From the Archives …

On March 25, 1948, a realtor named H.S. Sturm in Villa Grove wrote to Rev. Ellis Pierce, pastor of the Universalist Church in Urbana, asking if the church wanted to sell the 40 acre tract of land in Murdock Township/Douglas County it had inherited from John Jordan. Mr. Sturm assured Rev. Pierce that “Real Estate is about as high as it will get.”

The church were landowners before and after Mr. Sturm offered to take that Villa Grove farm off our hands, usually to the regret of the church members who had to answer phones from tenants late at night or otherwise deal with the problems of rental properties. 

None of those church members may have had a more interesting time with the church’s real property than Parker Wheeler, who served as Financial Secretary. It turns out that Mr. Jordan had bequeathed the 40 acre farm in Villa Grove to the Urbana Universalist church AND Lombard College. 

In the late 1940s, Mr. Wheeler sent Lombard (by then Meadville Lombard) checks for their portion of the profits from corn and soybeans grown on the jointly owned farm. On May 26, 1948, he sent two bank drafts to the school: one for $112.57 for Meadville’s half of the proceeds from 71 bushels 15# soybeans at #3.16 per bushel; and another for $181.13 for 192 bushels 13# corn at $2.15 per bushel, less seed corn & shelling and $1.00 per acre supervision. In the letter accompanying those payments, Mr. Wheeler explained that he had delayed sending the soybean money because he had to add some limestone to the land and he didn’t know how much it would cost. In a very farmerly way, he also told the gentlemen at Meadville that the “crop last year was poor on account of the lateness in planting, due to excessive rain at planting time, and lack of rain at a critical time during the growing season.”

By July 1949, the church and the seminary had a buyer for their farm. Mr. Frank Ewing of Villa Grove bought the 40 acres for $10,500. When Mr. Wheeler sent the proceeds of the land sale to Meadville Lombard on August 17, he also sent $187.82 from the sale of that year’s corn – no soybeans, apparently. He concluded his letter to Rev. Wallace Robbins, President of Meadville Theological School, by saying, “Thus ends the joint ownership of the 40 acre tract in Villa Grove. In some respects I was sorry to sell the land as it was a source of revenue for our church and paid a good rate of interest. On the other hand we were able to liquidate our mortgage on the parsonage which is desirable in case of another depression.” 

On August 3, 1949, Parker Wheeler sent John Mitchem at Busey Bank a check for $3,876, which paid off the mortgage ($3800) and the six-months interest that would be due on August 19. He said, “The Church congregation decided it would be a smart move to liquidate this debt before another depression comes along.” While the U.S. was in the midst of a recession in 1949 as we transitioned from wartime to peacetime production, the economy soon straightened out and grew dramatically in the 1950s. It probably would have been okay to keep the farm.