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Dec 7, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
So the question is, will this be a typical Illinois winter or not? If the past few years are any guide, we’ll never know what the heck will happen next. Snow, wind, rain, sleet, thunder, lightning – sometimes all at once – along with wild temperature fluctuations enliven the experience for us as we try to cope these days.
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Nov 9, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
They were eager, and for the most part youngsters, those from Kendall County who have marched off to war during the last 190 years. Circumstances forced some to defend their homes; others volunteered to fight in foreign places from Mexico to the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean. They all put personal considerations aside to do what they felt was right, starting with the bedraggled refugees who fled their homes up and down the Fox River in May 1832.
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Oct 5, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
It’s interesting driving down Route 71 these days and watching the progress on the highway widening project between Orchard Road and Route 126. The view has been cleared so we can get a good look at the topography along that stretch of road. And that includes the Morgan Creek bridge. The newly cleared area offers a rare look at the usually hidden creek itself.
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Sep 22, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
It seems that, at least in some communities, chicken-raising is making a come-back. It wasn’t all that long ago that small-town residents commonly woke hearing a rooster crow at sun-up. Well within the memories of lots of local folks, including me, more than a few residents of most if not all small towns kept some chickens. Some townies even kept other livestock, although the general practice of having a family cow in town was pretty much over by the time World War II started.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
It’s now closing in on the end of what used to be called threshing season. Until the 1960s when diversified farming died, “small grain” crops such as oats, wheat, rye and barley were harvested beginning in late July and early August. Depending on the weather, the season sometimes lasted into September. Today, there are very few fields of oats and wheat in Kendall County, and none of barley or rye that I’ve seen.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
It was 1834 – exactly 190 years ago this summer – and what would become Kendall County seven years in the future was undergoing an almost manic period of town-building. The area, most of its land area not even surveyed by the U.S. Government to enable it to be legally sold, would eventually include nine surveyed townships, each consisting of 36 sections of (nominally) 360 acres each.
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Jul 4, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
Seward Township isn’t usually a topic of discussion in our home, but it did come up not too long ago. From what I overheard some folks talking about, the origin of the township’s name seems to be a mystery to many. For reference, Seward Township is located in the far southeastern corner of Kendall County, and, like NaAuSay Township, until recent years when Joliet and Plainfield began annexing Kendall County farmland, had no municipalities, at least for its first 150 or so years of existence.
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Jun 11, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
Twenty years ago, I was covering the Oswego School District Board for our local paper as the district was in the midst of selecting new social studies texts. When I got to the board meeting that Monday evening two decades ago, one of the brand new fourth grade history books under consideration for approval—colonial through Civil War U.S. history—was sitting right in front of me. Now, for me, it’s hard to resist reading a history book, any history book, even a fourth grade text.
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May 23, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
Back in the 1960s, young German relatives of good friends of ours visited the U.S. They flew into California, planning to travel from there to the (then) small rural town of Oswego to visit their American relatives. But when they told our friends they planned to take a bus from California to northern Illinois, our friends tried really hard to talk them out of it, explaining just how many miles separate California and Illinois. But the German visitors were adamant.
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May 7, 2024 | 
shawlocal.com | Roger Matile
Some time ago, I explained how Kendall County came to be established back in February 1841. In order to make up the county’s total of nine townships, the Illinois General Assembly took three of Kane County’s townships—Little Rock, Bristol and Oswego—and combined them with six of LaSalle County’s townships—NaAuSay, Kendall, Fox, Big Grove, Lisbon and Seward. Here in Illinois, townships are both geographical and political entities.
