Pioneer Trials

History is not always what it seems. It appears tidy but upon closer inspection the neatness unravels. People had ambitions, agendas, and dysfunctional families. The line between the good guys and the bad guys was movable. Southeast of Quincy, where branches of prairie reach the bluffs in a beautiful area called Rolling Ridge, two murders occurred that illustrate this perfectly.

Daniel Lile can serve as an example of the shifting fortunes of early settlers dealing with the Law.  He was one of the first settlers in Adams County, arriving from Tennessee with his wife Sally, and their six children. He built a cabin and later a horse-powered mill in the wilderness near Liberty when it was still part of Pike County.

The area was dangerous with four-footed and two-footed predators. Bears, wolves and cougars prowled the forest and by one estimate, Indians outnumbered settlers twenty to one. The settlers were hard and sometimes dangerous men at odds with one another on things like where the seat of local government should be situated and whether Illinois should be a slave or a free state.

A series of disagreements in 1822-24 became known as the Great County Seat Wars, when control of economic development and judicial authority see-sawed between one settlement north of Alton called Coles Grove and a newer one called Atlas.

Future founder of Quincy, John Wood, was living near Atlas at this time. John Shaw, an elected state representative, enlisted Daniel Lile to discredit the settlers of Atlas and keep the county seat in his town of Coles Grove. Lile agreed to help by spreading rumors throughout the area damaging and undermining Wood.

The mudslinging concerned a tale in which John Wood, supposedly admitted killing a convicted horse-thief.  Wood was helping the sheriff transport the lawbreaker to jail through wild country with streams running high from storms. Details were murky, explanation shaky, when the prisoner’s body was found in a flooded creek. No charges were filed.

Wood sued both Lile and Shaw for slander. This involved a trial. With fewer than 100 settlers, the scarcity of qualified jurors, white men over 21 years of age, made it a challenge to seat any jury. In 1823 there was no dedicated courtroom. The jury deliberated under an oak tree.

At this 1824 trial, Lile was found guilty of slander and fined. Shaw was astute enough to demand a change of venue for his trial which was moved to another county. The charges were later dropped.

In the musical chairs game of defendant/victim/witness, Daniel Lile was next called in 1825 as witness in an assault case against John Pettit and Thomas McCraney. As he was the victim, Lile made a good witness. Court documents say “… James B. Pettit … did then and there beat, bruise, wound and ill-treat to the great damage of said Daniel Lile to the evil example of all others …” No outcome was cited in this case.

In 1827 Wood took his family and went north to Galena to prospect for quick money in the lead mines. While he was away, his old opponent Daniel Lile was elected county commissioner. This county board authorized the construction of a courthouse and jail.

It was a busy year for the Liles. Daniel’s son, Henry, was a witness in an assault and battery case, and a perjury trial. Daniel was a witness in a case of unlawful assembly (a gathering of six or less) and another for ‘affray’ (fighting between two individuals). Unlawful assembly seemed to apply to a gang of men preying on a weaker opponent.

In 1828, both father and son were defendants accused of assault; that April, Daniel had an ‘affray’ with a different man and was fined $3 plus costs. In October, Henry testified for the defense of a man accused of lying under oath in a previous trial where a married man had been accused of adultery.

By 1829, Daniel Lile had missed several court appearances and explained to the judge in a sort of ‘the-dog-ate-my-homework’ vein that his failures to appear were because he was then living 300 miles away; he’d been sick; he was under a doctor’s care; and he couldn’t take care of his business.

In 1830, Alexander Peterie arrived from Kentucky bringing his family, including sons, Andrew, John and Hiram and daughter, Elizabeth, who caught the eye of Henry Lile. Henry and Elizabeth were married that December. Another daughter, Sarah, wed one John C. Johnson. The groom’s middle initial would prove important.

In 1832, Lile/Peterie family relations got ugly. About four miles south of the village of Payson, near Pigeon Creek, John B. Johnson was stabbed and left to die. Daniel Lile swore to a judge that John Peterie, his brother Hiram and their father were the killers. The court determined that John Peterie was the murderer and dropped charges against the others. With his brother-in-law accused of murder by his father, Henry Lile was in an awkward position. He chose to sign as surety for brother-in-law Peterie’s bond.

The granting of bond to an accused murderer was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that the jail authorized by then commissioner Lile was incapable of holding a prisoner. In 1832, repairs were approved for adding grates to the windows and fixing the leaky roof.

In 1833, with John still facing murder charges, his father and two brothers, along with Henry Lile, were back in court for threatening another settler. Eventually John Peterie was found guilty of manslaughter in the Johnson case and served ten years. His sister Elizabeth died about the time he was released from jail, severing the family bond with Henry Lile.

Daniel Lile continued to be trouble, eventually disappearing from the record. But Rolling Ridge wasn’t finished with murder or the Peterie family.

In 1861, Ratcliff Harrison, a rum-maker living in a shanty near Pigeon Creek south of Payson was found bludgeoned to death. It was Andrew Peterie who saw the body and so became involved in a second murder trial, this time not as a defendant but as a prosecution witness.

Attison Cunningham and his nephew Nelson were both charged with murder. Nelson pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in prison, the same term John Peterie had served. Upon receiving his sentence, a relieved Nelson replied to the judge, “Much obliged.” Attison Cunningham was found guilty and hanged in the Quincy jail yard. Despite a jailhouse return to religion, Attison maintained to his final breath that he was innocent, and his nephew Nelson had actually done the killing.

So, the next time you are faced with dry historical dates and names, remember our illustrious pioneers and know there’s always more to the story.

Beth Lane is the author of Lies Told Under Oath, the story of the 1912 Pfanschmidt murders near Payson, Illinois and a former Executive Director of the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County.

Sources:

“Eternity!” Quincy Daily Herald, August 18, 1893, 1.

Great River Genealogical Society, comp. Cemeteries of Adams County, Vol. 1. Quincy, IL: Great River Genealogical Society, 1988.

Kay, Jean. “The Rolling Ridge Neighborhood.” Paper presented to the Great River Genealogical Society, Quincy, IL.

Murray, Williamson & Phelps, pub. The History of Adams County, Illinois. Chicago: Murray, Williamson & Phelps, 1879. A reproduction by Unigraphic, Inc., Evansville, Indiana.

“On To Pike County.” Quincy Morning Whig,  February 9, 1896, 3.

Robison, Stephen D. Early Records Index, Adams County, Ill, Vol. 4. Genealogical Society of Utah, contributor. Quincy: Great River Genealogical Society, 1993.

Thompson, Jess M. The Jess M. Thompson Pike County History, as printed in installments in the Pike Co. Republican, Pittsfield, Il. 1935-1939. (Chapters 1-6) Pittsfield, IL: Pike County Historical Society, 1967.

Tillson, John. History of Quincy. In Past and Present of the City of Quincy and Adams County, Illinois, William H. Collins and Cicero F. Perry, authors. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1905.

“The Trial of Cunningham.” Quincy Daily Herald, November 2, 1861, 2.