June 21, 2021
#362

Thank you, Barbara Schock, for sharing your delightful tales of Sandburg and 19th century Galesburg & American history.

Thomas Carter Duval (1802-1890) Henderson Township, Knox County, Illinois

The Old Timers

By Barbara Schock

In his autobiography, Always the Young Strangers, Carl Sandburg wrote that the old timers became part of his “mind and memory.” He perceived them as “living segments of history, specimens and vestiges, breathing evidences in the building of America.” He tried “in his boy’s mind to picture them standing where there wasn’t a wall or a roof on Main Street nor yet a street.”

“They looked around and decided where to clear for the first row of houses, the Public Square, the church, the blacksmith shop, the general store—and the college to be the focus of light and hope for the youth and the coming generations. They saw their little town rise to be a place and a name where before had been silence broken only by wild animal cries, by the recurring rains and winds.”

Henderson Township was the first to be settled in Knox County. It was 1828 when Alexander and Daniel Robertson, came from Morgan County, Illinois, and erected a log cabin. Other early settlers came from Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. They came by foot and horseback. The dwellings they built were sometimes called “block houses” as they were constructed of large trees cut into square shapes with an adze for easier assembly.

Conditions for farmers in those eastern states had become so difficult that they chose to travel a great distance. They desired land which would be productive. They were willing to do the work of clearing the trees and prairie grasses in order to farm. The production from those farms was soon being shipped down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans by steamboat.

Thomas C. Duval was born February 28, 1802, in Culpeper County, Virginia. His parents, James T. and Judah Jennings Duval came to Appanoose, Hancock County, in 1835. James had served in the War of 1812 and came to claim his bounty land. Congress had set aside the Military Tract between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers for veterans.

Thomas struck out on his own and worked for a year on a farm in Warren County. Then he purchased a quarter section of land in Henderson Township for $150. He resided there until 1855. In 1850 he had purchased 240 acres on which the village of Wataga would later rise. Eventually, he owned 2,000 acres and was able to give each of his children a farm.

Thomas married Nancy Shumate (1805-1889) on April 2, 1823. They had ten children of which seven grew to adulthood, married and had children. When he died September 25, 1890, there were forty-three grandchildren and forty-one great grandchildren. The couple is buried in the Henderson cemetery.

Thomas C. Duval paid a $10 or $15 fee to have his biography printed in the Biographical and Portrait Album of Knox County, Illinois, which was published in 1886. Perhaps he felt that the accomplishments of his life needed to be recorded for posterity. They became a wonderful source of family history to the later generations.