The next Winter, 1854-5, a school was taught in one of the log cabins by Charlotte Potter, now Mrs. Charlotte Eldred. Slab seats were made, holes bored in the log walls and desks made on the pins inserted in them, a box stove placed in it, and the room was considered ready. This was the school for this community until after the township organization, in 1858. That produced a change for the better, and new and more comfortable houses came into use. In the Autumn of 1858, Mr. Potter went to Joliet and procured lumber for the erection of a school house, which was completed and occupied the next Summer. School was taught in this building by Margaret Turner, of Dwight, and such was the state of the township finances that Mr. Potter was obliged to wait almost two years before he received pay for building this house. About the time the war came on, the township began to increase very rapidly in population, and other schools were added. This continued to be the case until the present number, nine, was reached. The schools are now in good condition, and are maintained fully six months in the year.

There are no established churches in the township. Several Catholics reside here, but belong to the church just south, in Broughton Township. Those belonging to other denominations generally attend divine service in Dwight. Through the Summer, Sunday schools are held in many of the school houses, and are well sustained. In the early days of the people here, services were held in each other's cabins or houses, and, after the building of the school houses, were held there. When roads were made, the people began attending church in Dwight, and still keep up the practice.

In the old log school house the first elections were held, and here votes were cast for Fillmore and Buchanan, representing the two great political parties of the day. The politics of the township have always been nearly equally divided between the Republicans and Democrats; and since the Greenback party came into prominence, it has found a good number of adherents here.

These gen

The township furnished its full quota of men for the late war. erally went to Dwight, Odell or Pontiac to enlist, and hence in the war record printed elsewhere in this book will be found credited to those places.

We have noted the coming of the first settlers in this town, and have narrated at some length their settlement here and their trials and difficulties experienced in the subjugation of the new prairie country. We could go on in this strain to an indefinite length, giving the name of each settler and what he did when coming here. This is so fully given in the biographical part of the work, under each name, that its mention here would simply be an unnecessary repetition, and to these pages the reader is referred for the further prosecution of this subject.

A glance at the wealth of the township, as shown by the Assessor's books, shows a striking exhibit of the results of a little over a quarter of a century's growth. The Assessor reports 22,959 acres of improved lands-none unimproved. He valued this land at $282,240, hardly one-half its real value. He

enumerates 582 horses, 1,119 head of neat cattle, 201 head of sheep, 34 mules. 3,020 hogs, and quite a number of other domestic animals. He values these at $50,000-an exceedingly low estimate. Corn is the principal cereal grown. Oats and rye do well, but are not extensively cultivated. Wheat has, in the earlier days of the township, formed the staple crop, but of late years has given way to corn. The last report of the Assessor shows that 32 acres were grown in wheat, 9,429 in corn, 1,427 in oats, and 960 in other field products. He also reports 2,896 acres of meadow, 2,119 in inclosed pasture, 85 in woodland, and 96 in orchards.

The face of the country included in Round Grove Township is slightly undulating, well adapted to farming and grazing, and is fully improved by the residents. It is well watered by four small creeks, running northward, affording good water facilities for stock grazing.

The "Act for Township Organization" was adopted in this county in the Fall of 1857, and went into force at the Spring election of 1858. At this election, R. Eldred was elected Supervisor, and work on roads was at once inaugurated. The effect of the Township Act was the erection of better school houses, construction of better roads and bridges, and a corresponding improvement in all parts of the township. It is now thoroughly settled and well improved, and is one of the best townships in the county.

The following are the present township officers: Supervisor, J. W. Lister; Collector, George Jeffers; Road Commissioner, W. H. Lister; Clerk, Cyrus Thomas; Assessor, Thomas Feehery; Justices of the Peace, George Maxson and Samuel Casement.

CHARLOTTE TOWNSHIP.

This township, like Sullivan, is newly settled. It was more than twenty years from the time of the first settlement in Indian Grove ere the cabins of the white man began to dot the prairies of Charlotte. Being a part of Pleasant Ridge until 1864, its history and early settlement are so closely interwoven with that of the latter town as to render it somewhat difficult to separate one from the other. Charlotte lies in the eastern tier of townships, and is described as Town 27 north, Range 8 east, and is all prairie, except a few sections of timber, bordering the north branch of the Vermilion River, which flows through the township to the west.

