Anderson Township

Tapscott farms (bounded in blue) with villages, schools, churches and cemeteries.

By 1855, the Clark County, Illinois, Tapscotts were living in Anderson township between the hamlets of Allright to the south and Auburn to the north.

Until 1892, the community just off Fox Road that would become Allright consisted of just a church (later, becoming a Congregational church) and a store, In that year a post office was established in the home of Henry Kile so that locals could avoid journeying to Auburn or Marshall to get their mail. Obtaining postal services required that residents select a name for the nameless hamlet, which they did and Henry Kile traveled to the Marshall courthouse to report the name. According to Carroll Kannmacher, an Allright resident and historian, “He got all nervous, stuttered and stammered and said ‘all right.’ The officials said, okay, you’ll be Allright from now on.” Eventually, the village had three general stores, but the post office, used by the Tapscotts, lasted only a few years, closing in 1908. The town limped along for another half century, the church shutting its doors in 1956. Today nothing remains of Allright.

The village of Auburn was settled in 1833 by one Jonathon Rathburn, who built a log cabin along the Great National Pike. In 1836, the village was platted. One block was set aside for public buildings and another for a school (two lots) and cemetery (eight lots). The town soon contained a hotel (opened by Samuel Williams, from Kentucky), the “Old Buck” Tavern, two groceries, and two blacksmiths. The stores sold as much liquor as the tavern.

The name of the town was changed to “Lodi” and a post office was established there in 1842. In 1857 the name was changed to “Clark Centre” and in 1893 to “Clark Center.” Some claim that the name “Clark Centre” was chosen in hopes that the town would be selected as the county seat after a decision was made to abandon Darwin as the seat of government, but Darwin had lost out many years earlier, in 1839. The Clark Center post office was discontinued in 1907.

Baptist, Methodist Protestant, and Methodist Episcopal circuit riders (who often walked rather than rode) covered the area, holding services in private homes or whatever quarters they could find. They ran revivals and camp meetings, usually filling the “mourners benches” with penitents. They visited the sick and dying. And they often rode or walked from town to town in rain and snow and mud. These early “fire and brimstone” preachers were poorly paid but were filled with the spirit, bringing religion into, what were then, rough frontier towns.

In the late 1700s, the authority of the bishops in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) began to be challenged. Some of the membership wanted local and lay representation at Methodist Conferences and a voice in the running of the church. A convention of those hoping to reform the church was held in Baltimore in 1824, and in 1827 a minister and several members were expelled from the church for agitating for reform. In the absence of this expulsion, a complete break would have been unlikely. In 1830, however, those expelled were joined by others in establishing the Methodist Protestant Church (MPC), identical to the Methodist Episcopal Church in all ways except governance. The first session of the Illinois Conference of the MPC was held in Alton, Illinois, on 25 Oct 1836.

Auburn Church, the home church and burial place of many Clark County Tapscotts, was a Methodist Protestant Church. In 1842, the Reverend Witherspoon organized the Auburn MPC, which was made part of the Mill Creek Circuit. This Circuit covered all of Clark County and extended south into Crawford County and north into Edgar County. In 1850, the smaller Mission Circuit was carved out to extend from Darwin in the southeast to Grand View in the northwest.

The first quarterly conference for the Mission Circuit was held at Auburn 15 Feb 1845 with Rev. E. C. Peacock presiding. Rev. Richard Wright, the Grandfather of Edna (Wright) Tapscott (wife of John Wesley Tapscott), was the district superintendent. An uncle of Edna, Rev. Henry Patrick Lowry, was a local preacher at Auburn around 1887.

In the early years, there was no church building at Auburn. Meetings were held in homes. In 1860, a new log school house was erected about two miles northwest of Auburn and was used as the church building until the church itself was constructed. In 1883, the trustees purchased two lots held by the school trustees and built the church on those lots. The following is an account of the construction: 

It was finally decided to erect a frame building. Much talk followed, but little action, ‘til one day Ben Lowry took his crosscut saw and ax and went down to Howard McNary’s. Howard asked him what he was going to do. He replied, “Oh, I’m going to cut logs for the lumber for the new church.” Whereupon, Howard called his boys and told them to get their saws and axes and go too. Then the men came to the hill just north of our present home and cut the trees from which the timbers and the lumber was made for the church.

With donated labor, a rough 30-ft x 40-ft building was erected in 1886 at a cost of $1000, but it was not completed until the following year. The building was erected under pastors William Burkett and Daniel McCormick, and was dedicated on 5 Jun 1887 by Rev. Richard Wright.

Rev. Wright was the first president of the South Conference of the MPC. This conference existed until 1922, when it was united with the North Illinois Conference to form the Illinois Conference. In 1939, the Methodist Protestant, Methodist Episcopal, and the Southern Methodist churches united (reunited?) to form the Methodist Church. In 1941, Auburn was placed on the Marshall Circuit and the Mill Creek Circuit was abandoned. Unlike Allright, the village of Auburn (today, Clark Center) and Auburn Cemetery still remain, but Auburn Church was abandoned and, in 2011, demolished.

