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early history





1830-1840



The Early Years



The recorded history of our property began when the U.S. Government began surveying land and selling parcels to the public. Before that time, we know very little about our property, but can speculate that it was probably wooded and possibly visited on occasion by Native Americans.


We know that many of the early settlers from the eastern U.S. came to Stephenson County, Illinois from Pennsylvania. Some staked claims to the land, then bought the land when the U.S. began selling it to private individuals. The earliest records of what occurred on or near our house starts with three men who decided to build a saw mill in the 1830's.



The Davis Mill


Our home is located in Rock Run Township in Stephenson County. As fate would have it, we are within shouting distance of one of the earliest settlements in the township. Although it probably wasn't much of a settlement when constructed, the Davis Mill was an important construction project in the late-1830s. When settlers arrived, most needed wood, and the Davis Mill was the place to get it. The mill was constructed in 1837 by a trio of businessmen named Stackhouse, Carrier, and Albert Flower. The mill appears in several early maps and surveys. According to The History of Stephenson County (M.H. Tilden, 1880), the first birth to the white settlers of Rock Run Township was alleged to have been the child of Albert Flower, born at the saw mill.


With the mill came the need for transportation, and we have seen several maps showing old roads which follow the general path of the current Farm School Road. This road is the northern border of our property, and would have passed by the Davis Mill at Rock Run Creek. If the mill existed today, we could probably see it from our front porch. The roads back then were rough and rustic, based on what we learned from Phillip Kiester's book Stephenson County Roads (1955). In excellent detail, Kiester described how Stephenson County commissioners planned and laid out roads in the 1830s. Most roads linked up the various trade routes, mills, and early settlements of that period. Some of these early roads passed through, or very near, our property.


The Davis Mill was one of four on Rock Run Creek, each appearing on maps at about the same time. With no railroads nearby, the mills were important to the early settlers as they began new lives in the Northwestern Illinois wilderness. The county commissioners focused their efforts on connecting the roads to the mills.



A full map of Stephenson County roads was compiled by Philip Kiester, based on various records available from the 1830s. An excerpt of that map is shown here, in what is now Rock Run Township.


It's not clear in the book if all of these roads were actually constructed. The author's research appears to be based on records of meetings where township commissioners were authorized to plan the roads. In the book, he laments the fact that not all roads were included in surveyor's illustrations of townships and sections.



Davis Mill received its name from Horatio Gates Davis, who purchased the mill shortly after moving here from Pennsylvania. The road linking Davis Mill with Salisbury Mill to the south probably passed through our property. The present-day Farm School Road still maintains some of the shape of the old east-west road through Davis Mill. As Philip Kiester describes in his book, most of these old roads disappeared after the railroads arrived, and after the land was surveyed and divided into townships and square-mile sections. However, certain parts of the old roads were incorporated into today's roads.


When Horatio Davis purchased the saw mill in 1838, he paid $4,000 for what was probably a speculative investment in a developing part of the Midwest. From 1836 to 1853, Stephenson County welcomed 10,000 new residents. All of them needed a place to live, and wood was the most common building material. However, the mill was not operational when Horatio made his investment, as the dam had not yet been constructed. But once completed, the mill became an important business in the community. So much traffic passed by the Davis Mill that in 1841, it became the first regular post office in the township.


The mill's prosperity, however, would end about 20 years after its construction. The first railroad through Rock Run Township arrived in 1857, and with it came abundant supplies of more affordable lumber. The railroad's path missed Davis Mill by about one mile, which spelled the end of the mill's importance for both lumber and postal services.


By then, the land in Stephenson County had been surveyed into townships and sections. On August 19, 1843, surveyor of public lands Silas Reed signed off on the final survey of Rock Run Township. The land was divided mostly into 36-square-mile townships, whose lines had already been surveyed in 1839. The townships were subdivided into square-mile sections in 1843.The original Rock Run Township survey map illustrated many land features, such as ponds, roads, and fields, and also noted the few houses which dotted the countryside then. An excerpt of the 1843 survey of Rock Run Township (below) illustrates Section 27 where we live today.


Although the mill is shown as "Davis Mill" on the survey map, an updated History of Stephenson County (Addison L. Fulwider, 1910) would refer to the mill as "Rock Run Mill". The book indicates that the mill doubled as a post office until 1847, at which time the post office was moved closer to Rock City. Ten years later, the mill's useful life was effectively over.



EXCERPT, 1843 SURVEY OF ROCK RUN TOWNSHIP





Source: Illinois Secretary of State

http://idaillinois.org/digital/collection/IllinoisPlats/id/3534/rec/89





Using U.S. land transfer records, we know that Horatio Davis and his son, John Andrew Davis, purchased land from the U.S. Government in the mid-1840s that now makes up our property. Most of our 15 acres is located on a 40-acre tract purchased by Horatio Davis in 1846. A small portion of our land was part of a 40-acre tract purchased by John Davis in 1847. Both men paid $1.25 per acre. The U.S. Government documented the transfers of land with Land Patents. Using land patent records, shown below is the ownership of Section 27 of Rock Run Township as it was around 1850. The year of each owner's purchase from U.S. Government is noted.



The 1850-ish ownership would have looked like this in Section 27:



Section 27, Rock Run Township, Stephenson County, Illinois



owner name and year(s) of purchase



Horatio Davis patent records:

1) West Half of Northeast Quarter of Section 27

2) Southeast and Northwest Quarters of the Northwest Quarter of Section 27


John Davis patent record:

Northeast Quarter of Northwest Quarter of Section 27



Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management



In total, Horatio Davis bought 560 acres from the U.S. Government in 1847 and 1848, spread across four sections of Rock Run Township. Another of Horatio's sons, Samuel Jefferson Davis, purchased 80 acres in 1849. Along with John’s 40 acres, by 1850 the Davis family owned 680 acres in Rock Run Township.


Back then, land was surveyed into 640-acre square-mile sections, which were further divided into 160-acre quarter sections and 40-acre sixteenth-sections. These original surveyed parcels did not take into account the geography of the land, such as waterways, hills or ridges. And since there were very few roads in our area in the 1840s, the land parcels didn’t reflect roadways. Over time, however, land owners would eventually divide their land into parcels that made more sense for the land’s topography and roads.


For example, the Horatio Davis land where our house sits today would later be divided into a 74-acre parcel with a northern boundary along the jog in Farm School Road. This boundary makes more sense, given that Farm School Road would have cut the corner off the John Davis 40-acre square. Road builders probably chose a diagonal path for Farm School Road to avoid a difficult crossing of Rock Run Creek. It’s not evident in the satellite image, but the creek cuts deeply through the land north of Farm School Road. Both the 1843 surveyor’s map and Phillip Kiester's map show the existence of a road which appears to closely follow the present-day Farm School Road, so maybe the township road builders chose to cross the creek at an already-established ford. Today’s engineers might have stuck to section lines and built a high bridge over the creek, but in the 1800s the road’s path took the easiest route across.



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