Preserving history in Greenview

GUESTWORK | Phil Bradley

In the forties and fifties, driving into Greenview on my way to visit my grandparents at their farm on Salt Creek meant passing a sadly decaying remnant of the town’s better days.

Just south of town was a unique farmstead, with a large collection of wooden barns and assorted outbuildings such as granaries, a wash house, an ice house and buildings for horses and cows.

These crumbling buildings surrounded a white-painted-brick Victorian mansion decorated with gingerbread molding, a twostory porch and a beautiful glass conservatory.

“That is the old Marbold place” my grandmother would say. “It used to be so beautiful.”

In my grandmother’s youth the house, its grounds and outbuildings had been lived in and well maintained. Grandmother’s best friend, Margaret Marbold, had lived there. I remember stories of all the house maids and of the peacocks that strolled across the lawn.

But over the following years and through the Depression, decay set in. I knew the house as a place where a farmer stored hay. The wooden sidewalk that Mr. Marbold built from the house into Greenview was gone, the line of trees that ran beside that walk was interrupted by empty places where storms had ravaged some of their number.

Slowly the barns collapsed or were torn down to clear the land for planting crops. It looked as if the end had come.

But then a small band of people who love Greenview and care about history started talking about saving the place. What started as a dream resurrection has, happily, turned into reality.

The group started raising money, succeeded in buying the old house, and set to work stabilizing the building. A new roof, new windows, all the things that old houses need were addressed.

The Historic Marbold Foundation was formed with a mission to restore the house and operate a center to educate today’s kids about what farm life was like years ago.

There have been festivals, plays, tours and much volunteer work at the site. And this year the foundation paid off the mortgage two and a half years early.

Now there is a place that reaches back into our rural roots.

A place that reminds us of a farmer from Germany who brought over girls to be servants, men to be field hands.

A place that tells the story of how those immigrants worked hard and eventually set out on their own, married, and became the ancestors of many current Menard County residents.

A place that can teach us about farms that had a variety of farm animals, that grew a variety of crops and that gave jobs to many.

The place reminds us that today’s corporate farms aren’t the way agriculture used to be.

Today there are huge fields with giant machines guided by GPS. In the old days there were small fields, many hedgerows and lots of cover for once-abundant wildlife. And work for many hired hands.

It is important to put today’s world in context. New Salem teaches much about early life in Menard County. The Marbold Homestead will teach us about the next phase in the county’s history.

Donations are still needed. That is a good thing to remember as you make your tax decisions at the end of the year.

There is much work still to be done. But attend one of their events and catch a glimpse of a simpler time, and you will come away with a better understanding of what life was like in small-town rural Illinois. And you can visit a once grand house being restored to its original glory.

Phil Bradley is a resident of Springfield. On his father’s side, Bradley’s forebears – the Bradleys, the Propsts, the Cleavelands, the Ponds and the Wilkinsons – had all immigrated to Menard County by about 1835.