of the Hopkins bridge. The little clearing is there yet, and the house to my recollection stood there tenantless for many years. Ed moved from there to the Albin farm. In the fall of that year Mr. Winkle came to Brushy on a visit; from there he rode over to Richman's. They were still living in the big tent. Old John, as he was called, had at that time six bee trees marked in the woods. Mr. Winkler tried to buy one, but could not. Mr. Richman had scruples, thought it would be an act of betrayal, which the bees might avenge by a spell on him, rendering it impossible to ever find another hive.

The Richman boys were quite peaceable men, much like their mother in disposition. John and David had her dark hair and personally resembled her. All had more or less of their father's disposition. When David lay in his last illness, he told me he wished to sell out; hoped to get six dollars per acre for his little farm, hoped to get well, to go to Oregon, to the Rocky Mountains to hunt the bear, the elk and the black-tailed deer. Of his five sons, I thought Lewis, the youngest, resembled his father the most.

Discussing this point once with the late James Hammet, he disagreed with me, but to me, the resemblance, if not striking, was considerable. Alike in size and build, both had sandy hair, the same piping voice and the same wild staring look.

As a sequel to my sketch of this wild man 'o the woods, permit me to close with an ancedote told me long years ago by the Rev. John Steel, of Grandview, Edgar county. Mr. Steel was born on the Greenbrier river in Virginia, near the Richman's and knew the family well, especially the younger members of it. He stated that a new church had been built in the neighborhood, seated in pew style, finished and dedicated. On a summer's Sabbath day services had been opened, the preacher had started into his sermon, when a strange man in hunter's garb was seen standing in the doorway, eying the preacher with intense earnestness. He was recognized as Bill Richman, a brother to John. After a long pause, he stretched forth his long arm and grasped the pew railing, drawing one foot forward followed by the other. Then another reach with one foot at a time, never moving his eyes from the preacher for a moment. Arriving at a vacant pew, he raised one moccasined foot, passed it over the door to the inside floor. then the other and sat down. He remained seated about ten minutes, then rose, passing one foot over the door outside, then the other as he stood in the aisle, all the time keeping his alert eyes upon the preacher as danger point. He then moved backward by reaches, along the railing as he had advanced, till he stood on the door-sill. Then with one last wild, staring look at the preacher, he sprang backward and out several feet, turned hastily and disappeared in the adjoining. forest.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH OF SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.

SOMETHING OF ITS BEGINNING AND GROWTH, DURING THE FIRST SIXTY YEARS OF ITS HISTORY.

1833-1893.

By Charles P. Kane.

The Sangamo Journal published at Springfield, Illinois, in its issue of March 16, 1833, made this announcement:

"Rev. Josephus Hewitt, of Jacksonville, will preach in the Court House in this town today and tomorrow. Services to commence at eleven A. M." If old Time would retrace his footsteps of the last sixty years, and gathering up his handiwork as he pursued his backward way, would cast it again into the inscrutable abyss of the unborn, what strange dissolving views might greet the vision of any, permitted to stand by unaffected by the marvelous change and witness it.

These witnesses would see aged men and women become first youths then children, children become babes, then they are not, and of the thirty thousand population of our present city, many would hie away in different directions whence they had drifted in; some would vanish in one way, some in another, until the whole had shrunk into a little pioneer village of about 500 inhabitants, situated on a lonesome road that stretched its tedious length from Vincennes, Indiana, through Vandalia northwestward to Fort Clark-now Peoria, thence still northward to the lead mines at Galena.

Along down one of the depressions in the beautiful, billowy prairie of the "Sangamaw country," draining a little green valley about two miles in width, sped a stream or runlet, prosaically dubbed by intruding civilization, "the Town Branch." It passed immediately south of the edifice, at Fifth and Jackson streets.

Primitive Springfield was located on the north side of this branch, reaching northward about to the line of Mason street, and extending east and west from Klein to Seventh street.

