LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 977.3999 L29h I .H.S. A HISTORY OF THE CITY OF CAIRO, ILLINOIS * Af i*». |V^ >yi. ^^(/vv^x^^ A HISTORY OF THE CITY OF CAIRO ILLINOIS BY JOHN M. LANSDEN WITH MAPS AND ILL USTRA TIONS CHICAGO R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY I91O •"; n D c.-, o. 0\ 5 7 7 3 \ Copyrighted, 1910 BY JOHN M. LANSDEN R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO .i^,.f Xce^vv/^ PREFACE HAVE lived In Cairo forty years and during all that time have been I engaged in the practice of the profession of the law. I ought, there- fore, to be fairly well acquainted with what has taken place, during that time, in and concerning the citj' and which was worthy of record or of a place in its history. For many years I have preserved papers and documents relating to the city, not at first with a view to writing a historj^ thereof, but just as any one would preserve papers or documents he regarded as of more than usual interest. These have so accumulated that I have felt I could in no other way do a better service for the people of Cairo than by using them and other materials in the preparation of a historj'^ of the city. Besides this, 1 have not known of any one who had in contemplation the undertaking here attempted. In the year 1864, Mr. Moses B. Harrell, then long a resident of Cairo, wrote an excellent short history of the city, and the same became the first fifty pages of a city director}' of that year. The History of Alexander, Union, and Pulaski Counties, published in 1883, twenty-seven years ago, contains three several parts relating to Cairo. These parts were written by Mr. H. C. Bradsby, who had before that time resided in Cairo many years. The book is a large one and contains many biographical sketches of citizens of Cairo. There are quite a number of copies of this history in the city 1 suppose; but of Mr. Harrell's history, there are now only a very few copies. This history must necessarily contain much that is found in the other two, just as the second contains much that is found in the first; but I have found a great deal which I have deemed worthy of permanent record, which is not embraced in either of the other two books; and further, many matters merely touched upon in them I have presented much more fully. It will be seen that the book contains much historical information about that part of our countrj'^ which embraces our city, county and state—information that might have been omitted without afEecting the local history ; but it is believed little of it will be found so foreign to the local history as to seem wholly out of place. Lyocal history would be very local indeed, which did not here and there show the relation of the 5 193886 6 PREFACE locality to much that was outside and pertained to the country at large. Then, too, I have desired to create, in some small degree at least, a desire in the younger people of our community to know more of this part of the Valley of the Mississippi—this Illinois Country, in some respects the richest part naturally of the United States. I have not been able to devote much time or space to biographical sketches. Ordinarily, it is quite difficult enough to choose between what ought and ought not to go into a local history like this. The book should be a history of the city and not of individuals, excepting, of course, of those persons who have been so identified with its establishment and growth that a history of it with them left out would seem very in- complete. J. M. L. Cairo, Illinois, September, 1910. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I Sketch of the Illinois Country . .13 CHAPTER n Early French Explorers and Missionary Priests . .18 CHAPTER HI The Illinois Territorial Government . -25 CHAPTER IV The City of Cairo of 1818 . -30 CHAPTER V The Site and Place from 1818 to 1836 . -39 CHAPTER VI The City of Cairo of 1836 to 1846. — The Illinois Central Railroad Company of 1836. — The Illinois Exporting Company. — The Cairo City and Canal Company . 41 CHAPTER VII The Cairo City and Canal Company Succeeded by the Cairo City Property Trust.—Cairo from June 13, 1846, to December 23, 1853 • • • .58 CHAPTER VIII Cairo's Site and its Abrasions by the Rivers. — Levees AND Levee Construction. — The Highest Known Floods . .63 CHAPTER IX Low Lots and Grounds. — Seepage. — The Linegar Bill. — Street Filling. — City Indebtedness . • 79 CHAPTER X The Wharf and Wharfage. — Riparian Rights . 85 CHAPTER XI Geological Formations. — The Signal Station. — The River Gauge. — Temperatures, Rain Falls^ etc. 90 CHAPTER XII The Illinois Central Railroad . .96 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII Maps and Plats . iii CHAPTER XIV The Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. — The Territory Drained. — Distances. — The Ohio River as a Bound- ary . .116 CHAPTER XV The Health of the City . .120 CHAPTER XVI Cairo During the War . .128 CHAPTER XVII The Churches ...... 