Our Genealogy Road Trip

I just returned home from yet another visit at my daughter's in northern Illinois.  We packed a lot of activity into the 10-day visit, one of which was a road trip to Amboy, IL, where my father was born and raised, in north central Illinois--a few hours of driving, each way.

I've always been curious about Dad's beginnings because, when I was a child (7? 8? 9?) we had occasion to be in the Amboy area and drove by his old house.  It stunned me.  Even at that young age, I couldn't believe that my father grew up in that house because it wasn't a house.  It was a falling-down raggedy shack!  We never talked much about it, for whatever reason.  I think I was reticent to bring it up because it was a very humble beginning for a man who had done so much in life.  We all knew Dad grew up poor.  I guess seeing that old shanty only served to prove to me just how very poor they were!

Over the past couple of years, my daughter (Megan) had done some genealogical digging and came up with an address for the old place.  Thus, armed with that and a couple of pictures of the house (taken in June of 1935 when Dad would still have been in high school), four of us departed on a day trip just to see what we could find.  (Road trippers were: Megan, me, Denis [my son-in-law] and Luda, Denis's mother.)  We started out in rain showers, but then the sun came out and it turned into a lovely day.

We knew from Meg's research on Google Earth that there is a house at 136 West Provost Street.  It didn't look at all like the house in the pictures, but we went anyway.  I was troubled by the fact that the house in the pictures appeared to be a single story, yet Dad always said that when it was his bedtime, his mother would say, "Time to climb the golden stairs."  (In fact, he used the same expression with us at bedtime.)  Could the pictures be the actual house we were looking for?  The caption below one of the pictures, in my mother's handwriting, said "Floyd's Home, Amboy".  But the house on Google Earth was clearly two stories.  What would we find at 136 Provost??

We pulled into what would have been a driveway.  Meg and Denis went up to knock on the door.  No one answered.  And then a young lady holding a baby across the street stepped out of her house to say, "No one lives there."  But...but...the lawn was mowed.  We explained to her who we were and why we were there and asked if she thought the owners would mind if we just walked around outside and took pictures.  She assured us that her husband was good friends with the old guy who owned the place and that there would be no problem.  We went about the business of comparing the old pictures with the structure in front of us.

At first glance, it didn't look like the same house...but then we began to compare features on the two sides for which we had pictures...and they matched, even allowing for changes that could have been made over the 80 years since the pictures were taken.  We had some problems reconciling the second story for part of the house.  Upon closer inspection of the pictures, we found that the elevation of the pictures taken hid the roof of the second story.  Bingo!  We declared that the house in front of us was, indeed, the same house in the pictures--the house built in 1871--the shack in which my father (and so many other children and grandchildren in that family) grew up.  Wow!

I wish I could say that the old house had been loved.  In fact, it did have a fairly new roof, and part of the front had been sided in white.  But the rest of the house was covered in rotting asphalt shingle siding...and the entire place seemed to just be one big storehouse for junk.  (I shudder to think how many vermin can get in and out of that place!)  The yard is maintained by someone who works at a John Deere dealership in Mendota close by.  (And interestingly, one of his co-workers has the same last name as one of my father's sister's husbands.)

The husband of the neighbor lady showed up.  He was quite a chatty fellow, and friendly.  In all, we probably spent an hour there.  I left the property feeling strange...like I'd been to some holy place, made so only because of the fact that my father rose out of that poverty to go on and make a name for himself in college and the military.  I wanted to shout to anyone who would listen: MY FATHER PULLED HIMSELF OUT OF THIS MISERY TO BECOME SOMEBODY!  I'm not sure anyone would care but family.  Still, it mattered to me....and I think it mattered to Megan.  I think she has new-found respect for Grandpa Covill.

When we departed the home place, we drove by the old high school where Dad played football.  The building was erected in 1922.  It is now being used as a middle school, but I am quite happy that it has been well-cared-for and looks great.  We also stopped at the Depot Museum in hopes of finding pictures of my grandfather James Covill who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad, to no avail.  In any case, it was interesting.  Then we moved on for ice cream...a short trip to Streator, IL, to make a cemetery visit where my family is buried...another short trip to look at the farm of my maternal grandparents (sadly not looking good at all)...then home.

When we returned to Lindenhurst, Papa Sergei had supper ready for us.  Just what the doctor ordered!!!

I'm so happy we took that trip.  I'm not sure why.  I just feel that something I thought I knew was validated.  And I walked the ground that my daddy walked as a boy, not knowing that life could be any different than the environment in which he grew up.  Proved that wrong, didn't you, Dad??!