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The first building at 8001 Blivin Street (known as lot 20 in 1897) may have been a saw mill run by Job Toles, who came to English Prairie in 1836. His mill was in operation somewhere along the Nippersink Creek in Spring Grove as early as 1840. Lewis Hatch bought that mill around 1870 and ran it for several years before he began farming. Before this mill was in operation, farmers would cart their logs 25 miles to “Southport” (Kenosha), Wisconsin, to be cut into planks for buildings and fences.
It’s possible this was the location of that saw mill because a Quit-Claim Deed from 1900 describes Lot 22 on a Plat of Survey from 1897 as “bounded on the north by the Saw Mill lot” (lot 20 which was owned by Lewis Hatch), and “on the east by the Highway” (Blivin Street). This could explain why the low lying south yard of the house looks like it was dug out and floods whenever the Nippersink Creek is high; it could have been the mill pond or the mill race.
About the time Hatch bought the saw mill, Henry Chauncy Sweet was born on English Prairie (1869) to Chauncy and Beata Bauer. He started farming about two miles east of town and married Ina M. Pierce in 1896 but she died just one year later. In 1901, he married Edna Main when he was 31 and she was 18. They had four children, but only two survived into adulthood - George and Charles. Ironically, Henry had a saw mill on his farm which he advertised in the Spring Grove Journal. In 1909 the Sweets rented out the farm and built a house where the saw mill on Blivin once stood.
Henry built 8001 Blivin “completely out of second-hand lumber”, according to one source. He worked as a carpenter now which included a lot of moving of buildings. One building was the old “livery” from Solon Mills in 1920. Glen Esh hired him to move it to his farm which was just west of the St. Peter’s Cemetery on Main Street. (It stood on the hill until the 1990s.)
Described by one person as “a brilliant man who wasn’t much interested in money”, Henry was very involved in community affairs. He was a village trustee, built the Cole Cemetery fence (with Lewis Nulk), was one of the three incorporators of the Spring Grove Telephone Company in 1906, and enjoyed playing the fiddle at town dances.
The funeral for his mother, Beata, was held in the house in 1910. Around 1940, Henry moved to Belvidere and Edna moved to Florida to live with their son, George. Then, in 1946, Henry moved to Mattoon, IL where he he lived in the Old Folks Home for the Aged and died in 1953. Edna died in Florida in 1977. Ernest Peacock and his wife moved into the home when they left and in 1949 William Gritzuk purchased the home. In the late 1980s, the Wilkinson family bought the house and still own it.
The 1969 photo of the house shows a front and back porch with nice large windows. A house renovation at some point included turning the porches into indoor living spaces. The front porch roofline was changed as well, giving the house a totally different look.
Story by Laura Frumet
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