This settlement dates back to 1830. at which Period
John Ankeny and
Thos. Parish built cabins on the east side of the Grove, both near, if not both on, the
Harry Smith place, but both left about the time of the breaking out of the Black Hawk War, in 1832. So far as known, neither one of them ever returned to their claims—in fact, Parish was never heard of afterwards, while Ankenv turned his attention to keeping a hotel or tavern at Buffalo, a few months after leaving his claim. This beginning excepted, Elkhorn Grove remained unbroken, undisturbed, wild, until about 1834, when
Levi Warner settled on the south side of the Grove. A surveyor by profession, he was elected county surveyor at the first county election, in April, 1839, and re-elected for several successive terms. He came here a bachelor, and remained in “single blessedness” for a number of years.
John H. Hawes now lives where Warner first settled. In 1835
Alvin Humphrey settled at the northeast corner of the Grove, and
Caleb Dains and
Thos. Hughes at the southeast corner. Humphrey was a great wag, and a great many of his “jokes “ are still remembered with broad faces.
Joln Knox and familv, including
Geo. W. Knox, came about 1834 or 1835, and made a claim on the south side of the Grove, where he “set out” the first orchard planted in the county. Geo. W. Knox now occupies the old home place.
In 1835, John Ankeny returned to the Grove.
Uncle Harry Smith and
Samples M. Journey settled at the Grove in 1834— the first-named on the land where he now resides, and the latter a little further to the east, on the farm on which
Ransom Wilson died a short time ago.
Miles Z. Landon,
Elder John Paymiter,
Joseph Steffins,
Manasas Neikerk and
Lyman Hunt came soon afterwards. A rapid tide of immigration now set in, and among them came a number of our now must prominent citizens. In 1837,
Elijah Eaton built a saw mill—the first in the township. The same year the people of the Grove celebrated the 4th of July with great pomp and ceremony, at the place of Alvin Humphrey.
Felix Connor delivered the oration, and a right good one it is said to have been. In 1834, a millwright named
Peters settled on Elkhorn Creek bottom, near the present village of Milledgeville, but, feeling sick, he gave up his claim to
Jesse Kester, who improved it with a saw mill. Kester subsequently sold out his claim to
Adam Knox, who built the grist mill. In 1839, his daughter, Eliza J., was born, which was the first birth. Soon after, his son Albert died, which was the first death at or near Milledgeville. In 1844, a post-office was established there, and
Jacob McCourtie was appointed postmaster.
At that time, Milledgeville (it is said) was a larger place than Mt. Carroll. In 1839,
Simeon Johnson and his son, J. B. Johnson,
Byron and Nelson Fletcher, and
Abel Eastabrooks, the father of L. F., and the other Eastabrooks boys, settled in the present town of Wysox. About this time - some a little before and some a little afterwards—the following named persons had settled in the Elkhorn Grove neighborhood, in which are included the towns of Lima and Wysox :
Tilson Aldrich, John Richardson, I. H. Woodruff, Hiram McNamer, Geo. G.Colton, N. Spencer, Alvah Dains, Henry Hunter, E. W. Todds, Chas. Redman, Stephen Jenkins, Philetus Peck, several by the name of Grant, and D. Stormer.
With but few exceptions, these settlers hugged the Groves, oniv the boldest of them venturing out on the prairie. The sweep of the winter winds, it was thought by some, would render the prairie practically uninhabitable. Others could not bear the idea of removing so thr away from the timber. Two gentlemen who had sold their farms in Pennsylvania, came to Milledgeville in 1840, with the intention of investing their means in lands thereabouts, and rearing stately homes on the broad fields nature had cleared. Some parties had accompanied them to show them the beautiful prairie between Milledgeville and Cherry Grove, etc. After traversing the broad and undulating expanse, vaster than anything of the kind their imagination had ever pictured, they came to the conclusion that the prairie was and must forever remain worthless, because it could never be inhabited to any extent the want of timber. So they repacked their dollars, turned their backs upon that garden-spot of nature, and re-invested their wealth in rocks and mountains and hills and timber of Pennsylvania. A Mr. Ingalls was the first school teacher in the Elkhorn Grove neighborhood, and taught in what is now known as the Centre School House District.”
