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:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)