Grandma Arnold and Children

"Grandma" Lora (Johnson) Arnold, Seward Arnold, Seba (Arnold) Linn and Silas Arnold.

--K. Family Photo Album.

Seward Arnold

--Kendrick Family Album.

Seward & Cora Arnold and their daughter, Louise

Seward Arnold, born in 1881 the youngest child of Amos S. Arnold and Lora Ann Johnson Arnold began farming at a very early age when his father was called away to care for his brother, Silas, after his accident. At sixteen, Seward started farming his Aunt Hattie McNeil's farm on his own. He married Cora Yackee and lived on the original Arnold farm north of Roberts. One of the first to practice scientific farming, he obtained and studied data from the University of Illinois about lime, potash, and clover, promoted the use of soybeans and very successfully learned to graft peaches and apples.
An avid baseball player, he pitched for Roberts for many years at a time when most towns had a team and were very competitive, even hiring major league players when they could. He sold war bonds during World War I, worked on the OPA Board (price control) through World War II, and was township road commissioner. After moving to Roberts, he traveled throughout the United States and Canada collecting Indian artifacts, rocks, and other natural phenomena. Some of his collections are in the courthouse at Paxton. At 103 he resides in the Gibson City Hospital Annex and wins regularly at Bingo.
Seward and Cora had one child, Louise, who rode horseback to the same one-room school her dad attended. Her high school was Roberts, then on to the Northwestern University School of Music in Evanston. She received a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Music. After teaching in the school and privately in Chicago Heights, she retired and is living in Roberts.
 

--History of Ford County Illinois. 1984.

Cora (Yackee) Arnold's brother, Ernest

Ernest Yackee (1892 to 1894)is the brother of Cora (Yackee) Arnold.  He was only 2 years old from the info found in FAG.  He was also a twin with brother, Earl Yackee.  This obit states he "died last Saturday."  The date of the article is 4 May 1894; "last Saturday" would have been 28 April 1894. 

 

 

--Gibson City Courier.  4 May 1894.  Page 1.

 

Cora Yackee Arnold's Mother

 

--Roberts Herald.  25 November 1925.

 

Louise Haeussler Yackee was the mother of Cora Yackee.  Cora Yackee married Seward Milton Lobdell Arnold.

The Lake Shore District Part 2

The second part of the Lake Shore District and the Prairie Fire.

 

 

 

 

Trying to locate "History of the Pan Handle" by John R. Lewis. I contacted Derrick Babbs from the Ford County Historical Society.  He has not seen a copy of this publication; he has been looking also. He did note that John R. Lewis settled in Piper City. 

I ordered "Where the Sky Began," by John Madson from the Paxton Library.  A description of life on the prairie before it was plowed under.

And also today at the library picked up "East Central Ilinois.  Exploring the Beginnings," by Elisabeth M. Hanson.  This book has an interesting reference to the Chatsworth Bog, Livingtson County. Never heard of the Chatsworth Bog. 

The Lake Shore District

 

 

Lyman Lake an old one

Evidence points to the lake in section 7 of Lyman Township to be an old one. 

 

 

 

Amos Arnold was the first to farm that area, and once the soil had been plowed and drained, a variety of artifacts of native American activity was found.

 

Some of the items are on display at the Ford County Courthouse courtesy of the Arnold family and Seward Arnold in particular, who for years would bring people into his home in Roberts to view his family's collection of spear points, axe heads, arrow points, scrapers, and hide-working tools.

June Arnold, who lives in Roberts, has some of the axe heads and stone hammers, and said that professors from the University of Illinois dated the tools at about 3,000 years old -- making the activity at the Lyman lake to be happening at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ.

Much of the prairie has no paths or tracks, with miles covered by big bluestem, but in such spots as the Roberts Grove, Oliver's Grove and the Lyman Lake, native Americans would settle.  They would use wood to heat and cook, and they would hunt the animals and birds that used the lake for feeding.  They would also fashion tools from rocks they would find.

Seward Arnold, in an interview in 1980 when he was 99 years old, said that for some time the land closest to where the lake had been was allowed to remain in grasses.  But when he began plowing the grasses, he said that in the first light of morning he could catch glitters in the fresh sod, the debris of chipping stones by Indians for centuries as they labored to make spears and arrows.  The glitter came from the fragments of granite and agate left behind from the chipping.

 

--Paxton Record.  26 August 1998.  Larry Knilands.

