Morrison couple unlocks the past during home remodel
Deer Grove: 150 years of history just off the highway
Farm history finds a home in Coleta couple’s barn museum
History Teller
Unlocking the past
A Morrison couple’s home improvement project has added another chapter to the story of a house with nearly 150 years of history written in its walls.
150 years of deer
A village that can track its history back to the early days of the railroad celebrates its sesquicentennial this year, and for the few dozen denizens who live there, they’re happy with their little hometown off the highway.
What a barn find
It may look like just another outbuilding from the outside, but inside it’s a different story: History has found a home in a Coleta couple’s museum, where they’ve put together pieces of past to paint a picture of what life on the farm used to be like.
George“Bud”Thompson
By Cody Cutter Sauk Valley Mediaveryone has a story to tell. Some tell it with pencil and paper, some use a keyboard to unlock their imagination, and others take brush to canvas.
George “Bud” Thompson is partial to bricks and mortar. The 92-year-old painter and politico has had a hand in many of the murals that grace Prophetstown’s buildings and tell stories of his hometown’s history.
The murals have become so much a staple of the city that in 2005, Prophetstown was recognized as “The Most ArtsFriendly Small Town in Illinois” by the Illinois Municipal League and the Illinois Alliance for Arts Education.
Murals are “a communication,” Thompson said.
“It’s telling a story. I’ve had people, not much younger than me, they go past the murals and go, ‘I can’t remember the old school.’ History is history, and sometimes people think it’s gone, but it’s still with us. If we just stop to think about it, we learn a lot looking back on what was before us.”
THOMPSON cont’d to page 6
“Bud” Thompson didn’t sit around wondering what would happen if the walls could talk in Prophetstown, he helped give them a voice — and it turned out they had a lot to say
particularly proud of the work thenfreshman Larry Kochevar did on the train painting
tracks outside
mural and down to the ground. “The recognition he got for that, I was so excited for him,” Thompson said. “That warmed my heart.”
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Bud Thompson, 92, has worn many hats in public service in Prophetstown: Mayor, school board president, Main Street president, and artist. In 1994, he was given a certificate of appreciation by the Illinois Alliance for Arts Education for his many contributions to the local arts.
THOMPSON cont’d from page 5
Murals aren’t the only thing that have helped Thompson make a name for himself in Prophetstown. He spent time as the city’s mayor and school board president, served on several local and county-wide leadership teams and boards involving education and economic development, was appointed to the Illinois State Board of Education, was chairman of the Whiteside County Republican Party, and served on the Whiteside County Board from 2012-22.
While his years of public service have earned him a laudable legacy, it’s his work on the murals that will live on — not only on the buildings, but with the budding young artists who helped put them there.
Thompson helped coordinate the mural projects with the Prophetstown High School Art Club. Along with high school art teacher Bob Deines, he oversaw the creation of several of the murals that celebrate the city’s past, including a series on Shaw’s Marketplace (seen in the photos at left): and 1881 elementary school building; the first bridge over the Rock River north of town; the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad and depot; the Asa Crook Home; and Wa-Bo-Kie-Shiek, the leader of a Native American village that preceded Prophetstown.
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“The kids not only got to experience painting, but they also got a history lesson,” Thompson said. “They asked a lot of questions, and it’s part of their history. I’m so proud of the work that the kids did, and they were so fun to work with and be around. They were exciting.”
One mural stands out in Thompson’s mind: a train that helped one student get back on track.
The railroad and depot mural features something a little different than the others that are part of a series on Shaw’s MarketPlace. The tracks extend outside of the mural’s frame and down to the bottom of the wall, where they reach a vanishing point — but that wasn’t Thompson’s idea, and he’s quick to give credit where credit is due.
The idea came from Larry Kochevar, a student who was working on the painting one day when something sparked his imagination. Kochevar had struggled in school, Thompson said, but being part of the painting project gave him something to focus on.
