My grandfather was born in 1846 in Mardorf, Germany. His parents were quite
rich but they had a garden in which they raised much of their own food. One day
grandfather was hoeing the garden when the hoe struck a rock. A chip of the rock
hit him in the eye, and after that he was blind in that eye.
When he was
in his late teens he left his home to seek his fortune. While at home he had
heard about the chances people had in North America, and when he left home he
started right away for the promising land. At the end of his journey the ship
docked at New York, and from there he traveled by train directly to Illinois,
where he stopped at Streator. Streator was then just a small town, known as
Hardscrabble. He went a half a mile east of town, which place is now known as
Otter Creek street. He worked there for two years and then moved to a place near
where Dwight now is, where he built a home and started farming on the prairie.
He had to haul his grains to Ottawa, where it was ground for food. The country
had many robbers and raiders in it and I have been told of a narrow experience
my grandmother had with a band of them. They would travel in a group, and
usually about six would raid a house and carry off the women when the men folks
were gone. My grandfather had gone to Ottawa with a team of oxen and a wagon
load of grain and my grandmother was all alone when a band of raiders came to
their home. It was about dark, but she went to the door and asked them what they
wanted, and they asked if her husband was home. She said that he was home but
that he was sick. They wanted to go in to see for themselves, but my grandmother
said that he wasn't too sick to hold a loaded gun, and that he would sure use it
on them if they stepped inside the door. They didn't go inside, so they must
have thought the threat real, but they prowled around outside and took what they
could find. That incident seems to show the bravery of the pioneer women of
those days.
About that time the country was stirred up about the war
between the North and South. When the North called for men to enlist, my
grandfather was unable to go because of his blind eye, which had been troubling
him.
In 1911 he retired from the farm to Streator, leaving his five
hundred and twenty acres in the care of his sons. There he lived until the fall
of 1930, when both my grandfather and grandmother got too feeble to take care of
themselves and they moved to Ransom, Ill., with my mother, where they lived
until they passed away. My grandfather was eighty-five years of age when he
died.
Extracted 08 Nov 2018 by Norma Hass from Stories of Pioneer Days in La Salle County, Illinois, by Grammar Grade Pupils, published in 1932, page 105.
| Lee | DeKalb | Kane |
| Bureau |
 |
Kendall |
| Putnam | Grundy | |
| Marshall | Woodford | Livingston |