From the History of Carroll County - Ketts 1878
Elkhorn Grove is one of the three half-size townships of Carroll county located on the southeast border, with a rich tradition of early settlers and trails that figured prominently in the pioneer history of northwestern Illinois. Henry Elsey of Hazelhurst who wrote about early days at the Carroll-Ogle county border, gave vivid descriptions of the primeval forests at Elkhorn Grove, Buffalo Grove and Chambers Grove "when they stood in all their glory just as they had come from the hand of nature's God." He told of towering maples, oaks and black walnuts three and four feet in diameter; when "deer could be seen grazing in herds of 10 and 20, skimming over the open prairies and passing out of sight in the dense
"Then there were in the springtime flocks of prairie plovers, crooked billed snipes, geese, ducks, and brants almost constantly in sight, while up on some rise of ground the sandhillcranes were dancing a cotillion and the `boom, boom, boom of prairie chicken were heard in all directions." But the great trees gradually disappeared as loggers felled them with ax and saw andhauled them off to the water-powered saw mills to be converted into all kinds of wood products, described as follows:
The loggers and teamsters in the employ of the Joliet Match Co., are still encamped in J. T. Woodruff's grove. The foreman thinks thatthey will be through at that place in about a week or ten days. He thinks there is workenough in sight to keep the gang in Elkhorn all summer. After a log is ready to be made into matches it passes through the various processes of cutting, splitting, dipping, boxingand placing on board the cars in nineteenminutes.
Two full carloads leave the factory each day when they have the material to work with. It would be interesting to know how far and wide over the earth's surface the timber that has grown in `Old Elkhorn Grove' has been scattered. The first demand upon the grove for articles of commerce was for pork and flour barrels, and thousands of them were made by Naaman Spencer and sons, Luke Case, G. Sutton and other pioneers who lived at the Grove. Then the Grand Detour Plow Co., procured plow beams at Journey and Smith's saw mill. Later Michael Ayers made wooden rakes, fork handles, spinning wheels, etc., and Philo Hill made tables, chairs, bureaus, etc. Then Naaman Spencer made the Defiance Gang Plow which found a ready sale.
Then hundreds of black walnut logs were cut and shipped to England, and now the poor, despised, good-for-nothing basswood is selling on the stump for seven dollars per thousand. And the matches will be carried to all parts of the world. The portion of the logs that are cross grained or for any reason not fit for matches go to the pulp mills and soon pass through the paper mills, thence to the printing presses. The township is three miles wide: it lies directly east of Milledgeville and its boundaries embrace the first major settlements in the area known as Elkhorn Grove (see Chapters I and II). and Hitt. both in the northwest section of the township.
There were grist and sawmills on Elkhorn Creek, Elijah Eatons. for example, at Hitt, later Lucius Thorp's and the John Clark, later the Hunter sawmill, at 6600 South Grand View road in the southeast corner of the township near the village of Hazelhurst There was the Fischer and Allison flourmill at 9613 South Lovers Lane, and the Landon mill at Freemont. All these early water-power mills went out of existence with the coming of steam power, electricity and the gasoline engine.
The Olin bridge at 11999 East Duck road is the site of the first bridge in the county. In a barn behind the hill at 8500 South Grand View road was a horse-thieves hideout which was later used as one of the two still known stations on the "Underground Railway" in pre-Civil War days. At 13500 and 14019 East Schell road were two taverns or stagecoach inns reported by early residents with no known road or trail passing nearby until a record was found of a road from Knox's Mill at Milledgeville to Dixon via Wilson's Mill across the Whiteside county line. This road continued from Milledgeville to Savanna on the first route viewed by order of the County Commissioners Court of Carroll county.
