By Jared Olar
Local History Specialist
Last autumn a newly-published diary detailing an Easterner’s 1835 travels in the Midwest was added to the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Collection. Because the diary-writer’s travels took him to Central Illinois towns including Tremont and Pekin, the diary is of local interest and can provide interesting glimpses at life in those places and at that time.
The diary was published last year under the title “A Traveler’s Diary from 1835.” The original copy of the diary is in the possession of Karen Dustman, who edited the diary and augmented it with photographs, maps, and explanatory notes. Dustman acquired the diary at an antique shop in Cambria, Calif., in 1988.
Unfortunately the diary-writer’s identity is unknown, but in her introduction Dustman tells what we may glean about the writer’s identity:
“One tiny clue about the writer’s identity comes from the diary itself: a brief mention of his rice crop, suggesting he might have been a Southerner. ‘If you have not sold my rice and there should be any appearance of the march laying claim, I wish you to dispose of it before they get a preemption,’ he wrote.
“More likely, however, is that he actually hailed from New England. The diary both begins and ends in New York State, for one thing. And the antique dealer I bought the diary from said she’d found it in Tiverton, Rhode Island (south of Newport). An 1830s newspaper clipping tucked in the back pages of the diary similarly came from a Newport paper.
“Notations at the end provide us a likely guess for the man’s name. The beginnings of a promissory note are sketched out in the diary’s final pages, a personal document hinting that the diary might have belonged to one Elijah Brown of New Hampshire.”
The diary-writer’s first entry, dated June 1, 1835, tells of his arrival in Buffalo, New York, by way of the Erie Canal. In the early stages of the trip, the diary-writer traveled in the company of two married couples, Mr. and Mrs. Buckley and Mr. and Mrs. Sturgis, along with a certain Mr. Russell. The group seems to have been intending to scout for land on which to settle “out West.”
The party only made it as far as Tecumseh, Mich., however, where the two married couples gave up and headed back east – a diary entry indicates that the Buckleys and Sturgises were sick or were otherwise exhausted from the trip. The diary-writer and Mr. Russell then continued their trip together.
They reached Chicago on June 10, then by stages made it to Utica, where on June 16 they boarded the steamboat Banner headed for Peoria, which they reached the following day. His entry for Peoria is brief but positive: “Arrived at Peoria, very pleasantly situated” (p.49).
During their stay in Peoria, the diary-writer and his companion Mr. Russell crossed into Tazewell County and took a trip to Tremont on June 18-19, evidently hoping to find some land to buy, but did not find anything to their liking. (This was a year before Tremont became the county seat.) On June 19 they viewed various farms in Peoria, where Mr. Russell opted to purchase land for his new home in Illinois.
It was the next day that the diary-writer embarked on steamboat at Peoria, heading for St. Louis, Missouri. Not long after leaving Peoria, the steamboat stopped briefly at Pekin – but long enough for the diary-writer to form an appraisal and opinion of the place (p.55):
“June 20:
“Took Steamboat Friendship for St. Louis.
“Touched at Pekin to receive freight. Population about 500; very sickly, cold, dreary-looking place. It commands a better and much more settled back country than Peoria.
“Arrived at Beardstown, in the night.”
The diary-writer may perhaps be excused for finding Pekin to be “very sickly, cold, [and] dreary-looking,” because Tazewell County and areas throughout Central Illinois in 1835 experienced an unusually wet May and June. Dustman notes (p.56) that another diary from this period mentions that in May and June 1835 the county had “uncommonly wet, soggy weather” along with heavy thunderstorms, hail, and even frost.
The diary-writer’s dismal description of Pekin is reminiscent of the way Tazewell County pioneer Eliza Farnham of Groveland related her impressions of her 1836 arrival in Pekin, which she disdainfully dubbed “Pokerton” in her account:
“We worried on through the flood of water that was pouring down the bed of the Illinois and submerging its banks, till the night of the fifth day brought us to the landing place of our friends in the town of Pokerton. It was at that time the county seat of one of the largest and wealthiest counties in the state. Its name is faintly descriptive of its inhabitants in a double sense: one of their favorite recreations being a game at cards, which is indicated by the first two syllables of this name. . . .”
A long, lost feature of Pekin’s local geography during pioneer days – erased by the growth and improvement of the city over time – no doubt contributed to the negative impressions formed by Farnham and the diary-writer. That feature was a seasonal body of water that was named Bitzel’s Lake, which was perhaps the remnant of an ancient backwater of the Illinois River.
Describing Bitzel’s Lake on his 1910 historical map of Pekin, William H. Bates says, “This lake was created by a depression from St. Mary to Derby streets. After a heavy rain it would reach of width of over 100 yards, and about 1 mile long. It was a favorite skating resort in winter. It had an outlet via N. 3rd, N. Capitol, the big ditch, then into Pekin Lake.”
Given the wet weather in June 1835, Bitzel’s Lake probably made Pekin an especially swampy place.
Incidentally, the diary-writer’s brief stop at Pekin took place just 12 days before Pekin’s inhabitants voted to incorporate as a Town under Illinois law (though as we have previously related here, the failure properly to record the results of that vote made it necessary for the Illinois General Assembly to pass a law in January of 1837 ‘legalizing’ Pekin’s incorporation).
