Patricks had arrived in 1829 and Bilbrey in 1850. The William Patricks also built a pen shelter like the Stouts, and lived in it until the sons had cleared ten acres of ground; then they built a cabin.
The pioneer group found the Kickapoo and Delaware Indians living on the upper Mackinaw, with about eighty warriors and their papooses, ponies and dogs. The Potawatomi were on Six Mile Creek west of Hudson and numbered about 550. All of these tribesmen hunted and fished occasionally along Panther Creek, and many ventured into the little settlement of white men. At the close of the Black Hawk War, General William Clark, the Indian superintendent at St. Louis, moved them all west of the Mississippi. The Kickapoos were under Chief Kannekuk, and the sub-Chief Machina who was something of a musician. While the settlers were relieved to have the Indians moved west, they had generally found them a friendly and curious lot. They loved to examine the white man's possessions, and sometimes could not resist carrying them away.
The first white child in the area was born to Young and Amanda Bilbrey in 1831. On May 5, 1832, Thomas McCord and Allen Patrick left for service in the war. In a short time this little settlement had buried two of their young men, William and Winslow Patrick, the latter killed in a logging accident. Both were buried without ceremony but with genuine grief, near the old saw mill, and the spot became the Gabetown Cemetery, sometimes called the Carroll Cemetery.
The snow had started to fall in December of 1830, and it continued over most of Illinois until it was piled four feet deep on the level, and it remained on the ground until the spring of 1831. Wild animals and fowl came as though tame to the cabins in the hope of getting food, which aided the settlers to have plenty of meat during this period of complete isolation.
In the fall of 1834, John Armstrong, a native of Mercer County, Kentucky, and his wife, the former Elizabeth M. Garrett, came to the Panther Creek Grove and settled on Section thirty-four where his great grandson Wayne Armstrong now resides. Stephen Armstrong, one of the ten children of John and Elizabeth, settled on Sections twenty-seven and thirty-four; his grandson Curtis Armstrong resides today on Section twenty-seven. There are a number of descendents of John and Elizabeth Armstrong still living in Greene Township, the oldest family to continuously reside there. The Armstrong family has owned some of this land continuously since the day it was patented, 120 years ago.
The site of the upper Panther Creek Grove settlement is still beautiful, although old residents remark that the grove was once covered with much heavier timber. To see this grove, one may follow the road on the west side of Secor northward to the old Metamora Road; turn left, and on the south side of the road you can easily see Panther Creek. By following the next road south from the church, which marks the Third Meridian, and going south of the creek not far from the road,
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