Please Don't Quote Me By Caralee Aschenbrenner PART II Hag is a word not only associated with your familiar Halloween broom rider or the neighborhood crone, but with peat bogs as well. Hags is an old-timey word meaning the pit dug in peat beds, the hole left from the extraction of the material. Down in Union Grove Township, Whiteside, for instance, are huge hags, and huge mounds from the peat dug out, the mounds piled high and higher to help in the drying out and curing of the vegetable matter, the peat which is then stirred and perhaps mixed with other ingredients for fertilizers, bedding soil, etc. The paper copy here is from the files of the Sterling-Rock Falls Historical Society. Thanks.

Huge hags result from over a century and a half of extraction. With more modern methods the past forty years, too, by businesses with efficiency and technology to assist in their national distribution the work is steady and mounds high.

Union Grove Township where the largest of the peat beds occur has a notable history going back to 1835. Before that the native American used the many assets of the area but little is known of it because there's no written account.

Josh Atkinson built the first cabin there that early year and is also believed to have built a usable breaking plow and bought the first McCormick reaper in the county in 1837 or '38. Right there we can imagine how forward moving the county was going to become.

Mills, saw and grist, were THE order of first business on the frontier, however, Rock Creek being a formidable water power there mid-county, naturally, became the site of a couple mills along its winding way. A natural drop in the creek bed was just the ticket for building up a dam (sticks and stones in the pioneer way). As with other mills, other businesses and homes were built around them and often a village grew up by the mill site. At that particular mill such had occurred by 1839 and in 1841 a "city" was platted to become Unionville. It had high hopes but in the 1850s when the railroad line passed it by, it slowly began to decline with the budsinesses and residences moving across the creek where it was handy, and that place became Morrison, the county seat, by the way. Unionville became a memory there north of the new seat and depot! That beautiful, picturesque stone mill on the banks of Rock Creek was the Unionville Mill in Union Grove Township while Morrison was featured in Mt. Pleasant Township. The present road is Rt. 30 traveling through both.

"About three-fourths of the land in Union Grove Township is good; the balance is composed of swamps and bluffs. This is the portion taken in by the Cattail, the latter runs from the Mississippi to Rock River. About midway between them the ground is high and the water runs each way to the two rivers. The center of the high point is in Union Grove Township. In this Cattail lie large deposits of pest said to be of good quality," reports the 1877 Whiteside history which has a lengthy segment analyzing peat, comparing it with other of its type and pointing out 'way back then, its many unusual qualities and amounts.

For nearly thirty years after Franklin Dodge had attempted to "use the peat bogs" in the Cattail, there is little or no recorded activity. Reference does say that "apparently the peat fuel industry dwindled away. "Then in 1911 a notice was published saying that a new factory was to be constructed at the Oliver siding.

A railroad cut-off had just been completed between Fenton and Ebner, small "market" sidings which were sprinkled along the track routes, one being Oliver which had been built to carry off the vast quantities of vegetables which had been grown in the "Bottoms." For instance, celery was one crop which thrived in the fertile soil.

S.F. Oliver had made a notable change in 1889 in the traditional agricultural scenefrom wheat and corn he'd planted potatoes, onions and, surprisingly, celery. The extremely rich earth produced unbelievably huge harvests, opening eyes as to what could be done in thinking outside the cornfield.

New methods of several sorts had to be employed when farming in the Cattail, however, such as putting, fitting wooden clogs on the plow horses hooves so they'd not sink into the porous, former swampland. Better footing. Picture that.

At about the time in 1911 that the new buildings were being noted, a James Smith of Clinton, Iowa was reported to have invented a retort by which the peat could be converted into numerous materials such as paint, ink or illuminating gas. Because of the high water content of this peat, the age-old method of cutting into blocks and drying did not work ... Water must be pressed out, the resultant "mud" heat processed.

By mounding it up the peat would be combed through to dry it out gradually, reduce the amount by pressure, then grind it, etc., etc., etc.

Was it coincidental with Smith's new retort that a Clinton doctor had found a cure for cancer which he experimented with in a small building there, too? Rumor was it was a mixture of peat and lard!

Contracts had been let in 1911 for two cement block buildings be constructed for the National Products and Chemical Co. ... 42 feet by 80 feet and 30 feet by 40 feet in size. Business was looking so prosperous that another siding was put in above "Oliver" called "Sollars," the name being for the president of the new company, peat its export.

That company experienced complete loss by fire in 1919. There was no insurance coverage as it was considered a poor risk. Production ceased at an unknown date.

Not until the 1960s was there again any mention of peat beds. Organized in 1964 was the Anderson Peat Co. with 450 acres near Oliver Station along the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. A 100 foot by 100 foot steel building was built for processing and storage. Two photos here show two present day roadside businesses, the Markman Brothers and the nationally familiar Scott Co., the first on Fenton Road south off of Garden Plain Road on which is the Scott Co. with "blended growing media and potting soils" among their output. Yes, Scott Co. right in our own backyard for our backyard!

When the Galena, Chicago Union railroad came across the county in 1855 a second unincorporated village sprang up a little northwest of Unionville-Morrison which had yet to progress very much. The new settlement was called Union Grove and would serve as a busy shipping point by the railroad. A post office, too, issued from there, Union Grove, 1861. Its place can still be identified at the confluence of Ward and Hillside Roads with Rt. 30, a few miles northwest of Morrison (and Unionville).

Much other "history" is concern with Union Grove Township other than the peat bogs such as a "corduroy" road in the Cattail, a counterfeit gang of proliferant output in the 1850s, the mill sites, the abundant vegetable crops and this notation in the log of township business when that form of government finally took hold in 1853 ... "A committee was chosen to draft some laws to replace earlier ones which had been declared illegal. The group resolved that whereas the ones illegally in effect have proved to be sufficient (so) they would pass no others."

Ah, ain't history grand! Just think what might have happened had the Mr. Smiths of the world pursued and broadened his ideas of products to be derived from peat.

The 1910 Stephenson County History in fact had many ideas for peat also. Were they carried forward in the United States as they were elsewhere? These ideas were put forth almost a hundred years ago ... "Recent experiments show that where peat contains over 1% nitrogen, the value of ammonia as a by-product will more than pay the expense of extracting the gas, leaving the latter as clear profit. Professor Fernald of the Geological Survey says, "The day is near at hand when American cities away from the coal fields and near peat bogs will obtain their power and light from peat. Work has already begun on a plant in Florida for generating electric power by producergas engines using air dried peat as a fuel. The value of peat in the United States is estimated at $39,000,000,000. Peat also makes incomparable coke, being nearly free from phosphorus and sulphur. It is of utmost value in metallurgical re-educationsiron smelting, steel making and copper refining. Peat by-products are illuminating and lubricating oils, paraffin wax, phenol, asphalt, wood alcohol, acetic acid, ammonia sulfate and combustible gases. In Europe great quantities of fibrous peat are used in bedding livestock. It is superior to straw and an Indiana factory is now making a product of this kind that sells for $12.00 a ton. In Michigan, paper is made from peat; in Germany it is used for packing insulation, etc.; and in Norway it is made into ethyl alcohol."

Is peat the answer to the price of gasoline?