HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
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represented the district in the State Legislature, and after his removal to Elgin it was conducted very successfully by his brother A. J. Mann, and by the firm of Mann, Hapgood & Co. until A. J. Mann also moved to Elgin. Franklin Mann and Gideon Sherman erected the first saw-mill in 1850.
The first clergyman in the town was "Elder Eaton," who came in 1840 and soon after organized a Free-Will Baptist society. The first church building appears to have been commenced in 1853 by the Congregationalists, but it was four or five years in process of construction, and was also used by the Methodists and Free-Will Baptists, finally passing to the ownership of the latter.
In the late 'forties appearances were very favorable for the village of Burlington becoming an important place in the county. The State road was crowded with teams hauling out the produce of the country. The daily stages were filled with passengers, and the horses were stabled and changed at Mann's brick tavern. Plank roads were being built from St. Charles and Elgin, converging at Burlington, and prospects were very bright. But the route of the steam railways changed all this, and the village is now a thriving station on the Chicago Great Western Railway, which passes nearly due east and west across the township through the second tier of sections from the north line.
CAMPTON TOWNSHIP.
Township 40, Range 1, is the central township of the county. East of it lies St. Charles, at the north Plato and Rutland, on the west Virgil, and at the south Blackberry and Sugar Grove. There is no township in the county in which the pioneers found the indispensable wood and water more bountifully provided and conveniently distributed; while bordering the woodlands were the inviting tracts of open land, scarcely large enough to be called prairie, entirely free of rocks and bushes and ready for the plow, the wild grasses and flowers alone covering the rich black soil of seemingly exhaustless fertility. The southerly branch of Ferson's Creek had its rise in Lily Lake near the north line of Section 18 and, passing eastward across the entire township, in the early days was a stream of very respectable dimensions, in the spring being filled with pickerel and red-horse suckers, seeking the shoal waters in which to deposit their spawn. Very near the center of the township is the head of a branch of Mill Creek, which passes out of the township near the east line of Section 35. We can scarcely estimate, in these days of numerous wells and convenient pumping machinery, and of steam and electric power so easily available, the value of these natural features to the pioneer settlers. At first the water for all daily household use was obtained from the spring, creek or shallow well at the edge of the slough; and for fully twenty years, the farmers depended upon these for stock water. During the winter, ice was hauled from them and melted for family use, and to secure the luxury of soft water for washing. In the later 'thirties, Dr. King, a preacher, a physician and an energetic, useful pioneer, built an up-and-down saw-mill on Lily Lake Creek on the northwest quarter of Section 14, and established the King's Mill postoffice on the old thoroughfare toward Rockford. Each was a great convenience in its time. It is said that there was a very distinct Indian trail near the line of the highway from the river northwestward, passing the south end of Lily Lake. This lake is now practically dry, and doubtless its former bed will soon be cultivated land. The effect of the drying up of the water reservoirs and shrinking of the stream is one of the problems future time must solve, we hope without serious detriment to posterity.
John Beatty, who arrived at Haight's early in the spring of 1835 and began prospecting westward, was doubtless the first person to stake out a claim in this township. He drove his first stakes in the prairie upon what is now the southeast quarter of Section 36; but with the advancing season he ventured a mile or two further west, and located permanently in the edge of the woodland on the northwest quarter of Section 35, convenient to a fine spring and near the running creek, where he erected the first settler's cabin in the township. He sold his first claim to a Mr. Archie, and the second passed to the Burr family. John Whitney, Charles Babcock and James Hackett also came in 1835, and Luke Pike who entered the claim which became the home of the well-known and highly useful Chaffee family. In 1836 and '37 Harry and Spalding Eddy, John Elliott, At-well Burr, James Ward, William Kendall, John
