Kane County in Vintage Postcards

Jim Edwards, Wynette Edwards

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781439613153
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Rich land at the edge of a great prairie with the wonderful Fox River flowing through it, providing a source of power-this is what the settlers of Kane County found when they arrived. Early pioneers came from the eastern United States in the 1830s, and later migrated from Europe. Kane County in Vintage Postcards tells the story of the beginning of Kane County through its first 100 years, 1838 through 1938, featuring images of that period.

This new history of Kane County includes an essay on the importance of postcards as historical data, a general history of the county, and a section-by-section look at 27 cities and villages. More than 200 pictures and colorful narratives tell of the accomplishments by those first few generations who lived and died in the county.

Three

AURORA, MONTGOMERY, SUGAR GROVE, BIG ROCK, TROXEL

Aurora is located in the southeast corner of Kane County. Before the arrival of white settlers, Winnebagos, Sacs, Fox, Pottawatomies, and other tribes spent their summer months near what is now Aurora along the Fox River. Joseph McCarty, a millwright from New York, is said to be the first white settler in Aurora. He and his brother “squatted” on 360 acres of land on the east side of the Fox, and started a saw mill. By 1835, word had spread to all parts of New England about the opportunities in Aurora. Theodore Lake laid out the village of West Aurora in 1842, and had the first store in town. In 1857, West and East Aurora agreed to put aside their rivalry and form one city. By the end of the century, Aurora boasted of various state-of-the-art businesses, such as the immense C B & Q rail yards. As if all of this was not enough, Aurora’s factories produced enough silverware, corsets, road equipment, art, wagons, well works, railroad engines, cards, stoves, woolen goods, hardware, doors, bricks, drain tile, and butter to satisfy local, state, and national customers. The 1920s were part of a boom time in Aurora, and new prairie-style commercial buildings were constructed downtown .

Montgomery is adjacent to Aurora and is located south on the Fox River. Elijah Pierce is credited as its first settler in 1834. His one-room shanty of a house became a stagecoach station, busy tavern, and boarding house. Daniel Gray brought his family to settle in 1836. The town was known as Graytown, but he later changed the name to Montgomery. The village had a gristmill in the 1850s, which was later used to grind mica. The Burlington Railroad built pens for 75,000 sheep in Montgomery around 1890. Montgomery was also home to one of Chicagoland’s greatest amusement parks in the early decades of the 1900s.

People from Wood County, Ohio, settled Sugar Grove, west of Aurora, in 1834. Religion and liquor came to town early. A tavern was opened in 1836, and two years later the first religious services were held in a small frame house. A post office was established in the home of Thomas Slater by 1840. Farmers organized a library of 264 books in 1843. Schools were built, and a city hall was completed in the 1850s. The dairy business was a major industry by the end of the Civil War. In 1866, a cheese factory contributed to a bustling local economy. The Chicago and Ohio Railroad first served both Sugar Grove and the township, but by the turn of the century, the tracks belonged to the C B & Q Railroad.

Farmers from England, Ireland, and particularly from Wales settled Big Rock in the 1830s. Around 1840, a stage coach road was constructed from Chicago to Galena, through Big Rock. The name of Big Rock was chosen for the village after the township—which had been named by the Indians after a rock in the local creek. In 1860, the land baron of Big Rock was Joshua Rhodes, who owned the very land that the village was built upon. In 1871, the C B & Q Railroad came through town, and the station was named Blunt Station. Agricultural goods were shipped out from here. In the 1870s, Big Rock had a wagon shop, a steam feed mill, and a large grain elevator. A fire destroyed almost all of the downtown in 1890. The next decade saw the construction of the First Baptist Church and the English Congregational United Church of Christ.

Troxel is a very small community located at the crossing of County Line Road and Owens Road, 6 miles south of Maple Park. The land that became Troxel in 1905 originally belonged to J. Shoop and J. Morse in the 1860s. Today, Troxel has a total of 8 houses, 2 of which are on farms.

In the years before World War II, there were about 475 different cars being produced in Illinois. Aurora also entered into the business of car making. The Thor Company built the “Aurora” and the “Thor” motor cars in 1906, neither of which were produced in vast numbers. The Thomas Dunham Co. in Aurora began by manufacturing automotive accessories and eventually sporty bodies that converted Model T Fords into racy-looking automobiles. One of their models was called the “Newport Speedster.”

Much of the early manufacturing in Aurora took place on the banks of the Fox River and on the island between East and West Aurora. J.D. Stolp started a wool cardin...