“He was a freshman, and he was a problem,” Thompson said. “This kid was in the art club and he liked to draw. I had Larry work with me on the train and the old depot, and he came to me and he said, ‘Mr. Thompson, why don’t we bring those tracks out of the mural and all the way to the ground?’ I said that’s an idea that works great, and if you hit the vanishing point, you can make those tracks move. He worked on that, hit the vanishing point, and those tracks moved. No matter where
you’re standing, they’re looking at you.
“That kid turned around, his grades got better, he graduated, got married and went into the military, and I hear from him quite often. The recognition he got for that, I was so excited for him. That warmed my heart.”
Thompson often hears from students about the impact art has had on their lives, and sometimes they parallel his own upbringing.
Thompson grew up in Prophetstown while his father, also named George, ran the family livestock and transport business. Not everything came easy for young Bud: his father struggled with alcoholism and several of his classmates picked on him because of that.
He found an escape from the taunting in art.
“I did a lot of doodling,” he said, but “I had no idea that I would ever become an artist.”
Many of his drawings were inspired by a war raging across the ocean.
“When I was in the eighth grade, World War II was going on. I used to sit in study hall, and sometimes instead of studying I would draw airplanes, ships, tanks and stuff like that. I was just a kid, and I was excited about the war.”
One day he was caught doodling by his study hall supervisor — but that infraction turned out to be an inspiration for Bud.
“The teacher came up behind me and I didn’t hear her, she tapped me on the shoulder and said. ‘What are you doing?’”
THOMPSON cont’d to page 8
Wall-to-wall
Many of works Thompson has had a hand in depict scenes from local history, like these, (from top): Prophetstown City Hall and the former Tom Robb gas station (both in City Hall); Prophetstown’s July 4, 1897, celebration (on the side of The Stumble Inn); a downtown scene from 1953; the World War I veteran’s honor roll that once sat in the middle of the intersection of Washington Avenue and Third Street; and local artist Don Kirst’s mural of the Smith Brothers and McCormick stores in Tampico, which Thompson helped restore.
Thompson said. “I thought, ‘Oh, geez, I’m in trouble.’ She said, ‘Let me see what you are doing.’ I handed her the paper. She looked at it and said, ‘May I have this?’ ‘Sure.’”
His teacher took it, but not before one more request.
“’Just sign your name,’” he recalled her telling him.
To Thompson’s surprise, he later saw the drawings hanging in the teacher’s lounge. That was a lifechanging moment.
“My attitude before that, because my Dad was a drunk and I had heard so many times, ‘You’re old man is a drunk’ — and I was small and got picked on a lot — after she hung that on the wall of the teachers lounge, I had a number of people come up to me and say how good my drawings were. It changed my whole attitude. I got a better outlook and thought maybe there was something out there for me. And that stuff with the old man being drunk, that didn’t bother me.”
It was during that time that his father’s attitude changed, too. On Oct. 31, 1944, Thompson’s father found Alcoholics Anonymous, and would go on to give up drinking. However, he later developed emphysema and by the late 1940s could no longer run the family business. By that time, Bud had helped out enough to become the “Son” in George Thompson and Son. Bud would eventually take charge of the business and run it for 40 years.
He also found time to make art part of his life. He graduated from Prophetstown High School in 1947, studied art at Augustana College in Rock Island for a year, and moved on to the University of New Mexico on a scholarship that involved studying painting in Taos, New Mexico, the home of famous Modernist artist Georgia O’Keeffe. On July 8, 1948 — a date etched in Thompson’s mind because it was a special one in his artistic development — he showed a few drawings to O’Keeffe. He was in line with other students showing her their paintings.
“I was toward the end and she got to me,” Thompson said. “That lady had eyes of steel. No kidding. She looked at me, didn’t crack a smile, and I handed her my painting, she looked at it, and she looked at me, and she handed it back and said one word: ‘Interesting.’”
As the years rolled by, livestock would play a bigger part of his life as the family business thrived, along with Thompson’s own family. He and his wife, Shirley (Van Damme), celebrated their 73rd anniversary in early March, and the couple has two children, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
His success as a business owner helped him earn respect in the community, and a seat on the Prophetstown school board in the 1960s. When Prophetstown schools merged with Lyndon’s in 1969, Thompson became the first president of the new unit district.
