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Aurora Beacon-News
March 20, 2001
By Marie-Anne Hogarth
STAFF WRITER
BIG ROCK TOWNSHIP ó In an effort to oppose the proposed Prairie Parkway, Tracy Dettman and Marvel Davis applied
to the Landmark Preservation Council of Illinois, asking the agency to recognize their Big Rock Township farms
as historic.
While this designation alone might not stop a road being built near their farms, the women understood the council
to be a respected group. They hoped other historic groups would listen and help the women in their fight against
locating a highway near Big Rock.
Thursday, the Landmark Preservation Council is scheduled to hold a news conference in Springfield and announce
the state's top 10 most-endangered historic places. One site is property in Big Rock Township.
Tracy Dettman said her farm and Marvel Davis' farm are on that land.
The council isn't commenting until Thursday.
Regardless, the Dettman and Davis farms near Jericho and Granart roads have quite a story. It's a story about
people who started a town from nothing about 170 years ago.
A portion of Dettman's home, at 47 W196 Jericho Road, was built by John Pierce in 1863. Pierce came to the United
States from Wales about 30 years earlier. He founded the Big Rock Welsh Congregational Church and held meetings
in his home until a church was erected.
Also, the farm is interesting because Pierce hired an "Indian Jim," who lived in the vicinity and did
work for the farmer. Native American Indians likely lived in the nearby woods, according to Dettman, and archaeologists
discovered chips, likely remnants of rocks being shaped into arrowheads.
Dettman says the woods where the Indians lived are in the proposed corridor of the Prairie Parkway.
After Pierce died in 1891, his farm passed to his three granddaughters, Dettman said. One of the granddaughters
sold her share of the land to the two others, who split the land. Today, Marvel Davis lives on the land owned by
one of the sisters, and Dettman lives on the land owned by the other.
Dettman says this is only further evidence of the area's historical significance.
A farm on the southeast corner of Jericho and Granart was the site of a shack owned by a man named Santy Cook.
When Pierce arrived in the area in 1835, Cook was already living here.