The Vandalia wagon road joining another from the direction of Edwardsville, entered town from the south along the line of First street, uniting at Jefferson street with two less important roads leading the one to Beardstown, the other to Jacksonville. These passed eastward together on Jefferson street, becoming merged in the Fort

Clark road, which near the present site of the St. Nicholas hotel, on Fourth street, turned northward in the direction of the fair grounds and so to Peoria or Fort Clark.

Thus Jefferson street early became the leading thoroughfare of the village, and upon it were more thickly grouped the unpretentious dwellings of the denizens, with a shoe shop, a tailor shop, a blacksmith shop, a doctor shop, a printing office, a justice's office, a land office and half a dozen stores, which supplied the inhabitants and neighboring settlers with dry goods and groceries.

. But at the time of which we write, a brick court house had been recently erected in the block of ground dedicated to public uses, and business was cautiously but steadily drifting to the public square, though most of the space fronting the court house was still occupied by private dwellings. Matheny's corner where the old Farmers' National Bank buiding and the Smith buildings now stand, was the residence of Dr. Garrett Elkin, at one time sheriff of the county. Along the east line of his premises, now Sixth street, was a high worm rail fence, in one of the secluded corners of which Dr. Pasfield, encouraged by other naughty boys, smoked his first cigar and was made very sick.

Neighboring farms bordered close on the confines of the little town. A farm house stood on the corner of Sixth and Cook streets; another was to be found about the place where General Orendorff now resides, at the corner of Second and Wright streets, and still another at the intersection of Mason and Seventh.

And so old Time in the backward march proposed for him, would see the bricks and stones of the Governor's mansion and our new State house sleep again in their native quarries, laying bare once more the vacant slopes of "Vinegar Hill." The solid blocks about our public square and its vicinity would melt into thin air, to be replaced by the green dooryards and modest dwellings of our first citizens. No railroad trains would rush with shrill scream and imperious roar across the quiet unfenced prairies of the Sangamaw country, where slow oxen gravely drew the plow and reluctant harvests were garnered with the sickle and the hand rake; no telegraph ticked its swift news from distant places and peoples to our little town; no public schools open their doors in the morning to the gathering children, and not one of the churches where a score of congregations met and worshiped, would remain to invite those who hunger and thirst after righteousness to enter and be filled.

Far removed by many miles of distances from old centers of civilization and still farther removed by slow and difficult means of communication and transportation, our brave little frontier town was shut up to itself, a kind of world in miniature, in which trivial incidents became as important and were as earnestly discussed by gatherings on the corners, as they now are when blazoned in great dailies or sagely considered in ponderous editorials.

The single newspaper published in Springfield at this time gave its readers a weekly summary of the contents of such St. Louis or eastern papers as might reach its office through tardy and intermittent mails. One number of the Sangamo Journal announced that having completed.

publication of the debate in the United States Senate between Mr. Webster and Mr. Hayne, which had occupied the entire space of several recent issues, the editor would now endeavor to give his readers a greater variety of news.

A noticeable feature of the village paper was the absence from its columns of local news or reference to events occurring in the village or neighborhood. This arose, I presume, from two causes: first, as an old settler said, "nothing happened, everything was quiet and peaceful;" and secondly, whatever experiences of the little community might have been deemed worthy a place in the columns of a newspaper, were so thoroughly ventilated by the garrulous population, that the editor felt it a work of supererogation to insert the matter in his journal.

So it was that the so-called Rev. Josephus Hewitt had visited Springfield and preached the everlasting gospel, some time prior to the first announcement by the Sangamo Journal, March 16, 1833, that he would preach next day at the court house, though an incident that would be seized eagerly by the modern reporter and read the next morning with interest by his patrons. Yet true it was that Mr. Hewitt was the first minister of the gospel to promulgate at Springfield, that interpretation of Biblical teaching, accepted and advocated by the body of believers known as the Christian Church or the Disciples of Christ, now numbering in the United States over one million souls.

