re, then [1824 c.], the two strongest men
of mark in the ministry, in this State [Illinois]." Cartwright's vitality
was remarkable. In the sixty-sixth year of his ministry, and the
eighty-sixth of his life, he dedicated eight churches, preached at
seventy-seven funerals, addressed eight schools, baptized twenty adults
and fifty children, married five couples, received fifteen into the church
on probation and twenty-five into full connection, raised twenty-five
dollars missionary money, donated twenty dollars for new churches, wrote
one hundred and twelve letters, delivered many lectures, and sold two
hundred dollars worth of books. Many frontier preachers of the time were
lacking in common sense, but they were not popular. This is the testimony
of a contemporary (1828) writer whose analysis of western character has
rarely been excelled.(546)

John Edgar, a native of Ireland, was one of the largest landholders who
ever lived in Illinois. At the outbreak of the American Revolution he was
a British officer living at Detroit, but becoming implicated in the
efforts of his American wife to aid British soldiers in deserting, he was
imprisoned. He escaped, and in 1784 settled in Kaskaskia, where his wife
joined him two years later, having saved from confiscation some twelve
thousand dollars. This made Edgar the rich man of the community. "In very
early times, he erected, at great expense, a fine flouring mill on the
same site where M. Paget had built one sixty years before. This mill was a
great benefit to the public and also profitable to the proprietor. Before
the year 1800, this mill manufactured great quantities of flour for the
New Orleans market which would compare well with the Atlantic flour."
Edgar built a splendid mansion in Kaskaskia and entertained royally. At a
time when hospitality was common he improved upon it. His home was the
fashionable resort for almost half a century. It was here that Lafayette
was entertained. In addition to his flour mill, which attracted settlers
to its vicinity near Kaskaskia and which for many years did most of the
merchant business in flour in the country, Edgar owned and operated salt
works near the Mississippi, northwest of Kaskaskia, and also invested
largely in land. Before the commissioners appointed to settle land claims
he claimed thirty-six thousand acres in one claim as the assignee of
ninety donation-rights, while he and John Murry St. Clair claimed 13,986
acres which proved