Duffield/Sisson Postcards No. 28

Next in the series of postcards from 1908-1914 is No. 28, Grant School, Streator, Ill. These postcards were discovered last year in the Sierra Madre, California home of Warren Brown after his death. They were saved by his maternal grandparents, Edith Amy Duffield (1864-1926) and Charles Herman Sisson (1868-1927), and passed down to Warren, my husband’s cousin. Charles and Edith were married in Ottawa, Illinois in 1895 and remained there until the early 1920s when they moved west to Los Angeles, California. 

Grant School, Streator, Ill. 2896

Streator was a nearby town in LaSalle County. In the 1877 History of LaSalle County, author H.F. Kett states:

Perhaps no city...in Illinois, outside of the great city of Chicago, presents an instance of such rapid and substantial growth as the city of Streator. From a single small grocery house... the locality has grown to be a city of 6,000 prosperous and intelligent people. Churches, school-houses, large, substantial business houses and handsome residences, with elegant grounds and surroundings, now beautify the waste of ten years ago, while the hum of machinery and thronged streets are unmistakable evidences of business importance and prosperity.

The school building pictured on this postcard was built in 1909, one of six schools built that year, to meet the needs of the growing population (from Biography in Black, A History of Streator, Illinois, by Paula Angle).
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Postmarked in Dayton, ILL on 2 Jul 1910

Addressed to:

Mrs. Charles Sisson.

Ottawa,

Ill.

408 Marcy St.

Message:

Dear Ede,

I don't know when I 

can come down I am

so busy you better

come up. I have from 

3 to 4 men to cook

for every meal and

washed two days this

week and baked bread

3 times besides taking

care of 93 chickens

so I am kind of busy -

but won't be (up)

that busy

for long. we come

to town at

night and 

eat Ice cream

to get cooled off.

Eva

Eva Grace (Duffield) Green was a younger sister to Edith. She and her husband, Lyle, rented and worked a dairy farm in Dayton, LaSalle County, less than 10 miles from Ottawa, It seems that July was a very busy time on the farm! Cooking three large meals a day and baking bread for a crowd would be a big job all by itself. But add in washing using a wringer machine and hanging laundry to dry and all those chicken to care for, Eva was indeed a busy lady. Sitting down to have an ice cream at the end of the day was surely a welcome treat.