Mr. Hewitt was a remarkable man. He had qualities that would have distinguished him in any society, in any age. Large of stature, dignified of mien, he at once impressed individual or assemblage. As a speaker he was effective and forcible; I have heard numbers of persons say he was a grand preacher. One who listened often, describes him as a man of singular eloquence and power.

Judge James H. Matheny, a lifetime resident of Sangamon county, himself styled by brother lawyers at his obsequies, "silver-tongued,' and "Sangamon's well beloved son," in a letter to the "Illinois State Journal" upon "Some forgotten Orators of Springfield," published April 28, 1889, wrote these words:

"Josephus Hewitt was one of the most eloquent men I ever knew. He came here as a minister of the Christian Church. Afterward he was admitted to the bar and appointed prosecuting attorney for his district. He was a conscientious man and had a high sense of the responsibility of his office. On the first day of each term of court it was his duty to charge the grand jury, and people invariably laid aside their work and flocked to the court house to hear him.”

At an important crisis in his career as state's attorney, the requirements of duty came into sharp and direct conflict with weighty personal obligations and friendships, and upon the eve of a momentous criminal trial he resigned his office. And writes Judge Matheny, "I never saw Josephus Hewitt again. The next morning it was announced that he had resigned his office and gone south, and one of the most eloquent men Springfield ever knew faded from the recollection

of its inhabitants." Hon. David Davis, a former Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court referred to him in a public address as "Hewitt, eloquent and persuasive and my valued friend."

Mr. Hewitt was born in New York City, August 27, 1805, and removed to Versailles, Ky., when twelve years old. He came to Illinois in 1832, settling near Jacksonville; other members of his family followed in 1838. Immediately upon his arrival in Illinois he began to preach and was heard at Jacksonville, Carrollton and other places. A few members of the church had drifted into the Springfield neighborhood from Kentucky and through these, chiefly Mr. Joseph W. Bennett, Hewitt was induced to come here and undertake to organize a church. His first visit was made sometime in 1832 when not yet twenty-eight years of age; a young man indeed, but not younger than Saul of Tarsus, when arrested on the way to Damascus and commissioned as the Apostle to the Gentiles.

There were but two, possibly three church buildings in town but their pulpits were not open to Mr. Hewitt, nor was there a hall suitable to an assemblage of the people. In this emergency, friends secured the use of a building, situated in the outskirts of the town, now the northwest corner of Fourth street and Capital avenue, at present the site of the Devereaux family residence.

Mr. Hugh M. Armstrong, formerly a resident of Springfield and proprietor of the Springfield Woolen Mills, thus describes the location. "The building in question was situated at the corner of Fourth street and Capitol avenue fronting east. It was a brick building, one story high and about forty feet square, erected in 1830 or 1831 by George Carlyle, a young man from Kentucky, and was occupied by Mr. Hay and his sons Nathaniel, Milton and others for cotten spinning, and afterwards by Williams and Iles for a wool carding machine."

"Yes I have heard Josephus Hewitt preach there at the time to which you refer. The brick building was removed and Capt. Halliday built his residence on the same ground, which I believe is there at this time."

And there they preached the Gospel, and thither went Martha Beers, member of the Presbyterian church and Philo Beers, her husband, of no church at all, and they took with them their little daughter Caroline, then but six years of age; a circumstance I may be pardoned for mentioning, for though there are members of this congregation older than she, there are none living who shared this experience with Caroline Beers, now Mrs. A. J. Kane.

But the carding machine, as the building was called by contemporary citizens, soon became insufficient to accommodate the audiences that desired to hear, for many came in from the country around to swell the company of town folks that gathered nightly. And now new and influential friends intervene to secure the court house for the brilliant young evangelist, and according to another account of this incident, for a time "the same musty walls, which through the day re-echoed vociferous interpretations of the laws of man, resounded at night with the proclamation of the laws of God."