ORIGIN OF OUR STATE CHARITABLE

INSTITUTIONS

CARL E. BLACK, M. D.

The story of the founding of the first State Charitable Institutions in Illinois for the care of the Deaf, the Blind, the Insane and the Feebleminded reads like a fairy story as we look back from the viewpoint of Jacksonville's Centennial year.

In 1838 Illinois was largely an undeveloped country with settlements here and there, most of them accidental aggregations of men and families seeking to build a home or secure a fortune by individual effort rather than by community effort. The problems of the individual were so urgent and the tasks and the difficulties of establishing a new home in the wilderness were so pressing that little or no time was left for the problems of organized society.

The efforts of the early settler to ward off the responsibilities of organized society is no where better illustrated than in the early statutes dealing with "Pauperism." The idea was not to provide for the unfortunates but rather to protect the community from them. As physicians we know that for the most part paupers are medical problems. Physical or mental illness or old age are largely responsible for our paupers. It reads strangely to the ears of our generation to find in the first enactment of this subject in 1819 the following language:-The overseers of the poor are charged "yearly and every year, to cause all poor persons, who have or shall become a public charge, to be farmed out at public vendue or outcry."

From this beginning the succeeding legislatures made new laws in keeping with the advance of the social organization. The progress of organized society was slow notwithstanding the fundamental urge of food, of reproduction and of self

protection. For the most part ideals were low and individualistic. The social expression in laws was equally slow and crude and had many setbacks depending on the quality of the peoples' representatives. By 1830 a few people or groups of individuals began to realize their social responsibilities-people who came from well organized communities and who sought a new home and more acres with their coincident comforts desired these same things for the community and for the state in which they had cast their lot. It requires no deep study of our state history to see that such individuals were few, and that communities of that type were practically negligible prior to 1830. The explorer, the hunter, the trapper, the adventurer, and the land grabber formed a restless self-seeking majority against which the educated and trained man with a real spirit for a better social life made slow headway.

About 1830 there was an event in the life of the state which started a new influence-namely the coming of the "Yale Band" to Jacksonville. The members of this band did not all come west at once, some of them remaining to seek support in the east for their work. This arrangement proved to be a great asset. Julian M. Sturtevant and Theron Baldwin were the first to join John M. Ellis at Illinois College in 1829. Between 1830 and 1833 Asa Turner was at the church in Quincy, Wm. Kirby at the church in Mendon, John F. Brooks at the church in Collinsville and Theron Baldwin at the church in Vandalia. Mason Grover did not come out until some years later. These members of the "Yale Band" with Rev. Edward Beecher, also a Yale man, who became the first President of Illinois College, had widely distributed spheres of influence but centered that influence in Illinois College at Jacksonville. Rev. Theron Baldwin located at Vandalia in order to be in touch with the legislature.

These men were well educated, and brought with them a highly developed spiritual responsibility for social welfare. They brought the traditions of New England. While they

sought new homes their real object was far above that. They came with high ideals of religion and of education. Here they met a group of Southerners who embodied all the ideals of social and community betterment although some of them were still attached to the institution of slavery. Murray McConnel came to Jacksonville in 1821; William Thomas in 1826; Joseph Duncan and Samuel D. Lockwood in 1830; and Stephen A. Douglas in 1833. Peter Cartwright came to Illinois in 1821, and while not a resident of Jacksonville was always in close touch with this community.

It was the coming together and the united efforts of these groups which began to shape things for the new state. They had knowledge of what had been done in older states and set about to improve the social welfare of the community. It was the working together of these two trained groups which soon showed its influence. The nucleus of this group was at Jacksonville and attracted and united similarly minded individuals from other settlements throughout the state.

Naturally most of the physicians who came to Jacksonville early belonged to the educated and trained group. The underlying object of their choice of medicine as a career was to be of help and benefit to their fellow men.

No doubt there was the usual proportion of untrained "quacks" in medicine who came to exploit the ailments of the settlers, but their names like their works have achieved a just oblivion. Quackery was by no means confined to the doctors but flourished, unrestrained, in all professions and walks of life.

The character and the ideals of any community are reflected in the institutions which the people of that community seek and support. Some people sought industrial and manufacturing enterprises as their ideal of a community interest while others sought educational and eleemosynary institutions. Each is likely to secure in greater or lesser degree what it seeks and it will seek what most appeals to its own peculiar community mind. Jacksonville was settled by a type of citi