Being the president of the Prophetstown-Lyndon School Board propelled Thompson further in education. In 1978, he was appointed to the Illinois State Board of Education by Gov. Jim Thompson (no relation) and served for 15 years. His work in state government brought him close to Govs. Thompson and Jim Edgar, Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and a host of local politicians. While he had his hands full with that, he still managed to leave room for art when he had free time. He even gave both former governors some of his drawings.
Thompson also found time to serve as president of Prophetstown Manufacturing Inc., a local innovative effort to create jobs during the 1980s, and was the first president of the town’s Main Street program.
In 1982, Thompson presented Reagan with a picture of a double rainbow ending at the president’s birthplace in nearby Tampico. Meeting him was particularly special for Thompson, with the Tampico native’s roots not far from his own. Reagan’s family lived in Tampico when he was born there on Feb. 6, 1911. They lived there again from 1919-20, in the upstairs apartment of the H.C. Pitney Building on Main Street.
Around the time Thompson was helping coordinate Prophetstown’s mural projects, Tampico artist Don Kirst was commissioned to do a mural of Reagan’s life on the side of the Pitney Building. There was just one problem: Kirst had trouble painting faces. He called Thompson for help, a project that still
CODY CUTTER/CCUTTER@SAUKVALLEY.COM
Thompson helped out fellow artist Don Kirst with this mural on the side of the H.C. Pitney Building in Tampico, where a young Ronald Reagan lived with his parents and brother in the early 1900s. Kirst needed help with the faces, so Thompson lent a hand.
holds a special place in his life.
“I thought, ‘Here I am, painting on this wall, and the Reagans lived here and I’m doing a portrait,’” Thompson said. “I had a really neat feeling come over me. This is special.”
THOMPSON cont’d to page 10
son once knew Prophetstown artist Robert Zschiesche, who drew the “Our Folks” and “Harley” comic strips in decades gone by. A framed poem from Zschiesche hangs on the wall of Thompson's office.
Kirst, who died in 2011, also painted a mural in Tampico of the former Smith Brothers and McCormick stores in town, and in 2016, Thompson helped freshen up the faded mural, working with the Tampico Long Range Planning Committee to restore it. While in Tampico, he also found time to paint a silhouette mural of baseball players at the outer concession stand wall at the town’s baseball park.
Thompson also has worked on other murals close to home, including one at the Hooppole Village Hall that depicts the former Hooppole, Yorktown and Tampico railroad; another in Rock Falls behind the former American Red Cross building of famous nurse Clara Barton. His work can also be found in Colorado, as well as Puerto Rico, where he worked on a mural depicting Jesus Christ, done through a work-study program at his church.
Murals aren’t Thompson’s only medium. He’s also worked on set designs for local plays and does ink drawings.
His pride and joy, though, are his hometown murals. He saw much of his city’s history with his own two eyes: trains running through town, attending the old two-story brick school, and hearing first-hand many more of the town’s tales. Through his work, some of those stories live on, brought to life on the buildings that are part of the town’s history and its future.
“Art is the love of my life,” Thompson said. “I just love to paint, and love to draw.” n
In the photos on the facing page,
By Cody Cutter Sauk Valley Mediaor a Morrison couple, old homes are never past their prime — their past is their prime, a time when craftsmanship was the order of the day, before prefab homes were churned out on assembly lines, shipped out and slapped up.
The past is also a place where lessons were left for future generation to discover, people like Andy and Tracy Henson, whose home improvement journey not only opened doors, but refurbished them — and on the other side of those doors? The story of a historical house and the people who called it home: people who balanced books, toyed with business, answered the call, and taught future generations.
