Breaking The Prairie, from a drawing by Theodore R. Davis, Harper’s Weekly, 1868
Gaddial Scott
By Barbara Schock
When Carl Sandburg was
growing up in Galesburg, he knew a number of early
pioneers who had settled in Knox County in the
1830s.
The custom of having a
picnic and get-together of the old setters every
summer occurred in many Illinois communities.
Prizes were awarded for the eldest person present,
the individual who had traveled the longest
distance to attend the picnic or the man or woman
who had arrived earliest in the vicinity. The
newspapers usually printed long articles about the
event, the names of those present and the deaths
of pioneers during the preceding year.
Gaddial Scott was one of
the Knox County pioneers. He had been born in
Jackson County, Tennessee, on August 9, 1809. His
father had been born in North Carolina and his
mother in Kentucky. By 1833, Gaddial had settled
in Sangamon County, Illinois, where he married
Susan Sexton. They had thirteen children, of which
only two survived to adulthood.
The family settled on a
farm four miles north of Knoxville in October,
1834. It is said Scott broke the first sod in Knox
Township. As a young man in 1827, Gaddial had
traveled through the area with several other men
looking for honey. They found two trees filled
with the sweet substance. On their journey, they
never saw another human being.
In those early days,
farmers had a difficult time selling the grain
they had harvested. Scott and several other men
decided to haul their wheat to Chicago. They hoped
to get a better price there. The market price
locally was 20 to 40 cents less per bushel. Their
wagon held only thirty bushels of wheat. They
slept in the wagons at night and prepared their
own meals. A coffee pot and skillet were the only
utensils used. The men made coffee and cooked
bacon to be eaten with bread.
Chicago was a large
mud-hole with sailing ships anchored on the banks
of the Chicago River. Mr. Scott was so interested
in all the sights that he ran into the back of
another wagon. He unloaded his grain and received
47 cents a bushel (equal to $11.03 in today’s
money). The men spent more than eleven days
traveling to and from Chicago. For all the effort
of planting, harvesting, cleaning and hauling the
wheat, the Knox County men didn’t profit very
much.
Wisely, Scott bought three
barrels of salt which cost $1.50 each. There was a
shortage of salt in the area around Peoria because
the Illinois River was too low for navigation. The
price of a bushel of salt in Peoria was $3.00.
The Knox County Republican
printed the obituary of Gaddial Scott on June 23,
1880. He had lived a life of seventy years, eight
months and nine days. This quotation from the
obituary sums up the life of Gaddial Scott and
many other pioneers. “To a few such stout hearts
and willing hands as his, the Great West is
indebted for the prosperity which it enjoys
today.” He is buried in the Knoxville Cemetery.