Remembering Jonathan Tharp’s cabin

The seed from which Pekin grew was the log cabin that pioneer settler Jonathan Tharp (1794-1844) built for his family in 1824 at what is now the foot of Broadway. The year after his arrival, Tharp was joined by his father Jacob and other family members, with several other pioneer families arriving here over the next few years, culminating in the formal surveying, platting, and naming of the town of Pekin on 19 Jan. 1830.

Perhaps the earliest historical primary source related to Jonathan Tharp and his log cabin is the original plat of the Town of Cincinnati that he and his friend Jesse Dillon filed on 11 July 1830, just a few months after the official plat of the Town of Pekin was filed by a rival group of settlers. Tharp’s home lot is denoted as Lot No. 160 on Benjamin S. Prettyman’s official copy of the Cincinnati plat dated 28 May 1837 – Lot No. 160 is at the northwest corner of Broadway and Main.

One of the most important historical sources for Pekin’s earliest history is the 1860 diary of Jacob Tharp (1773-1871), father of Jonathan. Jacob’s diary is extensively quoted in Charles C. Chapman’s 1879 “History of Tazewell County,” and on pages 562-563 of Chapman’s history we find these crucial sentences from the diary:

“Jonathan Tharp, my son, built the first house ever erected in the city of Pekin, in 1824, on the spot now occupied by Joshua Wagenseller’s residence. Jonathan’s farm embraced the land now covered by our heaviest business houses.”

Jacob’s memory seems to have been somewhat faulty, though, because other records show that the Wagenseller Mansion was next door to the Tharp cabin.

Another indispensable early source is William H. Bates’ account of the first four or five decades of Pekin’s history that he included in the 1870-71 Sellers & Bates City Directory of Pekin. On page 8 of that book, Bates says:

“The first settler in what is now the city of Pekin was Jonathan Tharp, who erected the first house in 1824. Mr. Tharpe (sic) was accompanied by his family, and Jesse Eggman. The latter settled at what was for many years, and perhaps is yet, known as Eggman’s Ferry, near where Kingston now stands. Jacob Tharp, sr., erected the second house in 1826, and Jesse Eggman, who, it seems, grew tired of the loneliness of the west side of the river, about the same time constructed a home in Pekin on what is now known as ‘Gravel Ridge.’”

In 1824, Jonathan Tharp’s family consisted of himself, his wife Sarah (Eggman) Tharp (1793-1839), and six children, Isaac, Eliza, Matilda, Rebecca, Mary, and Phebe. Jesse Eggman, who also accompanied them from Ohio to Illinois, was Sarah’s brother. There, in that little log habitation, Jonathan and Sarah and their children experienced the joys and the sorrows of pioneer life, welcoming four more sons, Joseph Powell, John Wesley, Jonathan M., and Jacob, and another daughter, Sarah. However, the eldest, Isaac, died in his teens in 1833, followed five years later by the second child, Eliza. Six years later, in 1839, Jonathan’s wife Sarah passed away. Then came the year 1844, which was an especially sorrowful one for the Tharps: Jonathan’s daughters Mary and Phebe both died in 1844, as well as his son John – and the dread disease of cholera claimed Jonathan himself that summer. The Jonathan Tharp farm then went to his son Jonathan M. Tharp, who died in 1919 at the age of 86.

After telling of the arrival of Jonathan Tharp and Jesse Eggman, a little further on in his 1870 narrative, Bates adds (emphasis added):

“Jonathan Tharp was the first permanent white settler in ‘Town Site,’ the date being 1824. He located his crude log cabin near the family wigwams of Shabbona, just west of the present Franklin School.” 

As we have noted before, in 1824 Shabbona’s camp was near Starved Rock, not at the future site of Pekin – Shabbona didn’t camp here until around 1830. Nevertheless, Bates’ information here is in basic agreement with Jacob Tharp’s diary in locating Tharp’s cabin on a site at the foot of Broadway. The original Franklin School was built on the former site of the Wagenseller Mansion, at the northeast corner of Broadway and Second, so Tharp’s cabin would have to have been located at the corner of Broadway and Main.

Another passage in Chapman’s 1879 history, page 416, tells of Jonathan Tharp’s arrival here, and his attempt to found a pioneer settlement named Cincinnati:

“In 1850, on the eve of adapting the township mode of conducting affairs, the commission appointed to divide the county into townships, laid off Cincinnati a full congressional township, which included 36 sections. Subsequently the northern tier of sections was cut off and added to Pekin township. In this portion of the township, near where the P. L. & D. Railway shops are now located, Jonathan Tharp settled in 1824. He was the first settler both in the city of Pekin and in this township, in that that section he located upon, was afterwards included in Pekin. Jacob Tharp Sr., came in 1826 and erected the second house, south of the corner of Broadway and Court streets. Jonathan Tharp laid his farm off into town lots, and named his prospective village Cincinnati, whence the present name of the township. Pekin was laid off and the two places so close together, were known as Pekin and Cincinnati. Finally they were united under the name of Pekin.”

Bates later prepared a fascinating “historical map” of Pekin, which he published in 1923, the year before Pekin’s Centennial. One of the most important details on his map is an asterisk placed on a lot at the northwest corner of Broadway and Main. The map’s legend identifies the asterisk as “Site of first log-cabin home, built in 1824, by Jonathan Tharp, cor. Broadway and Main.”

At the upper left of the map, Bates included a brief narrative of Pekin’s founding and early years, which tell us (emphasis added):

“Pekin – named ‘Town Site’ by the pioneer trappers and hunters – had for its first permanent settler, JONATHAN THARP, in 1824, who built his log-cabin home on the high ground at the corner of Broadway and Main streets. In 1826, Jacob Tharp, father of Jonathan, built the second log-cabin home near the corner of Front and St. Mary streets.”

An 1877 aerial view map of Pekin shows a small home or cabin at the corner of Broadway and Main. That can only be Tharp’s log cabin, which by 1877 would have undergone both exterior and interior remodeling, including the addition of siding. The remodeling and improvements would have left the house’s log “bones” intact, though.

The same small structure shown on the 1877 aerial view map later appears on the old Sanborn Fire Insurance maps of Pekin from Nov. 1903 until Sept. 1925. The Sanborn maps indicate that the structure changed little during those decades, sometimes getting a small addition, sometimes getting some interior changes.

Though Jonathan and Sarah’s old log cabin appears to have lasted for over a century, it was apparently torn down in the 1930s. In the mid-1930s, Pekin Public School District 108 decided to build a new Franklin School adjacent to the original one. The new Franklin School was built in 1936. If Tharp’s cabin had not been demolished in the late 1920s or early 1930s, then it would have been removed in 1936 when the new Franklin School was built. A close examination of modern maps, comparing them with the old Sanborn maps, indicates that the former cabin site is not covered up by the school building (now the home of Roger Brotherton’s private museum), but is just adjacent to it, on the grassy hillock that rises above Broadway and Main.

Though the Tharp cabin site currently lacks any visible memorial or marker, in the late 1990s the late Norman L. Tharp (1941-2000), a descendant of Jonathan Tharp’s brother William and one of the charter members of the Tazewell County Genealogical & Historical Society, had a historical marker placed at the former site of the Tharp Family Farm near the corner of Haines Avenue and St. Joseph Place (formerly called Tharp Place).

Meanwhile, Roger Brotherton is considering the possibility of building a replica of the Tharp cabin in the usual pioneer American style from the 1820s. Brotherton says if he goes ahead with the idea, the replica cabin would be erected near the southwestern corner of Broadway and Main, next to his recreated vintage gas station, at a spot not far from the original Tharp cabin site.