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CHURCH 7 LUPITED NETKOPISY
GIFFORD CENTEN
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ord Centennial
1975
1875
We Built Depot July-19-20 t A Community With Unity
ILLINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY
N51-3
The
Centennial
Book
Gifford, Ilinois 1875 -1975
PRINTED BY BLUEGRASS PRINTING, POTOMAC, ILLINOIS
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Introduction
Oh, the wonderful, terrible, heroic, cowardly, honest, thieving, kindly, selfish, eager, lazy, can- tankerous, cooperative people whose efforts created the Village of Gifford and kept it going for a hun- dred years-
And all those men and women-equally mixed in their good and bad qualities-who will see it through the next century and prepare for the Bi- Centennial Celebration in 2075.
Lord, have mercy on all of us.
This volume has been hastily prepared, and by amateurs. It does not claim to present the whole story of Gifford, and your favorite incident or char- acter may have been omitted. It will surely contain errors-some of our own and some found in our source materials-and these are regretted. The prepa- ration of this book has shown the need for establish- ing some kind of Historical Society, or a Village Historian perhaps, to gather and preserve all possible accounts of our past and to record the events of our second century as they occur. Such action is urged upon the present Village Board.
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Dedication
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GERTRUDE WOOLDRIDGE BARNES
There was much excitement in the first house south of the Gifford School on February 27, 1893, when a 12-pound daughter, Gertrude Irene, was born to William Alonzo and Hattie Maria (Morse) Wooldridge. Members of the Wooldridge and Morse families have lived in the Gifford area since around 1866-coming to Illinois from New York State. Their ancestors were among the Puritans. who came from England and settled in the New England states, and later pioneered in the State of New York. Ger- trude's father had been a monument cutter by trade in New York. After coming to the Gifford area, he was an employee of the J. M. Morse Drug Store, where he became a watch repairman. Will Wool- dridge was postmaster of Gifford for 18 years-part of which time the jewelry, drug store and Post Office were combined.
Gertrude came by her musical abilities natural- ly as her family were all interested in music and art.
At a very early age, Gertrude played the big bass "fiddle" in the family string orchestra. When she was about ten years old, she recalls playing the pump organ at school while the children marched to classes. A cousin of her mother, Samuel F. B. Morse, was a well-known portrait painter and the inventor of many electric devices. The Morse Code was named in his honor. Gertrude's cousin, Frank Wooldridge of Gifford, played with the John Phillip Sousa Band before his death at Great Lakes, during the 'flu epidemic of World War I.
Since she had two older brothers (Gene and Fay) and her parents ran the Post Office and drug store, Gertrude and her dog "Rufus" were very familiar sights on the streets of Gifford. She admits she was a "tom boy" and probably a "spoiled little brat." As she lived next door to the school, Ger- trude used to run home at recess and "raid the cookie jar" for her friends. The year she graduated
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from Gifford High School, she was the only mem- ber of the graduating class. During the "Womens' Suffrage Movement," she joined the bunting-covered caravan that toured Champaign County, urging "the vote" for women. In those days, after the "turn of the century," Gifford was one of the larger towns in Champaign County, and had an opera house, chautauqua shows, a community orchestra and even a visit from the famed evangelist Billy Sunday.
The Morse and Wooldridge families were among the founders of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in 1868 (later known as the Gifford Baptist Church). Gertrude has always been an active member of the church. At the age of 19, she was appointed as Sun- day School superintendent-a position which she held for many years. She also taught Sunday School and Bible School, played the piano for Sunday School, directed and sang in the choir, and for many decades has furnished or arranged the flowers each Sunday. Hattie Wooldridge was organist of the Bap- tist Church from the time they bought their first organ in the late 1800's. Since her mother's death in 1924, Gertrude has been the regular church organist. She has never accepted any remuneration for her 51 years as organist. Since she was a small girl, her beautiful voice has been very familiar to the people of the area, as she has sung and played for weddings, funerals, church and school events for generations.
On June 1, 1921, she was united in marriage to Roy Stanley Barnes (the son of James Simmons and Dora Belle Lenox Barnes) in Gifford. The Lenox and Barnes families had also been early pioneers in this area-coming to Illinois from Ohio in the 1860's, when this area was mostly prairie.
