HISTORY OF FORD COUNTY
BUTTON TOWNSHIP.
Button township is bounded on the north by Iroquois county; on the east
by Vermilion county; on the south by Champaign county, and on the west by
Patton township. It is situated in the extreme southeast corner of the
county, lying in three different ranges and two different meridians. It is
six miles north to south, and varying from five to six miles east and west.
This township is favorably located; settled with thrifty, industrious
people, who are mostly well-to-do farmers, with improvements and buildings
suitable and adapted to the day and age. This township was set off from
Patton and organized in December, 1864, and derived its name from James
Porter Button, its first supervisor.
Among the early settlers of Button township were Edward Pyles, John Rails
(two squatters, Cook and White), Joshua Trickel, Robert Trickel, W. J. and
W. R. Trickel, William and Samuel Swinford, O. H. Campbell, Story Button,
David Patton, Matthew Elliott, Bennett Lucas, Jacob Tanner, John Dopps,
Milton Strayer, Harmon Strayer, J. B. Strayer, Joseph Harris, William
Walker. J. H. Flagg, A. F. Flagg, E. Wait, Eli Dopps, Spencer Cushing,
Daniel Stamps, William McClintock, David Saunders, William Phebus, Daniel
Moudy, William Montgomery, A. Lance.
"Trickel's Grove" is beyond a doubt the first settled locality in Button
township and in Ford county. A few squatters, who never became permanent
settlers, built log houses and lived in or near the grove prior to 1835. In
1836, two brothers, Joshua and Robert Trickel, located at the grove which
was then a part of Vermilion county, and bought out these squatters' claims,
and we have every reason to believe the Trickels were the first permanent
settlers of what is now Ford county, except it might have been Andrew
Sprouls, who occupied for a short time what was afterward the W. Walker
farm.
The first schoolhouse built in Button township was of logs, and located on
the farm owned by John Rails near Trickel's Grove. This farm was entered by
Edward Pyles; afterward owned by William Swinford, and later by A. L. Clark.
The first schoolhouse built north of the timber on the prairie was located
on section 16, near the Vermilion county line, on the farm which was later
owned by A. H. Morrison.
The first school taught in the township was by Simon Mitchell, in a cabin
belonging to Jacob Tanner.
CLARENCE.
Clarence postoffice (Kirk's Station, Lake Erie & Western Railroad) is a
thriving village and grain center, located on sections 7 and 8, on the farms
of W. T. Morrison and S. I. Hntchison. It was surveyed and laid out by
Robert F. Whitham in August, 1878. The village is surrounded by a fine
farming country.
The following are sketches of the early settlers and other prominent men
wlio lived and are yet living in Button township:
James Porter Button (deceased) was born in Jefferson county, Kentucky,
January 29, 1822. He came to Ford county in 1852. Mr. Button was married to
Miss Sarah R. Hock, in Fountain county, Indiana, February 8, 1845. They have
had a family of eight children. Mr. Button entered land in section 25, town
23, range 10, in the township which now bears his name. Mr. Button filled
many positions of trust with credit to himself and satisfaction to his
constituents. He was the treasurer of Ford county at the time of his death,
which occurred at Paxton March 22, 1866.
David Patton (deceased) was born in Ross county, Ohio, December 20, 1815.
Thomas Patton, the father of David, emigrated to Vigo or Parke counties,
Indiana, when David was about three years old. He remained there only a few
years. In 1823 the family moved to Fountain county, Indiana, where Thomas
Patton died. December 10, 1844, David was married to Miss Jane Cade,
daughter of William Cade, who settled in Fountain county in 1823. November
2, 1854, David Patton came to Illinois and settled in Button township, then
in Vermilion county. Here he resided until his death, February 29, 1880. He
entered four hundred and eighty acres of choice land in section 23, range 14
west, in Button township. There were eight children. The widow is still
living on the old homestead.
Matthew Elliott (deceased) was born March 4, 1799, in the District of
Columbia. When about twenty-one years old, he came west to Ohio, where he
remained until the spring of 1850; then came to Ford county, Illinois (then
Vermilion) and entered land in the southeast quarter of section 25, and
moved his family here from Ohio in the spring of 1852. He purchased the home
place of Benjamin Stites, who entered the land and made the first
improvements in Button township. Mr. Elliott died August 23, 1881. They had
a family of five children.
