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Asahel (pronounced Ash-el) Gridley was born on April 21, 1810 near Cazenovia, New York. He was the youngest of six children born to Asahel and Elizabeth Gridley. He was four years old when his father died and ten years later, in 1824, his mother passed away.
The Illinois Central Railroad then appointed Gridley to the post of land agent in McLean and Woodford counties. In 1857, he became the sole proprietor of the Bloomington Gaslight Company and turned over much of his legal practice to Abraham Lincoln to manage his business ventures. His close friend, William Flagg, sued him for slander sometime in the spring of 1859.
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In a letter Davis wrote to Colton, he stated that he swapped his house with Fell—“giving him the loan to boot—for his farm. The hurry in the decision was that Gridley wanted to buy of Fell. I could not bear to see Gridley get that place.” The farm was made up of 190 acres of land located on the eastern edge of town on the prairie.
Before his mother died, she sent Gridley to nearby Pompey Academy. However, Gridley focused less on schooling and concentrated his efforts on making money. After attending the school for only one year Asahel told his mother that he was going to be a store clerk. At the age of ten, he packed his bags, walked five miles to Cazenovia, and secured a job at a general store. Gridley held this job for five years before the business shut down. Gridley is an agricultural community that has produced notable business entrepreneurs, national and military leaders.
Mary Gridley's Lincoln Anecdotes
One company, Company B of the 4th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers, was assigned to McLean County. Gridley, still in charge of the militia in McLean County at the time, had been made a Brigadier-General. He called a meeting to be held in Bloomington on June 13 of that year to raise a company of men from McLean County. People from all parts of the county showed up for the meeting that day which was held on a vacant lot on the southwest corner of Center and Market Streets . According to Ezra Prince, “General Gridley mounted a wagon and addressed the crowd in a very patriotic, vivid, and flowery speech in which he painted in glowing colors the glory the soldiers would achieve and the good times they would have in the Halls of Montezuma! ” Gridley urged the young men to enlist and defend their country which had been “attacked by the ruthless Mexican barbarians.” He closed the speech in telling the men to “go and fight the battles of your country as I have done.
In January of 1836, the same year of his marriage, Gridley and J. Not only did Gridley make a profit in doing so, he also bought farmland throughout Central Illinois to sell off. In an 1899 interview with Madame Annette, a reporter with The Daily Bulletin newspaper, Mary revealed that Asahel had convinced her that Bloomington was practically a paradise, which made her happy to leave her beautiful home in Pittsburgh. However when they arrived in Bloomington, Mary was less than impressed. Shortly thereafter, they boarded with James Allin where Gridley had previously lived.
Asahel Gridley's Bank
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When the equipment arrived it was hauled by wagon to Bloomington. Gridley’s interest in the newspaper seemed to end after his procuring the press and equipment in Philadelphia. Gridley was responsible for laying out several towns throughout McLean County. In November, 1835 Gridley, with the help Merritt Covel, laid out the town of LeRoy.
Lincoln Lore: Recollected History
He wrote a heated letter to the editor of The Daily Pantagraph in response to an anonymous letter written about him in which it appears that his character was attacked. In his letter, Gridley lashed out at the anonymous author inviting that person to rewrite the letter with their name attached so that Gridley could know who was writing “malicious” lies and personally attacking him. It appeared that Gridley was getting a dose of his own medicine in this instance. It is not known if he ever found out who the letter writer was. Just ten years into this business venture, Gridley began to feel the pressure from the growth of modern technology. The new invention of electricity would come to threaten all that he had built with the Gas Company.
It’s true that it’s important to hire professional movers for small local moves, but it’s even more important if you’re moving long distance. If you’re packing up and hitting the road, make sure you hire an experiencedout of state moving company. Gridley hired then-lawyer Abraham Lincoln to defend him in the case.
Because of the Panic, these customers were unable to pay their debts to the store. Wrought with frustration, Gridley placed an ad in the Observer offering a $25 reward to any person who could bring the indebted customers to pay him as due. By 1842 Gridley, like so many others in Bloomington, went bankrupt. His debts came up to an astounding $52,599.44 (which would be over $1 million in 2012). His family was forced to survive on cornbread and the occasional strip of old bacon.
When he returned from the Black Hawk War, Gridley jumped right back into his mercantile business. While he purchased many of his supplies from St. Louis, he also traveled back east to Philadelphia and New York City twice a year to buy his goods. In Gridley’s efforts to promote the new city of Bloomington, he sold $20,000 to $30,000 worth of lots of Bloomington land to Philadelphians. In January of 1832, the McLean County Commissioner’s Court adopted a plan for building a courthouse in the newly established county of McLean, the county seat of which was in Bloomington.
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