Orrin Higgins' Farm

Since late 2017 my family and I have lived in a small, isolated subdivision in Wayne Township.  At first glance, there isn't much to speak about in regard to the neighborhood.  In many respects, is a typical early-90s development, complete with cul de sacs and unimaginative street names (each named for a bird and not all are native to the region - way to go on that one).   The community itself was christened "Meadow Wood", quite possibly the most generic and uninspired name in the history of the universe.  It's also kind of confusing because meadows are what they are because there are no trees, and therefore no wood.  But it must have sounded great to the developers who built the subdivision and to home shoppers then and now.  Safe and naturey.  But I digress.

Walking the curvy streets of Meadow Wood, there doesn't appear to be much if any history whatsoever.  But a sharp eye and a penchant for dusty old books gave rise to this post which I'm sure absolutely no one will care about since it is niche as hell.  I'm gonna do it anyway.

Meadow Wood, and the land surrounding it, was once a gently rolling landscape of tallgrass prairie and savanna.  There are indications that the water table was quite high at one point and that tiling in the mid-19th century effectively dried most of the area for growing crops.  Some of the local drain tiles have been removed, mostly across the road where a seven hundred-plus acre preserve sits.  That preserve is comprised of restored prairie, marsh, and fen habitat, with a one-and-a-half-mile length of river (West Branch of the DuPage River) and two reclaimed quarries (Deep Quarry Lake and Bass Lake).  I'm still working on a series of posts about the preserve itself - the first is here.

Starting in the 1830s, European settlers from the East, primarily Germans, migrated toward northern Illinois for new opportunities.  One of these settlers was Orrin Higgins.  Born in Vermont in 1818, he spent the majority of his life in Ohio before continuing west and landing in Wayne Township in 1840.    He married Betsy Irish in 1845 and together they had four children - Laura, Rosa, Job, and Anna ("Belle").  Their farm was where Meadow Wood sits today.

In 1882, the Higgins property enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame when it was discovered that a rich bounty of fossil fuels might be had there.  

Suffice it to say, "the Junction" (today, West Chicago) never did become a grand health resort or large coal/oil mining town, but we can boast some seriously good tacos and horchata.

Orrin passed away in 1887 at the age of 67, and Betsy followed seven years later in 1894.  Orrin, his wife Betsy, and their oldest daughter Laura were interred at Oakwood Cemetery in West Chicago.

While Orrin claimed land in Wayne Township, a plat map from 1851 does not plot homesteads, only saw mills, post offices, and school houses.  It also spells out landowners, but fails to delineate property boundaries.  The blue X in the map below is roughly where the Higgins' homestead stood.  

Most interesting is that the road which leads to Meadow Wood today, Klein Road, is not featured on this map.  Fair Oaks Road is on this map, running north and south east of the river.  This makes me wonder how the Higgins family accessed their farm.  It seems highly unlikely that access to the farm was via Fair Oaks Road, but it's possible.  This map may not be purely accurate.  There is no indication that Fair Oaks Road ever crossed the river - twice - so I don't know what's up with that.

              

Whomever drew the plat map in 1874 did a much more thorough job.  Properties are clearly drawn out and now we see the locations of farmsteads.  In short, there were both changes to the landscape between 1851 and 1874, AND several errors I've found.  For example, the West Branch of the DuPage River is erroneously labeled as the East Branch, which is actually about six and a half miles east.  So the maps are imperfect - bear that in mind.

1874

In the 1874 map above, the farmstead of Orrin Higgins is clearly labeled near left-center.  There are three black squares (directly over "Orrin") which indicate a house and two barns or other substantial outbuildings. The series of dashes around the buildings indicate an orchard.  There are about two larger blotches which may indicate trees.  There is a large swath of timber just south of the Higgins property, and many of those trees still exist today.

And here is an aerial photo from 1939.  By this time, the farm is owned by the Schramer family.  Visible in the center is a dense cluster of trees, an orchard, a barn, and several other smaller buildings (the house is there, casting a shadow from the southwesterly sun, along the driveway).  This dense cluster appears well-established and probably contains some pre-settlement trees.  Most if not all of the scattered trees to the immediate south are naturally occurring and predate European settlement.  

Also visible here is the old property line that separated Orrin Higgin's holdings from that of R. H. Reed (see 1874 map).  Today, this line separates the West Branch Forest Preserve (north) from the Old Wayne Golf Club (south).  

