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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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142 History University of Illinois farm he became interested in the movement for industrial universities. Here he frequently entertained Turner, Butherf ord, and others of his friends. "Being a firm believer in the future of Illinois farm lands, he put all he could raise into Government land warrants which he located in LaSalle and later in Livingston County. He then sold as many of the lands as the farmers and settlers wanted (often entering for them lands they desired), and retaining the balance, he later had them broken up and put under cultivation, and they became the support of his family and himself for the rest of his life. "He took Professor Turner's view of the value of the osage orange for hedge and fencing purposes, and along the lines of those lands which he retained in Livingston County, he had osage orange set out and cultivated with great care,—over 30 miles of it,—and so far ahead of time that when the lands were ready for improvement, the hedge furnished almost continuous fences. The hedges grew so luxuriantly as to cut off the breezes from the roads and therefore had to be trimmed down. Some of their stumps today measure a foot in diameter." "About 1855 he moved from Farm Ridge to Ottawa, Illinois, into a house he bought of Professor Charruaud on Eose Hill, just North of town, and there had furniture for the parlor sent on from one of the best makers in New York." "He was a strong anti-slavery man from the very beginning, a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, whom he warmly supported and he also favored the underground railroad, with which Capt. William Strawn of Odell had some connection." " I n the fall of 1858 he left that house at Ottawa and moved East to his father's country house at Greenfield Hill, near Fairfield, Conn., where he remained that winter. The house was not fitted nor heated for winter. The coldest day that winter,—so cold that all the children had to be kept in bed to keep them warm,—he drove to Bridgeport, four miles away, in an open wagon to buy and bring back a stove for the hall, to keep them warm jj and so bitter was the day, that he met only one other person out on the road. But he brought the stove back with him.
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