The Militant Lowrys

Only one Wabash Valley Tapscott, Wesley “Tabscott” [31 Oct 2015 post], served in the American Civil War, but some Clark County families into which the Tapscotts married played much larger roles. One was the Lowrys.

Towards the end of the War, on 15 Feb 1865, Jackson Lowry, husband of Eliza Ann Sweet [27 Sep 2015], was mustered into Company C of the 155^th Illinois Infantry, a most unusual action for a 45-year-old married man with seven children. The 155^th was assigned to duty in Tennessee, guarding the Nashville and Chattanooga railroad. By the time the regiment was disbanded, on 4 Sep 1865, it had lost seventy-one men to disease, but not a single one to military action. Jackson's decision to enlist may be due to the actions and fates of two of his sons.

Battle of the Wilderness (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division).

Much earlier, on 5 Sep 1861, Jackson Lowry’s oldest child, Henry Patrick had mustered into the 25^th Illinois Infantry, Company D. Henry was with General Grant at the start of his 1864 Overland Campaign to force rebel forces from Virginia. After crossing the Rapidan River, Union Forces fought a bitter battle with Lee's army on May 5 through 7 across the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, an area crisscrossed by small streams and covered with heavy underbrush. The three-day battle resulted in 29,800 casualties out of 162,920 men engaged. In the days to come, Grant would fight in the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, the Battle of North Anna, and the Battle of Cold Harbor. At some point around this time, Henry was struck by a rebel shell. The date recorded for the injury, 23 Jun 1864, is over a week after the conclusion of the last (Cold Harbor) engagement. Henry's niece claimed that the injury occurred during the Battle of the Wilderness. Of course records of injuries during war are often incorrect. Henry survived, although years later his shoulder still bothered him.

But the Lowry who suffered most from the War was Jackson’s son Lewis Taylor. Military men often overlooked the age requirement of eighteen for enlistment. As many as one-fifth of Civil War soldiers were below the minimum age. Lewis was one of those. On 30 Mar 1864, at age 15, he mustered into Company I, 54^th Illinois Infantry  in Mattoon, Illinois. Just two days earlier, a gang of "Copperheads" had attacked some members of the regiment in Charleston, Illinois, killing an officer and four privates. Lewis's story has been recorded by his daughter Mary Elizabeth (Lowry) Johansen in her book The Merry Cricket [29 Sep 2015]:

[Lewis] enlisted in Mattoon, Illinois, and was sent with hundreds of other young recruits to join General Sherman on his march to the sea. However, before his unit could reach the army in Georgia, news was received that Savannah had fallen. The city was a sea of flames, the campaign in Georgia had been a complete success, and there was much rejoicing throughout the North. But until someone could decide where father's unit should be sent next, it was ordered to stay encamped right where it was.

The green recruits from Illinois were glad to have the chance to rest up. They were led by officers as inexperienced as the men themselves. None of them had been trained in the techniques of war. So, although deep in enemy territory, they lit their campfires and relaxed, all unaware that they had attracted the attention of strong rebel bands which closed in on them easily and which captured the entire unit before it had a chance to resist.

“It was a long march from there to Andersonville,” father said, remembering, but not with bitterness. “Many of the boys who were guarding us were farm boys like ourselves. When their officers were not listening they'd be friendly as could be. What was it like farming up North, they would ask, and what would us Yankees do after Lee had licked us?”

He smiled. “But we changed our minds about them when we finally got to Andersonville. We'd heard about it. The stories had gotten around. But even the worst we'd heard didn't come up to what we found. It was much more than just the most awful filth-infested pest-hold anyone could ever imagine.”

“It was a place where Southern men, and boys, encouraged by the example of the worst bullies amongst them, lost whatever sense of decency they might have been born with and just let themselves have fun being inhuman, not just jailers but murder-loving fiends ! Only a person willing to give up acting like a man could treat other men like animals instead of like human beings.”

“The food was always spoiled, the bread moldy, the soup soured. There was never anything to drink except water and there was just one water spout. This was out in the courtyard and there was a low, stone wall all around it. A prisoner who was thirsty, even those who were sick, had to crawl to this watering trough. But if anyone poked his head up too high over this wall, he was shot at by the guards. Many prisoners, crazed. by thirst, or the pain of their wounds-men whose spirits had been broken or who had given up all hope-deliberately chose this way out.”

“Wirz was hanged for his brutality, his inhuman treatment of the Union prisoners at Andersonville. But he'll be hanged over and over and over again so long as there is anyone left to remember him!”

Andersonville (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division).

Lewis, who mustered out in Little Rock, Arkansas, on 15 Oct 1865, was a survivor. Of the 45,000 Union soldiers confined at Andersonville, nearly 13,000 died at the prison. The prison commandant, Captain Henry Wirz, was the only person to be executed for war crimes during the Civil War.

There is one bothersome problem about Lewis Lowry’s story. Lewis’s name does not appear in lists of Andersonville prisoners. Nevertheless, his story is probably true. Present day prisoner lists are compiled from various sources and are known to have errors. Lewis is known to have served in the Civil War and the details of his story appear to be correct.