Roy was postmaster and then RFD mail carrier out of Gifford from 1908 until his retirement in 1960. During World War II when his sub-carrier was in the Army, Gertrude drove the 40-mile mail route as the substitute carrier. Roy and Gertrude Barnes were the parents of two children, Ruth Ann (Zook) and William James Barnes. They farmed 80 acres of land just west of Gifford on Route 136 for over 20
years, where they had a large herd of Guernsey dairy cattle. Gertrude sold eggs, cream, home-made butter and cottage cheese. In 1947, they sold the farm and moved back into Gifford. One of the many moments of pride in her life was the election of Roy as Mayor of Gifford in the 1960's. During his ad- ministration, Gifford got its present water system.
Gertrude is a charter member of Woman's Club, WSCS and World Wide Guild, and has served as President of each organization several times. Since Roy was a veteran of World War I, they were both active members of Rantoul American Legion Post 287 for over 50 years. She is a past president of Auxiliary and for many years was 19th District rehabilitation chairman. In the last 25 years, she has compiled over 5,000 hours as a "volunteer" at the Danville Veterans' Administration Hospital. For several years, she was on the Board of Directors of the Gifford State Bank, which was founded as the Exchange Bank in 1885 by her grandfather, James Madison Morse.
One of her life's unfulfilled desires was to be a registered nurse. Maybe that is why she has devoted so much of her life to the sick, elderly and bereaved. She has been on the Champaign County Board of Directors of Red Cross, Heart Association and Can- cer Society, and goes weekly, with a group of ladies of the Lutheran Church, to sing at several Cham- paign County nursing homes. Nearly every week day, Gertrude can be found at Country Health, helping in the craft shop or at the piano.
After 53 years of married life, Mr. Barnes passed away on September 14, 1974. Gertrude con- tinues her very active life as a volunteer at Country Health and the Danville VA, participates in com- munity and family activities and as Methodist Church organist.
With this dedication, the Gifford community, at this time of its 100th birthday, pays tribute to one of its well-loved senior citizens, Gertrude Irene (Wooldridge) Barnes, for her 82 years of unselfish giving to her home town.
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Mr. & Mrs. Pioneer
The Gifford Centennial's Mr. and Mrs. Pioneer are representa- tive of the wonderful people who make Gifford their home. Neither of them lived here as a child, but each chose the Gifford commu- nity in which to start married life and to raise a family. As much as were the early settlers, Mr. and Mrs. Pioneer are great assets to the community they chose to call "home."
Mr. Pioneer - Howard Varner
Howard Varner has owned and operated a barber shop in Gifford for 47 years-nearly half of the century of progress we are commemorating. He was born in Wayne County, Illinois, on December 25, 1899. His first trip to the central Illinois area was in 1915. Later travels took him to Pueblo, Colo- rado, where he began barbering in August of 1920. In 1928 he and his wife, Maude, settled in Gifford and Howard opened his own barber shop. At that time haircuts were 35¢ and a shave was 15¢. In the
accompanying picture, Howard is preparing to cut the hair of Danny Reynolds-the fifth generation of the Reynolds family whom he has served.
During the depression years Howard served the community as Justice of the Peace. He is a member of the United Methodist Church, of the Gifford Lions Club, and of the Masonic Lodge. He has en- joyed bowling for years and still bowls once a week on the Gifford State Bank team. Howard and Maude have been married for 52 years. They have one son, James, and four grandchildren.
Howard Varner, Mr. Pioneer, and Danny Reynolds
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Sophia Grimm Roessler, Mrs. Pioneer
Mrs. Pioneer - Sophia Roessler
Sophia Grimm was born on October 17, 1890, in Bischtroff, Germany, and came to central Illinois in 1903. She was married to Carl Roessler in Octo- ber of 1912 and they lived west of Rantoul for several years. In March of 1924 she and Carl moved to a farm just east of Gifford, and there they com- pleted the rearing of their seven children. They re- tired from farming and moved into Gifford in 1924. Carl passed away in 1961.
Mrs. Roessler is a member of St. Paul's Luther- an Church and she is a charter member of the Women's Missionary Society (now called American Lutheran Church Women). She taught Sunday School for 38 years and she taught in Vacation Bible School for 25 years. She was a member of the Gif- ford Home Bureau and she is still a member of the Penfield-Gifford American Legion Auxiliary.
Mrs. Roessler has 21 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren.
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Werner William Roessler - 1913 - 1973
Werner was the first of seven children born to Carl Roessler and his wife, the former Sophia Grimm. He was born on August 5, 1913, near Dewey, Illinois. While he was still an infant his family moved to a farm where the Bethany Park Christian Church now stands at Rantoul. As a boy he attended what is now known as the Myna Thomp- son School, but it was then called the Frederick Street School. At age 17 he moved with his family to a farm outside Gifford.
