bargain; he added gall and wormwood by making them sign a $2,000 bond to guarantee they would properly pay over the one-fourth of the lot sale money. It seems Denison was acting for the rail group as an agent and not for himself in any unethical way. The contract and bond were signed June 20, 1854 and are a matter of record, detailed in many abstracts.
The two Washington men were delighted when construction of the Eastern Extension soon commenced, and they watched its tracks push through there and on to the east where construction stopped at a spot on the prairie in October, 1854, since named for the company's construction superintendent, William H. Cruger. Eastward and only threefourths of a mile north were the stakes of the new town site, but the railroaders were already out of cash. There had been an authorized stock of $400,000, and although the city of Peoria had liberally backed the venture, not enough had been subscribed and paid in. People at the end of the track donated the building of a little depot; Wathen and Gibson pushed lot sales, mindful of the cut due Denison for the benefit of the railroad. It was a venture in which everyone felt the need of cooperation. Money was borrowed where it could be found, and the Eastern Extension became heavily encumbered.
Thomas A. H. Smythe, construction agent for the contractors, Cruger, Secor & Company,9 finally got the work resumed in the summer of 1855, and on April 1, 1856, the last tails were being spiked down to make the junction with the three year old Illinois Central. Octave Chanute,10 twenty-three-year-old Frenchman and civil engineer in charge, used the free 100 foot right-of-way granted by Wathen and Gibson.
Denison thus completed his part of the bargain, and on April 4, 1856, Wathen paid him $467.48 and Gibson $701.22. The figures show lots had been sold or contracted for in an amount exceeding $4,600. Denison and his wife then gave a quitclaim deed to any further interest in lot sales, but the rail group immediately appointed their President, George Clinton Bestor as agent to make a new deal.
It was important for both the railroad and the town organizers that the rails be continued on eastward, so there would be a crossing instead of a junction, terms by which the place was first known. That Denison and the rail group were allied may be inferred from the date of the new contract, April 5, 1856, one day after Denison was paid in full. This new contract was to become the basis for years of later court action between the railroad and Wathen and Gibson.
Sometime in 1855 or early 1856 George Bestor built what was probably the first building ever erected on a town lot. He almost immediately moved it south onto railroad ground near the earliest depot,11 and brought in an old world refugee called the Count, who lived in it and also operated a little restaurant in it. A man named Ben Hazlett seems to have been the only other person there at that time; William Ostler's
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