Lake Shore School

I got these images last week from cousin Gene Arnold.  The Lake Shore School was located northwest of Roberts, and four of my Grandpa, Ernest Arnold's, brothers are listed on the student page. 

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.