Local history: taking the train from Roscoe to Harlem
Trains ran regularly through Roscoe and Rockton in the late 1800s.
Allie Dodge McCurry (1875-1962, Roscoe) wrote of taking the train from Roscoe to Harlem Village, which was quite a little community in the late 1800s/early 1900s. People got around the area quite easily thanks to transportation that was available then! Trains ran regularly from Rockton and Roscoe to Rockford, Beloit, and on to Chicago and Madison.
Editors note: Harlem Village was founded by farmers from Harlem, New York, who moved west before the Civil War , after which Harlem boomed with an influx of poor Italians and Jews from New York City. Originally located near Alpine and Harlem Roads, in 1859 the community moved east to be near the Kenosha Railroad, which ran between Chicago and Kenosha - as many as ten trains a day - until 1937. Loves Park annexed Harlem Village in 1982. In 2013, Woodward bought part of the land where the village had stood.
More local history
- Allie's transportation drawings, age 16, from 1891
Horses, carriages, trains, and friends at the Beloit train station - Exploring the history of schools in Roscoe Township
school in the blacksmith shop - Since 1910: the Roscoe Fall Festival over the years
livestock show, fairies, elves, flowers, and the most perfect baby - Memorial Day, 1908
Decoration Day, the Spider Web Social, revolutionists in Russia, safecrackers in Roscoe - This Week in... 1877: Vegetine!
grazing ordinances in Roscoe, Crazy Horse, land rush - Next Week in... 1877 -
temperance and phrenology - This Week in... 1879
kissing the groom, Victor Hugo, this country is just full of climate. - This Week in... April 1877
rights of intolerance in education, free land in Kansas
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