If That Train Had Come

 Downtown Bachelor's Grove, the intersection of 135th & Bachelors Grove Road, a densely populated couple of blocks and a surrounding area of immigrants, homestead-farmers. Some more well connected than others, but all waiting for the train tracks to be laid through their hamlet. With beginnings sometime in the early 1800s in the southwest section of what is today Cook County, IL, pictured above was the main drag.  

  "Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a "property" in his own "person." This nobody has any right to but himself. The "labour" of his body and the "work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property" - John Locke on Homesteading

The remains of Midlothian Turnpike, Dec 2012

Most anticipated it would trace the Midlothian turnpike, leaving several blocks for Bachelor Grove's expansion to match the big passion and spirit the small community possessed. Simultaneously delivering service to and establishing a barrier with Bremen, the Township seat whose growth could be a threat to the municipality. Alas, the tracks led through Tinley Park instead, further from the township center of Bremen than the Midlothian turnpike bed would have been, but another  settlement now obstructed the path of Bachelor's Grove's hopes the village limits would include a rail line. Subtly dealing no economically viable future to the area, though some held on as long as they might. Little remains of the settlement today, but lore and ghost tales aplenty.

Cement pilings of early 1800s homesteaders denote claim boundaries,

Bremen, and the Grove were primarily German immigrants in the early 1800s, Plats from the turn of the 20th Century display old country names, and some known to Cook County historians today. The Fultons, The Cool Brothers, Schmitt, Everden, Funk and Tinley. Families that migrated along with commerce around Chicago, or slipped off the roles until Bachelor's Grove was dying out, save the few homesteaders who strove to meet the applicable ordinances imposed alongside the Land Act of 1804 a state government beginning to realize it's power. 

In Ancient Footsteps along the foundations of the Everdon Farm site

 
 Some families left early, the Everdon's sold a famous plot of land to the Schmitt's, before much of the bureacracy had been implemented. While legend says Mr. Schmitt was aware a cemetary was on the land, and it's use by residents continued, the proper paperwork was not completed correctly, so the burial ground was not on the county radar for preservation, but that is another tale.

The Everden Farm is hard to find, and is only a partial silo foundation,

The inhabited areas were incorporated into the Cook County Forest Preserve's Turtlehead Lake Forest Preserve, a massive piece of county owned property that encompasses all of the areas the 1960 plat maps were calling "Old Tinley," except for the 1.00 acres that made up the 'Everdon Burying Ground,' but again I digress. This tale is of their lives.

 A Cistern, where the workmanship inside is remarkable

 
 And some foundation pieces. I was lucky enough to meet an old timer in the woods who explained these were not steps but, he explained what they were so fast I will have to go back and record it.

The only budding optimism in these woods comes on behalf of the trees

 

See where the house used to be?

The main road facing north to the heart of "town"

 

In late fall current day, the Prairie lies lifeless indeed.

Minor traces of the lives and labor peek through the continual pressures of nature, calling to be acknowledged for their role in expanding the west.

Minding the muse, listening to the tales.

Signs of life were primarily fungi

Or Past Tense

The Old Hedgerows still thrive

The lake has dried up, but the view from the bottom at sunset is spectacular

Rorschach Bark along the way, what do you see?

The wells are mostly intact, though overgrown. The ones easiest to find are filled with the trash from a century of teenage weekends drinking beer, raising hell, and being delinquent