fact well established,
and in this connection it may not be inappropriate to remark
that elk bones were also found by the early settlers.
Dr. Hall remembers a huge skeleton of this animal
that lay on the high prairie towards Providence, and served as a
"land mark" for years—its bones glittering in the sunlight,
could be seen for miles. So Mr. Sturms'
theories are not without collateral support.
Besides the large family of Matthias, senior,
there was another Henry Sturms, brother of the
former, whose children for the most part are residents of Stark
county. Of this family we have even less knowledge.
Peter, a local preacher of the Methodist faith, and a
well to do farmer lives not for from Bradford in a locality
known by the suggestive, but not euphonious appellation of "Hell
street." Possibly his philanthropy led him there, that he
1might beseech of his neighbors to choose better ways. In
conclusion we may say of these families, that although they have
never been prominent in politices or claimed "high places in the
synagogues," yet they have been by no means wanting in religious
fervor.
The cabin of "Uncle Tias" was one of the
first meeting places of the Methodist fraternity, and the
Sturms' school house was remarkable for displays of "the
power" and enthusiasm generally, that would astonish the most
ardent advocate of camp meeting excitement, now-a-days.
But the present generation, the Sturms of
to-day, is quite another being to the Sturms of forty
years ago. They are losing the characteristics of
backwoodsmen, or frontiersmen, and growing just like their
neighbors.
In fact, public schools, equal rights, and Paris
fashions are fast obliterating all differences among our western
people, reducing them to a dead level, or as near that as nature
permits. This may be right and best, but after all, we
rather enjoy contemplating the diversities in the genus homo,
and can hardly see how society would be the gainer by making
people all just alike, if that were possible.
Source: Stark County and It's
Pioneers - Published 1876 - Page 253 |
NOTES:
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