In 1844, a carding-mill and cloth-dressing establishment was started between Dundee and Carpentersville, by William Dunton, who operated it for five or six years, and then sold it to J. A. Carpenter, who removed it to Carpentersville, where it was continued as a cloth-dressing factory for some time; was finally enlarged and converted into a manufactory of stocking yarn and flannel. It went into the possession of the present stock company in 1866. From twenty to thirty hands are employed, and the stock is valued at about $25,000. J. A. Carpenter owns an extensive part of it, and of nearly every manufacturing and business establishment in the village.

The grist-mill, still running upon the East Side, was erected about 1845, and is now owned by Mr. Carpenter.

The village was surveyed and laid out July 15, 1851; and about the same time, the first bridge was built, by subscription, Mr. Carpenter defraying nearly the entire expense. It was replaced by an iron one in 1869. About 1855, a school house, two stories high, was built, the upper part being used as a hall by the Sons of Temperance, who have succeeded in maintaining an active organization in Carpentersville since 1851.

But by far the most important institution in the place is the mammoth manufacturing establishment of the Illinois Iron and Bolt Company. In 1853, Mr. George Marshall opened a shop for the manufacture of reapers and agricultural implements. The business was continued, in a small way, until 1864, when a radical change was made, a joint stock company formed, and the manufacture of thimble skeins, sad irons, pumps, copying presses, garden and lawn vases, seat springs, etc., commenced. The buildings are of vast proportions, including a

foundry and machine shop. The main structure is of brick, and was erected in the Summer of 1871. In the following season, a wooden building, where the large brick office now stands, was destroyed by fire, and replaced, the same year, by the present one.

A brick foundry was built, in 1875, in connection with the larger shop. The stock amounts to $110,000, of which Mr. Carpenter owns a controlling interest, and became Manager, in July, 1868. Over 120 hands are employed, and the annual sales amount to $200,000. The manufactured articles are sold

from Maine to California.

The Star Manufacturing Company (agricultural works) was established in 1873, in a large building belonging to J. A. Carpenter. It is a stock company, employing about twenty hands, engaged in making horse powers, cultivators and feed cutters. These, with a small planing-mill, upon the East Side, complete the main manufacturing establishments of the place.

The post office was established in the village about 1866. The mail is obtained from Dundee.

During the Fall of 1877, the appearance of Carpentersville was much improved by an elegant business block, built by T. L. Whitaker, who has an extensive trade in dry goods and groceries.

T

The vast deposits of peat, extending over several hundred acres, east of Carpentersville, have received some attention during the past year, and the proprietors entertain the hope that in the near future, the demand for it as an article of fuel may be sufficient to warrant them in making efforts for its removal.

SUGAR GROVE TOWNSHIP.

As a Congressional township, Sugar Grove is known as Township 38 north, Range 7 east of the Third Principal Meridian. It occupies a position west of Aurora, north of Kendall County, south of Blackberry and east of Big Rock Township. Its surface, though gently undulating, presents more of the features of the prairie than that of the adjoining township on the east, and its name, Sugar Grove, was given by the Indians, from a beautiful grove of sugar maples situated mainly in Section 9. The earliest settlers recollect seeing the remains of sugar camps, scars upon the trees, and sap troughs strewn upon the ground, at the time of their arrival in the country, and there is no doubt that the Pottawattomies had manufactured there, as late as 1833, the saccharine food, which they seem to have relished next to whisky. The first

SETTLEMENT

in the township was made by a party from Ohio and New York, composed of James, Isaac C. and Parmeno Isbell, James Carman, an old gentleman by the name of Bishop and Asa McDole. All but the last hailed from Medina County, Ohio, and on their way to the new country, in a cart drawn by two yokes of oxen, had overtaken, at a place then known as the Black Swamp, in Wood County, Ohio, Asa McDole, who had left his home, in the State of New York, several weeks previous, and was also traveling toward the setting sun. agreed, therefore, to cast their lots together, like the company who lay "at Southwark at the Tabard," some five centuries before, and thus continued their journey to Oswego.