The first settlement in what is now Charlotte Township was made by Patrick Monahan, in the Spring of 1857. He came from Old Ireland, the "Gim of the Say," and is a genuine, warm-hearted, big-souled Irishman, in the full sense of the term. His first habitation was made by planting four posts in the ground, across which poles were laid, and boards placed across the poles. As he could obtain neither wood nor coal, for the first few months his family gathered dried resin weeds, which were used as fuel. The fires for cooking were built on the open prairie. This was the very first opening or settlement made

in this section. He states that he shipped the first car load of stock from Chatsworth, and brought the first load of lumber to that place. He used to go to Morris with an ox team to mill, which occupied several days, and sometimes a week. In breaking prairie, the "red roots" were carefully preserved for fuel. This was a kind of prairie shrub, somewhat similar to hazel or willow, except that it had larger roots. There was no coal then being mined in Livingston County, and it behooved the settlers to economize in every way possible the means of keeping up fires. John Monahan came with his brother, and was a single man at this time. He lived with Patrick several years before taking to himself a life partner. When the Monahans came to the settlement, one of their oxen gave out one mile west of the place chosen for their home. They came on, and left it lying by the road side, or rather, their trail, for there were no roads then, and the next morning Patrick sent his brother John back to see if the ox had sufficiently recuperated to make the remainder of the journey. He found only the bones of the poor animal, the wolves having devoured it during the night.

The same year that saw the Monahans pitch their tent upon these wild prairies brought Owen Murtagh and John Martin to the township. Murtagh came from Marshall County, and settled here soon after Monahan. After some years, he sold out and removed to Ford County, where he, at the last account of him, resided. Martin came from England, and seems to have been but poor material. He enlisted in the army during the late war, and after its close returned to the neighborhood, but finally left his wife, who still lives here, and went to Kansas. That is the last of him, so far as this town knows to the contrary. In the Fall of 1850, the settlement was augmented by the arrivals in it of L. W. Dart and a man named Loomis. These were rare specimens, from the accounts gathered of them. Dart came here from Woodford County, but was originally from the Green Mountains of Vermont. He built a sod house, in which he designed passing the Winter, but in the fore part of the season it was burned. He lost everything he had except his wife and children, and besides which he had little. else. He had nothing to live on, and after his house was burned stayed at Monahan's several weeks, until he could find some place to go to. He appears to have been a bad manager, as he received $5,000 with his wife when he married, but lost it all in Woodford County in attempts at wheat raising, and in speculating, so that when he came here he was well nigh penniless. He is said to have been a man of fine intelligence, but of a disposition to render him unpopular, and a character to some extent questionable. His family often suffered for the necessaries of life, sometimes living on potatoes alone, sometimes grinding corn in a coffee-mill for bread. He "lawed" the county for sixteen years for some imaginary title to land in Charlotte Township, but without profit to himself, or any one else, aside from the lawyers engaged in it. He left the town in 1876 without a dollar, and, as we are informed, without reputation, and went to the Indian Territory, where he is now, if he has not lost his scalp. His wife,

however, was said to be a perfect lady, well raised and well liked by all. Loomis was from New York, and was another man of little use in the community. He lived by trapping and hunting, and as game became scarce, he added the making of axe handles to his business as a means of support. Like the last mentioned, his family often suffered for provisions, and his neighbors remember a time when he had nothing in his larder but some frozen potatoes, which they lived on for days together. When he run his course here and starved out completely, he took the advice of a noted philosopher, and went further West to grow up with the country. William Hefner and Elias Brown came here from Indiana in the Fall of 1859-60. They made settlements, but becoming dissatisfied sold out and moved away about 1870.

