Following the Path of Abraham Lincoln, We Explore the Confluence of the Fox and Illinois Rivers in Ottawa and Beyond

March 28th, 2020 at 11:13 AM

Streator, Illinois

Last night, I drove with a friend up to Ottawa Illinois, a city built at the confluence of the Fox and Illinois Rivers. He loved these two rivers where he has lived so much of his life. We drove first to the Fox River where we toured a collection of mansions along the shores, brick river houses with steeples or turrets. 

Most homes featured porches for a coach and horses to park out of the rain. As I looked up the houses today, I learned many opened their doors for a country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln loved rivers. A long scene in John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln dwells upon Lincoln gazing, speechless, upon a river panorama. His date, dressed in a ball gown, had no idea why Lincoln got lost in his reverie. I have dug for ten minutes trying to learn the name of that river. I wish it were the Fox River.

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas faced off in Washington Square Park downtown Ottawa, and statues of the great orators face off to remind us of the matches, beautiful verbal fights. History recorded their words verbatim before the advent of recording media. Stenographers and telegraph operators made this miracle possible, working for Democratic and Republican papers. 

We drove by on our way to see the murals of downtown, full of closed restaurants and empty sidewalks. We stopped to appraise a mural of the Radium Girls, women in town who worked painting glowing paint on watch dials. 

The women working with Radium paint were told that it was harmless. Sadly, many died of cancer as a result of their exposure. John Pugh’s painting on a tall brick tower near the Fox River makes an unspeakably beautiful testimony to these women. He paints Trompe-l'œil, French for trick the eye. His Radium Girls have the power to make panels of brick open like a door.

We changed directions and headed west to the city of Naplate, a town where Libbey Owens Ford produced automotive glass. The factory has yet to close, which is great for an American factory.  I know that name because LOF competed fiercely with McGraw Glass, a glass plant owned by a division of Chrysler Corporation in the last century. 

Now Chrysler is a different company, sold off to Daimler and then to Fiat. LOF has become part of a Japanese corporation, NSG. NSG stands for Nippon Sheet Glass, said Wikipedia. I have to read an encyclopedia to keep up on these changes. 

I am reminded of a stock certificate left in a chest of drawers in my Grandmother’s kitchen. My father showed it to me, and I had no idea how to locate the name of the company on the certificate, a company perhaps long since merged into another company. I know now how to research these certificates, but too late to help my father. 

I now wish I had done a better search for my father. Maybe that old stock certificate was a valuable document that could have changed his life. I remember when he asked me to read what had happened to his GM shares when the company declared bankruptcy and a second GM corporation arose in its place. It seemed that his shares were so devalued to a millionth of their previous value. I read the tiny text many, many times, sitting on the Lazy Boy closest to his before I told him my opinion. He sat in his Lazy Boy nearest the window and probably thought to himself, “Screwed again”. Since 2011, it’s been too late to win big for him.

We continued driving west as the sun began to weaken. At Naplate, deep pits of a gargantuan size have been dug to retrieve silica, an ingredient of glass. The mining continues as a few pits fill up with water and become lakes. Sadly, the pits limit the growth of Ottawa and its suburbs to the west. I have no idea how the pits could be filled, and the land reclaimed for building houses. I know the lots dotted with trees and sand pits along Lake Michigan have been declared as parkland by Muskegon County, deep lakes that could be too deep for swimmers.

A three-story stone house stood alone by the side of the road. I wish we had stopped because I can’t find the house by easy web searching. One friend in the office claims Lincoln stayed in the boarding house while engaging Douglas. I imagine Lincoln catching a horse and buggy ride into the city, contemplating his talking points. I see him sitting by a fire afterward, soothing his throat with a mixture of tea and honey. I must own that house or at least assure it eternal conservation!

John Pugh works on Radium Girls in downtown Ottawa, Illinois. Picture taken by the Ottawa Times.