CHERRY VALLEY .

The township of Cherry Valley was first known on the records of the county as Butler Precinct. The name was changed to Cherry Valley upon the adoption of the township organization law. Its settlement commenced in 1836, Joseph P.:Griggs being the first settler of whom direct trace can be found. Embracing a good deal of timber, it attracted a liberal share of im- migration, as it is a fact that all the pioneers sought the timber districts in which to locate their claims. believing that it would be easier to make farms by grubbing and clearing the lands than it would be to reduce the prairie land to farm tillage and remunerative returns.

But as time advanced, and the later settlers were forced out on to the prairies and began to experiment upon them, the first settlers were made to realize that they had made a somewhat costly mistake by selecting timbered claims. They had been pitching brawn and muscle against nature, for all that the prairies needed was to be tickled with the plow to make them yield living crops the first year, and heavy and remunerative returns the second.

Where the Chicago & Northwestern Railway crosses the Kishwaukee river, there is a beautiful little valley—a picturesque and romantic basin of a mile in width, extending up and down the river, that, in its natural condition, must have been an attractive resort for the red men whose homes were along the banks of that easy and gracefully curving stream. Even now, when dotted over with fields and houses and barns and lowing herds, its stillness broken by the hum of mill machinery, and anon by the rumbling of long, heavily laden trains of steam drawn cars, one cannot help but admire its rare beauty, and almost sigh that the work of nature's floraculturalist should have been swept down before the march of the pale faces. In this little basin cosily nestles

 

History of Winnebago County-1877

 

 

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