As settlers pushed west from Ohio into western Indiana, they encountered what geographers and geologists call the Prairie Peninsula.
The peninsula was a gigantic expanse of grassland that thrust eastward across the Mississippi into western Indiana, covering most of northern and central Illinois. The expanse notable for its scarcity of timber, at least compared with the densely wooded areas the pioneers had become used to as they moved west of the Appalachians.
Unlike the shortgrass prairies found west of the Mississippi, the Prairie Peninsula was a tallgrass prairie, abounding in wild grasses and forbs (non-woody, broadleaf plants) such as Big Bluestem and Compass Plant that towered as high as eight feet above the prairie sod.
Environmental scientists still argue about exactly how and why the Prairie Peninsula came to be. But however it was formed, in the thousands of years following the retreat of the last glacier that scoured northern Illinois, a diverse and complicated ecology grew up in the Prairie Peninsula. The landscape was dominated by prairie plants, particularly grasses and sedges (which have triangular-shaped, sharp-edged stems: “Sedges have edges,” which is a handy way to differentiate them from grasses).
You can still get an idea of what the Illinois tallgrass prairie looked like during the settlement era at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie at Wilmington, Illinois.
Grasses such as Big Blue Stem and Little Blue Stem predominated in the tallgrass prairie, but in the spring and the fall, before and after the grasses’ and sedges’ growing season, forbs predominated, creating the brightly colored carpets of wildflowers so many of the early settlers commented on.
The settlers didn’t spend a lot of time pondering questions on how the landscape came to be, but mostly wondered how they were to survive in seemingly endless grassland with few patches of timber.
The problem was that early 19th Century settlement technology was timber-intensive, requiring lots of trees from which to manufacture split rail fences, log cabins and outbuildings, and the firewood needed to heat homes during Illinois’ fierce winters.
As the settlers pushed west out of the Ohio and Indiana timber into the prairie, they found that, in general, wooded areas followed along the banks of streams and were growing in groves in other areas of wet prairie. They quickly realized woods proved thickest on the east side of streams.
Scientists generally agree now that the prairie fires that swept across the Prairie Peninsula on a regular basis, driven by the prevailing westerly winds, were slowed or stopped by streams, which allowed more and thicker timber to thrive on streams’ east bank.
Many native prairie grasses and forbs require periodic fires to thrive, while non-native species tend to be killed by fire. In addition to high resistance to fire, most native plant species are also highly drought resistant. Prairie plants and native tree species tend to have deep root systems and leaf systems that maximize water retention. Each year, about 37 inches of rain falls here in Kendall County. Significantly, that’s almost exactly the amount of rainfall absorbed by an acre of native prairie or oak savanna.
Not only the quantity of timber was changed due to location, but the type was too. In general, fire-resistant trees such as white oak were more likely to be found along the west banks of streams, while less fire-resistant species, such as black walnut, basswood, and maples, found life easier along the streams’ west banks.
When U.S. Government surveyors arrived in northern Illinois in the late 1830s to complete the survey mandated by the Northwest Ordinance before land could be sold to pioneer settlers, they documented the types and extent of timber up and down the Fox Valley. Looking at those original survey maps and reading the surveyors’ notes, it becomes clear how important location was when it came to the kinds and amounts of the area’s timber resources.
This photograph taken by Malcom Rance at the 1911 Wheatland Plowing Match illustrates how timber-free that Will County township was even into the second decade of the 20th Century. (Little White School Museum collection)
In fact, timber-free land was settled last. Will County’s Wheatland Township, which neighbors Oswego Township to the east, was virtually treeless so when my Pennsylvania German ancestors arrived there in 1852, they were still able to buy unclaimed government land. It’s important to note that the land there, and elsewhere on treeless prairies where timber was far removed, wasn’t ignored at first because it wasn’t fertile, because it was. It was avoided for several years because vital timber was too far away.
When the earliest settlers reached the Fox Valley in the 1820s and early 1830s, they found timber edging both banks of the Fox River, although the belt along the east bank of the river was generally thicker with a more diverse species of hardwoods. In some areas, like in most of Aurora Township, just to the north of Oswego Township, there was scarcely any timber along the west bank of the river at all.
Some of these woods were, in part, densely timbered and had a hazel brush understory. But other parts of it were relatively open, what is called today an oak savanna that was fairly park-like.
In the spring and the fall, after native prairie grasses and other plants had dried out, thunderstorm lightning naturally started many swift-moving prairie fires. But in addition, in a practice that had been noted by the region’s first French explorers, the local Native American population also started fires, both intentionally and unintentionally. Unintentional fires happened when cooking fires escaped into the dry prairie. Intentional fires were much more common and were started to prepare fields for cultivation, combat insects, kill trees that were encroaching onto the prairies from the groves, and for hunting purposes. To hunt with fires, Native People would start a ring of fire sometimes a mile in diameter, and leave an unburned exit, through which game animals would be forced by the flames.
The fires also swept through the hardwood savanna areas, killing off brush and keeping the understory clear, while encouraging the growth of fire-tolerating trees and plants. Fires did a good job of creating lots of wooded edges that encouraged the deer and other animal populations.
The periodic burning, both natural and caused by man, largely created the prairie landscape found by the pioneers when they arrived. Over thousands of years, the plants and trees that grew on the prairies had come to not only tolerate, but to rely on fire. White oaks, for instance, are very fire resistant because of their thick bark and their high resistance to rotting after being scared by fire. In addition, they quickly grow after fires—fire actually helps some oak seedbeds sprout. On the other hand, many other species—maples, for instance—are very susceptible to fire damage.
While hardwood groves dotted the prairie, one extensive stretch of timber in particular caught the eye of many early mid-Fox Valley settlers.
