Life and Letters of Rev. Aratus Kent Introduction

115^[115]Editorial note: The above is an account of the second trip to Galena by the Rev. Aratus Kent, the first one having been made three years previously. Due to the Indian war in 1832 the church which he had established was closed and he journeyed East where he was united in marriage with Miss Caroline Corning. When the church was reopened Mrs. Kent conducted the primary class of the Sunday school and there are still living members of her class. Among the members of the Kent family were Mrs. Henry Phelps Corwith, long a member of the First church, who was married from the Kent residence and Miss Julia Joy, who died some years ago at Plattsburg, New York. The account of the trip was published in Centenniel Celebration of the First Presbyterian Church of Galena, Galena, 1931. p. 73-76.

116^[116] March 1, 1833.

117^[117] The account of Kent is found in his extensive Jan. 1858 county by county report to the A.H.M.S.. The account appears in the Putnam Co. section.

118^[118]Matson, N.: Reminiscences of Bureau County. Princeton, Il, 1872. p. 93-104. Matson is the only "primary" source for this lurid tale. Frank Stevens retells it in his History of the Black Hawk War, but offers no new sources. The account here is abridged from Matson. Matson gives the following detail on his sources:

"This tragical story came principally through Indian sources, and was unknown to the early settlers of this county. The manner of capturing and executing the victims was narrated to the writer, a few years ago, by two Pottawatomie chiefs, named Half Day and Girty. During the time of the Black Hawk War, a rumor was current among the people, that a man and his wife was lost while traveling from the Mississippi to the Illinois river. Four years after the war, Shaubena told the writer that the Indians had burned a man and woman, whose names were unknown to him. Also, Squire Holly, a well known pioneer, and whose face was familiar to many of the Bureau settlers. Many years ago, a young man named Britt Sample, lived north of Dover, and for some time made his home with James Forristal. Sample said his uncle and aunt disappeared at the commencement of the Black Hawk War, and were thought to have been killed by the Indians.

The writer has spent much time in the investigation of this tragical affair, corresponding with those who would be likely to have some knowledge of the matter, also visiting the place where the friend of the victims were said to have lived, and find the accounts conflictlng. One account says the parents of Mrs. Sample, whose names were May, lived in a hovel, partly dug out of the bluff, on the site of an ancient Indian village, nearly opposite the mouth of Lake Du Page. They had lived in the country but a short time, and at the commencement of the war they boarded a steamboat at Fort Wilburn, and went to Missouri, where they had formerly lived."

119^[119] Matson does not tell us why Girty (see preceeding note) would relate the details of his own participation in these brutal murders.

120^[120] Matson, N.: Memories of Shaubena. Chicago, 1878. p. 194-206

121^[121] Andreas, A.T.: History of Chicago. Chicago, 1884. Vol. I, p. 300.

122^[122] Near present day Bloomingdale.

123^[123] June 2, 1833

124^[124] Quaife, M.: Chciacgo's Highways, Old and New. Chicago, 1923. p. 95-6.

125^[125]Sept. 3, 1833.

126^[126] Kinzie, J. Wau Bun, Chciago, 1932. p. 567.

127^[127] Mazzuchelli, p. 166. "1833 sent there as Missionary the Reverend J. McMahon, an Irishman, who, as the preceding chapter recounts, died nine months after his arrival and was buried in the public cemetery at Galena."

128^[128]Sept. 3, 1833.

129^[129] Oct. 10, 1833.

130^[130] March 21, 1834.

131^[131] Lucien Farnham to Peters, July 1, 1836.

132^[132] Jan. 7, 1834.

133^[133] Probably John T. Mitchell who was Galena”s Methodist Preacher in 1833-35. In 1834 Mitchell was also in charge of the Dubuque Station and he was joined in Galena by Barton Randle. (Kett. p. 501) Late in 1835, probably before Brunson”s arrival, Mitchell was sent to Chicago. [Log Cabins to Steeples, p. 73]. The following anecdote, probably at least partly apocryphal is from Ellsworth, Spencer: Records of Olden Time. Lacon, Ill: Home Journal Steam Printing Establishment, 1880. p., 397-8.

About 1832 or 1833 Mr. Sawyer's father [Jesse Sawyer, an early settler of Hopewell in Marshall Co.] went to Springfield to enter land. A man named Howard kept a sort of tavern at Holland's Grove, near where Washington now stands, and there Mr. S. put up for the night. The landlord was short of beds and he was given a bed-fellow a Methodist minister named Mitchell. After retiring these gentlemen struck up a conversation, in which Mr. Mitchell disclosed his profession, and, the further fact that he was hard up for money. He said if he had $500 he could put it to good use and make it pay him well, and that if he knew where to get it he would pay fair interest for the same. Mr. Sawyer was a man of some means, and had more ready money than he desired to use and though a careful business man he loaned the preacher the required sum, taking his note therefor. After parting with his new friend and thinking the matter over he concluded he had been too precipitate. It was not "business," and the conclusion arrived at was that he had been sold.

