After this trying journey in much rain, they stopped in the little settlement of Twin Grove, a few miles west of Blooming Grove, now Bloomington. Here they built a cabin with puncheon floors and remained three years. Thomas said the only settlements were in the groves, and the only mill for miles was a corn cracker at Twin Grove which was operated by horse power. In March, 1831, the McCord family moved north to the upper Panther Creek settlement in Greene Township where their cousins the Patricks had located. They probably forded the Mackinaw at Dixons or the Mackinaw Dells ford then used by the travelers on the Wabash-Fort Clark Indian trail. William McCord made a claim for land, which when surveyed, was the northeast quarter of Section nineteen in Greene Township, entering his claim at the Danville land office.
William built a log cabin with the help of his sons which was still standing in 1889 along with a little blacksmith shop he built later. These were then in an old orchard planted by Mr. McCord. The cabin was
twenty feet square and one and a half stories high, the lower and upper portions consisting of a single room. It was built of small round logs 'chinked' with smaller pieces of wood and daubed with mortar. There were two doors and two windows, the latter consisting of four panes of eight by ten inches each. The chimney was built of sods, one on top of another to the proper heighth. (Le Baron.)
This became the home of ten, possibly thirteen people, as the McCord family finally had eleven children. Years later the son Thomas McCord was asked what he could tell about pioneer living; he stated he knew everything there was to know about it. He could even recall the weird and dismal sound of the howling packs of prairie wolves in the still of a lonely night.
On reaching the upper Panther Creek Grove, the McCords found Amasa Stout and his wife Susannah had lived there for three years, the settlement's oldest residents. The land was unsurveyed, so at first no one entered any land claims. The Stouts had seen two bitter winters; their first in 1828-29, when they lived in a rail pen, protected on three sides with an ample layer of corn fodder. The second was the one just passed, which the McCords also experienced at Twin Grove, the winter of the deep snows. This original Stout pen was located near the west line of the northwest quarter of Section nineteen, also the west line of Greene Township. After living upon their farm for about eight years, Stout finally patented it under date of June 13, 1836, and immediately sold it to B. J. Radford, Sr., the father of the author of Woodford County's first history. They then moved south to Dry Grove.
The families who preceded the McCords to the Greene Township settlement were William, Allen and Eliza, Winslow and Almira, and Eli and Mary Amanda Patrick; Young Bilbrey and his wife, Amanda Patrick, and the Stouts. All except the latter were related. The
Page 20