Lonesome in Canada

Carlstadt Alta
Dec 28th 1910

Dear Seward.

As I have nothing else to do will write you once more. How
was your corn this year? Did you get any results from that phosphate yet?  The crops throughout Canada were pretty short this year. Hundreds of acres of grain up around Gle??, Strathmore, ?amaka, on the C.P.R. irrigated land that was never cut at all. Wheat they reported before threshing would go twenty bushel to the acre went eight and ten. There was nothing raised around here (Carlstadt) except a little green feed, and some potatoes. Some as nice spuds as you would ever want to see. I didn't raise anything but then it wasn't the ground's fault. But wait till next year I will try my luck at it.  I am getting a long fine this winter so far. A little lonesome sometimes, but is not bad living out here. People living all around here now. A family now living on the west half of four came since the last time I wrote you. Some snow here on the ground most all the time more snow here than over by town.
Quite a few antelope around here. I saw a band not long ago with 35 or 40 in the bunch. The redcoat was out after a man over west for killing one as he thought the other day, but he couldn't prove anything on him. A fifty dollar fine first offense hundred dollars the second offense and so on. A few jackrabbits around here but not many. Mrs. Stevenson who lives 4 miles southeast of here died last week of typhoid fever. Age forty years. Was buried at the place as Stevenson didn't have enough money to ship her to Ontario. A family over west here have Scarlet Fever the three small children. I heard yesterday they lost their little girl aged seven years was buried at the place. We have a post office over west at the store. They commenced carrying mail first of December once a week. You was asking once if there was much scrip located around here I only know of 5 scrips located here within a radius of ten miles. They had quite a scramble at the land office in ?? week before last. There was a piece of land thrown open eight mile west of the hat, two men camped on the steps for two day and nights, it was nearly zero weather in the mornings. They filed when the office opened. There was fifteen or twenty men there and all made a rush for the door and tore it from it's hinges, but one of the fellows who camped so long filed on it. They claim it was worth five thousand dollars, was quarter section but I don't think it worth that much. But how it was there came to be land so close to the hat for homesteading yet I do not know.
The people talk about land getting scarce I see only the other day where they have ten million acres ready for homesteading up in the Peace River district. I was talking with a man this summer who said he had pear and apple trees on his place bearing fruit. He said some valleys up in that country were fine to live in but most places the land was poor, lots of this kind they call Muskeg land without any bottom to it as one might say, and also plenty of mosquitoes in the summer. There was hardly a mosquito around here this last summer it being too dry for them.
I have my shack fixed up so it is warmer than a good many others are out on the prairie. I hauled in two tons and quarter of coal from the mine likely will get another load towards spring. Pretty fair coal this winter.  ??nite a soft coal $2.75 at mine. They sell lots of it all around the country. I have a good little heating stove set up and do not use the cook stove much. The railroad where I was working this fall was the ?egreville - Calgary line of the C.N.R. that goes from ?egrevaille via Camrose and Stettler to Calgary. The last one-hundred and twenty six miles from Stettler was graded this last summer. They are going to lay the steel this winter and have it ready for trains in the spring.
Railroad building is just getting a good start here in Alberta and it won't be long we will have as many roads as Saskatchewan. They have a school house built now in the township north of that one. The land over there was taken up a little sooner over there because right next to C.P.R. irrigation block. And the people thought they would have a railroad sooner then here. Maybe they will a little but if they have a road there it will probably build further.
I see my letter is getting long so will stop and take it over to ? or he is going down to Trays in the morning to get the mail there as it is nearer that the post office.

Clyde Arnold
Carlstadt
Alta Canada

Seward Arnold Discusses the Chatsworth Train Wreck, Oliver's Grove, and Indians

Seward Milton Lobdell Arnold was my Grandfather's Uncle.  He was the youngest child born to Amos and Lora Johnson Arnold. I knew Seward.  He lived in Roberts when I lived in Roberts.  Seward lived to celebrate birthday number 103.

The following is a very interesting article (probably from the Paxton Record) with Uncle Seward reminiscing about his visits to Germanville Township.

