Garfield Farm Museum will be host to an afternoon session on how railroads impacted the development and growth of northeastern Illinois into what we know today, at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 13 at Garfield Farm Museum 3N016 Garfield Road, Campton Hills. Kenneth Carlson will discuss how Kane County contributed to the growth and development of Chicago and the impact of the region on the national and global scene.
Carlson is a volunteer at the Spring Valley Heritage Farm in Schaumburg. He grew up in a farm town and his grandfather, father, and uncle, worked on the railroads. Carlson is a history enthusiast, a musician, and a model railroader. He is a member of the National Model Railroad Society and the British Train Society of Illinois. He has been an avid photographer of railroads since 1958 and has been interested in how the growth of the railroads changed the early pioneer farms. He and his wife are helping to organize the history of Hanover Park, southeast of Elgin.
William Ogden was instrumental in having a railroad built through LaFox, west of Geneva, on the way to Freeport in the early 1850s. Carlson will talk about how the farms benefited from the new technologies of the 1850s.
Early settlers banked on the growing agricultural commodity, wheat, which had numerous applications in local, national. and international growth, food stuffs, and international sustenance by the 1850s. Northeastern Illinois was instrumental with its fertile soil and its location to the Great Lakes and other transportation networks that boosted the economy and its area on to the national and international scene. There is a $6 donation for the talk. Reservations are preferred and can be made by contacting the Museum at (630) 584-8485 or info@garfieldfarm.org.
Garfield Farm Museum is five miles west of Geneva, off of Illinois Route 38 on Garfield Road. Garfield Farm is a former historically-intact 1840s Illinois prairie farmstead and teamster inn that is being restored as a working 1840s farm.
—Garfield Farm Museum