Joshua Trickel (deceased) was born August 5, 1788, in Virginia. Mary
Trickel, his wife, was born February 8, 1800. William Trickel, son of Joshua
Trickel, was born in Piqua county, Ohio, October 17, 1820, and came to
Illinois with his parents when only seven years old. His father settled at
Butler's Point, in Vermilion county, until they took up their residence in
Ford county. Elizabeth, wife of William Trickel, was born in Lawrence
county, Indiana, July 29, 1838. Her father, Alexander Henry, was an old
settler of Iroquois county, Illinois. Mr. and Mrs. Trickel were married
January 7, 1857.
David Saunders was the first to buy land in school section 16, afterward
owned and improved by William Phebus.
Obadiah Leneve was born in Halifax county, Virginia, December 30, 1801.
Samuel Leneve, father of the subject of this sketch, was a native of France,
and emigrated to America with his brother John. They came to this country at
the time La Fayette and his troops came over to assist the Americans in
their strife with England for the independence of the colonies. John Leneve,
grandfather of Obadiah, was one of the soldiers who came over with General
La Fayette; he died in Virginia. Samuel, the father of Obadiah, was about
three years old when he landed on American soil. They settled in Virginia
near the old Halifax courthouse; here he grew to manhood and married Katie
Arrington, a native of that place. About 1806 he emigrated to Tennessee,
where he remained about one year; then journeyed on to Kentucky and settled
in Mercer county; there he remained eight years; then moved to Nelson
county; then again moved to Sullivan county, Indiana, and settled at Shakers
Prairie. Here he remained only a year, when he made his last move to
Lawrence county, Illinois, and resided until his death in the spring of
1831. Obadiah was married in Lawrence county, Illinois, to Polly Lemons, a
native of Tennessee. She died in May, 1878. They located in Vermilion county
in 1824, in the Newell settlement, in the northeastern part of the county.
They had a family of eight children. Mr. Leneve was one of the hard working
and successful pioneers of Vermilion and Ford counties. Mrs. Moudy
(deceased) first wife of Daniel Moudy, one of the prominent farmers of this
county, was a daughter of this old pioneer. Mr. Leneve died in Paxton,
February 4, 1884, at the home of one of his nephews.
Peter Moudy was a native of Virginia, where he was born August 1, 1804, but
was raised in Butler county, Ohio, where his father moved when he was an
infant. Here he remained until 1835. He was married to Miss Elizabeth
Herring, daughter of George Herring, December 25, 1825. She was a native of
Pennsylvania, but left there when about five years old and was raised in
Butler county, Ohio, until 1835, when they emigrated to Western Indiana and
located in the Wabash valley. In Vermilion county, Indiana, Daniel Moudy,
son of our subject, was born February 4, 1836. Peter Moudy had a family of
twelve children. He located in Vermilion county, Illinois, in the spring of
1855, where he resided until his death, May 7, 1875. Daniel Moudy is among
the early settlers of Button township, coming to his farm place in 1859,
where he commenced making improvements by breaking prairie with oxen. Very
few settlers had located north of the timber at that time. Mr. Moudy has
owned several fine farms in this township, comprising seven hundred and
eighty acres in all. He has at all times been one of the leading and
progressive farmers and stock-raisers of Ford county. The first wife of Mr.
Moudy was a daughter of Obadiah Leneve, an old pioneer of Vermilion county,
Illinois. She died January 31, 1879. Henrietta, his second wife, is a
daughter of O. H. Campbell, an early settler of Ford county.
Obadiah H. Campbell was born in Northumberland county, Pennsylvania,
December 17, 1811. He left that state and came to Indiana in 1855; remained
there till the spring of 1856, when he located at Trickel's Grove, buying
out the heirs of Joshua Trickel. Mr. Campbell was one of the oldest living
settlers of Button township, and owned one of the very first settled places
in Ford county, owning altogether three hundred and seventy-three acres. His
father, James Campbell, was born in New Jersey, and emigrated to
Pennsylvania when fifteen years old. He died there at an advanced age. Mrs.