HENSONS cont’d to page 14
in Morrison is shown, as it’s looked through the years. At top, with its original front porch; center, without it; and at bottom, a recent photo, with the rebuilt porch. Note also the front door on the right of the house, which was removed and a window put in its place
Learning and appreciating the past “is how you learn and not repeat mistakes of the past,” Tracy said. “You can take some of the good things of the past and [keep them]. Our modern world is so fast, and doing this makes you imagine was life was like at the time.”
In fact, the past is such an important part of their home, that its history earned it a place on the Morrison Historic Preservation Commission’s list of Local Landmarks or Places in 1999, just a year after they bought the place. The house is in the Morrison Historic District, a mostly rectangular area that also includes much the downtown.
Fresh on the heels of their wedding, the couple found something else to fall in love with: a circa-1883 Victorian Italianate at 104 E. North St., near the Whiteside County Courthouse. They bought the home in 1998, and in the 25 years since, they’ve not only built a life there, they’ve rebuilt part of the home, giving it a new lease on life — remodeling, refurbishing, and ultimately, returning it closer its roots, when the house was built on the land of a still young and growing city that would become the county seat, a city that welcomed the high-class hobnobbers and professionals of the time.
One of the first projects Tracy (left) and Andy Henson tackled after buying their home was to give the exterior a facelift. They stripped decades of paint down to the wood and repainted it, lightening and brightening things up. The houses’s former darker gray siding and black trim kind of made it look like a “haunted house,” Tracy said.
“I love the character of them, and I like two-story ones, so I knew I didn’t want a new or a modern house,” Tracy said. “We came to look at it and just fell in love with it the first time we saw it. There was so much character to it. The house has only had four or five sets of owners now. Most things have stayed the same.”
Both Andy and Tracy grew up in older homes, he in Sterling and she in Morrison. Tracy has taught at Morrison’s public schools for 31 years and Andy is a retired Whiteside County sheriff’s deputy. They got married in
July 1998 and picked out the old two-story on East North Street to start their lives together. As with any home its age, it came with a list of things to do, and the longer they lived there, the more they would do.
The two biggest projects were converting an upstairs kitchen back into a bedroom, and returning a porch to its rightful place, but other than that, much of the work has been cosmetic — with a lot of elbow grease to help keep project moving along.
“When we moved in, we just had cosmetic things to do and nothing was really wrong with it,” Tracy said. “We could tell it had been really taken care of and loved for a long time.”
One of the first projects they tackled was exorcising some ghosts of paintings past. The house was dark gray with black window trim when they moved in — “It kind of looked liked a haunted house,” Tracy said — so they picked out a new color scheme and set out to freshen up the exterior. But this wasn’t going to be just a quick scrape and a new coat. With help from Tracy’s father, Steve, who ran a painting business in town, decades of paint were stripped off before it was repainted.
“We stripped all of the paint off of the wood because there were layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of paint,” Tracy said. “We wanted to keep the house historical, so we didn’t want to side it. Andy got a paint shaver and shaved the paint off of the house, and I did all of the sanding.”
After a couple of months, the house was given lighter gray with burgundy trim and cornice brackets, and just in the nick of time, before winter set in.
“The weather was beautiful,” Andy said. “We absolutely lucked out.”
As time went on and their daughters, Emily and Kate, got older, Tracy became more interested in the house’s history — “a natural inclination to want to know more,” she said.
The couple wanted to get to know the people who also called their house a home, so Tracy kicked off some research and immediately found out the approximate construction date and who its first owners were. The deed read “Louisa L. Thatcher,” but no mention was made of her husband. That mystery was solved when Emily and Kate, were roaming around Grove Hill Cemetery one day and recognized Thatcher’s name on a sarcophagus. Next to Louisa Thatcher was her husband, William H. Thatcher.
Further research revealed that Mr. Thatcher was Whiteside County’s treasurer from the late 1860s until shortly before his death in 1909.
The Hensons weren’t the first ones to tackle projects at their house. This news item from Sept. 17, 1935, The Daily Gazette mentioned the Trautwein family’s plans for “extensive improvements” at the house. For the Hensons, one of their bigger projects was rebuilding a porch that had been removed at some point during the house’s history.
