|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
LIFE OF JOHN D. LEE.
CHAPTER I.
A STORMY BEGINNING.
IN JUSTICE to myself, my numerous family, and the public in general, I consider it my duty to write a history of my life. I shall content myself with giving facts, and let the readers draw their own conclusion therefrom. By the world at large, I am called a vile criminal, and have been sentenced to be shot for deeds committed by myself and others, nearly twenty years ago. I never willingly committed a crime. I have acted my religion, nothing more. I have obeyed the orders of the Church. I have acted as I was commanded to do by my superiors, and if I have committed acts that justify my execution, I ask my readers to say what should be the fate of the leaders in the Church who taught me to believe that I could not and would not commit sin while obeying orders of the priesthood? My sins, if any, are the result of doing what I was commanded to do by those who were my superiors in authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I will now give the facts which relate to my own history, and leave it to others to say how I should have acted - how they would have acted if situated as I was.
I was born on the 6th day of September, A. D. 1812, in the town of Kaskaskia, Randolph County, Illinois. My father, Ralph Lee, was born in the State of Virginia. He was of the family of Lees of Revolutionary fame, and was a relative of General Robert E. Lee, of the late war; he served his time as an apprentice and learned the carpenter's trade in the city of Baltimore. My mother was born in Nashville, Tennessee. She was the daughter of John Doyle, who for many years held the position of Indian Agent over the roving tribes of Indians in southeastern Illinois. He served in the war of the Revolution, and was wounded in one of the many battles in which he took part with the Sons of Liberty against the English oppressors. About the year 1796, he was appointed Indian Agent, and moved to Kaskaskia, Illinois.
My mother was first married in 1799, to Oliver Reed, and lived with him until he was assassinated by a man named Jones, who entered the house when the family were asleep, and striking Reed with a seat of a loom, knocked his brains out, at the same time severely wounding my half-sister, Eliza Virginia, then six months old. The blow and the screams of the child wakened my mother, who sprang from the bed, and recognizing the assassin, said, "For God's sake, Jones, spare my husband's life!" Jones said, "You know me, G-d-n you! you shall tell no tales." With this, he caught up a sugar trough and struck my mother on the head with it. The blow rendered her senseless. Jones, believing he had completed his work of death, then left the house. My mother soon revived, called upon the neighbors for assistance, and told who had committed the murder. Jones was arrested, convicted and afterwards hung for the crime. The injuries received by my mother, from the blow struck by Jones, affected her all the rest of her life.
After the death of Reed, my mother went back to Kaskaskia lived in her father's family until she married my father in the year 1808. My mother had two children by my father - that is, William Oliver and myself. My brother, William Oliver, died when about two years old. At the time of my birth my father was considered one of the leading men of that section of country; be was a master workman, sober and attentive to business, prompt and punctual to his engagements. He contracted largely and carried on a heavy business; he erected a magnificent mansion, for that age and country, on his land adjoining the town of Kaskaskia. This tract of land was the property of my mother when she married my father. My grandfather Doyle was a wealthy man. He died in 1809 at Kaskaskia, Illinois, and left his whole fortune to my mother and her sister Charlotte, by will. They being his only children, he divided the property equally between them.
My father and mother wore both Catholics, were raised in that faith; I was christened in that Church. William Morrison and Louise Phillips stood as my representative god-father and god-mother. It is from that Church record that I could alone obtain the facts and date that referred to my birth.
When about one year old, my mother being sick, I was sent to a French nurse, a negro woman. At this time my sister Eliza was eleven years old, but young as she was she had to care for my mother and do all the work of the household. To add to the misfortune, my father began to drink heavily and was soon very dissipated; drinking and gambling was his daily occupation. The interest and care of his family was no longer a duty with him; his presence was seldom seen to cheer and comfort his lonely, afflicted wife. The house was one mile from town, and we had no neighbors nearer than that. The neglect and indifference on the part of my father towards my afflicted mother, served to increase her anguish and sorrow, until death came to her relief. My mother's death left us miserable indeed; we were (my sister and I) thrown upon the wide world, helpless, and I might say, without father or mother. My father when free from the effects of intoxicating drink, was a kind-hearted, generous, noble man, but from that, time forward he was a slave to drink - seldom sober.
