One of the aims of the early part of the Tour route, which I have not mentioned before now, is to bring me to several of the places that my ancestors had lived. I have, off and on, been researching my family history for just over twenty-five years. For most of that time, we really knew very little about our ancestry, as the trail often disappeared into the fog as recently as the late nineteenth century. However, like many people, over the last decade, or so, I have benefited tremendously from the proliferation of online records databases and genetic testing services. Now, I have a picture of my personal history that is close to complete, at least on my father’s side of the family, and I will be able to visit several places that were important to that story, some of which I did not realize were involved until very recently. The first Tour stop where I can learn about that past, however, is one that had always been known to us.

My paternal grandmother was Marjorie Fowler, and she grew up in Centralia, Illinois, a town located about 100 km east of St Louis, on the eastern edge of the Great Plains, in a region of the state known as Little Egypt. The town was founded in the early 1850s, and from its inception, was intimately linked to the fortunes of the Illinois Central Railroad. In fact, it was from that operation that the name Centralia was chosen. My grandmother frequently mentioned the town when I was young, even though she had long since moved away, but, as children are often wont to do, I paid little attention to what she had to say about it, which, of course, I now regret. I do remember that she was always smiling when she mentioned the town, and I believe she thought it was a great place to have grown up.

Four of my ancestral family lines converged in Centralia in the mid-to-late 1800s, as part of the westward expansion occurring in the United States at that time. This, however, would be as far west as my family would get until I relocated to the west coast in the 1990s. In fact, my grandmother, after she met my grandfather, would reverse course and return to the east. Milan Day, one of her maternal great-grandfathers, originally came from Fauquier County, Virginia, and took the somewhat uncommon course of migrating west as a single man. Consequently, we know relatively little about him, and his motivations for coming to Centralia. A family named Adams, one of many distinct family groups in the US with that surname, originated in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, then spent a few decades in Robertson County, Tennessee, before finally settling in rural. Marion County, Illinois in the early 1840s, almost exactly at the future townsite of Centralia. Their reasons for moving west certainly included seeking good land for farming. One of the first members of that family born in Centralia was Marjorie’s maternal grandfather, William J. Adams. Even though his ancestors came from Tennessee and Virginia, when the Civil War erupted he enlisted in the Union Army, and served for three years in Company F of the 48th Illinois Infantry, which at times was under Generals U. S. Grant, or W. T. Sherman. His Company participated in several important engagements, including those at Shiloh, Vicksburg, Kenesaw Mountain, Atlanta, and Savannah.

Members of the other two families, the Hadlocks and the Fowlers, took a somewhat different route to the town. Both families had been living in western New York in the early 1800s, and men from both became early members of the fledgling Mormon Church. I may pass on more details on some of them later on, but the relevant part of the story for now is that both families followed the early westward movements of the Church, first to Kirtland, Ohio, and then to Nauvoo, Illinois. However, a scandal involving one of the elder Hadlocks in 1846 led to his discommunication, and, following that, the younger members of the family also left that Church, presumably feeling disillusioned. These stragglers bounced around Illinois for a while, then eventually found their way to Centralia.

Marjorie grew up in the white house with the curved roof, shown in the image below. Until she married my grandfather, she lived there with her parents, Harry Allen Fowler and Mattie Adams Fowler, who remained there for the rest of their lives. Her grandfather, Reuben G. Fowler, and a number of her aunts, lived in the larger greenish house next door. An older image of that house appears further down, and it apparently has changed little over the years. Reuben Fowler was the epitome of a Midwestern gentleman of that era. He worked hard, and successfully, at several jobs in cities around the region, mostly with the railroads, and similar mechanically-inclined industries, before founding the family plumbing supply business in Centralia, and raising a large family there.

As time passed, his two sons took over the business, which then became known as Fowler Brothers, an enterprise that is still well-remembered in Centralia to this day. My great-grandfather is the handsome fellow in the upper-left of the advertisement shown below. Their business was quite successful, and they claimed it was the Largest of its kind outside the Great Cities, though just what constituted a Great City was not specified. The building shown at the bottom of the ad was the original Fowler Brothers building, and it still stands today, though with some changes to the facade, as seen in the next image. However, in this time its utilization is less than ideal, housing only some sort of establishment that has video poker and slot machines.

The Brothers were so successful that they built two other buildings in downtown Centralia in the early twentieth century. The next of these still exists, though, like its predecessor, it is currently minimally occupied, with two vacant sites, a dress shop, and a beauty supplies store. The third Fowler building, in the second image, was the last to be built, but is gone today. Some say it burned, but I could never get a definitive cause of its demise.

That brings me to my thoughts about the town today. I asked a few people, who were familiar with the history of the area, if Centralia had a Golden Age, and the consensus was that the first half of the twentieth century probably fit that description, which coincided with the last decades that my ancestors lived in the town. In those years the railroad was still the most important method of transport throughout the country, and the surrounding area also hosted coal mining and, later, oil industries. However, since then the town has seemingly been in a bit of a decline, indeed its population peaked in 1970. Today, on a Saturday afternoon, the former main street seemed inappropriately devoid of people.

I usually enjoy touring in the American Midwest partly because many of the towns are so nice. Cities and towns in this region were mostly built during a time when America was a more optimistic country, and that is obviously reflected in how the people then originally constructed their home towns. It is usually apparent that people of that time went to great lengths to create a place that, before other considerations, was simply a nice place to live. Homes and businesses were built with beautiful, classic designs, and also with the intent of lasting indefinitely. Even small towns included impressive examples of necessary civic structures, libraries, schools, monuments, and beautiful parks. Today, some towns seem to have held on to these fine characteristics more than others.

When pondering why Centralia is noticeably less vibrant today than it was seventy years ago, some say it was the eventual, and totally predictable, exhaustion of the relatively small extractive industries of the area, coal and oil. However, my opinion is that the primary cause was the decline of the railroad. When rail was dominant, major centers on the lines were, by default, places of importance. When the nation abandoned its efficient rail network for a distributed road-based system, locations that were once important simply became ordinary, and suffered as a result. Around the same time, many businesses in Centralia left the city center for a few dreary strip malls at the edge of town, just as happened in so many other towns in this country. These, in turn, are being now supplanted by the arrival of a mega-chain whose name begins with W. I think that Reuben and his sons would be saddened that the business they worked so hard to create slipped away into nothingness, only to be replaced by such bland counterparts.

There are always positive aspects about any location, of course, and modern Centralia is certainly not a bad place overall. The rural farms surrounding the town universally appear to be prosperous and well cared for. In the 1980s, the town built a nice carillon tower, shown below, in the city center. This is an example of the type of structure that used to be more common, something that serves no useful purpose beyond making one’s home a nicer place to live.

Some connections to the past still exist as well. The Centralia House Restaurant has been operating in the center of the town for around one hundred and fifty years. The earliest structures that housed it, including one that Abraham Lincoln is said to have dined in, burned during the nineteenth century, but its replacement, which still exists today, has been the same since the 1890s, including its original bar, cash register, patterned ceiling, and other items. The restaurant was famous for bringing food out to passing trains in the days before dining cars existed, and was a primary social center for Centralia and much of southern Illinois. It is likely, then, that my grandmother and her parents dined there many times over the years. When I visited during the Tour, I enjoyed a nice dinner there as well, thinking about them, and how they must have been proud of their town and excited about the future while they enjoyed their meal.

The image below is Marjorie, at an age when she would have been living in Centralia. I will think of the town they way she did, as a place that was important, and full of possibilities.