"The Year of the Deep Snow"

Hughea Davenport was not a resident of our county, but his descendents were. It is through the late Berle Mattes that I received a copy of a memoir, written in May 1876 by his great-grandfather Davenport.
Hughea was 12 years old when he came to Illinois from Kentucky in 1824, settling with his family six miles west of the hamlet of Springfield, which Hughea told consisted of eight to 10 houses, several stores –  including one with a whiskey barrel owned by Herndon – and the Capps brothers’ hardware and shoe shop.

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