My aunt Charlotte was a regular spit-fire; she was married to a man by the name of James Conner, a Kentuckian by birth They lived ten miles north of us. My sister went to live with her aunt, but the treatment she received was so brutal that the citizens complained to the county commissioners, and she was taken away from her aunt and bound out to Dr. Fisher, with whose family she lived until she became of age. In the meantime the Doctor moved to the city of Vandalia, Illinois. I remained with my nurse until I was eight years of age, when I was taken to my aunt Charlotte's, to be educated. I had been in a family which talked French so long that I had nearly lost the knowledge of my mother tongue. The children at school called me Gumbo, and teased me so much that I became disgusted with the French language and tried to forget it - which has been a disadvantage to me since that time.
My aunt was rich in her own right. My uncle Conner was poor; he drank and gambled and wasted her fortune; she in return gave him thunder and blizen all the time. The more she scolded, the worse he acted, until they would fight like cats and dogs. Between them I was treated worse than an African slave. I lived in the family eight years, and can safely say I got a whipping every day I was there. My life was one of misery and wretchedness; and if it had not been for my strong religious convictions, I certainly would have committed suicide, to have escaped from the miserable condition I was in. I then believed, as I do still, that for the crime of suicide there was no forgiveness in this world, or that which is to come. My aunt was more like a savage than a civilized woman. In her anger she generally took her revenge upon those around her who were the least to blame. She would strike with anything she could obtain, with which to work an injury. I have been knocked down and beaten by her until I was senseless, scores of times, and I yet carry many scars on my person, the result of my harsh usage by her.
My experience in childhood made a lasting impression upon me; the horrors of a contentious family have haunted me through life. I then resolved in my mind that I would never subject myself to sorrow and misery as my uncle had done. I would marry for love, and not for riches. I also formed the resolution that I would never gamble after I was married, and I have kept that resolution since I was a married man.
Aunt Charlotte had five children, four girls and one boy; i. e., Minerva C., Amanda, Eliza, Maria and John Edgar. They, as well as myself, were strangers to the affections of a mother, and the pleasures of a home.
When I was sixteen years old, I concluded to leave my aunt's house - I cannot call it home; my friends advised me to do so. I walked one night to Kaskaskia; went to Robert Morrison and told him my story. He was a mail contractor. He clothed me comfortably, and sent me over the Mississippi river into Missouri, to carry the mail from St. Genevieve to Pinckney, on the north side of the Missouri River, via Potosi, a distance of one hundred and twenty-seven miles. It was a weekly mail. I was to receive seven dollars a month for my services. This was in December, 1828. It was a severe winter; snow unusually deep, and roads bad. I was often until two o'clock at night in reaching my stations. In the following Spring I came near losing my life on several occasions when swimming the streams, which were then generally over their banks. The Meramec was the worse stream I had to cross, but I escaped danger, and gave satisfaction to my employer. At my request, I was changed, in the Spring of 1829, to the route from Kaskaskia to Vandalia, Illinois, the then capital of the State; the route went by Covington and Carlisle. This was also a weekly route; the distance was about one hundred miles, and I had eighteen hours in which to make the trip. While I was carrying the mail in Missouri, I got a letter from my sister, informing me of her marriage to Josiah Nichols, a nephew of Barker Berry, the sheriff of Fayette county, Illinois, and inviting me to visit them. Nichols was a wealthy man, and lived sixteen miles north of Vandalia. I had not met my sister for many years, so I concluded to visit her. This was one reason why I wished to be put on the Vandalia route. One day, when I arrived at Vandalia, I did not find post-master in the post-office. I could not find him, so I left mail at the post-office door, and rode up to my brother-in-law's house. I had a pleasant visit there, and returned the next morning to carry the mail back to Kaskaskia. The post-master, not knowing where I was, had sent another person with the mail, at my expense. It cost me $ 15.00 - a little over my wages for two months. I returned to Kaskaskia, where my employer received me kindly, and laughed at my mishap. I agreed to pay all damages if he would change me to another route, for I could not consent to return again to the scene of my failure. My employer kindly gave me the place as stage driver from Kaskaskia to Shawneetown, on the Ohio river. The route ran by Pinkneyville and Gallatin; and it was one hundred and twenty miles in length, through thinly settled country. I drove on that line about one month, when I commenced driving stage from Kaskaskia to Belleville. In traveling this route, I passed by my aunt Charlotte Conner's place. Uncle Conner had then gone to the lead mines at Galena. When my aunt and cousins saw me, they all begged me to return and live with them. They made great promises of kindness, and I was finally persuaded to agree to return, and live in the family. I soon quit the stage-driving business and returned to my aunt's.