From the location of today’s city of Batavia, all the way south to Waubonsie Creek in Oswego, a thick belt of maple, linden, oak, ash, and hickory provided an excellent source of timber, as well as protection from the prairie winds. In typical prosaic pioneer fashion, the settlers gave this huge stretch of woodland a simple and descriptive name. They called this big woods, the, well, “Big Woods.”
A detail from the 1838 U.S. Government survey map of Oswego Township shows the southernmost lobe of the Big Woods (highlighted in green) extending down the east bank of the Fox River from the Kane County line.
Not only did the settlers find welcome shelter among the hardwoods of the Big Woods, but so did the Native People who lived there before them. Chief Waubonsie, the principal war leader of the Prairie Potowatomi, located his permanent village in the western verge of the Big Woods, moving it often enough so that virtually every modern town up and down the Fox Valley from Oswego to Batavia can accurately claim to have been the site of the chief’s village at one time or another.
When the pioneers got here, they settled along the verge of the timber, locating their homes next to the woods and plowing fields in the nearby prairie. The Big Woods wasn’t regular in shape; it had many lobes that extended into the surrounding prairie, providing many protected areas where pioneers quickly established fields by plowing the native prairie with special “breaking plows,” designed to turn over the thick sod for the first time.
According to the original survey maps, the Big Woods stretched some miles east of the Fox River, almost to Naperville at the ford across the DuPage River. It then extended south all the way to Waubonsie Creek, where its southernmost lobe ended. As surveyor James Reed wrote in his notebook back on Aug. 8, 1838: “Mouth of Wabansia Creek 30 links [20 feet; a link was 7.92 inches] wide. North of creek land is timbered with white and Black oak. South of creek land is prairie and slopes gently to the river. The village of Oswego is located just below the mouth of the creek.”
The Big Woods covered almost half of Kane County’s Aurora Township, as this image of the 1838 U.S. Government survey map shows–with timbered areas highlighted in green. Note the near-total lack of timber on the west side of the river, with only a pencil-thin strip existing in the north half of the township.
The first thing the pioneers did when they arrived was start cutting down the Big Woods, along with most of the other stands of timber in the area. That initial wave of settlers was a timber-intensive bunch, requiring logs—and lots of them—to manufacture all those rail fences, build log homes and outbuildings, and supply firewood. According to James Sheldon Barber, an Oswego settler, writing back to his parents in New York State in 1843, a pioneer farm family needed 10 acres of timber to make a go of it on the Illinois frontier.
A large portion of AuSable Grove south of Oswego was subdivided into woodlots told to settlers where they could cut firewood and timber needed for building purposes. This cut is from the 1870 plat map of Kendall County.
For early arrivals, that was no problem, but they quickly claimed the timberland for their own use. Some, however, bought timber stands with the intention of dividing it into smaller parcels to sell to later arrivals. That’s why you see some wooded areas on early plat maps divided into many small chunks.
The settlers used didn’t always require cutting trees down, of course. Maple sugaring in the spring was a popular and profitable activity that even left its name behind in the name of one of our area towns—Sugar Grove. Further, the breeds of hogs the settlers brought along were hardy, ornery animals that got along just fine browsing in the oak savannas that were relatively common during those early years, especially eating all the acorns produced by native oaks.
Eventually, the only remaining woods were in wetlands and other areas not farmed for one reason or another. And, in fact, remnants still remain today, including a nice stand at Cook’s Savannah in Oswego’s Old Post Park and such areas such as Briarcliff Woods Park and the Arbor Ridge Subdivision in Montgomery and in several other areas up and down the Fox Valley. Each of those oak savanna remnants is a reminder of the landscape the pioneers encountered when they decided to settle along the banks of the Fox River.
Okay, things got sort of discombobulated here at History Central early this year. What with COVID, my spouse’s knee replacement, and my own emergency pacemaker install, some important local history milestones got past me without notice or comment.
One of those milestones was the 100th birthday of the Kendall County Farm Bureau that rolled past in December 2019, with the group’s operational existence dated to early 1920.
Farm families once comprised the vast majority of Kendall County residents and agriculture was the county’s most successful business. While those days are past, the county’s land area is still mostly rural. Residents living, as I do, in the county’s three northernmost townships might not realize how rural our area of the state is. But all you have to do is drive a few minutes west on I-88 or U.S. Route 30, or southwest on Ill. Route 71 and you’ll be deep in corn and soybean fields that run all the way to the horizon no matter which direction you look.
But while there’s still a lot of farmland in Kendall County, its value as a percentage of the county’s total real estate valuations keeps declining as more and more land is turned to growing houses and businesses instead of crops. As late at 1988, farmland comprised more than 10 percent of the county’s property valuation. It now stands at less than one percent.
Nevertheless, farming is still a valuable industry in the county’s economy.
Back in the settlement era, of course, farming was the county’s primary industry, a situation that continued well into the 20th Century. And in order for farmers to succeed they required the efforts of not only themselves and their own families, but also those living in their neighborhoods.
It generally took several people to actually assemble a log cabin after the logs had been cut. Cabin raisings were some of frontier Illinois’ first farmer cooperative activities.
The first informal farmer groups helped each other with barn and cabin raisings as pioneer families arrived. A settler could cut his own logs and get them to the building sites using his own teams of horses or oxen, but he needed assistance with the heavy work of raising beams and logs into place—something not easily be done by a single family.
Also at the beginning of Kendall County’s settlement, farmers had to band together for their very safety. The Black Hawk War of 1832 forced the county’s farmers and their families to flee to Ottawa or Walker’s Grove (Plainfield) as unfriendly Indians roamed the area. The militia companies that were subsequently recruited and serving until the end of the war were yet another, although more formal, example of pioneer farmer organizations.