Werner was married on May 18, 1935, to Miss Marie Aden and the new couple lived on the farm now occupied by the Don Osterburs. Eight children were born in their family-Leona, Kenneth, Beverly, Lawrence, Bernice, Karen, Dean, and Don-and there are at the present time eleven grandchildren.
The Werner Roesslers moved into Gifford in 1948 when Werner established the Roessler Slaugh- ter Plant at the south edge of town. In the same year he assumed management of the Gifford Locker Plant. He later came to own the Locker Plant and ran it until his death in 1973.
Werner was an almost life-long member of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Gifford and he served the church in many capacities. He was a member of the Senior Choir for 42 years. He was a member of the Lutheran Brotherhood and of the Church Coun- cil, and at the time of his death he was a member of the Evangelism Committee, of the Board of Luther- an Homes at Muscatine, Iowa, and of the Cham- paign-Urbana Camp of Gideon International.
Werner was an enthusiastic and active member of the Gifford community. He was a charter mem- ber of the Gifford Lions Club, and of Gifford's volunteer Fire Department (the Gifford Fire Pro- tection District). He served as Fire Chief for years. For fifteen years he was Scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts, first for Troop 45 and then for Troop 27, and for an additional ten years he served Scouting as institutional representative and in other capacities. Werner was one of the organizers of the Gifford German Fall Festival and was serving as its treasurer at the time of his death, March 16, 1973.
In Memoriam The Roessler Family
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In The Beginning
Well, "in the beginning" our little area shared with the rest of the Earth in its creation, however that creation was accomplished. Perhaps it was all done in six hectic days with God shoving the hills, valleys, plains and rivers into place and populating them with birds, beasts, fish-and men. When He stepped back to admire His work on that first Saturday evening, He looked out upon things all in place, essentially as they are now.
Geologists and other scientists tell us that the creation was a long, slow process involving hundreds of thousands of years. They say that our area was once submerged for centuries under the ocean and they point to the 20-foot layer of limestone under the ground (at least as near as Danville) as proof. They tell us that in other centuries our area was tropical-covered with lush, dense vegetation and they say that deposits of coal and oil in Illinois prove that. They say that our area was at the edge of a vast glacier in some distant ice age and they explain that the very high ground on which we stand is the eroded remnant of a great ridge of soil and rock which the glacier had pushed ahead of it from the North. Oh yes, and when that glacier melted-the scientists sav-the old Middlefork River ran a hundred times wider and deeper than it does now, receding at last to leave the high banks which more or less parallel the present river at a distance of several rods. If all these things really happened it must have been quite a show. Wish I could have been there to see it.
Whatever the creation process, centuries of time passed with no men in this area. It fascinates me to consider how the Winter winds howled across the land, the Spring flowers bloomed and the Autumn leaves fell with no one here to know it. Seedlings grew into giant trees-the trees fell, rotted and nurtured other seedlings-with no one to wit- ness it but the prairie chickens and the chipmunks.
So much for the "beginning." Men did finally appear in this location-Indians. As with the crea- tion, the origin and history of the Indians is largely a matter for speculation. But the Indians were here and our farmers still find an occasional arrowhead in the fields. And to rub the dirt off an arrowhead with your thumb almost impels you to wonder about the man who chipped it out of flint and shot it, probably at some small animal. What did he look like? How tall was he? What kind of a life did he live, and how long ago? In this area they probably lived along the Middlefork River. They were never much as farmers and they probably roamed across our fields only in search of game.
The very first white men in Illinois were the French explorers-LaSalle, Joliet, and Marquette in the late 1600's. They came up the Mississippi and
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Illinois Rivers and across to Lake Michigan but it is doubtful thev ever entered our locale. Their efforts did mean, though, that for a time our homesite was part of the French colony of Louisiana. When the British took over the area by the Treaty of Paris, "our town" became part of the colony of Virginia. Having lain for centuries under no flag, our fields have since belonged under four flags-the flag (or whatever} of the Indians and the flags of France, England, and the United States. So you see, we've been around.
By the late 1700's, migrants, mostly from Vir- ginia, reached Illinois and the inexorable pressure upon the Indians began. Illinois became a state in 1818 and as the numbers of white settlers increased the Indians were more and more either killed or driven off their native grounds. The matter came to
a cruel climax and the Indians were effectively eliminated from the new state with the defeat of the great Sauk Indian Chief, Black Hawk.
