Little Egypt Heritage Articles Stories of Southern Illinois (c) Bill Oliver 22 June 2003 Vol 2 Issue: #24 ISBN: pending Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen of Little Egypt, In order to do some R & R [roaming and researching, that is] there was no article last week. This week there will be an abbreviated one, because Barb and I just returned home. We also did some "typical tourist" wandering, looking at architecture and other "old" sites. We were looking for a particular place mentioned on a brochure in a small town, and a "native" asked us if he could help alleviate the puzzled look on our faces. When he gave us very good directions, he asked us if we were "really tourists in this little town". We assured him that we really were "tourists". The researching was fine. Like a couple of years ago in Nebraska, we wandered around back and forth and up and down to many places. This year we crossed back and forth on the River to River Trail in Illinois, as well as up, down and both sides of I-24 from Marion, IL to Paducah, KY. Besides just enjoying the beautiful scenery and some tourist type sight-seeing we visited sites of the property of several ancestors. When I was in Nebraska, the original land on which my ancestor settled and farmed was located, as well as several places owned by the children of these 2nd great grandparents, very easily. That was because everything was mapped and marked in square miles or sections and the roads were straight -- north and south, east and west. We walked the lands there in Nebraska and took pictures of where the original dugout was located and the frame house that they built later. What a thrill!! That developed a close feeling for those ancestors. This has stimulated me to find as many sites as possible owned by my ancestors. They are being plotted and visited if at all possible. Those areas laying in the old Northwest Territory and out in Nebraska are fairly easy to visit if one finds the records. Most of them are identified by township and range. One of the pieces of land one great grandfather farmed is not very far from where I presently live in the Black Swamp of northwest Ohio and I remember it as it was when I was a boy. Today there is a big chain store where the livestock was corralled. A community of double houses has been built in the old orchard. The other day I looked but there was not a single fruit tree left. With the knowledge of land records I travel Ohio and southern Michigan to view the farms of my kin. But, this past week I was in the Little Egypt section of southern Illinois, the roots of my father and his parents. Though the same system of squares was used to identify land, the hills and hollows of southern Illinois prevents the roads from being straight, as they are in northwest Ohio and Nebraska. Before the Revolution the property of my ancestors was listed much differently. An ancestor had property at the head of Benson's Run on the Cowpasture, while either his father or his brother had property on the Bullpasture. Wow!! Yeah!! Everyone knows exactly where that is. The history books make it even easier because they identify the property by who owns it "today"; when the book was written. However, that book was written a long time ago and one has to be familiar with the area of a hundred or more years ago. Well, lots of research shows me that there is a Bullpasture Mountain in Virginia and it is between the Bullpasture and the Cowpasture Rivers where Benson's Run empties into the Cowpasture River. And, someday we will visit that land and walk it. As mentioned, this week we visited land an ancestor bought in the "wilds" of southeastern Massac county, Illinois in 1857. The land records record his purchase and he's listed in the tax records for 1859. Plus, in this area, the square township method was used to identify land. A resident of the area, that we met, took us out to the property. As we drove, Mr Davis told us of all the folks who lived around the area, and how they were related. The property was listed in the sale of "swamp" lands. But, most of the countryside has now been drained and only pieces of swamp remain. Still, the surface ground retains water after heavy rains and the tractor paths aren't passable without good boots. There is a possibility that my ancestor was buried on his property, back by a creek that bears his surname. We attempted to get back there but recent rains filled the little used road with water. Like any swamp this created mud which made traversing difficult and we were ill equipped to trudge along without boots. At least part of the land was "walked". In other areas of this country no road is straight. Grandma always said that my 2nd great grandfather's brother, James Monroe Benson, lived under the "bluff" in Tunnel Hill. We've been to Tunnel Hill several times and no one there today could tell me anything about the Bensons or where they lived. This trip, armed with the land records, we set out to locate the properties owned by my ancestor and his brother We traveled along the top of turned out to be the bluff and then on a whim turned off and the road "switched" back and took us back and down below the road we had been on. The property there turned out to be part of the property we were looking for and it was certainly under a "bluff". With the knowledge of where all of the land holdings are, it was discovered that a few years ago when asking around about the Bensons, we had stopped at a house on the corner of a crossroads not far from the community of Tunnel Hill. The person I talked to then lived on part of Uncle Monroe's farm. Yes, I feel much closer to these ancestors for the visiting of their lands. Their farm homes haven't survived but they have through my eyes looking out over what was theirs and the stories I listened to as told by a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle or a stranger who was pleased to show us. Wado, Bill -=- Other sites worth visiting: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/SOIL http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/ILMASSAC http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/state/BillsArticles/LittleEgypt/intro.html