Following the war, normal pioneer life resumed with the addition of another type of local organization: vigilantes. With the near-total lack of effective law enforcement on the frontier, citizen groups were required to protect individual farmers against stock thieves and highwaymen. The protective associations established during the settlement era—particularly the ones aimed at rustlers—continued their activities well into the late 19th Century.
In the days before effective law enforcement, farmers often had to take the law into their own hands. The Kendall County Horse Protective Association was established to deter horse thievery. (Little White School Museum collection)
Another common frontier farmer organization popped up when the vast majority of Kendall County’s U.S. Government land was up for sale in 1842. The settlers who arrived before that could not buy the land they squatted on. By treaties between the government at the Fox Valley’s Native People, the land couldn’t be sold until it was surveyed, the treaties reserving for the tribes’ use until the sales were held. The Indians, however, were removed from the Fox Valley by 1837, negating government promises that they would be able to hunt and fish on the land until it was sold.
While the Native People were gone by the time land sales took place, a far more dangerous species—the land speculator—was not. With the willing collusion of government officials, speculators would often buy the land that settlers had already improved and fenced and then sell it back to them for a profit.
A couple of governmental practices made the speculators‘ lot easy. While the land was inexpensive, going for only $1.25 an acre (even cheap in 1842), payment had to be made in gold, a very scarce commodity on the frontier of that era. Also, land sales were held at central federal land offices, and neither travel nor obtaining information on where and when sales would be held was easy in early Illinois.
So, in their own defense, farmers formed claim associations. A delegation of honest men was elected to buy the land, while another picked group, usually armed, intercepted and detained any speculators seen in the area. The resulting land was then divided up between those who were members of the association. According to early county histories, it was an effective tactic for Fox Valley settlers. And it’s why here in Oswego Township, Walter Loucks is listed as the first private seller of most of the township’s land following the government land sale. Loucks served as the designated buyer for much of the township, later transferring to those who were actually living on the claims.
As the 1840s progressed, the era of ad hoc farmer organizations began to be replaced by an era of more formal groups. In 1841, just one year before Kendall County’s land went on sale, The Prairie Farmernewspaper was established in Chicago. Published especially for the Prairie State’s farmers, the paper helped encourage them organize, for the first time, on a statewide basis.
Still, farmers proved an independent lot not much given to joining groups, even those that worked in farmers’ own best interests. But then came a severe financial crunch, the Panic of 1873, nicknamed The Long Depression. Farmers were primed to swing into action due to the nation’s railroads’ collusion on freight rates for grain and livestock, and high prices caused by industrial monopolies. As a result, farmers’ organizations such as the National Farmers Alliance and the Farmer’s Mutual Benefit Association popped up all over the nation.
Here in Kendall County, a Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Club was established in Millbrook in February 1873 to “work for the overthrow of monopolies in general and railroad monopolies in particular.” It is interesting to note that farmers were so upset that they were willing to work together with “mechanics,” the 19th Century term for factory and other non-farm workers to try to break the power of Big Business.
That led to establishing a Farmers’ Association of Kendall County in April 1873, and a “mass convention” May 23 in Yorkville. The immediate aim was to elect a farmers’ party circuit court judge, due to the courts obvious favoritism towards business interests. Much to the surprise of local Republicans, the farmers’ party’s candidate beat the party candidate.
Then in July, a formal political convention at Yorkville nominated an entire slate of local candidates—including the first woman candidate in county history—for the upcoming fall election. That prompted the local Republican Party to close ranks around their own candidates to defeat these proto-progressives. The 1873 convention proved the local group’s high water mark, but it also laid the groundwork for more organizing by farmers by emphasizing the importance of organizing to fight for their own interests.
The Patrons of Husbandry, the Grange, combined attributes of the fraternal orders so popular in the 19th Century with political activism to aid farmers. Several Grange lodges were established in Kendall County starting in the 1870s.
One of the major results of this feeling of community among pioneer farmers was creation of one the first real farm organizations, the Patrons of Husbandry, or Grange. There were Granges in Bristol, Na-Au-Say, Oswego, and Seward Townships in Kendall County. The organization became so popular that “granger” became synonymous with “farmer” for several years.
It might seem counterintuitive, but continual progress in farm mechanization encouraged the creation of farmer cooperative organizations. The harvest of small grains—wheat, oats, barley, and rye—was backbreaking and extremely labor intensive. It therefore became the target for inventors who created labor-saving machines to help with the tasks. The earliest harvesters cut the grain so farmers could bundle it by hand and then stack it to dry before threshing it by hand using flails to separate the grain from the stalks. Soon after, mechanical threshers were invented and by the 1870s, these machines—also called separators because they separated grain from hulls and stalks—were being powered by steam engines. Such threshing outfits, including a threshing machine, a steam traction engine, mobile water tank and coal wagon, were too expensive for most farmers to buy on their own. So farmers formed cooperatives to buy the equipment. The outfits would then travel around the neighborhood from farm to farm of stockholders in the cooperative to thresh their grain. Which was the origin of the name of these cooperatives: threshing rings.
The Harvey Threshing Ring on the move during the 1897 threshing season in the area of Wolf’s Crossing and Harvey roads. (Dale Updike collection)
By the early years of the 20th Century, however, big business and the growing influence of government in farmers’ lives again pointed to the need for real political influence on the part of farmers. In December 1913, the Illinois Agricultural Association was established to represent farmers in Springfield, but some had already begun calling the group the Farm Bureau.