Laurence Farrall and Owen Finnegan are warm-hearted sons of the "Old Sod." Farrall came from Ireland, and stopped at Chatsworth in 1857, before the village of that name had perhaps been thought of. He remained there until 1861, with the exception of one year spent in Fairbury, when he settled in this township, where he had bought land and erected a house two years before. He still resides on this place, and the house then built was the first frame dwelling put up in this township. Finnegan came from Ohio here, but was originally from Ireland. He stopped in Fairbury, where he remained two years, then removed three miles south of Chatsworth, and in 1862 came to Charlotte, where he permanently settled and where he still resides. The last two, with Patrick and John Monahan, are all of the early settlers of Charlotte Township still living among the scenes of their early trials and privations.

Patrick Monahan's first residence, and the one he occupied until he got his land paid for, is still standing, a small cabin, presenting a striking contrast to his present elegant dwelling, which is one of the finest country residences in Livingston County, and cost $5,360, exclusive of his own work, which included all the hauling of material to the ground. It is a two-story frame building, with foundation of Joliet stone laid in cement. He is enjoying now the reward of the privations endured in the middle of a great prairie, twenty years ago. Then hunger often stared him in the face, and cold, with the extreme scarcity of fuel, was sometimes unpleasantly severe. He informed us that in those early days his family once lived nearly a week on potatoes and beans, and meal was sometimes almost wholly unattainable. He heard of some meal to be had at a certain place beyond the river, and after crossing the river on the ice, breaking through and nearly drowning, as well as freezing, found the place, but the meal was all gone. At another time, Brooks, who kept a store at Chatsworth. received a barrel of flour, and had to divide it into seven parts to accommodate his almost starving patrons.

The first child born in Charlotte Township was Julia A. Monahan, a daughter of Patrick Monahan, October 8, 1859. Her father took her to Morris, with an ox team, a distance of fifty miles, to have her baptized. Having no gun, he made the trip armed with a pitchfork to defend himself against the

wolves, which were so bad that he did not know whether he would get back with his charge or not. But such is the religious zeal of that devoted people, that they will brave any danger to perform the decrees of their church. However, he made the trip in perfect safety. John Monahan and a daughter of James Glennin, of Avoca Township, who were marrried in October, 1863, was the first marriage, though the ceremony was not solemnized in the township. The first death was a boy named Thomas Bain, drowned in the Vermilion River in the Winter of 1862-63. He was skating on the ice, when he went through, and for some time his parents did not know where to look for him. They finally found where he had broken through the ice, and after breaking it still further, found him underneath in the water. His parents had come from El Paso to this settlement, and they took him back there for interment. As he was their only help on the farm, they never came back here to reside. The next death was an old German, who worked for Patrick Monahan, and died very suddenly. It was extreme cold weather, and he was taken to Chatsworth, and in almost the first vacant spot was buried. He is mentioned in the history

of Chatsworth as the first burial in the village cemetery.

The first

The first school houses were built in Charlotte Township in 1861. In that year, the houses known as the Dart and the Monahan school houses were erected. The name of the first teacher is now forgotten, but in 1862, Miss Jane Winchell taught a school, which was the second taught in the town. Board of Trustees were Patrick Finegan, Owen Murtagh and Loomis ; the latter's first name no one now remembers. The township has at present nine school districts, with good frame buildings in each district. The citizens of Charlotte boast of the fact that not a town in Livingston County has better school houses than those of their own town. The present Board of Trustees are Samuel Foreman, Lawrence Farrall and Jonathan Edwards. Owen Finegan is School Treasurer.

The first blacksmith, and the only resident one the town has had, was the man Dart, already alluded to. He had a few blacksmith's tools, and did a little work sometimes, when by strong persuasion he could be induced into his shop. But he usually had too many irons in the fire, metaphorically speaking, to bring himself down to good hard work.

There are three substantial wooden bridges spanning the Vermilion in this township. The first one was a rude wooden structure, built before any regular roads were laid out, and was, in a few years, washed away, when a substantial bridge was put up where the road running through the center of the town crosses the river, at a cost of $1,700. Patrick Monahan had the first road laid out, which is the one above alluded to. It runs north and south, by his residence, and is the principal thoroughfare of travel through the town.

As stated in the commencement of this chapter, Charlotte was included in Pleasant Ridge Township until 1864, when the latter township petitioned the Board of Supervisors for a separation. In accordance with the law, "made and