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This is the story
of a town-a very small town, located in the heart of these Illinois
Prairies-cradled on the black earth of these Illinois farm lands.
This is the story of the early days of a prairie town-our town-this
is "The Bement Story."
 It
all began over one hundred years ago when Joseph Bodman of Williamsburg,
Massachusetts, heard of the building of a new western railroad across
the prairies of Illinois. Here was a chance to grow up with the land!
Pioneers would follow that railroad across the wilderness of the prairie.
Towns would grow up along side it. Prairie land would become farmland
around it. Grow up with the land! A man of vision could see that!
A man of great hope-and great faith-and great dreams could see that!
And so he came, from the faraway hills of Massachusetts, past the
wooden buildings of sprawling Chicago, down the great Illinois Central
to the pioneer hamlet of Bloomington, out to the flat prairie lands
and swamp lands that lay south of the ridge, south of Monticello,
Piatt County, Illinois.
Finally, on Christmas Day, 1853, Joseph Bodman, L.B. Wing, and Harry
P. Little, halted upon the ridge which divides the waters of the Sangamon
and the Kaskaskia, halted and looked southward-three solitary horsemen
on a lonely knoll.
 LB
Wing later described it this way:
"It was a beautiful day, that Christmas Day of 1853-like autumn,
rather than winter. A magnificent view, limited only be the powers
of visions, was before us. It was like looking out upon the ocean.
No farm, no orchard, no living thing or sign of human habitation!
Everything, so far as we could see, was just as it had been for centuries.
We knew that in the groves of timber that skirted the water course,
a few pioneers had built their cabins and for years had supplied their
simple wants by hunting and a little farming of the most primitive
sort. But their proximity was not apparent to us and in no way dispelled
the sense of complete solitude that oppressed us.
We dismounted and threw ourselves upon the sunny slope to enjoy the
view and debate the question whether it was likely that this prairie,
after remaining hundreds of years, was now about to attain any particular
value. All who preceded us had evidently come to the conclusion that
it was like air and water, valuable and necessary, so far as it could
be used; but it was in too large a supply to be worth buying. Was
it likely that the little span of time represented by our lives, that
this condition would greatly change?"
And so they came, saw the countless miles of treeless prairie, saw
the grass tall as a man's head. Saw, and for a moment doubted, miles
and miles of worthless prairie land. But they were men of vision-and
faith-and plain Yankee shrewdness. And they saw, not what was on the
prairie, but what might someday be.
After consulting their maps and riding over the land they drove stakes,
selecting adjoining tracts so they wouldn't lose each other and in
1854 they secured titles to all the land they could afford at $1.25
per acre. Joseph Bodman bought 6,000 acres of this prairie land, swamp
land, grass as tall as a man's head land, seemingly worthless land.
Six thousand acres of "What could it ever be good for" land,
home of the deer and prairie wolves and prairie rattler-a great sea
of grass.
The year following, the deer and prairie wolves were startled from
their homes by an engineering corps surveying the route for what is
now the Wabash railroad. LB Wing in 1854 sold to Hunt and Carter (agents
for the Great Western Railroad) 33 acres of land in section 19 for
$1.00.
Mr. Joseph Bodman, LB Wing and Henry P. Little donated the ground
upon which the original town of Bement was laid out. Bement was surveyed
and platted in the winter of 1854-55, and the plat was filed on April
5, 1855. In 1855 Bement consisted of a few stakes driven in the ground
and only one log cabin between here and Monticello-the home of Mr.
and Mrs. Joseph A. Alvord. And here the carpenters stayed while they
built the first house in Bement that year, April 1855. Mr. Bodman
went back east and persuaded six young men, some of them carpenters,
to come to Bement and "grow up with the country." They were:
J.M. Camp, J.H. Camp, W.H. Ellis, T.T. Pettit, Marion Pettit, and
Charles Smith. These were the first settlers of Bement.
 J.M.
Camp built the first house for Joseph Bodman. It is located at 217
W. Bodman street and is now the home of Mrs. Burleigh Creel and her
daughter, Miss Guynell Creel. Mr. Alvord hauled the lumber for the
house from Champaign. When completed, the house was occupied by a
Joseph Nye and his wife, who kept boarders.
Later that same year, Mr. Bodman built the second house in Bement.
It was located just west of the first house and is now occupied by
Bill Slagle and his family. When completed, it was occupied by Joseph
Alvord. Soon after, Mr. Bodman erected a small office building, the
first business building in Bement. This building was used for various
purposes including a post office and train depot until the railroad
moved one here in 1856.
