Henry Seely STURM

                   Name, birth date and place, death date and place from Ancestral File v4.19 5/2001

CENSUS YR:  1850  STATE or TERRITORY:  IL  COUNTY:  STARK  DIVISION:  No. 29  REEL NO:  M432-129  PAGE NO:  234B
REFERENCE:  Enumerated the 9th day of Oct. 1850 by Thomas J. Henderson
ftp://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/il/stark/1850/pg0227b.txt
15  528  555 Sturm          Henry S.       41   M         Farmer         560       Ohio
   16  528  555 Sturm          Betsey         40   F                                  Ohio
   17  528  555 Sturm          Isabella       18   F                                  Ohio                   SCH  X
   18  528  555 Sturm          Matthias A.    15   M         Farmer                   Ohio           SCH   X
   19  528  555 Sturm          Samuel         13   M                                  Illinois            SCH     X
   20  528  555 Sturm          Betsey         11   F                                  Illinois             SCH    X
   21  528  555 Sturm          Margaret       9    F                                  Illinois           SCH     X
   22  528  555 Sturm          Martha         7    F                                  Illinois             SCH    X
   23  528  555 Sturm          Hannah S.      5    F                                  Illinois          SCH       X
   24  528  555 Sturm          Solomon        2    M                                  Illinois

No marriage information in Illinois Marriage Index.  From the census information I would think they had to be married in Ohio, rather than in Illinois as the Ancestral File record indicated.