Meanwhile here in Kendall County, local farmers were organizing their own local clubs to socialize and to encourage good farming practices. In April 1919, the Kendall County Record reported that “A meeting of the farmers of the neighborhood of Oswego was held at the home of Nate L. Pearce Thursday and an organization formed known as the Oswego Farmers Improvement and Social Club. The group, later renamed the East Oswego Progressive Farmers Club, was one of many established throughout the county.
And while the betterment of individual farmers was a laudable goal, there was also the sense that there was a growing need for an organization with actual political clout. In a July 23, 1919 letter to the editor of the Record, farmer W.F. Osborn complained that an effort by farmers to politically eliminate Daylight Savings Time had failed in Washington, D.C., and wondered whether it might not be time to start some sort of national farmers’ organization to represent farm interests.
As it turned out, such an organization was already in the works. In December 1913, the Illinois Agricultural Association was established to represent farmers’ interests before the General Assembly in Springfield. Shortly thereafter, some in Illinois had already begun calling the group the Farm Bureau. In November 1919, the name of the group—now affiliated nationally—became the American Farm Bureau Federation.
It was at that same time that interest in creating a farmers’ organization peaked in Kendall County. The Nov. 26, 1919 Record reported that: “The Kendall County Farm Bureau perfected a temporary organization last Wednesday and are preparing a drive for membership during December.”
On Dec. 10, the Record noted that a membership drive was about to begin, and encouraged all county farmers to join, explaining: “It is for mutual assistance among the men of the country in getting their rights.”
The organizing effort proved remarkably successful, probably driven by the farm depression then already gripping the nation. The Record reported on Dec. 24 that the formation of a Kendall County Farm Bureau was already assured: “The farmers of Kendall county made a move in the right direction last week when they organized into a permanent farm bureau for mutual benefit. The spirit with which the organization is made is commendable. There is no radical element in the local association whereby the benefits of the organization would be lost in an effort to revolutionize. Better market facilities, the demand for a superior grade of seed, the improvement in farm finances, and best of all, a farm adviser are some of the leading features for consideration.”
The first Kendall County Farm Bureau office was located in the Kendall County Courthouse. This photo was taken about 1922.
The organization began with 961 farmer members and quickly reached and then exceeded the one thousand mark. While encouraging membership, the Record was quick to note—possibly with the on-going Red Scare in mind—that the Farm Bureau was not some sort of radical organization: “It is not in the way of a labor union–it is not antagonistic to present day principles–it is for the good of the farmer,” Record Editor Hugh Marshall contended.
The organization elected its first slate of officers as well as an executive committee consisting of one member from each of the county’s nine townships.
There had been some pressure for Kendall to join with Kane County in a joint Farm Bureau, but the members at Kendall’s organizational meeting made it crystal clear they wanted no outsiders telling them what to do.
“The group also passed a resolution stating their unanimous opinion that Kendall County was able to protect her own integrity and would have nothing to do with the proposed merger with Kane County. This was passed with a whoop that showed that the feeling was unanimous,” the Record reported.
The new organization didn’t have to wait long before an important issue dropped in their laps. Railroads, long the bane of farmers, were again slowing the shipment of grain, something that had negative effects on both farmers and agribusinesses. The Jan. 7 Record reported on a critical shortage of rail cars for grain shipments: “Where the trouble is cannot be told. Mr. Hines of the railroads says that everything is in excellent condition but this condition contradicts any such statement. There’s a problem offered right here for the new Kendall County Farm Bureau and its larger associates. If the farmer wants to go to the bottom of the affair he will probably loosen up the grain cars, be able to ship his grain at a good price and taken an awful crack at the high cost of living all in one fell swoop.”
In March, the Kendall County Farm Bureau passed a major milestone when it hired its first professional farm advisor. Earl Price, the farm advisor in Saline County, agreed to move north to Kendall County to take the brand new job. Price, then 37, was born in Clearspring, Indiana and who was a graduate of Purdue University, took up residence in his new office in the Kendall County Courthouse.
Price’s first job was to conduct a livestock census of county farms on behalf of the state Farm Bureau with the aim of using statewide livestock figures to begin stabilizing prices for pork, beef, and poultry. In September Price helped organize a collective buying plan. The Kendall County Cooperative Buying Agency began with the cooperation of virtually all the grain elevator concerns and cooperatives in the county.
Under Price’s leadership, the Farm Bureau also worked to introduce the concept of fertilizing fields with phosphates and surveying farm labor costs. “A survey of the cost of labor in Kendall County for last year being made by the Farm Bureau indicates an average of about $63 for single men and $75 for married men per month,” the Record reported on Jan. 12, 1921.
As the “Roaring ‘20s” proceeded, the nation’s farm economy was in danger of collapse. The post-World War I farm depression was in full swing by 1924, when the Farm Bureau called a meeting in Chicago attended by representatives from 88 of the state’s local bureaus.
In 1924, Charles L. McNary (R-Oregon) and Gilbert N. Haugen (R-Iowa) shake hands after Congress passes their bill to aid farmers. President Calvin Coolidge vetoed the legislation twice.
“The result was that the farm bureau men unanimously endorsed and approved the McNary-Haugen bill for the relief of agriculture and demanded that Illinois members of Congress earnestly and actively support this measure,” the Record reported on March 14, 1924. The McNary–Haugen Farm Relief Act was a plan to subsidize American agriculture by raising domestic farm product prices. Co-authored by Charles L. McNary (R-Oregon) and Gilbert N. Haugen (R-Iowa), the bill called for the U.S. Government to buy wheat and store it or export it at a loss to prop up prices. Despite strong opposition from business, the bill passed Congress twice, but was vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge.
Despite low prices caused by over-production, Coolidge, and later Herbert Hoover, championed modernizing farming by encouraging more mechanization and rural electrification—which would have created even more surpluses, further depressing prices. Not until Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 were farmers made the beneficiaries of effective government assistance by reducing surpluses and increasing the market.