Also, I quit being a cheapskate criminal and just paid for this image.  Grainy screenshots cluttered with watermarks are so tacky.

I don't know how or when the Higgins home met its fate, but a replacement was constructed in 1912.  It is a beautiful brick farmhouse and thankfully it was spared when all of the other associated farm infrastructure was demolished sometime between 1988 and 1993. For most of the twentieth century, the farm and associated buildings belonged to the Schramers.  Theodore W Schramer and his wife Pearl lived in the brick house for many years.  Theodore was the great-grandson of Johann Schramer, one of the earliest residents of DuPage County.  Among other things, he was president of the Benjamin School District board of directors.

This sign hangs inside Benjamin Middle School.  Two years later (in 1965), Theodore died at the age of fifty.

The old Higgins farm - at this point in time, the Schramer farm - was purchased by Russell Builders around 1990.  In 1992, construction began on a new subdivision known as Meadow Wood. 

Fortunately, Russell had the foresight to keep the Schramer farmhouse intact and preserve most of the old growth trees on the property, but as usual, they demolished the old barn and all other outbuildings.

This was taken in November of 1993.  Courtesy of neighbor Barry Mehrman.  

Another shot of new houses being built, courtesy of a former owner of one of these (unknown).  1993.

The Schramer farmhouse as it appears today.

This cul de sac is the exact location of the old barn that was demolished prior to redevelopment by Russell Builders.

The "graceful oaks", as described by Russell, are still around and truly bring a sense of timelessness and perseverance.  Most are well over a century old, and could be upward of two hundred years old.  I am very glad they are still around.  To see what they have over the years...

A gorgeous shagbark hickory and a bur oak.  The sidewalk respectfully winds around the trunk of the hickory.

A large bur oak at the south entrance to Meadow Wood (with a smaller hickory in the foreground).

Another beautiful bur oak standing in front of what was the Russell office/showcase model (now just another home).

A group of old bur oaks and shagbark hickories.  The Schramer farmhouse is tucked away behind trees on the right.

Another view of some of the historic trees on a gentle rise.

My daughter Lumen standing under some huge oaks with the Schramer home in the background.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome

 John Cebula had a good point.

Many years ago, the retired college professor and amateur herpetologist would respond, in a somewhat discouraging manner, to field notes I had broadcast on social media.  At least that's how I saw it at the time.  I was committed to seeking reptiles and amphibians in the northwest corner of DuPage County and then share my findings.  If I had observed, for example, two fox snakes, two smooth green snakes, a milk snake, and a handful of common garters, I was on cloud nine.  But John's response was invariably a more sophisticated version of "that's cute".  He made sure to talk about all the herps he'd find back in the 80s while assisting Dan Ludwig & company with a county herp survey.

"Back in those days, we found smooth green snakes by the dozen.  I found a Blanding's turtle at the intersection of North Avenue and IL Rt. 59.  Fox snakes weren't uncommon as they are today."

Mentally, I dismissed these remarks.  John was a very nice guy, but really, with all of the natural areas around, how much could have really changed in nearly forty years?

Wisdom comes with time.  It would be years before I realized the fallacious nature of that old perspective I had been holding tight to.  Experience taught me that I had suffered a bad case of shifting baseline syndrome.

I mistakenly saw the 2017 landscape as THE baseline by which I gauged how well - or poor - nature was doing in suburbia.  That's the year I left the big city and settled in a semi-rural patch of suburbia 30 miles to the west.  The further west I drove on North Ave (IL. Rt. 64), the less developed the land was.  There were still some old homesteads, barns, and other features reminiscent of yesteryear and I just assumed that since they had been there this long, they're not going anywhere.

But since 2017, I've borne witness to big changes.  Some of the old homesteads had outstayed their welcome and were torn down to make room for detention basins and car washes.  Weedy lots that held a lot of biodiversity potential have been purchased and developed.  The southwest corner of Roosevelt Road and Winfield Road in Winfield, once a mature woodland directly across the street from Cantigny, was completely cleared to make room for a gas station.  It was clear to me that there was no such thing as permanence.  What originally appeared to me as a "finished piece" was in fact changing the whole time.  It made me wonder about the changes I wasn't aware of that had occurred in the area 5, 10, 20 years before.

