"House by the Side of the Road" The Abbott farm alongside US 30, home to L.A. and Eunice Abbott (house at left) and their son, Edward, and his wife, Dorothy, and daughters Susan and Jan (house at right). The two-story house moved about a mile east, now nestled beside the tracks near Union Grove, in 1991. Hereford cows are seen in the lane to the north; there were Herefords on the farm for 100 years, until 2010. Nowadays there are fewer trees, and about half the outbuildings; the Big Red Barn remains, a legacy of the original 1848 Abbotts, and reportedly used as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

My grandmother wrote the Cottonwood News for the local newspapers--and because she was paid by the inch, detail was abundant! We compiled some of those columns in a book, "House by the Side of the Road", by Mrs. L.A. Abbott, available through Pines Publishing, and on Amazon. A 30-minute DVD of the same name is also available, with footage of the Big Red Barn and a telling of some of the stories from the book about life, and visitors, alongside the highway.

Update: the Big Red Barn ( the silo was removed in the late 1960s) with its Underground Railroad legacy, was damaged in the derecho on Aug. 10, 2020. Another windstorm in October peeled off more of the roof. It is now being dismantled by the young Amish couple who purchased the house, barns and a bit of acreage in April, 2021.