Thatcher Blake. Their children are Hon. E. B. Sumner and Mrs. Annie S. Lane. Mr. Sumner was one of the very few early settlers who accumulated a large fortune. His last years were spent in Rockford. Mr. Sumner died October 18, 1887. February 11, 1845, Mr. Sumner was commissioned postmaster at Vanceborough. He was to retain the office during the pleasure of the postmaster-general. The commission is signed by C. Wickliffe, who was postmaster-general during the administration of John Tyler. The seal is the figure of a man on horseback, with a small mail-bag upon his back. Both man and horse are apparently in great haste to reach the next station. This commission, now in possession of Hon. E. B. Sumner, is well preserved, although it was issued fifty-five years ago. The elder Sumner built a stone house at Vanceborough, which is still in a good state of preservation, and has well nigh outlived the memory of the town. These primitive villages along the old stage lines were superseded by the railway station, and they now scarcely live in memory.

CHAPTER XXI.

DR. A. M. CATLIN.—THE FOOTE BROTHERS.—FIRST SEMINARY IDEA.

DR.

R. A. M. CATLIN emigrated to Illinois from the Western Reserve, in Ohio, in February, 1838, in company with the Rev. Hiram Foote and Silas Tyler. This party traveled the entire distance in wagons. They were of New England stock, and were part of a movement to found an institution of learning similar to the one then flourishing at Oberlin, Ohio.

The brothers, Hiram, Lucius and Horatio Foote, all clergymen, were prominent in this movement. They were more or less influenced by the example of the Rev. Charles G. Finney, the famous revivalist and founder of the Oberlin institution. Mr. Ira Baker, Rev. Lewis Sweasy, James S. Morton, a Mr. Field, and others moved from the Western Reserve to Rockford about the same time, and under the same influences. Upon their arrival in Rockford, the only hotel to be found was a double log cabin, and the only bed discovered by Doctor Catlin for himself and boy was a thinly covered, dislocated and dislocating stratum of oak shakes, supported at the sides by the naked logs—a Spartan bed for a cold night. Horace, a fourth brother of the Footes, had preceded the others by a year, and secured a log cabin on Rock river, about two miles above Rockford. Into this single room, with a small loft, were crowded three families, with several children.

Dr. Catlin moved to a log cabin on the bluff overlooking Big Bottom, four miles north of Rockford. A Hoosier by the name of Shores had worn a slight track between his home back on the hills and a plowed field on the Bottom, and this was the only road near the Doctor's new home. A small, inconstant, near-by stream, like the road, lost itself in the dry prairie.

At that time Dr. Catlin intended to abandon the practice of medicine. To feed his little family, he hired a broken prairie of Herman B. Potter, who lived two miles south of Rockford. This land, six miles from home, the Doctor cultivated under difficulties, for it soon became known to the scattered people that he was a physician, and, like Cincinnatus, he was called from the plow. He was not a man to deny the necessities of

others; and against his wishes at the time, he was drawn into the practice of his profession, which he continued until near the day of his death, nearly sixty years later. He had practiced in early life in New York and Ohio, and his entire professional service lasted seventy years. He died in 1892, at the age of ninety-one. On one occasion while at work on the Potter place, Dr. Catlin was summoned to visit a sick person on the Kishwaukee. He took his horse from the furrow near sunset, and, sending his boy of eight on foot six miles northward to the lonely cabin on the prairie, he himself rode southward to his patient. He soon learned that his profession was a jealous mistress, and abandoned farming.

The missionary educational managers had selected the mouth of the Kishwaukee as the site of their institution. A large building was begun, but never completed, and the useless frame survived for years as evidence of the untimeliness of their effort. An Indian wigwam still survived on the same site. The Indians, after their bloody victory over the indiscreet militia at Stillman's Run, had abandoned the region, and the military expedition, which included Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, had been withdrawn. Silver brooches, arrow heads and the like were found beside the deep, narrow Indian trails that wound about the bluffs and across the prairies. Kishwaukee, however, soon had about forty frame dwellings, and Dr. Catlin, Mr. Tyler, Mr. Field, Mr. Johnson and others resided there.

