Please Don't Quote Me By Caralee Aschenbrenner Sandfordville. This article concerns an early northern Illinois village named Sanfordville. It isn't that part of a scrap yard tended by Fred Sanford and his son, Lemont, of television fame. Sanfordville was once a thriving millsite just across the line of the southwest corner of Ogle County in the northeast corner of Whiteside and a stone's throw of Carroll. Boundary lines weren't yet fixed in the early days of settlement. In fact, the land office at which to register claims didn't open nearby in Dixon until 1841.

It was in 1833-34 that Cryreneus Sanford came by from New York state scouting for the promised land as in days of yore. Liking the looks of that place, Cyreneus returned east, the next year bringing out most of his large family. He had three daughters and eight sons none of whom was named Lemontor Fred for that matter.

Claims were made of four entire sections by various family members, they staking their ownership in the usual way by plowing a furrow around the entire perimeter.

If that didn't take up plenty of time, they invested themselves in building a sawmill on Buffalo Creek in order to accumulate cash-in-hand, a scarce commodity in the 1830s-40s. Not just the Sanfords were in need of lumber from the abundant timber all about, but custom from an extended distance made their way to the place of the Sanford's which, naturally, quickly became known as Sanfordvilleand a plat was made for a town, small and compact as you can see.

Of course, there must have been dreams of it becoming a metropolis because a branch of a major trail angled northwest through the village. The hand drawn map shows the Dixon Ferry to Savanna and Galena Road reaching out from here, westward, perhaps, which had it brushing Wilson's Mill two miles beyond where "Quaker" Joe Wilson heartily invited the traveler to stop and, too, a tiny speck of trade grew up there.

Burwick about which PDQ Me has told you. Or if angling more northwest, it passed Eagle Point about which this item was a subject also. (Wilson's - 1/21, 28, 2/4, 1987 and Eagle Point - 8/12-9/23, 1992.)

A dedicated reader of historical narrative can imagine the shivering hope Sanfordville and their neighbors must have experienced when rumors drifted by, hinting that the Illinois Central Railroad would veer northwest ward to pass through their settlement. Oh, the prosperity that would result!

That goal, doubtless, was the first plan of the I.C. Railroad, the one of the late 1830s which was aborted by the "Panic of 1837," a deep depression, which stopped the railroad in its tracks!!! And lots of other projects, too, although some surveying was done there in Carroll County, that just at the southwest corner of present day Mt. Carroll where a crude signpost on a berm warned, "Look Out the Cars When the Bells Ring" in hopeful anticipation. (See "Richmond," 1/20, 1988.)

It would be another fifteen years or so before the Illinois Central accomplished its state-length quest from Cairo to the Illinois River, then Freeport without much veering at all so Sanfordville was by-passed and a new town rose, Polo, just to the east to become a community of note.

It is said, however, that a dozen or more residences grew up around the millsite, some in the upsweep of the hill, some on the plain to the southeast to make a notable plot in the beautiful rolling landscape. As well, there were the usual tradesmen drawing on the custom of the mill ... A general store, Dan Finkle; a wheelwright who would've repaired wagons, too, Hiram Deyo; blacksmith, Dan Matthews and other "home industries" which was the way of the world back then ... Vernon Sanford grew a large orchard for cider and vinegar, important at the time. Many took advantage of the neighborhood trade and that passing through because, after all, the new traffic to and from Dixon-Galena was heavy and which by the 1850s became a small scene in the Big Picture in the making of America ... Almost as big as the I.C. Railroad.

The Telegraph Wire was being strung through, generally following the highway, a prestigious occasion, for certain.

Poles were set along the old trail which instantly became known as the TELEGRAPH ROAD which angled along in Carroll County and where a few stagecoach inns sprang up but if there were passers-through the wires could be pointed out as being connected to the wide, wide world. We were no slouches being "on the wire." The road is still known by that name today, Telegraph Road, a title we should respect and celebrate for the fact that it introduced and was the forerunner of Modern Technology, a New Era. What a coup for us!

But in the way of Americans, some of the Sanfords and others pulled up stakes in the 1860s and went Way Out West ... Oregon and Washington states. The wandering foot still itched. The Sanford mill was sold out of the family to Jacob Deyo in 1866.

He deepened the millpond by building a 15 foot dam and changing it from a sawmill to a grinding mill for feed, not wheat or grain for flour. Another era was passingcoming just as they do today without our much noting them!

The millpond grew ever larger and became a local landmark, Lake Fern. No one knows the exact time span of the pond nor how it got its name but it was a popular recreational park with cabins built around its edge and docks-piers built for boats and canoeing, swimming, fishing, picnicking, reunions and all sorts of get-togethers.

A piece of ephemera remains. From 1873, a program, here reduced in size, to recall the Polo Library program at Lake Fern, the library taking on the nautical term, bark, meaning a boat, and all parts being seaworthy in tribute, perhaps, to the lake. That, that plat, deed record survey and much of the material about Sanfordville come from Betty Obendorf, Polo, to whom we are indebted for her generosity. The Polo Historical Museum fairly recently in "new digs" and the Aplington House are to be commended for their lovingly transforming a downtown business into exhibits telling of their interesting past. Stop by.

The Sterling Gazette reported in July of 1882 that it, perhaps, was two storms which met generally over the Sanfordville area bringing torrents of rain and bolts of lightning which drowned several people along the creek banks and struck animals, killing them haphazardly but certainly. It took out nearly every bridge on Buffalo and Elkhorn creeks even mill dams. The iron bridge at Milledgeville was moved from its piers and set in the bottom of the channel. Rock River rose four feet overnight and was so filled with debris from upriver that it was too dangerous to search for the drowned victims. It was the worse storm anyone could remember and even though Wilson's mill lost its dam and bridge, the Sanfordville dam must have held because yet in the 1890s a newspaper item reported that one of the farmers nearby said that his pastures were drying up and James Anderson had come Monday to see if "we would let the water down from the dam so the stock could get drinking water." The millpond must have been still in existence. Even in winter it was of use for the harvesting of ice ... Chunks three feet square and ten inches thick were hauled away to ice houses near and far to be useful in the summer for cooling (and lemonade!).

But in 1896 an entry in the county records state that Moses and Mary Deyo who had but recently become owners of the "mill and its fixtures," sold the property to Alexander, Ellen and Agnes Anderson "in consideration of $300 paid to first parties by second parties, said first parties agree to remove the flood gates in the dam on said lands of first parties, and to open the flume about eight feet wide down to the natural channel of the stream of Buffalo Creek, and never hereafter erect or in any manner to maintain said dam or to do anything on said land that will cause the water in said stream to overflow any of the adjoining lands now owned by second parties or permit anyone else so to do."

That certainly was the end of Lake Fern of which there is little record but which was a big part of the recreational and economic life of its neighborhood. The picture here is but a bit of Buffalo Creek today, pretty and serene. The only hint of its one-time existence is a road sign off the Polo-Milledgeville blacktop which curves back and around to Talbott Road marked "Lake Fern." Only a rutted, grass-filled path leads to Sanfordville as does a road from the Freeport blacktop uphill through what was the village itself. A few homes remain, some parts of some, the original.

Even the mill itself became a residence. Now the quiet and privacy prevail. A modern bridge replaced the dam and even though the two rutted paths, once a major trail meet up top, a big mud hole seemed a portent of things to come so we turned back and, unlike Lewis and Clark, went into Polo for a piece of pie and a cup of coffee. It was, however, interesting to again think of the richness of the past of the place we live and the stories they have to tell.

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