So far as is recorded, the first settler in Com- promise Township was Isaac Moore, who settled in "Buck Grove," just northeast of Penfield, in 1830.1 He appears to have been followed by other settlers
as follows: Robert Wyatt in 1834, a man named Bruffet in 1835,2 Caleb Evertson in 1842, William Prentice and John McFarland in 1853, Joseph Mc- Cormick in 1856, Hamilton Fairchild and Frank White in 1858, John Lester in 1859, and Jeremiah Butz in 1860. The pace rapidly increased, however, and the "History of Champaign County" lists nearly a hundred men-presumably with their families-in Compromise Township by 1870.3 The men listed on Sections 1 and 2 where Gifford now stands were: C. H. Willard, Alexander Craigmile, George A. Jack- son, J. L. Buxton, F. J. L. Newburn, T. P. Barnes, H. M. Spencer, J. J. Brickey, "and two Swedes by the name of Lindeleaf."1
Editor's Note: The system by which sections of land are numbered and laid out in "townships" has no relationship to the political Townships which levy taxes and elect officials. The political Com- promise Township includes numbered sections from Ranges 10 and 11 East and 14 West, all in Town- ship 21 North. Thus the identification of sections gets a little tedious. If you can't find Grandpa's farm in this, well .
1 From "The History of Champaign County" published in 1878.
2 The story is that Mr. Bruffett came from Chio and bought part of the property held by Isaac Moore. He set out to find a good place to build a house and could not find one to his liking. The more he looked, the less he liked what he saw, so he turned his horses Eastward and went back to Ohio without ever unloading his wagons.
3 In addition to those already named, the following men are indicated as present in Compromise Township in 1870, on the sections indicated:
TWP 21N Range 14W Section 8-Edward and Edwin Fore- man, Section 9-R. Crawford, Section 16-Christian Wolf, Section 17-Henry C. Bear, Section 18-N. B. Odell, Section 19-E. Dickerson, Section 10-E. S. Obenchain, B. J. Gifford, Section 28-A. S. Houghtaylen, M. Jenkins, E. R. Michener, Section 29-L. Nabecker, A. J. Clifton, Job Clifton, M. Schwartz, Section 30-Joseph Ambler, T. Y. Thompson, John Hannessey, Section 31-J. H. Ellis, J. Horton, Section
32-Charles Haines, Section 33-W. J. Booker, R. M. Eye- stone, M. Jenkins, T. D. Cundiff.
TWP 21N Range 10E Section 3-John L. Lester, James Cambers, Section 4-Brown Matthewson, B. Suffield, Section 9-Frank Boon, Section 10-T. P. Barnes, J. H. Tilghman, T. S. McMasters, E. Buck, Section 12-J. M. Morse, Hiram Lennox, J. W. Dillsworth, Wm. H. Smith, William Stewart, James Pierce, J. Peoplow, Section 13-J. C. Shalton, A. Stan- ley, Section 14-Charles F. Guyer, A. Rutherford, M. Wise- garver, J. M. Morse, Section 15-Charles F. Guyer, Section 16-M. Dooling, D. Barry, L. Martin, A. Miller, Section 21- ? Skillman, John B. Perry, Section 22-J. Gruising, Phillip Mutter, Section 24-G. E. Cook, C. Wright, T. T. Wright, J. M. Wright, J. Despain, Section 26-Alexander Wilson, R. Knudson, Section 27-J. Shaw, N. Johnson, H. Gerbers, Section 28-T. Y. Thompson, William Niskch, H. Loschen, G. Dennerlein, Section 33-S. Willcox, Section 34-J. Buhr, Wm. Flesner, E. Henrys, Section 35-Mrs. A. Price, Section 36-Wm. Raber, Demas Judd, O. P. Ice, F. Owenson.
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THE VILLAGE OF GIFFORD WITH PORTIONS OF HARWOOD, KERR AND COMPROMISE TOWNSHIPS SURROUNDING
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Benjamin Gifford
Benjamin Gifford was a promoter, a developer, a planner and an organizer. He was a man of intense drive and ambition, a man quick to see opportuni- ties where other men failed to see them. While our town bears his name, the founding of Gifford, Illi- nois, was no big thing in his life.
