Some time in about 1824, John Pixley, a tall, gaunt, red-headed man, a great blow and something of a hunter, shot a buck about where Piper’s Woolen Factory now stands in Canton. The deer was wounded: Pixley swore it had been shot through the heart. He followed it across the prairie to the head of what is now Buckheart Grove, where he lost track of it. Pixley used to tell the story as an instance of the wonderful tenacity of life possessed by deer, always insisting that he had unquestionably shot that buck through the heart, and that afterward he had followed it five miles and it had finally escaped him. The grove where it disappeared was called Buckheart Grove in derision of this story, and the stream running through it received the same name, which was also afterward extended to the township.
The first tavern license issued to a citizen of Canton township was granted to Captain David W. Barnes, on the 6th of September, 1824. Mr. Barnes was, by the Board of County Commissioners, allowed to charge for a single meal 37 1/2 cents, lodging 12 1/2 cents, unless two persons occupied one bed, when the bill should be 6 1/4 cents each. Single feed of oats or corn, 25 cents. Whisky, per half-pint, the charge was fixed at 12 1/2 cents; rum or gin, per half-pint, 25 cents; brandy or wine, per half-pint, 37 1/2 cents. At
this time there were but three licensed taverns in the county: one kept by Ossian M. Ross, at Ross’s Ferry; one by Stephen Phelps, at Lewistown; and Capt. Barnes’s.
The Board of County Commissioners, or County Court, at this time were James Gardner, James Barnes, and David W. Barnes. This board received an application for and granted to John L. Bogardus a license to keep a ferry across the Illinois River, from the Village of Peoria to the opposite bank, in Sangamon county –Peoria at that time being in territory that was attached to and under the jurisdiction of Fulton County