children being massacred or carried into captivity in Kentucky alone between the years 1783 and 1790. In 1791 a large body of militia with the addition of 2,000 soldiers under General St. Clair marched toward the Wabash River, but on a tributary stream they were met by the Indian chief Little Turtle with 1,500 warriors in a midnight surprise attack and were badly beaten.
Another attack led by General Wayne in 1794 carried on a relentless campaign against the Indians, defeating them at Fallen Timbers and a mutual peace agreement was concluded in 1795. After this, immigration into southern Illinois came slowly. Then came other Indian uprisings led by Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet, and outrages and injuries inflicted by Great Britain upon the Americans led to the War of 1812. For two years this made it impossible for families to leave the security of their old homes for a newer and more sparsely settled land, although it was over 140 years since Marquette wrote so glowingly of the bountiful land of the Illinois. These events of history deterred a much earlier settling of our state.
Indian uprisings and pirates on the Mississippi having been subdued, work began on the Cumberland Road and the Erie Canal, two main arteries of travel. Reports were heard of other canals from the Ohio River to the Great Lakes, and of new stage coach lines, steamboat schedules and railroad planning.
In 1826 an adventurer returned to his home in Overton County, Tennessee, and made a glowing report of the new state of Illinois. William McCord, Sr., was one who heard him, and he made preparations to move his wife Jane McMurtry Armstrong and their eight children to the Prairie State. Because this pioneer migration closely follows a pattern of a hundred other such trips, it is told in some detail from the Thomas McCord records, Chapman Brothers Biographical Album and the Past and Present of Woodford County.
With five neighboring families, the McCords left their southern home on June 7, 1827. After tearful farewells they left in their tightly packed wagons, in which the women and children rode while the men and older sons trudged behind to attend to the cattle they brought. In a few days it began raining, and this bad weather continued for most of the fifty-three days they were on their way.
The crossing of the wagons over the ferry at Vincennes was accomplished without difficulty, but the cattle persisted in jumping off and swimming back to the Indiana shore. Thomas McCord, then eighteen, swam the river eleven times before the cattle were finally on the Illinois shore. There were other streams such as the Sangamon where they had to set about chopping trees and building rafts, lashing the logs together with the bed cord to affect a crossing. This meant a full day of work, chaining the rear wagon wheels, steering the raft, swimming the horses across and getting settled for meal and the nights encampment on the opposite shore.
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