Throughout the rest of the 1920s, the Farm Bureau championed a number of political issues of importance to farmers, including eliminating farm owners’ responsibility to maintain township and county roads in favor of gasoline taxes.
In 1926, Price resigned as farm advisor to go into the poultry business in Yorkville and was replaced by young M.H. Watson in January 1927. Watson lost no time throwing the Farm Bureau’s support behind the plan to pave Ill. Route 47 from Yorkville south to Morris. The state had already begun paving the section of the road from Dwight to Morris, and completing it from Morris north to Yorkville would be of great benefit to everyone living along the route local residents contended.
As Record Editor Marshall pointed out on May 11, 1927, “It is not Kendall county alone to be benefited by the Route 47 connection; it is the entire farming belt which extends from Champaign county to the Wisconsin line. Twenty-one state highways are intersected by Route 47, and we are for it.”
Ironically, the Crash of 1929 that initiated the Great Depression really didn’t have much of an impact on farmers, since the farm depression had been going on with no relief for a decade. But as the 1930s ground on, conditions continued to worsen for the county’s agricultural community. Drought; infestations by voracious chinch bugs, grasshoppers, and armyworms; and the continuing economic calamity had a continuing and increasing impact. By 1933, conditions had grown so desperate with so many farms and businesses being lost due to unpaid taxes and mortgages that residents were banding together to protect each other.
By 1939, the corn Graeme Stewart was harvesting in this family photo was grown from hybrid seed, which substantially increased yields. The Farm Bureau championed the change from growing open-pollinated corn to hybrid varieties. (Little White School Museum collection)
In early February, the Record reported that “Pledge cards are being circulated throughout Kendall county reading as follows: ‘As a citizen of the United States and a believer in justice to all alike, I pledge that I will give my moral and physical support that no person in financial distress shall be unreasonably troubled.’ it is reported that over 700 such cards have already been signed by farmers in this county and that more are being signed every day.”
The Record went on to predict that more than 2,000 farmers and other residents would take the pledge to help protect property from being seized due to tax and other debts during the drive organized by a group calling itself the Kendall County Farmers’ and Business Men’s Protective Association.
Later that month in a letter to the Record’s editor, Illinois Governor Henry Horner noted: “Many of our citizens are face to face with the prospect of losing their farms and their homes and suffering a still further decrease in their earning capacity… I therefore appeal, in this emergency, to all holders of mortgages on Illinois real estate and personal property, whether residents of Illinois or elsewhere, whether corporations or individuals, to use the utmost forbearance in foreclosing on mortgages upon farms, homes, and chattels when the farm or home owner is in such desperate financial circumstances that he is actually unable to pay.”
It seems Horner’s plea had little impact locally. Banks continued to foreclose and the properties were sold at sheriff’s sales, often with insurance and other companies buying them for less than the debts against them, leaving farmers and business owners with no means to pay off the balance owed on the loans. Locally, the situation came to a head in late February 1933 when a sheriff’s sale of a farm was scheduled.
“The courthouse in Yorkville appeared to be in a state of siege Thursday morning when farmers of this county gathered to prevent the sale of the August Wollenweber farm south of town on such terms as would allow for the entering of a deficiency judgment,” the Record reported in its March 1 edition. More than 750 farmers had gathered to make sure Wollenweber, a well-liked and prominent farmer, would be treated fairly—an astonishing occurrence in normally staid and law abiding Kendall County. Seeing the crowd and gauging its mood, the lone bidder, the Life and Casualty Agency of Chicago, met with officers of the Farmers’ and Business Men’s Protective Association (most of whom were also members of the Kendall County Farm Bureau) immediately before bidding began. When Kendall County Sheriff Martin N. Hextell called for bids, Life and Casualty’s representative, Chicago attorney J. Edgar Kelly, made the only offer—at the agreed price to satisfy the entire outstanding loan against the farm. Wollenweber was given 15 months to arrange refinancing. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief that violence had been averted, and Kelly was relieved to get out of Yorkville with his skin intact because the gathered farmers left no question about whether they were ready to use force to stop the sale if necessary.
Even as the county’s assessed value of farmland continued to plummet due to the Depression—it decreased by 10 percent in 1932 alone—the Farm Bureau continued to assist farmers with everything from combating chicken thieves to trying to keep chinch bug infestations from destroying crops. It also continued to be a leader as the nation’s floundering economy struck hard in Kendall County. In May 1933, the Record reported that: “Farmers, bankers, and business men of Kendall county met at the Farm Bureau office Friday evening and elected a county conciliation committee to help debtors and creditors settle farm debt problems.”
As if the chaos caused by the Great Depression wasn’t bad enough, the nationwide drought had spurred an infestation of voracious chinch bugs that, in those pre-insecticide days, could devastate a grain field in a day. As the plague grew, the Farm Bureau stepped up its efforts to teach farmers how to protect fields from the bugs’ attack. The method involved plowing a deep furrow around a field of grain and then dragging a wooden fence post through the furrow to loosen dirt on its sides. Then deep postholes were dug every rod (16 feet) or so in the furrow. The bugs, as long as they hadn’t developed into their flying stage yet, would fall into the furrow. The loose dirt would keep them from climbing back out, so they’d turn and walk one way or the other along the furrow until falling into one of the postholes. When the postholes were nearly filled, farmers would pour fuel oil or kerosene in and light them off incinerating the bugs.
Those who lived through that era said they’d never forget the stench of burning chinch bugs that filled the air all over northern Illinois.