138 CHAPTER XVIII The Schools . • . • .148 CHAPTER XIX The a. B. Safford Memorial Library. — The Woman's Club and Library Association.—St. Mary's Infirmary. —The United States Marine Hospital . • i53 CHAPTER XX The Trustees of the Cairo City Property. — The Trus- tees OF the Cairo Trust Property. — Their Early Civil Engineers. — The Cairo Newspapers . 157 CHAPTER XXI Cairo in Servitude to Land Companies . 167 CHAPTER XXII The American Notes . .170 CHAPTER XXIII The Town Government of Two Years and the City Gov- ernment of Fifty-Three Years. — The Seventeen Mayors . • • • • -177 CHAPTER XXIV Darius Blake Holbrook. — Miles A. Gilbert. — Samuel Staats Taylor. — William Parker Halliday. — Hal- liday Brothers . • . • .190 CHAPTER XXV The Growth of "The Three States" . .208 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER XXVI Alexander County and its Other Towns, and its Earliest Settlers . .211 CHAPTER XXVn Harrell's Short History. — The History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties . .217 CHAPTER XXVni Other Railroads. — The Illinois Central and the Thebes Railroad Bridges. — The Cairo Harbor and Bacon Rock. — The Ferries, Cairo's Need of . 220 CHAPTER XXIX Cairo Banks.—Building and Loan Associations.—The Custom House. — The Halliday Hotel. — The Spring- field Block. — The Court of Common Pleas . .231 CHAPTER XXX Extracts from Books^ Pamphlets and Letters . 240 — CHAPTER XXXI Fort Jefferson. Bird's Point and the Birds . .255 CHAPTER XXXII Miscellaneous Papers. — Judges of the Supreme, Circuit AND County Courts. — Members of the Legislature AND Other Bodies. — County, City and Other Offi- cers. — Lists of Early Residents of the City, Etc. 261 CHAPTER XXXIII Cairo as a Business Place. — The Future of the City . 280 Index ........ 289 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS page John M. Lansden, Photogravure Frontispiece Tanner's Map of Illinois of 1822 13 Details of Maps of 1718 and 1755 18 Survey of Township Seventeen, 1807 25 Map of Cairo of 18 18 30 Shadrack Bond, Photogravure 36 Elias Kent Kane, Photogravure 37 Thompson's Survey of 1837 • 39 Chancellor Kent's Letter of 1838 45 Galena Celebration, 1838 50 Certificate of Stock in C. C. & C. Company 54 Long's Topographical Map of 1850 58 Illinois Central Railroad Tracks 63 Junction of Rivers (1858) 72 Map of Proposed Canal, 1838 79 City Ordinance of 1843 85 Gulf Embayment Area 90 Judge Sydney Breese, Photogravure 96 Strickland and Taylor's Map of 1838 III Ohio and Mississippi Rivers at Cairo 116 Generals Grant and McClernand 128 River Gunboats, Cairo, 1861 . 134 First School House 148 A. B. S afford Memorial Library 153 St. Mary's Infirmary . 155 Cairo in 1841 170 Mayors of Cairo 177 Mayors of Cairo 183 Darius B. Holbrook, Photogravure 190 Miles A. Gilbert, Photogravure 193 Samuel Staats Taylor, Photogravure 196 William P. Halliday, Photogravure 203 Thebes Court House, 1845 211 Cairo Court House, 1864 214 12 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illinois Central Railroad Bridge . 220 Thebes Railroad Bridge . 227 Bed of Ohio River at I. C. Bridge . 229 Cairo-Kaskaskia Bank Bills . 231 Custom House and Post Office Building . 233 Alexander M. Jenkins, Photogravure . 238 U. S. Battleship Concord . 280 H. S. Tanner's Map, P HISTORY OF CAIRO CHAPTER I SKETCH OF THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY THE geographical position of this place, at the junction of the two rivers, requires, it seems to me, a somewhat full account of the attention given it before any attempt was made to establish a city here, which was in the year i8i8. This account may, therefore, be called the introductory chapter. The colonial grants to Virginia of May 23, 1609, and of March 12, 1612, were for territory extending "from sea to sea. West and North- west" or from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. It was not then known how far westward it was to the Pacific coast ; and the uncertainty about the western boundary of the grants afforded grounds for the ter- ritorial disputes which subsequently arose. The French had entered the country by way of the St. Lawrence quite as early as the English had entered it further southward ; and the former, pushing westward and southward, crossed these so-called sea-to- sea grants, which to them had nothing more than a mere paper existence. They, also, not long afterward, came into the country on the south and by way of the Mississippi River. Their claims to the country were based on the right of discover}' and on other grounds not necessary to be noticed here. They established posts here and there in their widely extended dominions.