He had never seen or heard of Mitchell before, and only knew that his name was such from the man's own statement. Mrs. S., good, careful woman that she was, did not approve his conduct, and more than once expatiated upon the "old man's foolishness" in trusting the unknown preacher with so much money. Time rolled on -one, two, three, four and five years passed, and no account came from Mitchell.

By this time the old lady's fears had become realities, and he gave it np as "a bad speculation." One day business took him to Hennepin, and it being Sunday, he went to the Methodist Church. Imagine his surprise as service was about to begin, when the long lost Mitchell walked into the pulpit! The preacher took occasion to give his hearers a forcible sermon on the subject of temperance, painting in strong colors the fate of the drunkard, and condemning in the strongest terms "regular" and "occasional" drinking, and promising unending punishment for the bibulous man.

When services were over Mr. Sawyer left the church unnoticed by the preacher, and went home without seeking an interview. He related to his family the circumstances, and, of course, all hopes of seeing his $500 were gone.

At noon on the following day the preacher rode up to the gate and asked for dinner. There was no pretence of a recognition on either side, but Sawyer managed to whisper to his wife, " that's our preacher!" The good lady surveyed him with much dissatisfaction.

Mr. S. was in the habit of "taking something" before dinner, and moreover, feeling indifferent as to the preacher's sentiments and in defiance of the temperance lecture of Sunday took down the decanter and invited the preacher to imbibe. To the utter bewilderment of the old lady and surprise of Mr. S., the pious man poured out a goodly "horn," fixed it up with artistic skill and drank it down with evident relish! Whatever weak hopes Mr. Sawyer had for his money were now banished. Soon after each took another liberal "nip," and when dinner had been satisfactorily disposed of, the preacher said: "Mr. Sawyer, I have a little business with you." To this Mr. Sawyer replied “all right, Mr. Mitchell; come this way."

This was the first time that either had spoken the name of the other! They sat down and the preacher drew from his coat pocket a well-filled bag and counted out the $500, with interest, to a cent, and handed it over with “much obliged.” This done, he mounted his horse and disappeared.

The old lady's opinion as to the character of that preacher underwent some modification, but still remained considerably mixed.

134^[134] Brunson, Wisc. Hist. Soc.

135^[135]March 16, 1836

136^[136]Orrin Smith was the wealthy steam boat captain who was so pious as to stop and tie up his boat where ever it migth be on midnight Saturday and not more it again until after midnight Sun. His brother Samuel was Kent's associate in the day school and the perpetrator of the beating of a student that caused Kent to be indicted. Orrin Smith was mayor of Galena in 1844 (Kett, p. 492).

137^[137] July 6, 1836

 

 

138^[138] Extract from a letter by A. Hale to Absalom Peters. Jacksonville, Illinois, September 27, 1836. in: Sweet, William W.: Religion on the American Frontier, 1783-1849; Vol. II The Presbyterians. New york, 1964. p. 684-5.

139^[139]Buley, Vol. II, p. 270.

140^[140] The corner stone of the Catholic Church was laid September 12, 1835. p. 44. A number of “firsts” were occurring in this period. On Sept. 8, 1838 the first circus license was issued to Mr. Miller for $20. (Hist Jo. Davies, p. 471. On Dec. 3, 1838 the first recorded license for a theatre was granted to McKenzie & & Jefferson for one year $75. p. 472. Their first performance was “Wives as they were, And Maids as They Are”. Tickets were $1.00. p. 481. The Galena Library Association was organized in 1835 and by 1838 contained 835 volumes. p. 476.

141^[141] This marks the beginning of a five year hiatus in correspondance betweeen Kent and the A.H.M.S. Since he was financially independent, he no longer made quarterly missionary reports.

142^[142] Jan. 17, 1837.

143^[143] Feb. 9, 1830.

144^[144] Samuel Smith, the brother of Captain Orrin Smith, the owner of the “Sabbath Keeping steamboat” and a successful merchant and one time [1844] mayor of Galena.

145^[145] Boss, Henry: History of Ogle County. Polo, Il. 1859. p. 30.

146^[146] July 31, 1830.

147^[147] Feb. 9, 1830.

148^[148] ibid.

149^[149] May 10, 1830.

150^[150] July 31, 1830.

151^[151] April 8, 1845.

152^[152] It is doubtful that Rev. Pendleton was "pro-slavery." More likely he was simply not sufficiently anti-slavery for the taste of at least part of his congregation. Aratus Kent labored under similar burdens.

153^[153] Ellsworth, Spencer: Records of Olden Time. Lacon, Ill: Home Journal Steam Printing Establishment, 1880. p. 283-4.