The June 14, 1933 Record reported: “According to Farm Advisor Miller chinch bugs are plentiful in most parts of Kendall county. At present they are most abundant in barley and the young brood is just beginning to hatch. The old bugs are now dying and it is the young ones that will go into the corn when the small grain is cut. Farmers should be on their guard at harvest time so as to protect their cornfields by making barriers. Further information may be secured at the Farm Bureau office.”
The federal government provided considerable fuel oil to incinerate chinch bugs, but by July, that had run out. To fill the gap, the State of Illinois began providing free creosote to farmers to burn the bugs. The Record reported a rail car a day was arriving in Yorkville daily with free creosote, with distribution organized by the Farm Bureau.
Meanwhile, the Farm Bureau was also working on concert with federal, state, and local officials to combat the effect of debt on town and country alike. The Record reported in May 1933: “Farmers, bankers, and business men of Kendall county met at the Farm Bureau office Friday evening and elected a county conciliation committee to help debtors and creditors settle farm debt problems. This committee is in accordance with the suggestion of Gov. Horner.
This photo was taken Nov. 12, 1933 in South Dakota during the dust storm that carried dust all the way to Kendall County on 70 mph winds.
And we can’t forget the dust storms caused by the on-going drought. They didn’t just afflict Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, and Texas. They also swept through the Midwest eroding soils and causing untold damage. The Nov. 15, 1933 Record reported on a particularly nasty dust storm that had struck the Fox Valley the previous weekend: “The dust storm Sunday night was one of the worst dust storms experienced in this vicinity in many years. It was just too bad for all the good housekeepers who had finished their fall housecleaning. Even in the homes with doors and windows tightly closed the dust-laden air was disagreeable to breathe. The dust is said to have been blown here from as far away as the Dakotas, where a 70-mile-an-hour wind did considerable damage.”
If all that wasn’t bad enough, June 1937, a plague of grasshoppers and armyworms struck the Midwest. In Kendall County, the Farm Bureau arranged the distribution of government-supplied and developed poison good for combating both destructive pests.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, of course. In amongst all the natural and economic devastation, the Farm Bureau found time to champion growing soybeans as a new cash crop and persuading farmers to switch from open pollinated corn to hybrids. By the time the Farm Bureau held their 1939 meeting, Farm Advisor Miller could report that Kendall County farmers had nearly all switched to planting hybrid corn.
Shortly before then, it had become clear the Kendall County Farm Bureau had out-grown its courthouse office space and badly needed its own building to house its growing number of programs. In July 1937, word spread that the organization was interested in property on Van Emmon Street in Yorkville as the site of a permanent building.
“The building will consist of a basement and two stories. The basement will house the cold storage locker plant,” the Record reported on July 21. “The main floor will be devoted to the offices of the organization, while the second floor will be a meeting room.”
The Kendall County Farm Bureau built their headquarters building on Van Emmon Street in downtown Yorkville in 1937, opening it in 1938. The Farm Bureau moved to new quarters in 2019 after merging with the Grundy County Farm Bureau.
In those days before home freezers were common, locker plants were popular in small towns all over the country. Farmer members of the Farm Bureau could rent locker space where they could store their own frozen meat and vegetables instead of canning them. As the Record helpfully explained: “The meat is brought to the cold storage locker plant immediately after it is butchered, where it is stored in the chill room at a temperature of 35 degrees for a few days until it is thoroughly chilled. It is then cut in pieces of suitable size for table use, wrapped in a specially prepared paper, and stamped with the number of the locker and the cut of meat. It is then placed in the freezer at a temperature of zero or below where it is immediately frozen and then placed in the locker rented by the individual, where it is kept at a temperature of 15 above zero.”
I remember going to the locker plant with my parents when I was around five years old—before my grandparents bought each of their children huge chest-type International Harvester deep freezes—and watching them wrap beef and pork from our own cattle and hogs in some of that special paper. It always impressed me as a wonderful place to live, especially when we went there on hot summer days to get a week’s worth of meat to take back to our farm.
With their own building, which opened in the early spring of 1938, the Farm Bureau could offer even more programs to educate farmers and their families. 4-H clubs got their start there, as did the county’s Home Bureau, an educational program to teach farm women how to safely harvest, preserve, and cook food, along with many other skills.
My mother was an avid Home Bureau member who came away from those courses with two bedrock convictions: Pressure cookers will blow up and kill you, and mayonnaise will quickly spoil and kill you. So I grew up with water bath canners and the presumably less lethal Miracle Whip—that my mother always called salad dressing.
Today, Farm Bureau membership is a shadow of its old self—mostly because farming in Kendall County is a shadow of its old self—although it continues to effectively serve the county’s farming community. 4-H is still as popular as ever, and the Farm Bureau continues to advocate for farmers and farm issues at the local, state, and national levels. The Home Bureau, which got its start back in 1938, is still functioning just fine as the Association for Home and Community Education.
The Farm Bureau’s building, brand new in 1938, on Van Emmon Street in Yorkville is vacant now awaiting repurposing as these modern times have demanded a leaner organization to serve the farm community’s modern issues, right along with some of the same ones they’ve been dealing with since the group was established back in December 1919. The Kendall County Farm Bureau itself has now changed, merging with the Grundy County Farm Bureau in 2019 to form a new combined organization. The new Kendall-Grundy Farm Bureau is headquartered in Morris.
Even with all the modern changes, the Farm Bureau remains an organization whose local ties go right back to those cabin and barn raising groups, the stock protective associations, and the claim associations that protected and promoted farmers’ interests so long ago.
I was going through some family stuff the other day and came across a small pocket notebook. Perforated Memo-Pad said the cover. When I opened it, I recognized my maternal grandmother’s handwriting right away.
It turned out to be a short travel log my grandmother kept during a trip to a family reunion in Abilene, Kansas in August 1934.
