Bradley Historical Society: 2 books

At the age of 49, Ohio-born J. Herman Hardebeck had earned a gilt-edged reputation as a real estate developer in Kankakee. In the spring of 1891, to the north of Kankakee and south of Bourbonnais, lay a flat, mile-wide prairie. The land stretched eastward from a grove of Kankakee river timber, past the...

Rush County, at the south end of Post Rock Country, was organized on December 5, 1874, and named in honor of Capt. Alexander Rush, Company H, of the 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry. The first settlers arrived in 1869 and established homesteads along Walnut Creek near the Fort Hays�Fort Dodge Trail. With...