In June of 1888, John H. Graham purchased the property where our house was built. In that year, Edward Cronkrite and William Stewart divided their 160 acres into what appears to be three parcels. Graham paid $2,198.80 for a 74-acre parcel on the south side of Farm School Road. In December 1888, Warren Dart paid $896 for a 50-acre parcel
on the north side of Farm School Road (most of this is now the Espenscheid Woods forest preserve). The remaining 36 acres were probably an eighth-mile-wide swath cut off the east edge of the 160 acres, which were sold that same month to Herman Bokhof for $996.62.
John Graham was a native of Pennsylvania. He came to Rock Run Township in 1842 and began farming, but eventually gave up his agricultural career and established a general store in Rock City. His business pursuits evolved into the Graham Brothers Company, which included a general store and grain elevator in Rock City, as well as grain elevators in Dakota, Durand, Florence and Nora. U.S. Postal records show both John Graham and his son Henry as Postmasters of the Rock City post office. John was appointed Postmaster in 1891 and Henry in 1902.
John Graham married Margaret Ann Young, also a Pennsylvania native, in 1857. They had 11 children, 10 of who were alive and living with John and Margaret as of the 1880 U.S. Census (their son Robert died in 1867). John died on February 23, 1897 at the age of 72. Shortly after he passed, Margaret moved to Freeport, where she lived until her death in 1922.
An 1894 plat map shows a residence on the 74-acre property, which at that time was still owned by John Graham. We believe this was not the home we live in today. After the property changed hands a couple more times, Samuel Warn would build a house which defied decades of age and neglect and remains standing today. On the 1894 plat map, a black dot marked the spot of the residence, but farther south of our home, possibly on higher ground near a bluff carved out by Rock Run Creek. We're unsure who built that house, or why.
Whatever house was present during the Graham ownership was probably not inhabited by John Graham. His wife's 1922 obituary in the Freeport Journal-Standard states that during their marriage, the Graham’s lived for three years on a farm about 3 miles south of Rock City. This was probably on land they owned at the corner of Eggert Road and Cedarville Road, shown in the 1871 plat map of Rock Run Township. Around 1860 the Graham’s moved into Rock City, where they stayed until 1871. They then moved to their 160-acre farm property adjacent to Rock City, also shown in the 1871 plat map, and remained there until 1894, when they sold the farm to Chris Benning. In February of that year, the Freeport Daily Bulletin reported that John would hold a public sale of his personal assets at the farm. The sale was expected to be the "largest sale of horses and cattle ever sold near Rock City."
We suspect the "old" house on this property was present when the Graham's bought it. We've found little evidence that John Graham or anyone in his family would have needed a place to live during the time he owned the 74 acres. In those days, most inhabitants of country homes were farmers. None of our research indicates that any of John Graham's sons were engaged in farming. By 1900, the U.S. Census shows only Henry Graham and his brother, John Jr., living in Rock City. The rest of the Graham siblings had moved outside the township, although several were still involved in the grain merchandising business and general store. The 1890 census records might have shed some light on who lived on the property, but unfortunately most of the U.S. census data for that year was destroyed by fire.
John Graham did have a daughter who married a farmer in 1887, which could have been the reason he wanted to own a farm with house on it. Sarah "Sadie" Graham was 27 years old when she married Charles A. Carnefix. According to a wedding announcement in the Freeport Daily Journal, Charles Carnefix was a "prosperous farmer in Rock Run Township." He had graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the University of Michigan in 1875. It’s possible the 74-acre property was attractive as a place for his daughter and son-in-law to begin a farming life after they were married.
Just two years after the marriage, however, Charles died. His obituary in the Freeport Daily Journal mentioned that Charles had been in ill health since working for the Denver & Rio Grande railroad. While there, he suffered from "mountan fever", from which he never fully recovered. By the time he returned to Rock Run Township in 1885, he was unable to do much physical activity. So it seems unlikely he and Sarah would begin their new life together as farmers, in a country home on Farm School Road.
What we do know is that the price John Graham paid for the 74 acres suggests the buildings shown on the 1894 plat map were already there when he bought the farm. When Cronkrite and Stewart sold their divided acreage, Graham paid almost $30/acre for his land, compared to $17.92/acre paid by Warren Dart and around $28/acre by Herman Bokhof. The Dart land, where most of the Espenscheid Woods forest preserve is now located, was the roughest, most jagged piece of ground and rightly should have sold for the least money per acre. The Graham land was also somewhat rough, with many trees, and even today would have only about 15 tillable acres. The Bokhof land was the only flat piece of the 160 acres, and according to the 1871 plat map, had little or no trees. If crop farming was the highest and best use for farm real estate in the 1880s, then the Bokhof land should have been the most valuable on a per-acre basis. However, the Graham land fetched the highest price per acre, possibly because it was the only tract with buildings.
But then an unusual thing happened. John Graham took a large loss on his 74 acres when he sold to T.J. Flynn in 1896. This is odd because farm real estate prices in Illinois were on a rising trend in the 1890s. Why Graham parted with the land for less than two-thirds of what he paid for it is unclear. One possibility is we misinterpreted how Cronkrite and Stewart divided their 160 acres, and Graham actually ended up with more than 74 acres. However, the legal descriptions seem to tie out to what the 1894 plat map shows. Another theory is that the economic Panic of 1896 affected Graham in a way that required him to quickly raise liquidity. Even though panics, recessions and depressions didn't always affect rural areas to the same extent as the rest of the population, John Graham was a merchant who probably had ties to Chicago and other urban areas. Credit availability is often the first thing to contract when an economy weakens, so maybe he needed to sell some assets to support his business.
We also know that John Graham was nearing the end of his life. Whether he realized this in 1896, we'll never know, but maybe he was in the process of estate planning for his large family. The Graham's sale to Thomas Flynn, as well as the next two sales of this property over the following 3 years, confirm the additional value from Sam Warn's construction of a new house on the property.
What that dot on the 1894 plat map represented is unclear. We suspect any house on the property wasn't very extravagant, based on the loss John Graham took on the property. An 1871 plat map shows no residence, and between that year and 1894, the other two owners (Samuel Davis and Cronkrite/Stewart) already had homes elsewhere. Samuel Davis owned houses in the village of Davis and on his property at the corner of Eggert Road and Farm School Road. He probably wouldn't have needed a third place to live, and had no children to build a house for. Cronkrite and Stewart were both well-established in Freeport, with Stewart already having his own country home at his family's 360-acre farm west of Dakota. His farm is referred to several times over the years in the Freeport Daily Journal society pages, as a sort of country retreat for family and friends. We know Cronkrite was a horse breeder, based on entries in the American Morgan Horse Register. Would he have built a house on 160 acres so that he, too, could have a country retreat? Maybe.
