Jacob Cosner was the brother of Elizabeth Cosner Potter, who, with her husband David and their family, arrived in the Wethersfield Colony in 1838. Jacob was born in Ohio in 1809. In 1838, he followed his sister’s family to Wethersfield. Then, in 1841, he moved to what became Burns Township, where he lived for the rest of his life. Cosner was married in 1841 to Sarah Leonard, born in Pennsylvania in 1820. They eventually had 10 children.
In addition to farming, Cosner operated Jake’s Tavern at the locally well-known intersection bearing his name. The tavern was a stage stop, a post office, and an inn, with three rooms upstairs, and two rooms and a bedroom downstairs. Travelers were not turned away. When the big beds filled up, out rolled the trundle beds from underneath. So long as there was floor space there was always room for another sleeper.
As an added bonus for travelers, Sallie Cosner’s reputation as a cook flew up and down the old stage coach road. Travelers were happy to spend a night at the inn and partake of Sallie’s meals, including her famous biscuits. And they knew that there would always be plenty of food – she stocked barrels of flour, barrels of home crown and cured meats, salt pork, smoked meat, corned beef, smoked dried beef, beans, hominy, dried apples, ground corn, just to list a few of her stores.
One of the many stories associated with Jake’s Tavern and the Cosners occurred about Christmas time in 1848.
As guests were sitting down for dinner, they heard a commotion outside. It brought the guests scurrying to the windows.
In the snow, there were 400 hogs on the hoof. James Allan, a Geneseo storekeeper, was corralling them while on his way to market at the Illinois River town of Lacon.
There were six inches of snow on the ground when Allan had left Geneseo. They stayed that night at Spring Creek, six miles east. The next morning, they found two feet of snow, crusted over, with the mercury below zero and the hogs covered with snow.
Allen returned to Geneseo, had a snowplow made, and obtained a yoke of cattle. Unfortunately, the cattle couldn’t budge the plow, so Allan hitched his horses to the plow, and it began moving forward, about two rods at time before having to stop to give the horses a rest. But they were able to clear a channel into which the hogs were led.
The next morning was “as cold as Greenland,“ but they had to get moving.
The first place they could reach would be Jake’s Tavern, nine miles away. The day was bitter cold, but the wind was from the northwest, at their back. They arrived at Cosner’s just at sundown, hungry and tired in the extreme. When they arrived, one of Allan’s hands, Sol Penny, a man with a dry sense of humor, said, “Allan, this is mortal.” Once they settled the hogs down, the group joined the other guests for one of Sallie’s fine meals.
They made it to Sylvester Blish’s Inn in Wethersfield the next night. Then on to Lacon, where a week later, Allan sold the hogs, but he only made enough to settle all of his accounts at the store.
It would not surprise me if Allan left a hog or two at Jake’s Tavern, and that Sallie cooked up a wonderful Christmas dinner for her guests.
(There are more stories about the Cosner’s Corner, which will appear in my new book, “Kewanee, Illinois, Reflecting on Its Early Years.”)
