John Frink and Martin Walker: Stagecoach kings of the old Northwest

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2002 by Matile, Roger

18 John, Spreading the News, 98-100, states that stagecoach companies could not operate without subsidies provided by mail contracts, which provided 30 percent or more of their revenues. Indeed, during the 1830s and 1840s, the terms stagecoach and mail coach were interchangeable.

19 Daniel Stowell, Grubb v. John Frink & Company 1852-1853, Sangamon County Circuit Court (Personal Injury), manuscript copy from the Lincoln Legal Papers Project, Springfield, Ill. 2001.

20 Album of Genealogy and Biography, 1897, 139-40. 21 Peoria Democratic Union, June 3, 1858, 3, col. 1-2.

22 "Packets" were steamboats that ran on regular schedules, unlike most steamboats of the era, which only traveled when they had filled their cargo holds. The U.S. Post Office favored ground transport of the mails over using steamboats. See John, Spreading the News, 92, for a succinct discussion of the unreliability of sending mail via steamboat.

23 Frink's obituary in the May 25, 1858 Chicago Daily Tribune stated: "Personally, Mr. Frink had but few of the virtues which society cares to perpetuate; but under all his roughness of manner, and beneath that arbitrary and uncontrolled will-aside from the habits which partially destroyed his usefulness-there were many sterling qualities, in the rough it is true."

24 John Dixon (1784-1876) emigrated to Illinois with his family in 1820. He served as circuit clerk in Peoria County in 1825. He later held the mail contract between Peoria and Galena. Dixon purchased Joseph Ogee's ferry across the Rock River in 1830. In 1835, he laid out the town of Dixon on land he owned around the ferry crossing. In the two decades before his death, he was active in Illinois Republican politics.

25 Elihu Benjamin Washburne (1816-1887) settled at Galena in 1841, where he joined in a law practice with Charles S. Hemstead. Elected to Congress as a Whig in 1852, he subsequently helped organize the Republican Party. He was appointed U.S. Secretary of State by President U.S. Grant in 1869, but soon resigned to become Envoy to France. After his return to the U.S., he continued to be active in state Republican politics.

26 Washburne, 1913, 223. 27 Ibid.1

28 Rounds, Report, 20. See also Walker's obituary, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 29, 1874, 2, col. 1.

29 Letter of William Beckman to Judge F. M. Annis, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 7:1 (April 1914), 130. Stagecoaches still linked towns throughout the region that did not have access to rail lines long after the first railroads were established. Walker's Chicago Daily Tribune obituary suggested he had continued in the stage business until the year before his death on May 28, 1874. As late as Feb. 28,

1878, a brief social note in the Kendall County Record, published at Yorkville, noted that a former resident had arrived for a visit after having taken the "Foote & Walker" stage to within a couple miles of the town and then walking the rest of the way.

30 Peoria Democratic Union, June 3, 1858, 3, col. 1-2

31 Album of Genealogy and Biography, 1897, 139-40. See also Frink's obituary in the Peoria Democratic Union, June 3, 1858, 3, col. 1-2. Frink had married Harriet Farnsworth on Sept. 23, 1845 in Jo Daviess County. Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, http: / /www.cyberdriveillinois.com / departments //archives/ marriage. html. The couple had two sons, George and Henry, and one daughter, Eva. By the time of his death, Frink was said to have been "estranged" from his family. Chicago Daily Tribune, May 25, 1858, 1, col. 3.