In 1856 Mr. LB Wing built the third house in Bement and it was occupied
in the spring by Mr. and Mrs. A.J. Force. The lumber for this house
was shipped from Chicago. (This house was located on the southwest
corner of Wing and Morgan streets where Bob Glennon is building his
new home this year). Mr. Force planted 100 acres of wheat at the south
edge of the original town in the fall of 1856 and harvested an abundant
crop in 1857. This is the first record of a crop here.
The fourth house built in Bement was an Irish shanty along the railroad.
Here in 1856 the first birth and death record occurred in Bement-a
child of the James family.
The years 1856-57-58-59 saw the arrival of the other pioneers, many
of whom settled here or on nearby farms. Among them were S.K. Bodman,
Thos. Postlewait, F.E. Bryant, Edmund Davies, Luther Bodman, James
McDowell, R. McDowell, Amos Stout, H.B. Burgess, Wm. Camp, Elihu Fisher,
W.D. Coffin, J.C. Evans, C.F. Tenney, Thomas Lamb, Charles Lamb, Albert
Lamb and others.
Mr. F.E. Bryant, in whose home Lincoln and Douglas met in 1858 to
make arrangements for their famous debates, arrived in Bement July
26, 1856. He immediately began operating a grain, coal and lumber
business.
The next year he started a general merchandise store, the first in
Bement, and later built several business buildings. He was known (according
to George L. Spear) as Bement's pioneer tradesman, and like Joseph
Bodman, was identified with every worthwhile project for the growth
and improvement of the village. (Emma Piatt's History states that
Mr. Bryant's family was the seventh in Bement.)
The first hotel, the Sherman House was built in the fall of 1856 by
John Townsend, a Canadian, who kept a hotel for the accommodation
of the traveling public and for the few boarders who were waiting
for something to show up. This hotel survived for a period until it
was moved to make way for a new towering structure, the Masonic building.
It was followed by the Pennsylvania House which was built in 1858
by James and R. McDowell and Thos. Postlewait. (This hotel was later
known as the Hotel Rennick.) The Pennsylvania House later became the
principal hotel and soon "ranked with the first-class houses
on the line of the Wabash Road". Bement's first depot was located
north of the present scout headquarters. Stephen B. Hawks was the
first yardmaster, being appointed in November 1857. Switching was
done by a yoke of white oxen hitched to the freight cars by a log
chain. Mr. Hawks also had charge of the pumping of water for the railroad
and it was also his duty to "rack up" four cords of wood
each day for the night trains. He served until 1870.
The first Sabbath-school, a union one, was organized in May of 1856.
Meetings were held in Bodman and Camps warehouse.
A depot was moved from Decatur in the winter of 1856, and Mr. and
Mrs. T.T. Pettit reported that the first sermon in Bement was preached
by Mr. Samuel Harshbarger in the new depot.
The first school election was held November 10, 1856. Joseph Bodman,
Aaron Yost, and Henry C. Booth were elected directors. Henry Booth
was employed to teach the first three month term at $40 per month.
The first school was taught in a dwelling built by Wm. Pickens.
The Methodist Episcopal Church of Bement was the first church to be
organized in Bement. It was organized in 1858 under the pastorate
of Rev. Rutledge. Meetings were held in the school house and in Bryant's
Hall.
The first flour mill in Bement was erected in 1858 by D.H. Rust in
Bodman's addition near the railroad on the south side. The mill did
a big business and was the pride of Bement until it accidentally caught
fire and burned in 1860.
Louis H. Alvord was born in 1858-probably the second child to be born
in Bement.
After this, the settlers came to Bement too fast for us to be able
to trace their order of arrival.
1859-Bement was growing and Rea's addition was added to Bement. There
were about 50 students in school, which necessitated the building
of a school building. It was located on the present site of the grade
school building and was completed in June, 1859. J.B. Lowell was employed
to teach at $28 per month and was instructed to hire an assistant
at $17 per month-the first teachers in Bement's first regular school
building.
Mr. C.F. Tenney moved to Bement in 1859 and said that at that time
Mr. Bryant had the only dry goods store in Bement. There were no sidewalks
and the streets were not graded, and there was not a street in the
town.
There were just enough ladies in town who danced to form one set.
He recalled that a favorite pastime on a Sunday afternoon was to drive
to the timber to lie in the shade of a tree. The mud was so bad that
a wagon would mire down in the middle of the street and teams frequently
had to be pulled out with extra teams or oxen. In wet times it was
impossible for the ladies to be on the streets, and in dry times the
fleas in the corncob sidewalks made it most undesirable for them to
be out. And there were millions of green-head flies and mosquitos
to add to the misery of the early settlers.
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