•April 8, 2026•

Essex

by Janet Roney

I left you guessing last week why a Massachusetts seaman, Ebenezer Noyes, bought 2000 acres of rattlesnake-infested flat prairie land in the Whitley Township area in 1833-34. All his pioneer neighbors thought he was crazy because no one, including Noyes, knew that the black prairie land was among the most fertile soils in the world. Noyes wanted it because it was flat, high, and dry. Why? The late E. D. Hortenstine of Gays, who wrote about Noyes in the 1955 Mattoon centennial newspaper, as well as other sources, explained why.

Although Noyes was trained by his father to be a doctor, he went to sea instead. After surviving a near shipwreck, he left the sea and went west. In 1833, he stayed at Hayden’s Tavern at Whitley Point for some time and eventually married the innkeeper’s daughter. There, he was surrounded by a different kind of sea...a green sea of prairie grass as far as the eye could see. He learned how to survey that sea of grass and helped lay out some early stage/mail routes for the state.

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