All I know of my father, after I was eight years of age, is, that he went to Texas in the year 1820, and I have never heard of him since. What his fate was I never knew.
When my mother died, my uncle and aunt Conner took all the property - a large tract of land, several slaves, household and kitchen furniture, and all; and, as I had no guardian, I never received any portion of the property; in fact I was robbed of all. The slaves were set free by an act of the Legislature; the land was sold for taxes, and was hardly worth redeeming when I came of age; so I sold my interest in all the land that had belonged to my mother, and made a quit-claim deed to it to Sidney Breeze, a lawyer of Kaskaskia, in consideration of $200. My sister, by the kindness of Dr. Fisher, her guardian, received a. much greater price for her interest in the land than I did.
I was born on the point of land lying between and above the mouth of the Okaw or Kaskaskia river and the Mississippi river, in what is known as the Great American Bottom - the particular point I refer to was then called Zeal-no-waw, the Island of Nuts. It was, nineteen miles from the point of the bluffs to the mouth of the Okaw river; ten miles wide up at the bluffs and tapering to a point where the rivers united. Large bands of wild horses, French ponies called "punt" horses, were to be found any day feeding on the evergreen and nutritious grasses and vegetation. Cattle and hogs were also running wild in great numbers; every kind of game, large and small, could be had with little exertion. The streams were full of fish; the forests contained many varieties of timber; nuts, berries, and wild fruits of every description, found in the temperate zone, could be had in their season. This point of land is one of the finest on the globe; there I spent my early year.; there I had pleasures and sorrows; there I met the maiden that first taught me love's young dream. Near by was the Kaskaskia Reservation of the Kaskaskia Indians, Louis DuQuoin was Chief of the tribe. He had a frame house painted in bright colors, but he never would farm any, game being so plentiful he had no need to labor. Nearly all the settlers were French, and not very anxious for education or improvement of any kind. I was quite a lad before I ever saw a wagon, carriage, set of harness, or a ring, a staple or set of bows to an ox yoke. The first wagon I ever saw was brought into that county by a Yankee peddler; his outfit created as great an excitement in the settlement as the first locomotive did in Utah; the people flocked in from every quarter to see the Yankee wagon. Every thing in use in that country was of the most simple and primitive construction. There were no saw mills or grist mills in that region; sawed lumber was not in the country. The wagons were two-wheeled carts made entirely of wood - not a particle of iron about them - the hubs were of white elm, spokes of white oak or hickory, the felloes of black walnut, as it was soft and would bear rounding. The felloes were made six inches thick, and were strongly dowelled together with seasoned hardwood pins; the linch pin was of hickory or nab; the thus were wood; in fact all of it was wood. The harness consisted of a corn husk collar, hames cut from an ash tree root, or from an oak; tugs were raw hide; the lines also were raw hide; a hackamere or halter was used in place of a bridle; one horse was lashed between the thills by raw hide straps and pins in the thills for a hold back; when two horses were used, the second horse was fastened ahead of the first by straps fastened on to the thills of the cart.
Oxen were yoked as follows: A square stick of timber of sufficient length was taken and hollowed out at the ends to fit on the neck of the ox, close up to the horns, and this was fastened by raw hide straps to the horns. All other implements were made in an equally primitive manner. The people were of necessity self-sustaining, for they were forced to depend upon their own resources for everything they used. Clothing was made of home manufactured cloth or the skins of wild animals. Imported articles were procured at heavy cost, and but few found their way to our settlements. Steamboats and railroads were then unthought of, by us at least, and the navigation of the Mississippi was carried on In small boats, that could be drawn up. along the river bank by means of oars, spikes, poles and hook. The articles most in demand in the settlements were axes, hoe, cotton cards, hatchela for cleaning flax, hemp and cotton, spinning wheels, knives and ammunition, guns and bar shears for plows. In exchange for such goods the people traded beef, hides, furs, tallow, beeswax, honey, etc. Money was not needed or used by any one-everything was trade and barter.
The people were generous and brave. Their pleasures and pastimes were those usual in frontier settlements. They were hardy, and well versed in woodcraft. They aided each other, and were all in all a noble class of people, possessing many virtues and few faults. The girls were educated by their mothers. to work, and had to work. It was then a disgrace for a young woman not to know bow to take the raw material - the flax and cotton - and, unaided, manufacture her own clothing. It is a lamentable fact that such is no longer the case.
Main Table of
Contents