Forty years ago, there were many, many acres of undeveloped land in my area.  In those days, John reveled in the richness of snake species and numbers, maybe so much that even he couldn't imagine a better time and place.  I enter the picture, working with what's available, and what I see as a good day would have been pathetic in John's day.  

When I read naturalist's accounts about the 19th century Illinois landscape, it is abundantly clear that we are living in a whole different era.  The ease at which Robert Kennicott procured Blanding's turtles in and around Glenview in the 1850s is remarkable (they are state-endangered today).  He found so many Graham's crayfish snakes within walking distance of his home that his pal Spencer Baird, at the Smithsonian, told him to stop sending specimens - he had more than enough.  And the Kirtland's snakes were probably everywhere nice, wet patches of prairie existed.  Kennicott of course is known for his discovery of the species in 1855 and likely didn't have to walk far from his home at the Grove to find it.   In 1892, Harrison Garman acknowledged the dramatic reduction of Kirtland's snakes in Illinois within his own lifetime.  He described the species as "formerly common in the north half of the State; rare at present" and added "A handsome snake, which ten years ago was not uncommon along prairie brooks...tiling, ditching, and cultivation of the soil have destroyed its haunts and nearly exterminated it."  Of course, in the decades since, with the implementation of mechanized agricultural practices, Kirtland's snakes are even more rare.  I'm confident I would have had a veritable field day counting Kirtland's snakes in 1892, and today a "good" population might occur on a scrap of habitat an acre in size and nowhere else beyond its artificial borders for many miles.

Entire landscapes have transformed into something unrecognizable, mostly due to human encroachment.  Most of the time, these are not good transformations.  H.S. Pepoon documented Chicago-area landscapes for his 1927 book "Flora of the Chicago Region".  These landscapes look almost pristine even though Europeans had been in the area for a century previous.  

Take this photograph, for example.  It is a view from Edgebrook Forest Preserve, located on the northwest side of Chicago.  It is beautiful. The caption states, "The trees are white ash".  Judging by the width of the path, these trees are mature and quite large.  Beside some (presumably native) shrubs, the woodland appears to be open and free of brush.  The lush herbaceous vegetation appears healthy; ample sunshine is reaching the duff layer.

I do not currently have an updated view available from this same or similar perspective, but I can assure you that these woods no longer look like this.  Most if not all of these ash trees are gone, victims of the emerald ash borer which has wreaked havoc on the regions' ashes.  In their places are mostly successional vegetation, including young green ash trees but also maples, buckthorn, honeysuckle, and various others.  Some large oaks remain alongside young oaks that have been planted in recent years.  The forest structure has undergone a substantial overhaul, and not for the better.

Now, check this out.  I took this photo at Rubio Woods south of 143rd Street back in 2014.  This is what a lot of the region's woodlands look like today.  A layperson might walk by this and feel a connection to nature.  It's green, it's lush.  The song of a raucous blue jay sounds from somewhere overhead.  All is good in the world.

But ecologists are screaming inside because there is lots wrong here.  I can go on and on about it (invasive species, fire suppression, etc etc) but my point is, little or no familiarity with what we consider to be our baseline for what a given ecosystem is supposed to look like can be dangerous.  

Henry Cowles was a pioneer ecologist who studied vegetative succession in the Chicago area

A skeptical college professor (from the same institution that had once had Dr. Robert Betz on staff, ironically) would ask, "From what period of the past should we be restoring land to?  A hundred years ago?  Two hundred?  A thousand?  THE ICE AGE??  Should we re-introduce wolves, bears, and mountain lions?"  A complicated problem to solve, actually.  No, we are well past the point of releasing large and potentially dangerous predators into our little scraps of greenspaces.  And no, we cannot change the trajectory of the Chicago River back to its original course (nor can we restore it back into a sluggish little stream).  No, we cannot bring back the Skokie Marsh, the Winnebago Swamp, or the Grand Kankakee Marsh.  Even our best efforts at restoring prairie create something of a shadow of the real thing; intact soil horizons and hydrology are key and these have too often been interrupted.  The simple answer to that question is, we can do the best we can - within reason - with what we know from history.

John Cebula's complaints over not not seeing enough snakes in 2025 doesn't mean he's bad at finding snakes.  It means he knows that once time, there were a lot more.  And that maybe one day, there won't be any at all.

History matters.