Interview with Henry Seeley Sturm
Stolen :) from Stark County and its Pioneers by Mrs. E. H. Shallenberger
(Cambridge, Ill.: B. W. Seaton, Prairie Chief Office, Book and Job Printer, 1876 Pages 353-6)
The Sturms
       This is a very large family. The writer had no convenient means of ascertaining how many of this name inhabited, and still do inhabit Stark county. One branch of this genealogical tree seems to have taken root on LaSalle Prairie, Peoria county, at an early day. From there (we think) came Lewis Sturms, among the first names mentioned in our annals, but who must have left again after a few years.
       In September, 1834, came Matthias Sturms, or as he was familiarly called "Uncle Tias;" with him, from the state of Ohio came his wife and ten children, one son-in-law, Kirkpatrick, and one daughter-in-law, the wife of my informant, Henry Sturms.
       Of these children of Matthias, we can record but little, save their names. The sons as we recall them, were Henry, Nicholas, Samuel, Matthias and Simon. His daughters became Mrs. Kirkpatrick and Mrs. Peter Pratt.
       Henry married a Miss Osborne, whose family also became residents of the Sturms settlement, and her father was noted among the first settlers as a successful bee hunter.
       We have elsewhere had occasion to speak of the characteristics of this Sturms family; their very numbers rendered them of importance in a new county, and as we remember them in their prime; they were all stalwart, active men, of rough exterior but kind at heart.
       At the date of our visit to Henry, now an old man, we found him greatly changed. He is in straightened circumstances, and this misfortune is heightened by the loss of his sight. Confinement to the house in consequences of his blindness, has robbed him of his early vigor, and he seemed sadly depressed in spirits, asserting that "he know nothing that could be of use to anyone." But as we strove to divert his thoughts from the sad realities of the present, to recollections of the past "when he was as well off as his neighbors," memory seamed to awaken once more, and he discoursed freely of the "good old times."
       He spoke of the encampment of Indians at Walnut grove much as Mr. Seeley had done; thought "he and his wife had seen five hundred pass their door in a single day; they were not afraid had been used to Indians in Ohio, and these Pottawatomies were friendly to the whites." He told us of hunting adventures with out end, thinks he has killed deer at all hours from sundown to sunrise, averaging, at a good season of the year, thirty a week. "He knew their licks," and climbing a tree convenient to them waited their approach and shot them from her perch. "He would then tie them to the tail of his horse with ropes carried for the purpose, and haul them home."
       Has dragged in three at a time in this way. To the youthful reader, this may sound like a very improbably tale; our horses would certainly object to such proceedings. But the Sturms were not the only men who brought their game home in this fashion as plenty of witnesses yet living can testify. They say it required the knack of an experienced hunter to do it successfully, "there was a great deal in knowing just how to tie them on." Henry Sturms further said that one Sunday morning some thirty years ago, as he and a cousin were walking along the bluffs of Spoon river, he spied in the water a slightly wounded buck; he immediately sprang upon his back, jumping from an elevation of about ten feet, and seizing the animal by the horns, "ducked him" till he was exhausted and breathless, falling an easy prey on the bank.
       They considered it "bad luck" to carry firearms on Sunday, and on this occasion had in their possession no weapon larger than a pen knife, so proceeded with great care and deliberation to dispatch the poor beast with that; and finally the two men dragged him home (but a short distance) in triumph.
       These anecdotes will suffice to show something of the life they lived, and the metal of which they were made.
       This man is among those who would think the undergrowth or thickets with which our woods now abound are of quite recent growth. He is sure all in the vicinity of Osceola grove, have sprung up since his time. Grapes, plums and crab-apples, he says were very scarce when he first saw the Spoon river county, but wild strawberries were abundant.
       It is curious that upon a matter so simple as this, different opinions should exist, some old settlers protesting that when they first saw these groves they were entirely clear of undergrowth, others, as confidently asserting the opposite state of facts.
       Mr. Sturms remembers that in his early hunting excursions he frequently came upon the remains of buffalo, think they had once ranged through these parts in large herds, but had perished during "the winter of deep snow," an era we can not date just now, but it occurred some ten or twelve years before the settlement of the Spoon river country.
       Our informant recalls several valleys containing acres of land literally covered with the bones of these animals; one of these lying between his own place and that of Mr. Searles, in Osceola township. He described particularly the peculiar construction of the shoulder bones, which produce the distinctive hump of this species of buffalo, and we conclude he must have gathered his facts from the observation of the remains, as it is not supposable he ever consulted books for such information.
       He concludes the buffalo sheltered from the fierceness of the storm in these narrow wooded valleys, but the snow which fell to a depth of four feet on the level prairie, would drift up those gorges and down the hills, and actually bury them alive, and as the intense cold soon crusted it over, there would be no escape from starvation. That the deer perished in a similar manner, about the same time, is a fact well established, and in this connection it may not be inappropriate to remark that the elk bones were also found by the early settlers. Dr. Hall remembers a huge skeleton of this animal that lay on the high prairie towards Providence, and served as a "land mark" for years--its bones glittering in the sunlight, could be seen for miles. So Mr. Sturms' theories are not without collateral support.
       Besides the large family of Matthias, senior, there was another Henry Sturms, brother of the former, whose children for the most part are residents of Stark County. Of this family, we have even less knowledge. Peter, a local preacher of the Methodist faith, and a well to do farmer lives not far from Bradford in a locality known by the suggestive, but not euphonious appellation of "Hell street." Possibly his philanthropy led him there, that he might beseech of his neighbors to choose better ways. In conclusion we may say of these families, that although they have never been prominent in politics or claimed "high places in the synagogues," yet they have been by no means wanting in religious fervor.
       The cabin of 'Uncle Tias" was one of the first meeting places of the Methodist fraternity, and the Sturms' school house was remarkable for displays of "the power" and enthusiasm generally, that would astonish the most ardent advocate of camp meeting excitement, now-a-days.
       But the present generation, the Sturms of to-day is quite another being to the Sturms of forty years ago. They are losing the characteristics of backwoodsmen, or frontiersmen, and growing just like their neighbors.
       In fact, public schools, equal rights, and Paris fashions are obliterating all the differences among our western people, reducing them to a dead level, or as near that as nature permits. This may be right and best, but after all, we rather enjoy contemplating the diversities ion the genus homo, and can hardly see how society would be the gainer by making people all just alike, if this were possible.