A piece of Dixon history: Why our local ancestors settled in groves

When Jacob D. Rogers came to the Paw Paw area in 1837, he did something odd.

“He was the first to settle out in the prairie, west of the grove, and was ridiculed for it,” said the 1881 History of Lee County.

“Ridiculed?” Why should a home in the prairie be worthy of ridicule? Why was it laughable to settle outside of the grove?

While I was researching the earliest history of the pioneers of northern Illinois, I noticed the frequent references to people settling in a “grove.” For example, on January 1, 1834, when the Chicago Road opened as the first stagecoach trail from Dixon to Chicago, its first three stops after Dixon’s Ferry were settlements at Inlet Grove, Melugin’s Grove and Paw Paw Grove.

Why settle in groves?

Droves of groves

When the renowned writer Margaret Fuller visited this area in a stagecoach in 1843, she wrote that the stage stations went “from grove to grove.” A historical marker along the Chicago Road in Paw Paw permanently displays Fuller’s famous quotation.

Indeed, dozens of early local villages had “grove” in their name. You’re probably familiar with Franklin Grove, Sugar Grove, Gap Grove, and Deer Grove. But there were many more.

Maps of the mid-1800s reveal 11 settlements called “groves” in Lee County, another 11 in Whiteside County, and 19 in Ogle County. Outside of these counties, some of the well-known local stagecoach stations were Kellogg’s Grove in Stephenson County, Troy Grove in LaSalle County, and Dad Joe’s Grove and Boyd’s Grove in Bureau County.

Actually, Boyd’s Grove was previously known as “Dixon’s Grove,” established by John Dixon in 1828, two years before he moved to Dixon’s Ferry in 1830.

The evidence is clear. Settlers viewed groves of trees as the ideal setting to establish a homestead. But why?

The peril of the prairies

“Settlements sprang up at first at the crossing of the streams and at beautiful groves,” explained the 1913 History of Carroll County, “as it was then believed people could not live through the winters in the open prairies.”

They “could not live” in the prairies? Why? Other historians reveal the surprising answer.

Groves provided vital protection from the “autumnal prairie fires.” Today, rural areas are covered with cornfields and bean fields that are cultivated annually. But in the early years, uncultivated prairie grass covered the land for as far as you could see.

“Prairie fires were the scourge of the settlements,” said the 1881 History of Lee County. These fires, often sparked by lightning, could sweep quickly through the tall dry grass, which was “knee-high to a horse everywhere.”

The ‘red buffalo’

“During the fall of the year, after the grass had been killed by frosts, magnificent prairie fires prevailed until snow came,” said Frank Stevens in his History of Lee County.

“The flames at night, when there were high winds, (lit) up the sky with surpassing grandeur, enabling a person to read by the light miles away, and being visible for a distance of nearly one hundred miles.”

Indian tribes called prairie fires “the red buffalo” because the glowing crimson flames would charge with the ferocity and roar of a buffalo stampede. A common old saying declared that a prairie fire moved “faster than a horse could run.”

Free from underbrush

While groves were not immune to fires, the fast-moving grass fires at ground level often failed to ignite the tall trees. Plus, thanks to previous blazes, many groves were free from underbrush.

“When settlers first arrived here,” wrote Ogle County historian Henry Boss in 1859, “there was no underbrush in the groves, as the spring fires always kept it down, and one could see almost as far in the groves as on the prairies.”

Groves that were free of underbrush created a natural clearing that appealed to settlers eager to erect their first homesteads in a park-like setting. Today, however, the lack of regular natural fires has allowed groves to be thick with thorny underbrush.

The ‘judgment day’ fire of 1845

In 1877, a Sublette resident recalled the horrific October prairie fire of 1845 that swept quickly through northern Illinois in the night. Awakened, one Sublette-area girl “thought that judgment day or night had come, and that the world was burning up. Going out of doors she saw the whole country southwest and west in a perfect blaze of fire, some of it as high as twenty feet.”

She ran half a mile to warn the nearest neighbors and then to others beyond them. Fortunately, the winds shifted, sending the inferno northwest of their homes, as the blaze raged onward toward Chicago.

Life-sustaining groves

In addition to providing vital protection from the prairie fires, groves also formed a natural canopy that provided cool shade during hot summers and partially blocked harsh winds and heavy snows.

Groves also generated timber for home construction and firewood for warmth. As the natural habitat of deer, turkey and rabbit, the groves also offered a source of food, while some trees could yield syrup, fruit or nuts. Streams of fresh water, another necessity of life, often flowed through the groves, producing rich soil for planting crops.

Taming the prairies

In time, of course, others would follow the lead of the ridiculed Jacob Rogers of Paw Paw. Armed with determination, inventive settlers soon tamed the prairies. A crucial innovation emerged from Grand Detour in 1837 when John Deere invented the self-scouring steel plow that famously became “The Plow that Broke the Plains.”

By the 1850s, newcomers to this area felt free to settle anywhere to build homes, farms and villages. Surrounded by supportive neighbors and fire-free cultivated fields, these communities themselves became life-sustaining groves of protection.