“They must have been very wealthy,” Tracy said. “That’s how we figured out who the man’s name was, which led me to figure out he was county treasurer at one time. With little things like that, one thing leads to another.”
Tracy dove into the county census records to learn more about the Thatchers. As she peered at the rows, columns and fancy cursive handwriting of the time, she discovered other people living in the house along with the Thatchers and their daughter: family servants, each with their own story.
“The people who built it had one daughter, and then two other times there was another female listed; when I looked them up, it was their servants,” Tracy said. “One was from Sweden, another was from Ireland. It’s just kind of a mystery to me, and as you find one thing out, it just makes you more curious about other things.”
Ownership passed from the Thatchers to their daughter, Gertrude Tuttle, who rented out the house out while living in New York City. She died in 1935. One of Tuttle’s tenants was Edward “Ted” Rich, who owned the Rich Toy Company in town with his brother, Maurice. Edward, his wife and their four children lived there from 1931 to 1935. The Hensons have some old Rich toys displayed in the home. One of Edward’s daughters, Helen Volckmann, once visited the Hensons at home late in her life and revealed more interesting tidbits and facts about the house.
Ferdinand and Lillian Trautwein acquired the house from Gertrude Tuttle in 1935 and spent 30 years there. Ferdinand established the Morrison Telephone Company in 1915, then living in a house on the Lincoln Highway that would eventually be shared by the business, but the Trautweins didn’t want to double-up their business and home when they moved to the house on East North.
They lived there until Don Miller, and his wife, Eileen, bought it in 1965 that itself would become an interesting sidenote in the home’s history. Years before Tracy would live in the home they bought from the Millers, her path would cross with Don, when she was a student in a class he taught. The Millers’ home isn’t the only place where Tracy followed in Don’s footsteps. She’s also a P.E. teacher at Morrison’s Southside Elementary and swimming coach at the junior high.
The Millers wound up not needing all the home’s space, and rented the upstairs out to students of the then newly opened Institute of Drafting and Technology (now Morrison Tech), converting one of the upstair rooms to a kitchen for their renters. The Hensons have since converted it back to a
At one time, the co-owner of Morrison’s Rich Toy Company rented the Henson house. As a nod to the former tenants, the couple has some of the company’s vintage toys on display, including this Borden’s delivery carriage.
Another big project was putting the porch back in its place.
By the time the Trautweins moved in, the front door and steps up to it had been moved to the side of the house, and the original sideentrance porch on the house’s west side was removed. Where the front door had been was replaced with a window. When people entered the home back then, they were greeted with the front staircase going up, and a few steps going back down. A rear staircase also was often used in decades past, but is now a closet.
The Hensons were fine with the front door setup, but they wanted to rebuild the west porch to its original state. Using an old postcard left behind by the Millers, it gave Andy a blueprint of sorts to recreate what it looked like. Due to the house’s location in the local historic district, plans had to be approved by the district before it could proceed.
Construction of the porch began in 2020, with pandemic downtime giving Andy and a friend ample opportunity to work on the project. Most of the original decorative pieces from the porch were in the loft of the garage, so Andy repaired them and painted them to match the rest of the house. Work wrapped up in 2021, with the lattice around the perimeter being the final piece to be put into place. The most recent work done was the repainting of parts of the house’s rear and east side last summer.
Upstairs, previous owners also converted a doorway between bedrooms into a closet, but there’s still a small door that can be opened to see from one room to the other.
With Emily attending St. Ambrose University and Kate The University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, the Hensons are empty-nesters these days, and fondly recall the days when their daughters ran around the house playing hide-and-seek, but that doesn’t mean they’re not able to find things to keep them busy around the house.
One thing they’ve learned since tackling all the projects in their Morrison makeover is that “one thing leads to another,” Tracy said. “Whenever you go out and do something, it’s not always going to be as easy as you think.”
