Obituary- Asahel Bruer
Champaign County Gazette, September 21, 1881

A Pioneer Dead
One of our Oldest Residents passes over the River.

Mr. Asahel Bruer died at his residence in this city, September 14, 1881; aged 89 years. Mr. Bruer was born February 17,1793, in Mason County, Kentucky, where he continued to reside until he arrived at mature age, when he settled in Vermilion county, Illinois, about 1830. Soon afterward he came to this county, where he continued to reside for fifty years.

On August 18, 1813, while yet a resident of Kentucky, Mr. Bruer, then twenty years of age, enlisted in the Third Kentucky Mounted Volunteers, in the service of the United States, as a soldier to repel invasion, at the call of General William H. Harrison. He marched on foot under the command of Governor Shelby, of his native state, rendezvousing at Urbana, Ohio, to Lake Erie, where he arrived in time to hear the roar of the guns employed in the battle between the American and British flotilla, September 10, 1813, and to join in the glad acclaims which welcomed the victory of Commodore Perry over the British.

Mr. Bruer has seen this country since the time, when a part of Vermilion, it contained only a few straggling families and probably less than 300 inhabitants; when its only houses were the rude cabins of the squatters and frontiersmen and the wigwams of the half-tamed Indians; when its roads were Indian trails from one point of timber to another, and blazed through the woods; when its stores were such scanty articles of necessity as the trader felt sure of exchanging for the barter of the country, or such as he could pack upon the back of an Indian pony, and following the redmen upon their annual hunt, trade to them for the trophies of the chase. He has seen all this, and in the evolutions of American life, he has seen too, the same territory a popular county of more than 42,000 inhabitants, all of whom dwell in comfortable homes, and many in abodes of elegance and splendor, crossed by many roads and railroads, over which the commerce and other continents past. He has seen the stores of fifty years ago supplanted by elegant trade palaces, where the elegancies and luxuries of the world are piled in profusion. For many years Mr. Bruer kept here a house of entertainment, and his roof has many times sheltered Abraham Lincoln, David Davis, Samuel H. Treat and Kirby Benedict and many others whose names have since then, been eminent for military and civic services to the country.

The life just begun under the presidency of Washington spans almost the entire constitutional history of the Republic. It enabled Mr. Bruer to participate in every presidential election from that of James Monroe, 1816, to that of James A. Garfield, in 1880. It made him a witness of the growth of the Republic from seventeen states lying on the Eastern border, with a population of 5 million, to 45 states and territories, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the frozen North to the Tropics, and embracing a population of over 50 million.

Mr. Bruer was twice married- first to Miss Martha Day, in Kentucky, in the year 1815, with whom he lived to celebrate their golden anniversary, in 1865, and for some years thereafter. The fruit of this marriage was one son and several daughters, with a numerous train of grandchildren and great grandchildren. On August 14,1875, he was again married to Miss Mary Christy, who has been his constant nurse and attendant in the helpless years of his advanced years and who survived him.

Mr. Bruer's funeral took place from the Methodist Church, on Friday September 16, and was attended by a large number of friends of the family. The services were conducted by the Revs. J.C. Long and David Gay, and Judge J.O. Cunningham read a very interesting history of Mr. Bruer's life.

Printed in the Urbana County Gazette 6⁄22⁄1870. From Urbana Free Library

At an "Old Settlers' Meeting", held in Urbana in June of 1870, Mr. A. Bruer, being called upon remarked:

"I came here the first of November, 1828. I stopped on the Little Vermilion and taught school one fall and winter. A friend came to me there, and wanted me to go to Newport. I went there and taught school part of a year. I settled first at Powell's Mill and broke ground in 1831. I once got meal ground at Powell's Mill, and on the way home with it, it froze so hard that we had to pound it up before we could use it."

"I had an invitation to come to the Big Grove and teach school. When I arrived here, I thought this was a perfect paradise. I taught school three months at Brumley's in 1832 and '33. I received $2 per quarter for each scholar. Matthew Busey and others persuaded me to stay and locate here. I concluded to do so."

"I left my farm on the Salt Fork in the hands of Charles Davis, my son-in-law. I bought 80 acres in the Big Grove in 1833. I own it yet. I started the first distillery at Powell's Mill on Salt Fork. A freshet [flood] came soon after and carried dam, mill, distillery, and all away."

Submitted by: Jean Davis