History
T. P. Garfield was a surveyor that purchased a 440 acres (180 ha) lot west of the Fox River in 1841. He farmed corn, wheat, hay, oats, livestock, and dairy. He also operated one building as a tavern to serve guests traveling between Chicago and the Rock River Valley. A westbound stagecoach and mail coach routinely passed the tavern at 4 P.M., and the tavern provided an overnight resting spot for travelers. The Garfield family charged each traveler 37 and a half cents to stay the night, and as many as 64 guests would use the facilities at once. The Garfield farm also became a popular local meeting place, holding monthly dances on Saturdays on the second floor of the tavern. Live music was hired for these events, which attracted as many as 100 couples at once.
Eventually, the farm focused on raising cattle and growing grain products. Elva Ruth Garfield donated the farm in 1978 to the local park district to become a museum. Many furnishings from the tavern were conserved starting in 1901. The Garfield Farm and Tavern received recognition by the United States Department of the Interior as a Historic Place on June 23, 1978.
Read more about this topic: Garfield Farm And Inn Museum
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)