SAMUEL E. SHIMP FAMILY

Except for the Elgin Joliet and Eastern (EJ & E) railroad tracks that still bisect Rt. 34 between Frontenac and Eola Roads, there is little in the area to allude to its farm history. Today, just west of the railroad tracks is a sprawling subdivision called Georgetown, a conglomeration of singles-family and duplex housing. East of the tracks is a garden center. All traces of this area’s rural heritage have essentially been erased and exist only in memory now.

Back in the 1880’s, however, the area was bustling with a different sort of life. Originally this area was known as Frontenac. A vast area of fertile farmland, one man who made his mark on the area was Samuel E. Shimp, who not only farmed the area but also served as the first proprietor of the Frontenac Grain Elevator, which was located on the site of today’s garden center. The only survivors of this era are a few small buildings on the site of the garden center that were once auxiliary structures on the elevator site.

Born in 1931 in Pennsylvania, Sam Shimp originally sought his fortunes in Ohio, where he apprenticed as a blacksmith. Evidently fame was not forthcoming, so he headed west and settled in the Naperville-Plainfield area where land was both abundant and affordable. A jack-of-all-trades, Shimp dabbled in other professions in addition to his farming. In 1887, he was elected constable of Naperville and began auctioneering (a lifelong sideline of his, and one taken up by his eldest son, Frank). 

In 1861 he married Napervillian Catherine L. Kline, who eventually bore him 13 children—three of whom died in infancy. Shimp was elected to a two-year term as Sheriff of DuPage County, and in 1864 moved his family to accommodations in the county jailhouse that was located on a site in today’s Central Park in Naperville.

After the end of his term as sheriff, Shimp bought a 178-acre farm in Frontenac that he farmed for 10 years. After another six-year stint as sheriff (significantly headquartered in Wheaton this time, as the infamous “rape of the records,” during which Wheatonites broke into the Naperville courthouse in the dead of the night and made off with all the records, had occurred), Shimp returned to the farming life.

In 1883, when Shimp and his family moved back to the farm, the number of Shimp children had so increased that a larger house was in order. Replacing the extent frame house was a large six-bedroom, red brick house, constructed by Levi Shafer, Contractor, the same builders that built Pine Craig (the Martin Mitchell Museum in Naperville). Shimp eventually expanded his acreage and bought more land, increasing the farm to 235 acres. The farm then covered both sides of Rt. 34 from Frontenac Road through most of today’s Georgetown. He later donated 2 ½ acres of this land to build a sorely needed one-room schoolhouse on the north side of Rt. 34 near Frontenac Road. This served the educational needs of the area children until the larger Granger Consolidated School opened in the early 1920’s at the intersection of Rt. 34 and 59—which in March, 1992 was torn down!
Shimps’s farm was ahead of its time in many respects. He equipped the land with 10 miles of drain tile, as proper drainage was (and still is) a problem. Though not so advanced as to have indoor plumbing, Shimp’s house could boast running water in the kitchen. Powered by a windmill, water was pumped to a high tank in the wellhouse where gravity then directed the water to the kitchen spigots.

To serve the needs of the many farmers in the area, The Frontenac Grain Elevator was built around 1880, when Sam Shimp served as the first manager and was assisted by sons Frank, Jesse and Jack, who also worked the farm. All the local farmers brought their grain to sell at the elevator, where such necessities as lumber, coal, flour, and sugar could be purchased, and which also served as the telephone connection between Naperville and Plainfield.

In 1903, the elder Shimps moved into a home on Webster Street in Naperville, where Sam lived until his death in 1914 and where Catherine remained until her death in 1931. All the while, though, the Shimp sons ran the farm. After Sam Shimp’s death, the farm remained as part of his estate, and was rented and farmed by Sam’s fifth-oldest daughter, Kathryn Shimp Wendling, and her husband, J. Richard Wendling.

Wendling raised wheat, corn, rye, and barley, all of which were transported by horse-drawn wagons to the grain elevator, loaded onto freight trains, and shipped to far-flung destinations. A portion of Richard Wendling’s grain crop went to fatten the cattle he raised for market. The steers he bought were shipped to Frontenac from Minnesota via the EJ & E railroad. The Wendling family remained on the farm at Frontenac until the death of Richard Wendling in 1929. At that time, Kathryn Wendling and daughter Evelyn Wendling (Hower) moved to Naperville.

The house and farm were sold at auction after the death of Catherine Shimp in 1931. A series of owners lived on the old Shimp farmstead until the house and all the surrounding farm buildings were razed in the 1980’s to make way for encroaching suburbia. And, as the number of farms in the area dwindled, so too did the need for the grain elevator which remained a sentinel of a time gone by until it, too, went the way of the neighboring farms.