As a member of Ancestry.com, I get periodic “hints” about ancestors. Not long ago, the hint was that in the 1930 U.S. Census of Wheatland Township, which borders Oswego Township to the east, my grandfather reported he owned a radio.
Why the U.S. Census Bureau asked whether residents owned radios piqued my interest. Radios not only provided entertainment in that pre-internet era, but also were literally instant windows to the world’s news.
Farmers relied on morning, noon, and evening crop and weather reports. Businesses relied on economic and weather reports. And other citizens depended on radio to supplement newspaper reports on everything from local school news to local, state, and national politics.
That helped enhance maintaining the informed citizenry envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Democracy simply can’t function with an uninformed citizenry and that new radio technology was had become for spreading the news.
It also briefly struck me that my grandparents reported owning a radio at a time before electricity had reached their farming community. But then I remembered they’d had a radio for several years before 1930 that didn’t need to be plugged in.
Their Neutrodyne 500 5-tube table model radio, made by the Wm. J. Murdock Co. in 1925, was powered by a large 4.5 volt battery. And I know all this because that same large, blocky radio in its wooden case measuring 26-inches wide and 21-1/2 inches wide by 32-inches deep with its three large tuning dials and a horn speaker on top now sits in the collections of the Little White School Museum.
My grandfather, you see, was what we’d call today an early-adopter who got a kick out of new technology. His son, my Uncle Earl, was born with what was probably muscular dystrophy, which in those days was basically untreatable. But despite his twisted body’s treason, Uncle Earl’s mind was unaffected; he basically taught himself to read and write. He, too, loved technology, and begged for a radio and thus the Neutrodyne set.
Technology in those days first moved very slowly, and then all at once. Electricity first arrived along the banks of the Fox River here in Kendall County from Aurora when the interurban trolley line was built in 1900. And I always figured that meant that folks along the line were able to tap onto its electrical service.
But, except in a very few special circumstances, that wasn’t true.
In fact, the trolley folks were barely able to generate enough electricity to run the line—at least most of the time. The Jan. 3, 1912 Kendall County Record explaining: “The [electrical] power at the Yorkville end of the line is so weak that the cars have trouble in getting up speed enough to get out of town, let alone the lighting of lamps in the evening.”
Electricity and electrical service in homes and businesses had long been an interest of area folks, of course. In the Kendall County Record’s Oct. 29, 1874 “Oswego” news column, correspondent Lorenzo Rank wrote: “Electricity and everything connected with it is no longer a mystery. Moses J. Richards has succeeded, doubtless by severe study, in getting the definite comprehension of its properties, workings, and the laws governing it. He ought to write a book or go out lecturing on the subject. It would be a great benefit to mankind.”
The Richards went on to invent all kinds of things before settling the sliding door hardware still manufactured by Richards-Wilcox in Aurora.
Lighting streets with electric arc lights started fairly early, with Aurora in 1881, Naperville in 1890. But providing home and businesses with power here in Kendall County waited until 1898 when Yorkville’s steam-powered electric plant went into operation, first to light the streets and then to provide power to homes and businesses.
In 1904, the trolley company eventually agreed to install some street lights along its route down Oswego’s Main Street south of Washington Street, but that was it. It wasn’t until February 1912 that the Aurora-based Western United Gas and Electric Company was granted a 50-year franchise to provide manufactured gas and electrical service to Oswego by the village board.
Pipes from Western-United’s River Street coal gas plant and the huge Gasometer pressure tank on Hurd’s Island in Aurora were run down the west side of the Fox River to Oswego. The next year, wires came down from Aurora and the electrical firm of Smith & Benjamin worked throughout Oswego hooking up folks to the new electrical system.
Many homes and business in the village had installed gas lighting systems fueled by small acetylene gas generators—at least one of which was invented and made in Oswego—and electricians found the existing gas piping made good conduit for wiring buildings.
In May 1912, Fred G. Young, the private owner of Yorkville’s power plant, sold it to the Public Service Company of Northern Illinois, which promptly closed it and ran service lines over from Joliet.
What about the county’s rural residents who were thirsting for electrical appliances and lighting? Yorkville’s plant was large enough to supply some farms close to town, but not many of them. It would take a couple decades and a financial depression to get everyone hooked up who wanted the service.
On May 20, 1936, Congress passed President Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Act. Part of the President’s New Deal, it offered federal loans to help bring electricity to rural areas. And local residents didn’t waste any time using it to get electrical lines installed all over Kendall County.
On July 1, the Record reported from Oswego: “Ten farm houses south of town have been wired for electricity and are enjoying electric service. The farmers east of town have signed contracts and work will soon be started there.”
Things moved really fast, with the Record reporting Nov. 11: “Oswego township has been quite thoroughly electrified and many are the motors, washing machines, flatirons, radios, and other electrically operated gadgets that have been purchased, even including electric corn poppers.”
Things went just as fast elsewhere in Kendall County and within months, electrical service was considered a necessity.
From there, our idea of what are technological necessities has only grown, something likely to continue for far into our future.
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