O. H. Campbell (deceased) was a native of Pennsylvania. She was born in 1817
and died on the 2d of February, 1867. They had a family of nine children.
Jacob Strayer, father of Milton and Harmon Strayer, was born in Berkeley
county, Virginia, in 1796; he came to Ford county in 1854, and lived here
until he died January 3, 1879. Elizabeth, his wife, was born in Fairfield
county, Ohio, August 1, 1803. She died June 21, 1883.
Milton Strayer was born in Fountain county, Indiana. In September, 1851, he
moved to Ford county on the line of Champaign county, and entered the land
where La Fayette Patton lived. In 1854, Mr. Strayer moved onto his farm on
section 25, in the narrow range of sections in this township, which land he
entered in 1853. He was married, August 31, 1851, to Miss Sarah Jane
Midcllebrook, a native of Ohio, and a daughter of William Middlebrook, who
located in Fountain county, Indiana, about 1841. Mr. and Mrs. Strayer have
had ten children.
Harmon Strayer, son of Jacob and Elizabeth Strayer, was born in Fairfield
county, Ohio, September 20, 1820. He came with his parents to Fountain
county, Indiana, in 1824. He came here in the fall of 1851. In 1858 he
assessed all the lands in Ford county, then Patton township, Vermilion
county. In 1858, he married Miss Martha McClure, daughter of Samuel McClure,
an early settler of Cass county, Indiana. She was born in Ohio. They had a
family of four children.
Joseph Harris was born in Germany, March 25, 1838. When nineteen years old
he came to America, and in 1857, located in Ford county. In 1860 he was
united in marriage with Miss Josephine Strayer, daughter of Jacob and
Elizabeth Strayer. She was born in Fountain county, Indiana. They had nine
children. Mr. Harris, for five years, worked by the month. In 1865, he
bought land of the Illinois Central Railroad Company.
J. C. Kirkpatrick was born in Adams county, Ohio. He came to Button township
in 1861, settling on section 17. Mr. Kirkpatrick was united in marriage with
Miss Sarah A. White, of Oak Grove, McLean county. They had eight children.
Several years ago he engaged in the hardware business in Clarence; he also
dealt in grain, coal, lumber and agricultural implements.
William A. Hutchison was born in Wayne county, Ohio. He came to Ford county
in 1868. He was married to Miss Margaret Ghormley, of Ohio. His father,
Samuel Hutchison, helped lay out the village of Clarence. The subject of our
sketch was postmaster of Clarence and also ran a grocery store.
David A. Frederick was born in Middlesex county, Massachusetts, and came to
Ford county in 1857.
Hugh McCormick was born in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania. He came to Ford
county in April, 1866, settling on section 9.
William Phebus was born in Fountain county, Indiana, and settled in Ford
county in 1865.
William T. Patton, a son of David Patton, was born in Fountain county,
Indiana, and came to Button township in 1854, locating on section 33.
James H. and Arthur F. Flagg, brothers, natives of the state of Maine. James
H. came west and settled in Button township in 1859. Arthur F. came to this
township in 1861.
Mitchel A. Karr, son of John Karr, was born in Coshocton county, Ohio, and
came west to Illinois and settled in Button with his father in 1864.
William T. Morrison was a native of Adams county, Ohio, and settled in this
township in 1868. He lived closed to the village of Clarence, in one of the
finest houses in Button township.
Albert J. Pool, a native of La Salle county, Illinois, settled in Button
township in 1873.
William Montgomery, a native of Shelby county, Indiana, settled in Ford
county in 1857.
William Walker, a native of Waye county, Indiana. He settled in this county
in 1859.
J. E. Walker, or Elmer Walker, was born in Fountain county, Indiana, in
1858, and that year came with his parents to this township.
Samuel Parsons, a native of England, settled in this township in 1869,
owning a farm of one hundred and sixty acres.
Extracted 29 Sep 2018 by Norma Hass from History of Ford County, Illinois, Volume 1, pages 127-134.