Mr. Gifford was born near Plano, Illinois, in 1840. He attended "seminaries" in Mt. Morris and Aurora, Illinois, briefly and began his professional career by teaching school at Yorkville, Illinois. He served under General Grant in the Civil War. He was wounded twice at Vicksburg and was promoted to Lieutenant for bravery. At the end of his three-year enlistment he returned home, raised a company of man and returned to the war. In November of 1865 he was married to Miss Etta Martindale and in 1868 he moved to Rantoul and established himself as a lawyer. His only child, a son, died in infancy.
According to the obituary prepared by his sister at the time of his death, Mr. Gifford nego- tiated the purchase of 80 acres of land when he was only 11 years old and his father stopped the deal,
not because the boy was too young or unwise but "because the tract was a mile and a half from tim- ber." The young Ben Gifford noticed the different heights of corn planted at the same time and figured out that they resulted from differences in the quality of the soil when he was 12 years old.
Still quoting his sister, by 1884 Mr. Gifford had successfully drained 7,500 acres of land in Cham- paign County with a system of 30 miles of ditches. He turned next to the "Vermillion swamps" in Ford County with equal success. In 1891 he began buy- ing swamp land in Lake and Jasper Counties in Indiana and at one time owned 36,000 acres which he had made productive "with a system of 75 miles of broad dredge ditches."
In his spare time, so to speak, he built rail- roads. In 1873 he and others secured a charter from the State to build a line from Havana, Illinois, to a point north of Danville on the present C. and E. I. They also arranged in Indiana to extend the line to Lebanon. By January of 1876 his railroad was operating from Alvin to Fisher and by 1879 it was
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BENJAMIN F. GIFFORD
running scheduled freight and passenger trains daily from Leroy, Illinois, to West Lebanon, Indiana. Its shops and offices were in Rantoul.
The Havana, Rantoul and Eastern Railroad- as it was called-did a bustling business in its early days and was of great importance in the develop- ment of farmland and villages along its right of way. But it never had anything but trouble financially. It was a narrow gauge train with tracks only three feet wide, and every item of freight had to be un- loaded and transferred to other cars before it could be received from or shipped on a standard guage road like the Illinois Central-its primary connection. The H. R. & E. defaulted on its bonds and was sold at auction to the Harriman-Hill interests of New York in the early 1880's. The Illinois Central took control of the H. R. & E. in 1887 and rebuilt the tracks to standard guage. The wide tracks were laid outside the narrow tracks. For a time both big trains and little trains operated on the line, but the little
engines and box cars were soon disposed of. A lot of them were used by local farmers as storage bins and a few of them were used as living quarters. The "History of Rantoul" (1951) says that at one time there was over a mile of these little box cars parked on a siding east of Rantoul.
Both freight and passenger trains ran daily until 1933. By that time the automobiles and trucks had so far undercut the railroads that the Illinois Central got permission from the State Commerce Commission to drop the passenger service. It was required, however, to provide intermittent freight service and still does so.
When freight came to town by train it provided a job for a "drayman." He would meet the trains with his horses and wagon, load up the freight and deliver it to the merchants and others for whom it was intended. But the trucks did away with the "drayman's" job, too. It is hard to imagine now that there was a time when the way to go to Urbana was to catch the H. R. & E. to Rantoul, change over to the Illinois Central and ride to Urbana. But how else? Even with a good horse and buggy, the trip to Urbana took three or four hours-one way.
But to get back to Mr. Gifford. His plans for the railroad and his and Mr. Bullock's plan for the original Town of Gifford were developed simultan- eously, apparently, for the plat for the Original Town provides right of way for the railroad. He knew by April of 1873 that he was going to build a railroad, and the plat for the town was recorded on November 12, 1875. Along with Mr. Gifford's suc- cess in Indiana, he was for a time part owner of the Cleveland and Marietta Railroad in Ohio. After about 1900 he organized and built a line called the Chicago and Wabash Valley Railroad in Indiana, largely to serve the thriving farm area which he had reclaimed from the swamps of Jasper County.
Mr. Gifford died in March of 1913 following a stroke. Funeral services were held in Rensselaer, Indiana, where he had been living and in Kankakee, Illinois, where he is buried.
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Some of Our Pioneer Families
No attempt is made in these pages to present backgrounds on all of our ancestral families. These are simply stories which have been brought to our attention concerning families which have been in the community for a hundred years or so-or who were real pioneers in the area. Some of the accounts are re-writes of sketches found in various histories of Champaign County-published in 1878, 1887, 1905 and 1918. Others have been prepared from information submitted by the families themselves.
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