ILLINOIS GENEALOGY EXPRESS

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Macon County, Illinois
History & Genealogy

"A MODEL MACON COUNTY FARM HOME NEAR ARGENTA"

TAKEN FROM THE DECATUR HERALD
Sunday, December 15, 1907


One of the handsomest country homes in Macon county is owned by C.R. Burns about three miles north east of Argenta in "Friend's Creek" township. The house is "modern" - so modern in fact that it would put many costly residences in Decatur to shame. An expenditure of $10,000 could not duplicate the residence.

The house contains thirteen rooms. Seven of these are downstairs and six are upstairs. One of the upstairs rooms is a billiard room. Downstairs are parlor, sitting room, guest room, dinning room, kitchen, etc. Upstairs is a play room for the children. The house is heated by steam. There are two bath rooms and hot and cold water in five different rooms in the house. The cold water comes from a well and the hot water from a cistern.

Fine carpets are on the floors. The furnishing throughout is as elegant as will be found in any home in Decatur.

HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY

Mr. Burns has solved most excelently the problem of how to live comfortably in the country, but he doesn't know it. He has a farm of 197 acres of land in the midst of a section where land is selling at from $125 to $176 an acre. All but about thirty-seven acres of this farm is under cultivation. That thirty-seven acre tract forms a wood-lot which he finds useful since he devotes most of his time to stock.

Farmer Burns doesn't work very hard. He doesn't have to, for the reason that he put his energy to good advantage when he was a younger man. He is now 48 years of age (born 1859). Most of his farm is in grass. Part of it he pastured and part of it he used for hay. The timothy made a little better than three tons to the acre. His large barn is fairly bursting out with the seventy tons of hay that it contains. In a smaller barn is another lot of thirty tons.

WENT BROKE, THEN GOT RICH

Mr. Burns never has been so much a farmer as a stockman. Down in Texas years ago he speculated on long-horned Texas steers and went broke. He and a partner bought 604 head of cattle. They contracted for several thousand bushels of corn to feed them. Corn was dirt cheap then. The owner of the corn told them they could pay him twenty-three cents a bushel for the corn and pay for it at the end of a year or they could wait and pay him the market price at the end of the year. Mr. Burns wated to pay the twenty-three cents, but his partner insisted that corn would see cheaper at the end of a year. They waited and at the end of the year corn was selling at 50 cents a bushel. When they sold the cattle and had settled all their bills, Mr. Burns had exactly $34.50 in his pockets.

A banker friend came to his rescue and "staked" him and told him to ............ponies. Mr. Buirns nat (whole paragraph missing)

From that time on Mr. Burns made good money and made it rapidly in Texas. He was about sixty miles from San Antonio, on the Guadaloupe river. When anyone went to San Antonio they spoke of the trip as "going to town." Eighteen years ago he came back to Illinois, lived with his parents at Bement for three years and then married. For years he farmed near Bement. A year ago he purchased his present home of Ed Drobisch of Decautr, paying for it $22,000. Drobvisch had bought it a few months before of Mrs. Catherine Miller, paying for it $25,500. Burns took possession last March.

Burn's family consists of himself and wife and three children - Margaret, Charles and Clarence. The children range in age from 11 to 12 years. Their aggregate weight is 450 pounds. Each weighs exactly 150 pounds. The are verily a "big three."

Mrs. Burns is one of the very few housewives in the country who finds time to spend amusing herself. Her amusement consists in painting, of which she is passionately fond.

LESSONS FROM McCUTCHEON

When she was a girl Mrs. Burns attended an art school in Indiana, her native state. She enjoys the distinction of having taken lessons under McCutcheon, the famous cartoonist on the Chicago Tribune. Her wok consists principally of studies in animals. All of them are clever and executed skillfully. Instead of raising a family, the world might have heard of her work as an artist. As it is she paints simply to arouse herself and her friends. The walls of her home show many of her best pieces.

Within a quarter of a mile of the Burns home is the Rural Park school, which the three Burns children attend. It may be mentioned incidentally that these children comprise one-third of the Rural Park School numerically. which is an __________ sense they _______ about .............of the school including the teacher too.

The school has nine children. It is the second smallest school in the county, according to the records, although Miss May Smith, the young woman which is training the young mind to shoot whithin the confines of the little white building, refused to admit that such is the case. By way of explanation it may be said that this is Miss Smith's first term of school. She is drawing a salary of $60 a month. Not so bad when there are only nine children to worry you. The picture of the school shown on this page was taken expressly for the Herald by a staff photographer. When he started to line the children up against the north end of the school house in the old sterotyped way of grouping, the young teacher demonstrated. She said that last fall they had had a picture taken with them all under one umbrella.

"Can you beat that?" she asked.

The photographer thought a moment. He espied a top buggy on the ground in which some of the children had ridden to school.

"Yes, I believe that I can," he replied. The next instant a couple of boys were pulling the buggy to the side of the school house. Two girls were loaded into the seat. Then the teacher was placed between them. In front of the teacher, on her knees the little girl was placed. Two boys stood on the back of the buggy and two others on the front. That made seven pupils - two were absent that day.

There are few schools in Macon county that can pile into one single-seated buggy.

PROUD OF HIS YEARLINGS.

On his farm Mr. Burns has one herd of twenty-five Herefords of which he is especially proud. They are yearlings that he purchased at the Imboden sale near Decatur a few weeks ago. On his farm is a natural spring, so that he is relieved of one of the burdens of the stock raiser - that of pumping water.

The Burns home was built about two years ago by Mrs. Catherine Miler, a widow who had a lot of money and a disposition to trade, but upon whom Dame Fortune seldom smiled in a financial sort of way. When Mrs. Miller had completed the erection and furnishings of her beautiful home it was a veritable country palace. Nothing but the most expensive furniture was permitted to enter the house. The downstairs rooms were elaborated in hard chestnut. She had several sons and for their gratitude she provided a billiard room upstairs. She had the house piped for gas, but sold the place before she had put in a lighting plant.

The barn, the house and all of the outbuildings are in splendid repair and the farm is the pride of the country side and a show place for visitors.

 

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