Charles R. Hume packed quite a bit of living into his years. He was born January 1, 1814, in Delaware County, New York, one of ten children of Robert and Catherine Ross Hume. After finishing at Jefferson Academy, he headed west in 1837 to McDonough County, Illinois, where he bought 320 acres in Hire Township. Along the way, the steamboat he was traveling on blew up, injuring several passengers—but Hume came through without a scratch and went right on with his plans.

In 1839, he married Harriet Lucinda Blandin, daughter of Joseph L. Blandin, founder of Blandinsville, Illinois. The couple had four children: Julia Catherine and Charles A., who both died young, and two who lived to adulthood—Mary H. (later Mrs. Joseph Edell) and Robert Wilson Hume.

Farming didn’t hold Hume long. By 1841, he had moved into Blandinsville and put up the town’s first store, later adding a mill. In 1843, he was appointed postmaster. During the years of the “Mormon difficulties,” he helped escort the last of the Saints from Nauvoo, Illinois across the Mississippi.

When the Mexican-American War came on, Hume enlisted but was assigned to recruiting duty near St. Louis, Missouri. A few years later, he tried his luck in California, then came back in 1855, read law, and settled into a long stretch of public service as judge, notary, and justice of the peace.

At the start of the American Civil War, Hume raised Company C of the 78th Illinois and served until 1864. He was captured and paroled by Confederate General John Hunt Morgan, then finished his service as a judge advocate in St. Louis.

The Hume household, like many of its time, tells a story beyond its own family. In the 1870 census, along with Charles and Harriet, a ten-year-old boy named Robert Hamilton—born in South Carolina and listed as Black—was living with them. By 1880, he was working as a farm laborer in nearby Warren County, suggesting the Humes may have given him a start in life during those early years after the war.

Charles R. Hume died March 13, 1898, at his son’s home in Indianola, Nebraska, and was laid to rest back in Blandinsville beside Harriet, who had passed on a few years earlier.

Pioneers of the Past is furnished by Julie L. Terstriep, of the McDonough County Genealogical Society, facebook.com/mcdcgs. For this story, go to https://www.mcdcgs.com/pioneers-of-the-past/