154^[154] Aug. 28, 1848; A lengthy extract of Brown”s annual report of the state of education in Dupage county is in Richmond, C.W. & Vallette, H.F.: History of Dupage , Illinois, Chicago, 1857. p.63-65.

155^[155] Jan. 19, 1858.

156^[156] Fleming, Children and Puritanism, p. 190, and Slater, Children in the New England Mind, pp. 81-84.

157^[157] Slater, Children in the New England Mind, pp. 77-87; George Stewart, Jr., A History of Religious Education in Connecticut to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1924), p. 321; Sidney Earl Mead, Nathaniel William Taylor: A Connecticut Liberal (1943; New York: Archon Books, 1967), pp. 171-99; and George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 46-52.

158^[158] Gardiner Spring, A Dissertation on Native Depravity (New York: Jonathan Leavitt, 1833), pp. 3, 8, 10, 17, 11-12, 36-37, 68-69, 88-92. See also McLaughlin "Evangelical Child Rearing," pp. 20-30; and Slater, Children in the New England Mind, p. 87.

159^[159] Aug. 7, 1829.

160^[160] May 10, 1830.

161^[161] July 31, 1830.

162^[162] June 6, 1831

163^[163] Sept 1, 1831

164^[164] Jan. 7, 1834.

165^[165] Horatio Newell to A. Peters, March 7, 1836.

166^[166] July 6, 1836.

167^[167] Edwin O. Gale, Reminiscences of Early Chicago and Vicinity. (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1902), pp. 369-70. Gale”s father Stephen was an early Chicago merchant.

168^[168] Jan. 17, 1837.

169^[169] March 6, 1854.

170^[170]W. C. Walton, Centennial History of McKendree College (Lebanon, Ill. 1928), 119-26.

171^[171]Austin Kennedy de Blois, The Pioneer School : A History of Slturtleff College, the Oldest Educational Institution in the West (New York, 1900), pp. 29-97.

172^[172]Charles Henry Rammelkamp, Illinois College: A Centennial History, 1829-1929 ([New Haven, Conn.], 1928), pp. 40, 68-69.

173^[173] Nov. 16, 1829.

174^[174] Oct 4, 1836

175^[175]Earnest Elmo Calkins, They Broke the Prairie: Being some account of the settlement of the Upper Mississippi Valley by religious and educational pioneers, told in terms of one city, Galesburg, and of one College, Knox ( New York, 1937), 32.

176^[176]Earnest Elmo Calkins, They Broke the Prairie: Being some account of the settlement of the Upper Mississippi Valley by religious and educational pioneers, told in terms of one city, Galesburg, and of one College, Knox (New York, 1937).

177^[177]Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of McDonough County (Chicago, 1907), II: 694-95.

178^[178]The Motto Jubilee College , Vol. I, no. 8 (July 11, 1849), 177. See also Roma Louise Shively, Jubilee, A Pioneer College (Elmwood, Ill., 1935).

179^[179] look up the Kent letter references to Addams.

180^[180]De Blois, Pioneer School, 69-70..

181^[181] Sept. 27, 1853

182^[182]Rammelkamp, Illinois College, 52.

^[182]Walton, McKendree College, 120.

183^[183]Walton, McKendree College, 120.

184^[184]J. M. Sturtevant, Jr., ed., Juian M. Sturtevant, an Autobiography. (New York 1896), 191-92.

185^[185]Quotation from Herndon in Rammelkamp, Illinois College, p.103.

186^[186] Webster, Seventy-five Significant Years, p. 64; Carriel, Jonathan B. Turner, p. 60.

187^[187] July 10, 1855

188^[188]The activities of the Western Convention are described in William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (New York: World Publishing, 1950), p. 195; see also Robert H. Irrmann and Helen L. D. Richardson, eds., "The Text: The Origin and Early Progress of Beloit College," in Chapin”s Corner Stone Speech (n.p.: Beloit College,1867), p. 16, 24; A. L. Chapin, "A Paper on the Acts and Aims of the Founders of Beloit College," in Exercises at the Quarter-Centennial Anniversary of Beloit College, 9 July 1872 (Janesville, Wisconsin: Garett Verder, 1878) p. 52; Colin Brummitt Goodykoontz, Home Missions on the American Frontier (New York: Octagon Books, 1971), pp. 383-94.

As noted earlier, the formal name of the "Western Society" was "Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West." It was also called the "College Society." In 1931 President Maddox of Rockford College said that a 1844 newspaper clipping reported that the Cleveland delegates had passed the following resolution: "The exigencies of Wisconsin and Northern Illinois require that those sections should unite in establishing a college and a female seminary of the highest order; one in Wisconsin near to Illinois and the other in Illinois near to Wisconsin." Typescript, "An Address by President Maddox of Rockford College, at the Centennial Banquet" (1931), Aratus Kent Files, Rockford College Archives Rockford, Illinois, p. 3. This resolution was passed by the first Beloit Convention, 6 August 1844, and was reported in an untitled newspaper article, Rockford Forum, 11 June 1845. See (unpaged) Beloit Convention Minutes, 6 August 1844 to 2 October 1845, Rockford College Archives, Rockford, Illinois.