Also in this community was a pioneer sodhouse at 13353 East Elkhorn road, occupied at this writing by Mrs. Jesse Yocom. The first school in the township was the South Elkhorn, now the town hall, at 13474 East Elkhorn, east of the sodhouse. Nearby is the South Elkhorn Methodist church site and cemetery, the cemetery also being known as the West Elkhorn Cemetery. When "rails overshadowed trails" during the splurge of railroad building from the 1850's through the 1880's, Elkhorn Grove and Hitt were by-passed and the growth of cities and villages followed the new routes commerce established by the "iron horse."
The Sucker Trail. earlier called the Savanna-Buffalo Grove (Polo) road, later the "Telegraph road", crossed the township from Hitt to Eagle Point. Stagecoaches crossed the township and stagecoach inns sprang up, the remnants of which are covered in the history of Milledgeville. One of thc old landmarks on Telegraph road is the farm house where Harry Smith, a former state representative in the legislature, kept a tavern and stagecoach inn: and the farm itself figured in a historic feud as the land originally claimed by John Ankeny, thetownship's first settler referred to in an earlier chapter.
Vernon S. Todd of Milledgeville, a respected and active member of the county historical society, said the sheepskin government patent for the land his ancestor, Eliakim A. Todd, homesteaded in South Elkhorn Grove in 1837 is still in the family. The elder Todd helped establish the South Elkhorn church in 1845 and served on the grand jury of his day. A deciding argument in the detachment of what today is Carroll county from Jo Daviess county in which the territory once belonged, was to make it possible for jurors and other men to get to the county seat by 10 o'clock A.M. on court days.
At 13488 East Elkhorn was the home of Levi Warner, county surveyor as well as township clerk for many years. He surveyed in 1833 the Peoria to Galena via Dixon road. using the shorter route via Buffalo Grove. Cherry Grove and Elizabeth. He later surveyed past his own residence the Bushes Ferry road which left the earlier Peoria road about 12 miles south of Dixon, crossed Rock River at the first rapids three miles below Dixon. entered Carroll county about one mile south of the present Hazelhurst. This road passed through Hitt where it crossed the Savanna-Buffalo Grove road and went by the East Plum River postoffice of George Harris to rejoin the Old Sucker trail en route to Galena.
Hazelhurst and Eagle Point, both principally on the Ogle county side of the border 1ine, were early communities. Hazelhurst was once a station-stop on the Chicago, Burlington and Northern railroad, and where postoffice for years was on the Carroll county side of the line. It was later moved across into Ogle county. Hitt's postoffice at times was known as Elkhorn Grove; and for some years that community a milltown junction of important trails was said tohave been as large as Savanna. When it was proposed to locate the earlier route of the(Illinois) Central railroad "from Peru to Savanna to Galena via Dixon passing nearHitt," there was a land boom for the sale of lots at Elkhorn City. An earlier name for Hitt was "towhead community." Fremont, a mile north of Hitt on Elkhorn Creek, was sometimes also shown as Elkhorn Grove.
Rural schools in the township also included Hitt at 12065 East Telegraph, Prairie Union at 13024 East Schell, Paynter at 14220 East Schell and Stewart at 14961 East Robin road. Today Elkhorn Grove township is a highly developed farming area. Much of the land has been cleared of trees and stumps and early settlers might not recognize all that has happened since the gasoline, then the diesel engine, and the bulldozer, came into wide use abolishing so many osage orange hedge fences they planted to mark the boundary lines of their farms. They would be amazedat the paved highways with steel and concrete bridges that replaced the trails and primitive log or stone bridges which served them so well in the day of ox teams, horses and wagons.
The township is legally described as the west half of Township 23, North, Range 7, east of the 4th principal meridian. Its assessedvaluation reported for the last two years was $2,180,353 in 1965 and $2,262,754 in 1966.The 1960 census put the population at 375, Clyde Etnyre is township supervisor, CarrieShilling, town clerk, Mrs. Darlene Hutchison, Accessor, town clerk, assessor; Archie Woodin, toad commissioner; Leslie Richter, Robert Thorngren and Alvin Hook, town auditors. George Gerdes, Republican and Roger Cheeseman, Democrat are the precinct committeemen.
From the Goodly Heritage 1968