Though there are always little things here and there to be done when you’re maintaining a 140-year-old house, the Hensons are happy to have had a hand in the handiwork that’s helped give their family a home and preserve a piece of Morrison’s past, and when they sit back and look around at the results of their hard work and dedication, they know they’ve got the best seat in the house. n
or a half-mile stretch in the southeast corner of Whiteside County, motorists traveling north or south on state Route 40 slow down from 55 miles per hour to 40 just before their “whoosh!” meets the ears of a quiet community’s few dozen residents — but that doesn’t mean the people of Deer Grove just let the world pass them by. Grain bins are busy humming, machines crank out gears, and the smell of fried chicken makes a lot of people happy.
And what the village of 38 people lacks in population, it makes up in perseverance. This year marks its 150th anniversary, and much of its longevity can be chalked up to Deer Grove determination. It’s the little city that could, despite setbacks. Though its population has tapered off from its heyday, it’s seen businesses come and grow and others rebuild from devastating disasters, it’s seen a once-closed school gear up for business, and it’s seen residents determined to be a part of Deer Grove’s story. While other communities its size may have folded by now, Deer Grove has soldiered on to its sesquicentennial.
DEER GROVE cont’d to page 20
One important piece the village’s story didn’t survive the test of time, though, and became just an early chapter — albeit, an important one — in the town’s history book. Deer Grove owes its existence to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad line that went east and west (technically eastsoutheast and west-northwest). The line was laid out through the southeast corner of the county in 1871 and crossed the well-travelled Golder Road in the spot where the village currently sits.
Golder Road (later Hoover Road and now state Route 40) was named after Rock Falls farmer Alonzo Golder, who was instrumental in forming the Illinois State Grange in 1872. The road went directly south from Rock Falls — itself established just a few years earlier, in 1867 — to the Whiteside-Bureau county line. The crossing provided a pivot for traffic and commerce coming from the east, from places such as Walnut, Mendota, La Salle-Peru and Streator, to come to Sterling and Rock Falls, and vice-versa. The railroad depot was in operation from the village’s beginning until 1959.
When Deer Grove was just a young buck, things looked a
lot different. The area around it was swampy and early settlers spent a lot of time turning the terrain into tillable farmland. The first of those residents was William Renner, who came to the area from Pennsylvania in 1841 and built a log cabin for his family. Renner lived in the area that would soon become Deer Grove until his death in 1859. A granite stone in Renner’s memory sits on the side of the highway in the middle of the village.
The bucks stopped here, and the does did, too ... Deer Grove got its name from early settlers in the area, who saw a lot of deer in the groves of trees in the area. Today, a pair of the woodland creatures keeps an eye on things in front of the village post office.
When Golder Road became busy enough to warrant the establishment of a post office in 1873, where the road crossed the line, platted lots began to take shape on the northeast side of the railroad crossing along what is today Deer Road. At the time groves of trees dotted the landscape, full of deer, hence the name Deer Grove was born.
Deer Grove would more than triple its initial size in 20 years: The area around what is now Hub Street started to take shape; and Mosher’s Addition, the third section of the village to be built, was named after general store owner John Mosher and went north along the west side of Golder Road.
A small hotel also called the community home around the turn of the 20th century; it was owned by Johnny and Kate Ford, and was on the northwest corner of what is now Hub Street and state Route 40.
Through the years, a number of businesses came to the bustling little burg to set up shop: a barber shop, implement store, tailor, stockyard, doctor’s office, pool hall, two blacksmith shops, a gas station and restaurant. Mosher ran his general store until it burned down in 1916 and John McCormick opened one of his own shortly after; the last store of that kind closed in 1966. Lauren Dir operated
the gas station for many years until his death in 1983.
Today, few businesses remain, but one that’s stuck around has been part of Deer Grove’s history for nearly a century, and today it attracts people from near and far. Perhaps no place in Deer Grove has drawn more people from outside the village limits than The Happy Spot restaurant, which dates back nearly 90 years. The restaurant began in the 1930s and was purchased by Arnie and Betty Johnson in 1967 and became known as Arnie’s Happy Spot. Its signature dish, fried chicken, became the talk of the town, and other towns, too.