SEWARD ARNOLD IS A LINK TO 1883

The odds on finding someone who had experienced life in the Chatsworth area and was still around to tell about it are about a thousand to one, according to the Census Bureau statistics.
But Seward Arnold of Roberts, who was born on May 17, 1881, remembers much about the area in the late 19th century -- and likes to talk about these times.
"Chatsworth was considered to be an important commercial center when I was a boy," Arnold said. "At that time, the area had few roads, so we just followed traces and took horses pretty much as the crow flew.
"My father made plenty of trips to Fairbury to haul coal, and the family also shopped in Chatsworth. I can't remember 1883 specifically, but I went everywhere in the wagon from the time I was an infant, so I'm sure I was in Chatsworth in 1883.
"I can remember playing baseball on the diamond southeast of town in 1888 when I was seven. I really liked to pitch, and I used to travel around to pitch for several teams. In 1888, I can recall a bright, warm afternoon when I played on the Chatsworth diamond.
Arnold can remember another incident a year earlier than that - the Chatsworth train wreck that made the community an unwilling paragraph in the history books.
"We had a six-passenger buggy then, and we drove out to the site as soon as we heard about it.
"The cars were piled up more than twenty feet high in the ditch, with lumber scattered all over. Women were standing around crying, and men had long poles to pry at the cars and at one of the engines lying beside the tracks.
"While we were there, the engine got moved enough so that the crews could remove three bodies that had been caught underneath.
"I didn't take away any relics of the wreck, but people were cutting off pieces of things and selling them already that day.
"Mostly I remember the crush of people, so many of them crying, and pieces of the cars scattered all over. I was just six at that time, but I never forget how awful it was."
Arnold plowed the last 30 acres of prairie sod known to be in the territory, about two miles southwest of Roberts. The field had five buffalo wallows in it. I took two horses and a small plow, and I had a file to keep the plow sharp. It took more than a week to get it turned over.
"Prairie sod had what we called 'redroot' all through it. Redroot grew big as our arm and was tough. It would throw a walking plow right out of the ground.
While it was not uncommon for a boy to be given farm chores in these days, Arnold did a lot of growing up at the age of 13.
"I had a brother who got TB in 1894, and Dad took him to New Mexico. I ran the place, but then Dad had always thought that kids had to learn on their own. I cared for 565 acres and had three hired men.
"I hauled limestone for the foundations on some of the buildings - and I hauled lumber and the other things we needed in order to keep up the operation."
While on these travels, Arnold went past Oliver's Grove many times before 1900, and occasionally shot ducks at the pond.
"That grove had many of the best hardwoods in the area. People used to think up ways to steal some of the timber.
"Revilo Oliver told me that people were always coming into the area for trees - and they didn't want to pay for them.
Arnold also remembers that horses sometimes got away from their rightful owners in those days. "One man said that he hoped he would be turned into a snake after he died so that he could come back and bite everybody who had stolen things from him," Arnold said.
Arnold remembers the site of a large Indian council house near Turtle Pond, and says that almost a hundred tents were pitched there at one time when the Indians gathered.
"By my time, of course, the Indians been moved to Missouri and Iowa, but many of the log huts were still around down by the pond and near Germanville.
"The bogs just southwest of Turtle Pond were scary. Gas came up from fissures in the ground, and the sod shook like jelly when you bounced around.
One favorite story of the area is that two hunters decided to stop for the night in the bog area, and told each other about the Indian curses put on the Turtle Pond territory as they built a fire. According to the legend, the heat caught the escaping bog gas afire - with the hunters running hard to get away from the flames zipping after them along the ground.
Indeed, the entire area south of Chatsworth is said to be loaded with curses put on by Indians. The Oliver's Grove area was a good place for Indians, what with the water, wood, and wildlife.
After General William Henry Harrison swept most of the Indians out of eastern Indiana in 1807, some of them found their way to the Chatsworth territory - and weren't too happy when white folks began moving in after 1820.
So the Indians began casting jinxes all over, making an 'X' on any spot thought to be sacred or for Indians only. On 'X' was a bad sign, and some spots around Turtle Pond had as many as four 'X' marks as warnings.
By 1832, Indians had supposedly built log formations, stone piles, and signs to ward off spirits and bad people.
The Indians were treatied away from Turtle Pond - although it is said that some of the tribal leaders came back to visit as late as 1845.
It is also said that the Indians buried some important tribal relics in the Turtle Pond area, and that the displaced natives snuck back to Chatsworth years later and destroyed the signs of the sacred burial ground, the worship area, and the clues to the secret buried materials that whites weren't supposed to see.
Arnold can't attest to much of this, because he wasn't there. But he recalls the huts, and he can still remember bits of relics that were scattered around.
At any rate, the Turtle Pond area is filled with bogs, woods, legends, and mysteries - many of which will always remain so.