A Taste of Lexington, Illinois
(December 2006)
From The Pantagraph Monday, April 24, 2000
What we’re famous for…..series of Pantagraph articles…
Big or small, every town has a claim to fame, whether it’s a major employer, a well-known favorite son or a historical oddity. The Pantagraph detailed the bragging rights of towns across Central Illinois in a weekly series. This article looks at ……..
Lexington
Tastes of the City Include Horseshoes, Hemp
By NANCY STEELE BROKAW
Lexington – Try to imagine what the following might have to do with each other: two ghost towns, a horse named “Old Clear the Kitchen,” a chinked cabin and a castle, Teddy Roosevelt, marijuana, the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales’ shoes, and the Taste of Country Fair.
The answer? They are all part of the intriguing history of Lexington, Illinois.
In 1829, John Patton and his family came to the Lexington area and stumbled on an abandoned American Indian village. The Patton’s helped themselves to the best wigwams they could locate and moved right in. When the Kickapoos returned they got rid of the trespassers by helping them build a log cabin. A settlement grew up around Patton’s cabin and became known as Pleasant Hill. The Patton Cabin, over time, fell into disrepair. In 1969, it was dismantled and reconstructed in a city park on the north edge of Lexington. Thought to be one of the 12 oldest structures in Illinois, Patton Cabin is open for tours on special occasions.
Around the same time Patton was cabin-building, General Joseph Bartholomew came to Money Creek Township and was instrumental in setting up another settlement in the area – Clarksville. Shortly after Bartholomew’s arrival, the Black Hawk War broke out. Bartholomew urged settlers to protect themselves by constructing blockhouses or fortifying their cabins, even though the Indians had promised no harm and kept their word. In an 1840 Pantagraph article, one of the oldest residents of Clarksville gave her account of this town, saying it was “full of gamblers and horse racers.” It was here that the Freelands owned and raced Old Clear The Kitchen, “supposed to be the fastest quarter nag that ever was in this country,” she said.
The article went on to say that townspeople were convinced that evil lawbreakers were living among them. Prayer meetings were held “for the express purpose for praying for the death of the ringleaders.” What the prayer meetings didn’t accomplish in terms of clearing out Clarksville, the railroad did. Historical records indicate the 1850 census taker was “a bit of a boozer” but by all accounts, however muddled, another town in the area was up and growing. This one was called Lexington, most likely after its namesake in Kentucky. A full-scale rivalry broke out among Clarksville, Pleasant Hill, and Lexington over who would get the railroad.
By 1854, the battle was over and the Chicago and Alton Railroad was laying tracks through Lexington. Clarksville died instantly. Its more than 300 residents moved away, most to Lexington. Pleasant Hill, which had been the second largest town in McLean County in 1847, managed to hang on until 1879.
James Van Dolah came to Lexington area in 1835. He was widely known as a successful livestock breeder. His son David Van Dolah took over the business, traveling the country buying Percheron and Norman horses and attending sales. Eventually, the younger Van Dolah acquired more than 2,000 acres in Lexington and Money Creek townships. His wife Britannia, or so the story goes, had an expensive taste in houses. She wanted to live in Chicago, so to keep her in Central Illinois, David Van Dolah built a reproduction of something like a Scottish castle on the west side of Lexington at a cost of $35,000. It was 1898, and the best craftsmen around were called in to help. Van Dolah lived only four years after he moved into the house. His wife lived there for another 25 years. An invalid in later life, Britannia used the home’s full-sized weights and pulleys elevator to get from one floor to another.
As is often the way with castles, the Van Dolah estate fell into grave despair. Luckily, in 1986 it passed into the hands of Mary and Charles Wright Sr. They have been striping, sanding, dismantling, painting, and restoring ever since. Today, the 17-room “Lexington Castle” is in fine shape. Most remarkable is a floating staircase that rises for three stories like a curl of smoke. Wedge-shaped steps spiral from the first floor to the ballroom, with little visible support. For Mary Wright, the biggest surprises were the many walls and ceiling painting that they uncovered as the treasure-hunt remodeling proceeded. With the help of Lexington artist Janet Oliver, the original freehand oil paintings, stenciled designs, and frescos have been restored to their nascent brilliance.