Johnson added a ballroom in 1976 that could accommodate 400 people, and it became a site for many gatherings: birthdays, weddings, meetings, auctions, benefits, dances, concerts. Some of the most notable people who have performed at Arnie’s include orchestra leaders Johnny Kaye, Al Pearson and Eddie Howard; and country-western singers Dottie West, Cal Smith, Freddie Hart, the Hager Brothers and Ernest Tubb.
The village celebrated its centennial with a potluck dinner at Arnie’s on Oct. 17, 1973. John Cooney, who served as Village President from 1954 to 1994, donated a 250-pound hog that Johnson roasted for the event that drew more than 100 people. For many years, the hog roast celebration was held each November at the restaurant.
Other than a brief period when a fire sidelined it, a well-known restaurant in Deer Grove has been making fans of fried chicken happy for nearly 90 years. The Happy Spot dates back to the 1930s (shown here in a photo hanging in the restaurant today), becoming known as Arnie’s Happy Spot during Arnie and Betty Johnson’s time owning it. Today, The Happy Spot is owned by Rick and Angie Lance.
operated it until selling to current owners Rick and Angie Lance in April 2018. Just 3 months into the Lances’ ownership, the restaurant and ballroom burned down on July 23 due to an electrical fire. The local institution that would often advertise being located in “beautiful downtown Deer Grove” was gone, but it was far from forgotten.
There was still a spot in their heart for fried chicken and good company, and the people of Deer Grove welcomed back a newly built restaurant just under a year later.
The Happy Spot reopened on June 15, 2019, and the famous fried chicken continues to be served with Arnie’s original recipe — a recipe that Arnie himself once boasted: “If Colonel Sanders had the recipe, he would have made general!”
Larry and Ginny Whitebread bought Arnie’s in 1999 and
Farming has deep roots in Deer Grove, too. The business of grain and feed has been part of its history since the first elevator was built along the railroad track in 1875. The elevator went through several owners, and the additions of a lumber yard and feed mill, before being acquired by the Cady Implement Co. of Yorktown in 1947. The business would suffer a doublepunch in 1974, when a fire destroyed the elevator on April 19, and a tornado destroyed the feed mill on June 21. The double disasters didn’t deter the Cadys, who soon rebuilt. Today, the grain bins are operated by River Valley Cooperative, based in Edelstein.
The final trains to be filled with grain came in 1984 when Burlington Northern closed its line through town after 113 years. These days, only a berm-like right-of-way remains where the track once was.
Deer Grove’s old school sat across the street from the service station where it drew students from town and a few miles beyond for around 75 years. Rural schools were consolidated in 1957 and a larger school was built to the south of the original building. The Hahnaman Consolidated School, named for the township its in, served as its own school district until joining with the Tampico district in 1971. Under Tampico’s administration, the school became a junior high until it closed in 1996. Students from Deer Grove now attend middle and high school in Prophetstown.
For the past quarter-century, the former school building has been occupied by Sterling Gear, which moved to Deer Grove from Morrison. The precision gear manufacturing and machining company makes gears for prototype work, custom fixturing, single parts and short-run production.
Deer Grove is one of the few towns in Illinois with a population of under 50 people to have its own post office and zip code (61243). The post office was housed in various buildings for its first 105 years, until a separate facility was built in 1975.
Village operations and township government also had to
share space with other entities during the latter half of the 20th century. A town hall used to be on the north side of town until the mid-1960s, and a new one wasn’t built until 2001, on Hub Street.
Although it’s not located inside the village proper, Deer Valley Golf Club has attracted golfers from all over the Midwest since it opened in 2000. The course, 2 miles north of the village on Route 40, has 18 holes and a nine-hole executive course. The complex also includes a large banquet facility, and a small subdivision nearby. The course makes the rounds on the Rock River Classic and Lincoln Highway circuits.
Elsewhere, Henrekin Pines beckons couples in the mood for love in a rural, rustic setting. The wedding venue just a couple miles north of the village features a spacious building surround by scenic country views. The modern barn venue, which sits at the foot of a 27-acres of rolling countryside, can hold up to 240 guests, and also is available for private parties and corporate events.