189^[189]Peet, Stephen, missionary, b. in Sandgate, Vt., in 1795, d. in Chicago, Ill.. 21 March, 1855. He was graduated at Yale in 1823, and preached for seven years near Cleveland, Ohio. Afterward he was a chaplain in Buffalo, N. Y., editing there the “Bethel Magazine " and the "Buffalo Spectator." In 1837 he became minister of Green Bay,Wis., and assisted in founding Beloit college and thirty churches. He then went to Milwaukee, and subsequently took charge of an institute in Batavia, Ill. He was the author of a "History of the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches and Ministers of Wisconsin"(Milwaukee. 1851). Appleton”s Vol. IV, p. 700.

190^[190] Lawrence E. Murphy, Religion and Education on the Frontier: A Life of Stephen Peet (Dubuque, Iowa: privately printed, [1942]), pp. 47- 49; Goodykoontz, Home Missions, pp. 59, 183-84.

191^[191] Peet to Brown, 29 July 1839, quoted in Murphy, Religion, p. 89.

192^[192]Chapin, Quarter-Centennial Address, p. 6.

193^[193] In the minutes of the first convention, four men were listed as representatives of Iowa; fourteen were from Illinois, and twenty-five were from Wisconsin. Also in attendance were Rev. Theron Baldwin, Secretary of the Society for Promoting Collegiate and Theological Education in the West (the Western Education Society) and Rev. H. L. Loss from Ohio. The latter had been head of the Beloit Seminary, and would assume the pastorate of the First Congregational Church in Rockford in 1846. See Conventions: RCA. In his decade address entitled “Historical Sketch of Rockford Female Seminary, Commencement Exercises, 1861,” A. L. Chapin said that twenty-seven delegates from Illinois attended the convention.[Sill Scrapbook (a collection of local newspaper articles about Rockford Female Seminary), p. 16.]; See also Chapin, ~Founders of Beloit College,~ Quarter Centennial Address, p. 5; Edward Dwight Eaton, Historical Sketches of Beloit College (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1928), p. 21.

194^[194] A.L. Chapin: “In Memorium,” The Beloit College Monthly. Vol XVI.- March 1870- No. V.

195^[195] Address and Discourse at the Inaugeration of the Rev. Aaron L. Chapin, M.A., as President of Beloit College, July 24, 1850. pp. 8-10. Beloit COllege Archives.

196^[196] A.L. Chapin, “Founders of Beloit College,” Quarter-Centennial Address, 6; First Convention Minutes, 6 August 1844. Details of convention resolutions are taken from the minutes of subsequent conventions, Conventions: RCA.

197^[197] Walhout, D.: "The Spiritual Legacy of Aratus Kent." in Asprooth, E.A., ed.: A Power not of the Present. Rockford College Press, 1973. p. 44.

198^[198] Joseph Emerson, “Dedicatory Address,” delivered at the dedication of Sill Hall, 1887, and printed in Rockford Seminary Magazine (15 January 1887): p. 2.

199^[199] Kent to Joseph Emerson, Jan. 29, 1850.

200^[200] Ibid.

201^[201] Chapin Papers- Beloit College.

202^[202] Oct. 1850.

203^[203]see: Townsend, Lucy Forsyth: The Best Helpers of One Another: Anna Peck Sill and the Struggle for Women”s Education. Dekalb: Department of Leadership and Educational Policy Studies, Northern Illinois University, in cooperation with Educational Studies Press, 1988. Ms. Forsyth found Joseph Emerson”s statment that Aratus Kent was “the man to whom, more than any other man, the enterprise owed its inceptions and all its developments” erroneous. She apparently felt the satement was intended as a slight to Anna Sill. Yet the double use of the word “man” leaves room for other interpretations. Certainly no other male did more to create the institution, and there is some doubt that Miss Sill would have survived a Board of Trustees headed by a less sympathetic man than Kent. Joespeh Emerson, Quarter Centennial Address.”, in Sill Scrapbook, p. 84-5. RCA.

In later years when Sill struggled to raise Rockford to collegiate status, Sill invoked the memory of Kent: “Let Beloit College steadily pursue its course; it is the Yale of the West. Can it not afford to be the gallant brother to defend and aid the younger sister. I write eith conviction that good Father Kent, if alive would say, “This let us do, ye, and to this end Brethren let us pray.” He used to tell me that “of the two institutions, the Seminary was his pet.” Sill to Emerson, 3 July 1879. RCA.