They

Mr. James Isbell, who owned one of the *ox teams, and was our worthy informant, states that there were then but two houses in the place, one on each side of the river. Crossing there, they proceeded to the northwest, and arrived in Sugar Grove on the 10th day of May, 1834, eighteen days after the Ohio party had left home. Taking up their abode in a vacated Indian wigwam, which stood in the edge of the grove, they commenced building a more convenient residence, and early in the Summer occupied it. This shanty was the first built by white men in Sugar Grove Township, and was located within the limits of Section 9.

Later in the same Summer, Mr. Bishop left the settlement and took up his abode further south.

*The other belonged to Lyman Isbell. James Isbell also drove in four cows, two belonging to himself, the others to Lyman.

As Lyman Isbell, an older brother of Isaac and James, was expected, with their mother, sister and his own family, consisting of his wife and two children. a log house was built, on a more ample plan, to receive them. It stood not far from the residence of P. Y. Bliss, and some of the logs from its walls are still in existence.

In due time the expected friends came and took possession of the house, during the month of July. They drove into the township a span of horses, the first seen there; while it is supposed that no white woman or children had crossed its boundaries previous to the arrival of Mrs. Lyman Isbell and her children, old Mrs. Isbell and her daughter, Miranda. It may be well here to state that the Ohio parties now remaining in Sugar Grove were all related: James, Isaac C. and Lyman Isbell being brothers, from Granger Township, Ohio, while Parmeno was their nephew, from Copeley Township, and Carman, a brother-in-law of Lyman Isbell, had left a home in Bath.

On the Fourth of July, James Isbell went to Oswego, purchased a bottle of whisky, and returning, drank it with his friends.* There were five persons at this celebration, and it was the first held in Sugar Grove.

Of the original settlers, Asa McDole now sleeps in the graveyard, near the residence of P. Y. Bliss. Parmeno and Carman have also gone to their final resting place; and I. C. Isbell, now in California, and James Isbell, our informant, now living in Batavia, at the age of 77, are all that are left. Lyman Isbell is likewise in his grave.

During the Winter of 1834-5, Joseph Ingham settled on the creek, east of the place now owned by Esquire Densmore. A number followed in the Spring and Summer of 1835, among whom we may mention a Mr. Gould, who located near the Densmore farm, and returned East after a few years. Rodney McDole, first settler, now living in the township; Cyrus Ingham, a son of Joseph, mentioned above, who came out, bringing his father's family, and Harry White. Many others flocked in in rapid succession during this and the years immediately following. Silas Reynolds, a native of Sullivan County, New York, who still resides near Sugar Grove post office, and who settled in the township on a tract which he still owns, in the Spring of 1836, states that he found, upon his arrival, the following men living around him, aside from those already named: Silas Gardner, Samuel Cogswell, Joseph Bishop, Samuel Taylor, Silas Leonard. Isaac Gates, Nathan H. Palmer and Lorin Inmann. The Barnes', too, were early settlers on Blackberry Creek, as was a Mr. Horr, west of the present site of the cheese factory, and Jonathan Gardner, from the shores of Lake Ontario. The latter became homesick, after a short residence in the West, pined for the fishing coasts of his native bay, and, after sighing through the settlement for a time that he would rather have what "gudgeons" he could catch from the shores he had left, at a single haul, than all the land in Illinois, he returned home, where he no doubt remains, still fishing. But the land in Illinois is

*This was the first celebration in Kane County.

worth more than his fish, now. Thomas Judd, from Franklin County, in the old Bay State, settled in Sugar Grove, in the Fall of 1836. Land had begun to rise even at that date, and Mr. Judd paid I. C. Isbell $200 for his claim, forty acres of which was timber. In the same Fall, H. B. Densmore located in the township, where he still remains. In 1857, Mr. Densmore was elected Town Clerk, and has retained the office ever since. P. Y. Bliss, one of the oldest and most respected residents in Sugar Grove, who settled on his present location in 1837, states that, in riding from his residence, in the following year, direct to Geneva, he passed not a house, furrow nor fence of any kind, and that the old Court House at the county seat was the first building which appeared to his view. In the year of his arrival, B. F. Fridley of his arrival, B. F. Fridley was High Sheriff, being the second elected in the county: Several settlers took up claims, that same year, in the vicinity of Jericho. Reuben Johnson, I. S. Fitch, the Austins and Capt. Jones were among them. A number of settlers flocked in during the year 1838, and among them Ira M. Fitch, now a Justice of the Peace in Aurora, and the founder of the Fitch House, in the Spring of 1867.