After decades of being governed as part of Hahnaman Township, Deer Grove became an incorporated community in 1937 and a set of officials soon were elected to serve. John McCormick was elected the first village president, and the office is currently held by Al Thompson, first elected in 2007.
At the time of incorporation, Deer Grove’s population was around 100, but the number had dwindled to 44 about 50 years later. Incorporated villages are allowed to have their population displayed on official road signs at the village limits, and drivers have taken note of Deer Grove’s 50 residents — as displayed on the sign — in recent decades, despite its current population of 38 as tallied in the 2020 Census.
But that sign of the changing times doesn’t deter the people who call Deer Grove home. Tucked away in the corner of the county, it may not be the biggest burg in the county, but to the people who live there, this Golder that grew into a Grove is near and Deer to their hearts. n
May we help you ... learn about the past?
Lee and Kathy Hinrichs of Coleta stand behind the counter at their farm museum, where they house thousands of pieces of farm memorabilia and agricutlural artifacts.
here’s a lot more than just two stories in Lee and Kathy Hinrichs’ barn.
Upstairs, downstairs, everywhere you look there are stories about life on the farm, and the Coleta couple is happy to tell them.
Lee and Kathy are the barn-tenders who invite people to take a stroll, or a jog, down memory lane in the two-story barn they built with spare time and spare parts, turning it into a museum that celebrates the history of the people who raised crops and raised families, and the places they called home.
“What we do inside our barn is to try to jog your memory,” Kathy said. “We’ll make it remind you of something your grandma had, or maybe when you were little you remember something — just something to jog a person’s memory. We think we do that quite often, and people enjoy that.”
The couple grew up not far from their current home and have spent years picking and antique hunting, amassing an impressive collection that’s found a home in the barn that they built in 2011. Today, inside those red walls, visitors will find toys, tools and trinkets, signs of simpler times, furniture and farmhouse decor from days gone by, and much more.
Many of the items tell a tale of toil in the fields, when farmers used their hands to plow fields and not push buttons.
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“We think we work hard now, but you just go back years and years ago, and you can’t imagine how hard those people had to work,” Lee said. “We worked hard on the farm, but if we go back to my great-grandpa, I didn’t work as hard as he did. I think that’s why when you look at some of these pictures and look at these people in their 60s and 70s, they look a lot older.”
“The women, too,” Kathy added. “They
didn’t have a microwave.”
The museum’s wood walls all are repurposed from long gone farm buildings — barns, corn cribs, sheds — adding authenticity and a vintage feel to the building. Some parts have come from old buildings both of their parents used to own. Erecting the building was a family affair with the Hinrichs’ children and grandchildren all involved — even if it was just “for the hell of it,” as Lee likes to tell visitors.
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Take a trip back in time
The Hinrichs’ farm museum, at 21738 Pilgrim Road near Coleta, is open by appointment only, with visits best scheduled at least 3 days in advance. Email hnrchs@frontiernet.net or call 815-336-2125 to schedule a visit or for more information.
MUSEUM cont’d from page 26
“We had always talked about building a barn, and so just decided we were going to build one and I had stuff stashed away from auctions,” Lee said. “One day we were working on it, and it came to me that, I’m building this barn for the hell of it.”
The Hinrichs’, who have been married for 52 years, had piled up a collection of stuff for about a decade before they built the barn. Along all of the repurposed wood walls are farm signs, hammers, axes, wrenches, license plates, toy trucks, garden tools — just about anything one would find in on an old farm, or in a farmhouse.
Acquiring the abundance of artifacts was fun, the Hinrichs said, but these days it gets a little harder to add new pieces of the past because of how scarce old barns are becoming along the rural landscape. Red wood barns are giving way to white Morton buildings on many farms, making scavenger hunts a little more of a challenge.
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There’s more than just tools and equipment at the Hinrichs’
— there’s also a display of farmhouse relics from decades gone by, such as toys, games, furniture