The date alone carries a lot of historical baggage. At that time, my grandparents were farming out on what’s now called 127th Street in Will County’s Wheatland Township. They’d moved to the farm they rented from Louis and Margaret McLaren in 1920, leaving behind town life to give my grandmother—a farm girl born and bred—peace of mind away from quarreling in-laws. My grandfather, a city kid, agreed to take up a rural lifestyle to make my grandmother happy and to get away from his own quarreling relations.
William H. and Mabel Lantz Holzhueter, taken Oct. 29, 1944.
They made a go of it, with my grandfather not only farming but also working as the steam engineer for the local threshing ring and working at his craft of carpentry building and repairing farm buildings.
Making a go was not easy during that time, either. A serious economic depression struck farming in the aftermath of World War I making for lean times. And then in October 1929, the big financial crash came creating the Great Depression.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the nation began suffering through years of severe drought. After the Civil War, railroad companies, with the added lure of the Homestead Act of 1862, had drawn thousands of farmers to move to the vast shortgrass prairies of the Dakotas, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas with promises of cheap—even free—land. And in the 1870s and 1880s the region received sufficient rain to produce good crops. But then came the post-war farm depression, drought, insect infestations, and then to top it all off, the Great Depression.
By 1934, the nation had about hit rock bottom in economic and ecological terms. Corn was selling so cheaply that farmers were burning it in their cookstoves and furnaces rather than pay to haul it to market. And that was here in the normally productive land east of the Mississippi. The farmers who had been lured to the western prairies had put millions of acres under cultivation that, with the loss of the natural prairie grass cover, turned into a dried up wasteland thanks to extreme drought and nonexistent land management. The resulting dust storms ravaged not only that region, but also extended east of the Mississippi right into northern Illinois.
As the Kendall County Record’s Oswego correspondent reported on Nov. 15, 1933: “The dust storm Sunday night was one of the worst dust storms experienced in this vicinity in many years. It was just too bad for all the good housekeepers who had finished their fall housecleaning. Even in the homes with doors and windows tightly closed the dust-laden air was disagreeable to breathe. The dust is said to have been blown here from as far away as the Dakotas, where a 70-mile-an-hour wind did considerable damage.”
As bad as conditions were, however, my Pennsylvania German family managed to keep going. The farm relatives our extended family all pitched in to help each other, and also helped out relatives that lived in town. My mother said that while no one seemed to have any cash money, none of our relatives ever went hungry.
And right through the worst years of the Great Depression our extended family continued to hold their annual family reunion. The sixth annual reunion was held on Sunday, Sept. 10, 1933 at the Isaac Lantz farm in Wheatland Township with 85 family members attending. During the reunion’s business meeting, Reuben Stark, a cousin visiting from Kansas, was prevailed upon to give a few remarks.
Home of Jacob Lafayette Lantz in Kansas on April 27, 1886. The family moved west in 1883 and clearly had enough money to build a substantial home and farm buildings on the Kansas prairie.
Back in the 1880s when the railroads were trying so hard to lure farmers to those shortgrass prairies west of the Mississippi, four of my great-grandfather’s adult siblings decided to take them up on it and head west. During a period of a couple years brothers Isaac, a widower and Jacob Lantz and his wife Belle; and sisters Betsy and her husband Christian Schaal and Sarah and her husband Isrial Stark and most of their children headed west to farm on the Kansas plains.
Jacob and Isabella “Belle” Lantz on their wedding day, Oct. 19, 1865 in Wheatland Township, Will County, Illinois. Jacob was my great-grandfather’s older brother.
It may have been those remarks from Isrial Stark’s son, Reuben, at the 1933 family reunion that gave my grandparents the idea to head west to attend the family reunion the Kansas Lantzes were planning to hold in late August 1934. Not that it would have taken much to persuade them to take a road trip. Both my grandparents loved seeing what was over the next hill. And with the threshing done for the season, my grandfather was free until the corn harvest began. Whatever the reason, they packed their car, loaded up food for the trip, and headed over to Plainfield to pick up U.S. Route 66.
By the mid-1930s, Route 66, stretching from Chicago west through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before ending in Santa Monica, California, had become known as both “The Mother Road” and “The Main Street of America.” Especially from Oklahoma and Kansas west, the road by the ‘30s was full of emigrants fleeing drought, dust storms, and grasshopper and chinch bug infestations.
It was also the easiest road for the first leg of the route from my grandparents’ farm just west of Plainfield, Illinois to Abilene, Kansas where the Kansas branch of the Lantz family’s reunion was to be held.
My grandmother didn’t drive, so that chore was up to my grandfather. My grandmother reported they got on the road promptly at 7 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 24, 1934 and drove the first four-hour leg to Bloomington, Illinois. Getting there at 11:15, they stopped for gas and decided to invest 10-cents in a watermelon for lunch instead of wasting time stopping to cook anything. Then it was back on the road until another stop at Sherman, just north of the state capital at Springfield, Illinois, for ice cream cones to cope with the August heat.
At St. Louis, they left The Mother Road and headed more west of south making for the road to Lawrence, Kansas, the college town just west of Kansas City. These days, it’s an easy three-hour drive from St. Louis to Lawrence on Interstate-70. Not so in 1934. They finally stopped for the night at Mexico, Missouri and rented a cabin in a motor court.
Christian and Betsy Lantz Schaal and their children shortly before their move west to Kansas from Wheatland Township, Will County, Illinois.
