t was more easily harvested than wheat. Wheat was
raised without any great degree of care as to its culture, being
frequently sowed upon ground that was poorly prepared, and being threshed
in a most wasteful manner. Both wheat and flour were exported.
Flour-mills, often of a rude sort, were found at inconveniently long
distances from each other. Ferdinand Ernst, traveling in 1819, found a
turbine wheel at the mill of Mr. Jarrott, a few miles from St. Louis, and
mentioned the fact as a peculiar feature.(445) Some of the settlers in
Sangamon county had to go sixty miles to mill in 1824.(446) In 1830 the
first flour mill in northern Illinois was erected on Fox River. It was
operated by the same power that ran a saw-mill, and the millstones were
boulders, laboriously dressed by hand.(447) Tobacco of excellent quality
was grown, and sometimes formed an article of export.(448) Cotton was an
important article for home consumption. In the early years of the state
hopes were entertained that cotton might become an article of export, but
it was found that the crop required so much labor as to make raising it in
large quantities unprofitable. It was after 1830, however, that it ceased
to be cultivated in the state. It was raised at least as far north as the
present Danville, about one hundred and twenty-five miles south of
Chicago.(449) A woman whose parents moved to Sangamon county in 1819 says
that when in that county they raised, picked, spun, and wove their own
cotton. The children had to seed the cotton before the fire in the long
winter evenings. The importance of cotton as a factor in inducing
immigration may have been considerable.(450) Large quantities of castor
oil were made in the state from home-grown castor beans.(451) Vegetables
were large, although not always of good flavor.(452) Peaches, apples,
pears, quinces and cherries were cultivated successfully, while grapes,
plums, crabapples, persimmons, mulberries, strawberries, raspberries and
blackberries grew wild.(453) An agricultural society was formed in 1819, a
chief purpose being to rid the state of stagnant water.(454)

It is not easy to exaggerate the simplicity of the farming of pioneer
times. When one reads that in 1817 a log cabin of two rooms could be built
for from $50.00 to $70.00; a frame house, ten by fourteen feet, for
$575.00 to $665.00; a log kitchen for $31.00 to $35.50; a log stable for
$31.00 to $40.00; a barn for $80.00 to $97.75; a fence for $0.25