CLAIMS.

The land throughout this and the adjoining townships had not been surveyed by the Government at the time of its settlement, but was taken up by the pioneers, and staked out in farms of such shape as suited their convenience, the main consideration being that there should be a grove of good timber included within the limits. The beautiful and fertile prairie farms, which are now the most valuable in the country, were then considered almost worthless, and were the last to be claimed. The various tracts were known as "squatters' claims,' and they were cultivated and eventually fenced with the same zigzag boundary lines which are found in all the farms, townships and counties in the Eastern States to this day. But in 1839 and 40, the United States Surveyors came and placed those inflexible lines which swerved not for farm, house nor garden, and in June, 1842, the sections were sold at auction in Chicago. Parts of several claims were thus frequently embodied in one section, and sold to a single purchaser. Much injustice might thus have arisen from settlers losing their improvements, had they not formed regular claim organizations, placing themselves under bonds to observe certain salutary measures for the general welfare. A special agent was selected to bid in the sections or parts of sections for $1.25 per acre, on the day appointed for the sale, naming as the purchaser in each case that settler who owned the largest share in the tract sold. At the end of the sale, each settler who had purchased any portion of his neighbor's farm deeded it back to him at the same price which was paid for it. ham was the purchasing agent of the farms of Sugar Grove. explanation, the reason why none of those farms have straight be evident. It is impossible to repress, if we would, a sincere admiration for the calm and philosophical course pursued by the settlers of this township during

Col. S. S. IngFrom the above section lines will

its entire history. They were men of more than common intelligence, possessed of broad and liberal ideas upon all subjects, and a far-reaching sagacity. Hence there has never been any narrow and suicidal policy, nor grappling for spoils in any of their public acts, while the efforts which have been made to promote general intelligence would have been creditable to a city containing many times the population of Sugar Grove, which has not a single village. Peace and good order prevailed through the period when many sections are scenes of violence and crime. For years there was nothing like an aristocracy to be found within its limits, and Mr. Densmore, who passed through there, says "they were the happiest days in the country." Harmony and a general reciprocation of good services was too common to be generally noticed, and Mr. P. Y. Bliss gives the following as an illustration of this statement: Mr. I. C. Isbell called at his store one morning and announced that, as he intended to kill a steer on the following Saturday, Mr. B. might tell any of the neighbors who happened around to call at his house and get a piece of beef. On the day named, a number of the settlers appeared and found the steer slaughtered and the quarters standing out against a post waiting for them, with a knife and hatchet near at hand with which to cut off whatever part they wished. Thus the meat was divided among them gratis.

FIRST DEATH, BIRTH, MARRIAGE, ETC.

Death commenced his work among the settlers before they had completed their second year in the West. The first to fall was a child of Carman's, in 1835. Others followed, and a broken and disfigured slab lying upon the ground in the old graveyard, near the residence of P. Y. Bliss, states that Asa McDole, one of the founders of Sugar Grove, died September 16, 1839. On the 7th day of August, two years previous, he had been elected the first Justice of the Peace in the township, while Sugar Grove was still a part of the old Fox River Precinct.

In the Fall of 1835, the first marriage in the township, that of Dr. N. H. Palmer and Miranda Isbell, occurred; and on the 19th of August, in the same year, Charlotte, a daughter of I. C. Isbell, was born. This has been generally considered the first birth in Sugar Grove, although the McDoles and some others claim that the birth of A. G. McDole, a son of Rodney McDole, was prior to it. It is safe to say, at least, that McDole's was the first male, and Isbell's the first female child.

ROAD, TAVERN, POST OFFICES, STORE, ETC.

A road ran through Sugar Grove, on the way from Chicago to Dixon, as early as 1834, and, in 1836, a tavern stood upon the route on Section 14, and was kept by Robert Atkinson. The old building is now used as a dwelling, on the original site.

Several years more passed before a post office was obtained, and it was not until 1840 that one was established, near the center of Section 15, at the house