About the time those paintings were originally finished, in 1902, the news that Teddy Roosevelt would be coming to Lexington had the town in an uproar. The finest horses and carriages were spit-shined to transport the president and his entourage to the city park, where carpenters were hired to erect a giant grandstand. Seats were pre-sold at a dollar apiece so that Lexington’s finest could listen in comfort as the Rough Rider delivered what was sure to be a stirring address. On July 15, the president’s train pulled into the station. Roosevelt spotted the top-hatted reception committee, lined up to escort him to the grandstand. That’s when he shocked them by saying, “NO, gentlemen, I did not agree to get off the train.”
Teddy Roosevelt did deliver a spellbinder of a speech that day. The catch was that his words went out to the throngs who were crowded on the railroad tracks, anxious to get a glimpse of the president. The upper crust, the ones who paid a buck a ticket, rushed back from the grandstand but, the crowd being what it was, couldn’t get within two blocks of the train.
Another patriotic period for Lexington came, believe it or not, when area farmers were asked to grow marijuana, and to learn how to do it in a hurry. In 1943, during World War II, tropical suppliers of hemp – a plant with fibers used to make rope and other textiles – were cut off. An alternate source was needed immediately. Lexington went to work and farmers seeded their first hemp crop in 1943. They planted 4,300 acres of marijuana. This first crop yielded 7,979 tons, for which farmers were paid $314,895. For the next two years, Lexington farmers continued to grow the marijuana that yielded the fiber for Navy and Army ropes. A hemp mill, one of 11 such plants in Illinois, was set up in Lexington to process the marijuana and ship it out in rail cars. By war’s end, the demand for hemp fiber dropped off; the growers were sorry to see it end. One Lexington farmer reported to The Paragraph that his 1944 hemp crop was more profitable than his best corn and that “the very best corn of all is grown after a hemp crop.” Nevertheless, the Lexington hemp mill was converted into a seed corn mill and marijuana was declared by the government to be a weed.
As it turned out, marijuana was not the only unusual commodity product in Lexington. For 21 years, the Anvil Brand Shoe Company has been producing horseshoes. In 1999, they made 90,000 pairs. One might think a big Chicago department store carries many styles of women’s shoes. But that’s nothing compared to the variety of shoe styles offered by Anvil. They make shoes for ponies, quarter horses, draft horses, and even the team horses that pull the wagons for Coors, Heinz Ketchup, and Anheuser-Busch. The Budweiser Clydesdales, who are reshod every few months, wear a custom-designed shoe of steel, bent to one-and-a-half-inches wide and a half-inch thick. The price is $22 a pair. Anvil ships internationally, from Lexington, to a dozen countries including Japan, New Zealand, and Egypt. The woman in charge of shipping at Anvil is Glenna Claudon. When she’s not directing “gaited-DieG” horseshoes to Australia, she volunteers her time at the Taste of Country Fair, a Lexington institution since 1986.
From small beginnings, the three-day Taste of Country Fair has grown into an event that has attracted as many as 30,000 people. The Taste of Country Fair began as a way for Lexington craftsmen to showcase and sell their wares. It has mushroomed into an event that draws vendors from Chicago and Wisconsin to join the local weavers, wood carvers, knitters and other artisans. It’s an all-town effort. An estimated 1,000 of Lexington’s 1,800 residents volunteer for the fair. The night before the event kicks off (this year the second weekend in September), hundreds of volunteers literally hand-sweep the streets.
This is not surprising for a town as community-minded as Lexington. Its residents have constructed a jewel of a Community Center that is used for local weddings, as well as for senior activities. And Lexington has managed to hang onto its own high school, home to a remarkable football team and history club.
Perhaps its unusual sense of shared history makes Lexington so quick to turn out the local support. A survey conducted by the mayor, a few years back, indicated that Lexington residents were anxious to fix up their downtown and to grow-----but only a little!