They hit the road at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning, aiming for my grandmother’s cousins’ home at Lawrence, Kansas. Adam Schaal was my grandmother’s first cousin, the son of my great-grandfather’s sister, Elizabeth Ann “Betsy” Lantz Schaal. Even though two-thirds of my great-great grandparents’ adult children had left for Kansas in the 1880s, the two branches maintained relatively close contact. The plan was for my grandparents to stay whenever possible at relatives’ homes—usually my grandmother’s first cousins—to keep those family ties strong. It was a full day’s drive to Lawrence; they didn’t arrive until 5:30 p.m. “Stayed all night. Good visit,” my grandmother reported.
Both Adam Stark (standing) and Will Schaal were my grandmother’s first cousins. During my grandparents’ 1934 auto trip to Kansas, she was able to visit with both of them.
On Sunday morning everyone got up early and had a good breakfast before my grandparents hit the road again at 7 a.m. for the drive to Abilene.
I don’t know if she saw the poem somewhere at Adam Schaal’s or whether she made it up herself, but on the next page is a short verse that pretty much described my grandmother’s outlook on life all the years I knew her:
Not anything should I destroy,
Which others may for good enjoy;
Not even tread beneath my feet
A crumb some little bird might eat.
On modern Interstate 70, it’s about an hour and forty minute drive from Lawrence to Abilene. No such luck back in 1934. My grandfather made the drive from Lawrence to the park in Abilene where the reunion was to be held by noon and in time for the fine potluck dinner. They sat with and visited with another of grandmother’s Kansas cousins, Willard “Will” Stark. Will was the son of Isrial and Sarah Lantz Stark. Sarah was my great-grandfather’s sister and another aunt of my grandmother.
After the reunion they were invited out in the country to Reuben “Rube” Stark’s farm to stay the night, Rube being Will’s brother.
The same month and year–August 1934–my grandparents were visiting relatives in eastern Kansas, these farmers had gathered at Ottawa, Kansas to sign up for government drought relief through President Roosevelt’s New Deal farm programs.
On Monday they apparently slept in because they didn’t get on the road until 9 a.m. that morning. They drove into Abilene for a visit and dinner with Wallace “Wall” Stark and his daughter, Nellie. Wall’s wife, Anna, had died in 1921 and Nellie was keeping house for her dad. Then it was back out in the country to the farm of yet another cousin, Richard and his wife, Jennie, Stark, to stay the evening before starting on the meandering road home.
Since my grandmother was determined to visit as many cousins as possible, my grandfather set his course to the southeast from Abilene to Herington, Kansas, where they had dinner (always the noon meal in those days and in those places) with Grandma’s first cousin, Pearl Stark Taylor and her husband, George. Then it was back on the road southeast to Emporia, where, just south of town, they arrived at William Matile’s farm. He was my father’s father and was still farming what they all called The Home Place just south of town. Two years later, he’d lease a Santa Fe boxcar, load all of his farm machinery, his draft horse teams, his daughter and her children, and John and Henry, his two sons, aboard and move to northern Illinois where his son, my father, was farming. But for now, he welcomed his son’s in-laws to stay the night.
The Matile Home Place, a few miles south of Emporia, Kansas, where my maternal grandparents stayed overnight with my paternal grandfather Aug. 28, 1934. This photo was taken in 2003.
As my grandmother put it, “Arrived at Matile’s at 5 o’clock…ate supper, had a good night’s sleep, ate breakfast, and left for Chanute at 9:30 a.m.”
On the way to Chanute, they were driving along U.S. Route 75 somewhere between Gridley and Yates Center when they had a blowout—a not infrequent hazard of travel in those days before tubeless radial tires. But Grandpa fixed it quickly and they got back on the road, stopping at a one-room school just outside Yate’s Center for a picnic lunch. The rural schools of the era, when not in session, were perfect picnic locations since they always had outhouses, a well with a hand pump, and some handy shade trees to sit under out of the sun.
They got to the house of Peter Schaal—another of Christian and Betsy Lantz Schaal’s sons—in Chanute in time for a nice visit and supper. Then it was out to the farm of 26 year-old Ora Cheney to stay the night. Ora’s mother, Margaret, was another of Grandmother’s cousins through the Schaal family.
Tours Courts like this one at Cape Girardeau Missouri–the ancestors of today’s motels–offered travelers shelter and a bed in individual cabins during the 1930s.
The next morning after breakfast, Grandpa and Grandma said their good-byes and hit the road back to northern Illinois. Leaving at 9:30 a.m., they drove to Mountain Grove, Missouri, where they rented a cabin in a tourist court for the night. The next day, they put 290 more miles on the odometer driving to Carbondale in southern Illinois where they stayed in another tourist court cabin. From there, it was a long drive north through Illinois, and it was pretty clear Grandma had about had it with auto travel on 1930s roads in a 1930s automobile. “Rode all day with an awful back ache,” she commented in her travel diary.
They pulled into their driveway at 7:30 p.m. Saturday evening, Sept. 8, 1934 after a 383-mile drive up virtually the entire length of Illinois. Through the years that have passed since that September evening in 1934, I can almost hear my grandmother say, with her ghost of a Pennsylvania Dutch accent, “Ya, it was a nice trip, but I was glad to get back home and sleep in my own bed.”
The trip was interesting both for what my grandparents did and when they did it. Driving through some parts of the country that were hardest hit by the Depression, as well as the natural disasters that were occurring, must have offered sobering sights and sounds for my grandparents. The members of the extended Lantz family that headed west in the 1880s were relatively prosperous farmers and it seems they were still managing despite the nation’s economic troubles, even in the disastrous year of 1934. It’s also interesting that my grandparents had enough money to make the trip in the midst of the Great Depression and to stay in tourist court cabins to boot.
For me, my grandmother’s tiny trip diary offers a glimpse at what my family was doing 86 years ago and what their lives were like.
The saga of Roger Matile attempting to track down local history, one blog post at a time, while avoiding the French. Although they do make good fries and toast.
historyonthefox 