DR. GEORGE CADWELL.

(By R. W. Mills.)

Dr. George Cadwell was born Feb. 21, 1773, at Wethersfield, Conn., where he spent his early youth. He acquired a literary education at Hartford, but his medical education was obtained in Rutland, Vt. While engaged in the study of medicine he became acquainted with Pamelia Lyon, of Fair Haven, Vt., with whom he was married on Feb. 19, 1797, at Vergennes. The mother of Miss Lyons, was, before her marriage, a Miss Hosford, and was a niece of the Revolutionary patriot, Ethan Allen, of Ticonderoga fame. Her father was the celebrated Matthew Lyon, then a member of Congress from the state of Vermont and afterwares four times elected to Congress from the state of Kentucky and once elected a delegate to Congress from the territory of Arkansas.

For a time after his marriage Dr. Cadwell remained at Fair Haven practicing his profession and assisting in the management of the extensive business of his father-in-law. Among the other things in which Colonel Lyon was engaged and in which Dr. Cadwell assisted him was the publication at Fair Haven of a newspaper called "The Scourge of Aristocracy." Colonel Lyon was an ardent Republican, and oppossed to the Federalist principles of Adams and Hamilton. He published in his paper many articles denouncing the Adams administration and thus became entangled in the meshes of the law. The Alien and sedition laws passed about that time provided severe penalties for speaking evil of the rulers: and on account of a letter reflecting on the administration of the elder Adams, written by Lyon while in Congress at Philadelphia and published in his newspaper at Fair Haven, which would be considered very mild in these stirring political times (extracts from which may be found in Wharton's State Trials," page 333), Lyon was indicted and convicted under the Sedition act and sentenced to pay a fine of one thousand dollars and to be imprisoned in the jail at Vergennes for a period of four months. To pay this, at that time, enormous sum in gold, brought Lyon to the verge of financial ruin, and in consequence thereof he resolved to remove to Kentucky. He selected a location on the Cumberland river at the point in Lyon county, Kentucky, where Eddyville now stands and thither he sent his family in the spring of 1799, in company with his two sons-in-law, Dr. Cadwell and John Messenger, the later subsequently becoming a prominent citizen of St. Clair county.

In making this journey it is known that the party constructed flat boats at Pittsburg and descended the Ohio river to the mouth of the Cumberland, and from thence ascended the Cumberland to the point of Lyon's location. Very little, however, is known of the first part of the journey; but it would seem that the party traversed the entire state of New York and through Pennsylvania to Pittsburg in wagons, as indicated by the following extract taken from McLaughlin's life of Matthew Lyon, page 407: "The John Adams or Chipman party had subjected Colonel Lyon to such persecution during the Alien and Sedition reign of terror, and were still besetting his path with so many petty annoyances, that he determined to leave the beloved state to which he had given the best years of his life. His departure was a notable event in the history of Fair Haven. The people gathered in sorrow to say farewell to the founder and father of the town. Among them was a youth who was so deeply impressed with the scene that he was able seventy years afterwards to recall, in a letter to the author of the History of Fair Haven, the white canvassed caravan of Matthew Lyon as it wound its way along the Poultney river on the long journey to the more primitive settlement in the forests of Kentucky."

In the spring of 1800 Colonel Lyon returned to Kentucky from the session of Congress, to which he had been re-elected while in the Vergennes jail, and engaged in the slave trade. The institution of slavery and the business of dealing in slaves were so distasteful to Dr. Cadwell and John Messenger that in 1802 they both removed with their families to St. Clair county, in Illinois Territory.

In his Pioneer History of Illinois, ex-Governor Reynolds says: "Messenger and Cadwell left Eddyville in 1802 and landed from a boat in Morgan bottom not far from old Fort Chartres". This statement was incorporated in an article from the pen of the late Judge Thomas, published by the Jacksonville Journal in May, 1874. Its accuracy was at the time questioned by two daughters of Dr. Cadwell then living in Morgan county, one of whom informed the writer that the journey was made in wagons across the territory of Illinois from some point on the Ohio river and gave him an account of the trip obtained from her mother, in which she stated that when the journey was begun in February, 1802, the weather was warm and pleasant, but during the trip they encountered a furious snow storm and bitter cold weather; that owing to the entire absence of anything like roads the wagon in which Mrs. Cadwell was riding with her two infant children was completely overturned and the occupants were only saved from death or serious injury by the fact that the wagon box was of the crescent shape peculiar to that period, and in falling rested on its long projecting ends. At that time there were but two trails across Illinois territory used by emigrants from Kentucky, one from Shawneetown and the other from Fort Massac, and it is highly probable that Dr. Cadwell and Messenger floated down the Cumberland and Ohio rivers in flat boats to the latter point and went across to the Mississippi overland. If Fort Massac were substituted in the account of Cadwell and Messenger given by Governor Reynolds, it would

probably be nearer in accordance with the facts, as a portion of the bottom near Fort Massac was called Morgan bottom, but no such place was known near Fort Chartres.

If Dr. Cadwell made a settlement in the neighborhood of Fort Chartres, it must have been of a temporary character, as a careful examination of the records of Randolph and St. Clair counties fails to disclose any conveyances to or from Dr. Cadwell in Randolph or in St. Clair county south of its present northern boundary. It is, therefore, believed that his first permanent settlement was made on the bank of the Mississippi river, opposite Gaboret island, where he purchased 200 acres off of the south end of the Nicholas Jarrott survey, described in the deed of conveyance as "being in St. Clair county, Illinois Territory, between nine and ten miles north of Cahokia, on the bank of the Mississippi river, beginning at the southwest corner of the Nicholas Jarrott survey at a point on the bank of the Mississippi river, from which a black walnut 15 inches in diameter bears south 75 degrees east 170 links, and running thence north 15 degrees east 170 poles; thence south 75 degrees east 188.2 poles; thence with the boundary of the Nicholas Jarrott tract to the place of beginning. This land is located a short distance north of the Merchant's bridge and immediately west of Granite City, Ill.

Here Dr. Cadwell built a cabin and engaged in farming and in the practice of his profession. This cabin was subsequently utterly demolished by a tornado. In an account of this storm given to the late Rev. William Rutledge by Mrs. Cadwell she said she saw approaching from the west side of the river a funnel shaped cloud but as she had never heard of a land storm having that appearance she suspected it was in the nature of a water spout, and fearing the destruction of her cabin by the fierce wind that preceded it she fled to a plum thicket near by, threw herself flat on her face and holding a child under each arm and grasping a plum bush with each hand she remained until the fury of the storm abated.

St. Louis at that time was a thriving village of 1,200 inhabitants, most of whom were of French extraction. Captain James Piggott owned the ferry across the Mississippi and his boats were propelled with oars. Cahokia, seven miles below on the east bank of the Mississippi, was the county seat of St. Clair county, the only town within its limits, and was still an active rival of St. Louis. On Cahokia Creek just east of Dr. Cadwell's land. Nicholas Jarrott, the wealthiest and most prominent citizen of Cahokia, had constructed a water mill which, owing to its insecure alluvial foundation, proved an unprofitable investment and ultimately seriously depressed him financially. There were no Indians then in that part of Illinois Territory but until 1808 visits were occasionally made by roving bands of Kickapoos and Pottawatamies. The small remnant of the once powerful Illinois confederacy, reduced to less than 150 Kaskaskia and Peoria warriors. had departed for the far southwest the year before Dr. Cadwell's arrival.

The first record we have of the public life and services of Dr. Cadwell is that of his appointment as a Justice of the Peace of St. Clair county, on July 9, 1809, "to continue during the pleasure of the