This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Does your house occasionally fill with unexpected relatives, complete with six children? You'll understand the dilemma of Timothy Harris.
Harris lived in a sturdy little log cabin twelve feet square beneath the bluffs along the Illinois River. His cabin in 1822 was an outpost of civilization. There were no inns or hotels nearby. These frontier conditions required hospitality. A stranger arriving at a cabin would remain on his horse, and shout, "Halloo the house," and then wait for someone in the house to come out and invite him in. Travelers could expect to be housed and fed and were expected to pay a small amount.
Chauncey Hobart, later a famous Methodist circuit rider, remembers his family arriving at the Harris cabin one day in 1822. There were already nine guests at the Harris', including a family with six children. The Hobarts came in two wagons: Chauncy's parents and four children in one, and two grandparents, a single woman, and the driver in another. Now there were twenty people in the cabin. Two days later, a young couple with seven children showed up, making a total of twenty-nine. There were also three hundred hungry Potawatomie Indians camped near the cabin. Sleeping arrangements covered the entire floor. Harris ran out of bread, and so several guests were sent with twenty bushels of corn to the closest flour mill. The round trip took four days.
Timothy Harris's generosity was apparently still not worn out. By the time the wagon returned with the corn meal, Harris was already busy helping the Hobarts build a large double log cabin nearby. Eventually, all eleven of the Hobart clan moved in, while the other parties went on their way west.
Timothy Harris today seems unbelievably generous and gracious, but he may have been clever as well. Imagine future travelers pulling up to the Harris-Hobart clearing, and taking a look at a grand double home near a small twelve-foot cabin. Guess which house they pulled up to and hallooed.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by the Scott County Regional Authority, with additional funding from the Illinois Arts Council and Augustana College, Rock Island.