Lucius and Horace Foote had staid by the log house of the latter, and Dr. Catlin, whose wife and Mrs. Lucius Foote were sisters, was induced by this fact and other reasons, to build in this neighborhood, which he did. He hewed the logs and the floor puncheons, and split the roof shakes with his own hands. His door and door-frames were made from purchased material, but lacked glazing or other filling for the skylight. As he sat one evening "under his own vine and fig tree," not yet planted, there passed a load of noisy revelers. As they drove furiously by, they shook out a wagon end-board that exactly filled the skylight aperture, and completed the house, which the builder probably enjoyed as much as any he ever occupied; that is, the recollection of it.

in

Although Rockford was from the first clearly indicated as the coming metropolis, by the ford which gave its name, yet Kishwaukee below and Winnebago above were "boomed." In those days they could compare population with Rockford.

SIXTY PRESCRIPTIONS IN ONE DAY.

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Dr. Catlin finally settled in Rockford about 1839, and entered upon a medical practice which, if not large, was very "wide," as it carried him from Roscoe and above on the north, to Stillman's Run on the south, and from Twelve-Mile Grove and beyond to Belvidere. Much of this was night riding. After the settlers' horses had done their day's work, and after the fall of darkness, in the silence of the night, when watchers became nervous, in the midst of storms and when the primitive household lights burned pale, was the accepted time to send for the medical comforter; and the nocturnal "Hollo, Doctor!" was often heard above the storm at the physician's door. He was never ill, and never refused to answer the call. Even when his own horse failed, he was mounted behind the messenger, and rode out in the night to relieve the sick. Once he was persuaded to mount the back of a sturdy messenger, who bore him and his precious medicine-bag through the swellings of icy Kishwaukee. The year 1846 was signalized by much sickness. Nearly every family living on low land had malarial fever, and the doctors were busy people. At one time Dr. Catlin could get but four or five hours' sleep out of the twenty-four, and he would become so exhausted that he frequently slept while riding from house to house. One day's ride, for example, included a trip of several miles north of Rockford, and then a tour south beyond the Killbuck, and a return by Cherry Valley, closing the day's work in the following morning. Thirty calls were made, and sixty patients prescribed for on that occasion. During this season Dr. Goodhue was asked what could be done for the sick. To this grave question the Doctor made this characteristic reply: "I don't know unless we build a big smoke-house and cure them," referring to the almost universal pallor. Dr. Catlin was an indulgent creditor, and fully shared the burden and poverty of early days.

As a practitioner, Dr. Catlin was distinguished by a combination of conservatism and independence of thought and method. It was said of him by one who knew him well, that "as a careful examiner, close reasoner, and with ability to define and state cause and effect, Dr. Catlin had few superiors." This fact, with his large experience and unobtrusive, non-self-assertive spirit, attracted the regard of his brother practitioners; so that he was often consulted by them in difficult cases. Near the close of his life he was honored by them with a spontaneous tender of a reception and banquet, an honor which he highly appreciated.

CHAPTER XXII.

DR. JOSIAH C. GOODHUE.—DR. ALDEN THOMAS.

HE year 1838 was signalized by the advent of several physicians who became prominent in early local history. Among this number was Dr. Josiah C. Goodhue, who settled in the autumn, with his family. He had been here the preceding autumn on a tour of inspection. Dr. Goodhue had attained some distinction before he became a citizen of this county. He was born in 1803, at Putney, Vermont. His mother is said to have been a cousin of Aaron Burr. The Doctor was graduated from the school of medicine at Yale, and began practice at St. Thomas, Upper Canada, in 1824. While there he was married to Miss Catherine Dunn. A brother, Sir George Goodhue, was in the employ of the Canadian government. The Doctor emigrated from Canada to Chicago in 1835. He was the first resident physician in that city outside the garrison of Fort Dearborn. When Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, Dr. Goodhue was elected the first alderman from the First ward. There were six wards in the city at that time. William B. Ogden was chosen mayor in that year. Dr. Goodhue designed the first city seal of Chicago, and it became known as his little baby. He was quite proud of his offspring. The Doctor was the real founder of the first free school system of Chicago. He was one of a committee appointed to solicit subscriptions for the first railroad chartered to run from the city, the Galena & Chicago Union.

In his practice in Chicago, Dr. Goodhue was associated with Dr. Daniel Brainard. Their office was on Lake street, near the old Tremont House. John Wentworth and Ebenezer Peck were engaged in the practice of law in the same building. Dr. Goodhue was one of the men who drew the act of incorporation for Rush Medical college, and was a member of the first board of. trustees.

Dr. Goodhue's first house in Rockford was what was then known as the "ball alley," on the northwest corner of Madison and Walnut streets, where the Golden Censer brick building was subsequently erected. He afterward purchased a home on the