|
As part of an Illinois History class project, I had to interview someone and write a story about a person, place or event in Illinois' history connected with the interviewee. This is the first draft of my story, and I'd appreciate your input. Thanks! :)
**************************************************************************
TAMAROA, IL -- Sometime after construction of the B.G. Roots home concluded in 1856, the lovely 16-room mansion was described in the U.S. Biographical Dictionary as "one of the most stately, tasteful and costly mansions ever built in the state of Illinois."
Today, 148 years after the famous abolitionist, lawyer, farmer and educator moved his family into the home, it remains a special place, a place that will find a new owner at 10 a.m Saturday.
The property is steeped in history and has been designated an official stop along the national Underground Railroad.
It was the third home for Roots in Illinois, and at each, he established a Locust Hill Academy, dubbed the first institution of higher learning in the state. Gen. John A. Logan attended school there for one year prior to entering university.
Roots also founded the graded-school system in the United States, beginning in the East and continuing his efforts in both Illinois and laterArkansas, said Jean Ibendahl, Roots' great-great-granddaughter.
Mrs. Ibendahl and husband Calvin have owned the property for many years, receiving it and 680 acres in 1958 as a wedding present from her grandparents. Both she and her husband are history buffs and fell in love with the home and its historic past. Jean scoured the area and filled the home with period furnishings in addition to those that actually belonged to Roots.
She's spent many years doing genealogical research and learning as much as possible about the man who built the Kimzey Road mansion with six bedrooms, two full baths, a library, a pair of Tiffany chandeliers, sunroom, two walnut staircases, beautiful oaken woodwork and many other distinctive features.
At some point, many of the fireplaces were removed and converted into 16 closets, although two large fireplaces remain, one in the library and one in the master bedroom. The four acres surrounding the home are home to 59 varieties of native trees, including four cherry trees now loaded with fruit. The 40-foot-long living room covers the entire south side of the home, which was built with walnut and tulip poplar, neither of which are subject to termite damage.
The two-story structure has a full-size attic and there's still a ladder there leading to a trap door in the roof where people could go to keep a lookout on the widow's walk in the days when slaves were hidden in the home.
"Everything is just like it was back then," Jean said. "You can see for miles around up there."
Walking through the home, one can almost imagine life as it was in the early days of Illinois. Roots once owned 1,600 acres and had a team of horses and a hired hand for each 40 acres, Ibendahl said. He was a beloved man in the area and she's amassed many tales about the man who helped many hundreds of slaves attain their freedom in Canada.
Roots was also an Illinois Central Railroad surveyor and he laid out the Centralia-to-Carbondale route with a curve so it would pass through his property, which was already on the Shawneetown to St. Louis Trail.
The train thus stopped right at the Roots home and one day when Roots alighted from the train he heard the rattle of chains and quickly reboarded the train, where he found a man named Jim Grey in chains, Ibendahl said. The slave was a free man but had been captured by slavecatchers. Roots risked his own life and a sizeable fortune to fight the legal battle that he ultimately won to help Jim Grey remain a free man.
Roots was also an attorney and a passionate educator. The four-room Roots School he founded in 1858 has been relocated to the Ibendahl's farm, too. The school and a one-room log cabin the family lived in while the mansion was built will be sold along with the home and four acres this weekend.
Mrs. Ibendahl said age and poor health have led her and her husband to an assisted living arrangement in Carbondale because the Tamaroa property is now "just too big and too much for a couple pushing 90".
They gave the surrounding farm acreage to Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 1984 in an annuity and the university has since sold the ground with the proceeds being used by the university to for agricultural scholarships, she said. Her grandfather would have been pleased, she thinks, noting that he introduced many modern farming techniques to the region and lobbied hard for the creation of the University of Illinois, a land-grant college.
Efforts to sell the home through a real estate agent have been unsuccessful, Mrs. Ibendahl said, forcing them to sell it in an auction. As she looks wistfully about the home, grounds, schoolhouse and log cabin, Jean Ibendahl can't help but hope that when the auctioneer's call announces a sale, it will signal not the end of an era, but the beginning of new history built on the old. "I hope whoever buys it loves history, too, and keeps the place as it is."
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
