Mary Adiliner's Bible
by Pete Way
It seems history can go back a long way. Where do I start? How about Grandma Mitchell's bible? My mother gave it to me for safe keeping several years ago, and I treasure it deeply. It holds the 23rd Psalm that Grandma recited to us often and taught to us children as we were growing up. She's been gone for 25 years now and was 100 years old when she passed away. Mt. Vernon was just 25 years old when she was born. Grandma kept part of our family history in her bible, and in it I found the birth dates of her parents and other family members who were all born in the early 1800s and who all played a role in the history of Mt. Vernon.
Her father, Eldred S. Hale, was born on April 13, 1816. In a book titled, "The Story of Primrose Township", published in 1895, my Great-grandfather, Eldred, told the story of how he first came to Mt. Vernon and what life was like then. He was said to be the first immigrant settler to have visited Mt. Vernon in 1831. Here is what he wrote in 1895:
"My father was drawn to the lead regions of northern Illinois and was killed by the Indians there in the Blackhawk War of 1832. I served in Fort Wiota as a guard of the women and children during that war. The year before this (1831), I made a wagon trip with my brother, "Wash", from Wiota to Fort Winnebago (now the city of Portage). We went over the present road leading from Mt. Vernon to Postville which was then only an Indian trail and carried with us a load of goods for the Indians and our last payment for their lands. We camped out wherever night overtook us, propping up our wagon pole with a stick and throwing a canvas over it for a tent. We came back around Lake Mendota at Madison, the region being then, of course, a wilderness. Madison had then contained only one building, a small double log cabin occupied by a Frenchman and his wife.
I brought the first span of horses to Primrose, I believe. We had no roads in those days, of course, but we got along anyway, all we needed was an ax to cut our way thorough the woods and a spade for cutting down the embankments of the streams and crossing. Wood and water determined cabin locations. Destructive prairie fires would sweep over the country. Game, especially of the smaller kind, was exceedingly plentiful, so much so that I have seen small knolls covered with rabbits and other game during the progress of a prairie fire. Roving bands of Indians were quite numerous at first, but they gave us little trouble.
The Indians all knew us as Hale brothers and were afraid of us as they knew we hated them for killing our father. Once in the early days, my brother, Wash, saw an Indian chasing a deer over the hill past my cabin here. He took down his rifle and went out to meet him, but the Indian was afraid and fled back westwards. "Wash" followed him until he reached their camp on the Barton farm. He walked right into camp with his rifle on his shoulder and told the Indians they must get out. They feared us and in a day or two, were gone."
The stories kept in my Grandmother's Bible also tell that Eldred Hale's wife and my Great-grandmother, Mary Jones Hale, was born on May 11, 1832, and died 90 years later on March 20, 1922. Her family also played an important role in the history of Mt. Vernon. She was born in Wales and came to America in 1843. Her father, John Jones, operated the first hotel in Mt. Vernon, serving pioneer teamsters hauling lead ore with ox teams from the mines of southwestern Wisconsin to Milwaukee. She and Eldred were among the first settlers in the town of Primrose. When she died in 1922, an era died with her.
My Great-grandparents lived in very exciting, yet difficult times. The Winnebago, who had occupied the land for hundreds of years, had agreed to sell the first part of their land in 1829. They soon found out that this meant they would have to leave. Fear and distrust separated the Winnebago from the settlers and intensified the kind of hatred my Great-grandfather felt toward them for having lost his father in the Blackhawk Wars. The settlers did not comprehend the hardships that the native people faced having to leave their ancestral homes forever. Unfortunately, my Grandmother's Bible does not record the births and deaths of the Native American families who lived on the branch of the Sugar River at the site of Mt. Vernon before my Great-grandfather arrived. But, it is important that we today, do remember the very first inhabitants of the Mt. Vernon area and perceive the hardships that they were forced into by the immigrant settlement of the area.