(upbeat music) - [Voice Over] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

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Welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald near Niota, which is near Nauvoo, which is, as you can see, the Mississippi River in the background, right on the Mississippi River.

We're north of Nauvoo, about eight miles or so.

This is an interesting place to be because if you'd heard of the Icarians, which were a community from France who lived in this area for a brief time, and a man named Cambre who was an Icarian who built this house that dates to 1867.

Well, it's been, was in that family for many years and now it's in a different family's hands after many years.

And we're gonna talk to the most recent owner about this house and about the history of the house and about the Icarians and about Mr. Cambre and how all that ties together.

Rebecca, it's a fascinating story.

Your grandparents loved this house.

- They did.

- They lived here for decades and decades and then they passed away, and you liked it too, so you bought it.

- Yeah.

- How did that happen?

How did that come about?

- Well, so it starts with my grandparents, of course.

In 1979 the house and the property here went up for auction.

And my grandmother, as a little girl, had come here to pick apples.

And so when she saw the auction notice she said she wanted to come see it and possibly buy it.

And she came out here and it was exactly the way she remembered it as a little girl.

And she fell in love with it again and my grandfather did too, and so they bought the farm here.

- And that was in '79?

- That was in '79.

- In succeeding years then, they were familiar with the history of the house.

- Yes.

- And they actually got it on the registry of The National Registry of Historic Places, right?

- Yes, they went through that process.

They've put it on the registry as an example of Icarian architecture.

- Okay.

Icarian, and Mr. Cambre, the French Icarian, was a cabinet maker.

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- So much of the wood that's in the house, we know that he built and milled and installed.

- Yes.

- Okay, describe this house for me, because people see this style house but not usually in the Midwest.

- Yeah.

So this is a salt box style house.

The story goes that in New England there's a different tax rate for a two-story house.

So when you look at it from the front it looks like it was a one-story house, but when you actually walk around to the back you'll see that it is a two-story house.

And so you hope that the tax collector does not walk around to the back side.

(Mark laughs) - [Rebecca] When he's coming to collect taxes.

- [Mark] Okay, well, everybody's got a gimmick.

- [Rebecca] Right.

Let's take a walk around there.

Now it's not a very big house, but Mr. Cambre had it full of people, didn't he?

- He had 10 children.

- [Mark] Oh my goodness.

- So five of which were born here in the house or on the property, at least.

So he actually bought the property in 1860 and then the house was completed here in 1867.

- And he was a farmer and he had an apple orchard, didn't he?

That's probably - Yes.

- how he made that and cabinet making?

That's how he made his living.

- Yeah, so this was a working apple orchard when he bought it.

And then they had it as a working apple orchard until at least the 1940s.

- [Mark] Now we're gonna see this from the inside, which is kind of a hoot.

But all the houses that- he built more than this house, didn't he?

- [Rebecca] Yes, he built five houses at least.

And they all had the door in the second floor.

There was no balcony.

Everybody asks.

It's the door to nowhere.

(Rebecca laughs) So it's used for ventilation.

So when I opened that dormer window that we saw from the front in this door, the breeze that goes through here makes this house feel like it's air conditioned.

- [Mark] Is that right?

- [Rebecca] Yeah.

- [Mark] Is that right?

- [Rebecca] Yeah.

- [Mark] So it really works.

I don't know why he didn't use a window.

Maybe it's a joke.

Maybe it's a joke.

- [Rebecca] Maybe, I don't know.

- That just don't take that first step because you won't survive it.

- It's a doozy.

- Yeah.

And even with the lower door on the back, it probably never really led to anything like a patio or, - [Rebecca] No.

- [Mark] Or a deck or anything like that.

- [Rebecca] No.

- [Mark] A great place to overlook the river, but I mean, nowhere to sit or nowhere to come out and enjoy it.

- [Rebecca] No.

- [Mark] Interesting.

- [Rebecca] Yeah.

- [Mark] Okay, so this is a, let's see, it's a one, is it two bedrooms?

- [Rebecca] Technically it's three.

- [Mark] Three?

- There's the downstairs bedroom and the upstairs bedroom right above it.

And then that big open room is a bedroom.

- 10 kids?

- I know, it baffles my mind every time.

(Rebecca laughs) - I mean, when you see where people were living in log cabins about the same time and they were a lot smaller than this, so.

- Right.

- But I guess the next thing to do- Now there's a number of things to do here today, because they had, of course, they were a working farm and an apple orchard, so they had a barn for animals and also for tools and stuff.

They're close to a spring here.

- Yes.

- So they had a pump house.

They had a pump house where they could pump the water up and distribute it.

- Right.

- And they had an apple shed, right?

Which is now gone, but we can take a look at where that was.

And I'm gonna guess that they had a lot of apple trees.

Unfortunately they're not still here, because they have a limited lifespan.

- Yeah, apple trees have a lifespan.

- But they had a lot, they had a big, big orchard, didn't they?

- Yes.

They had a big orchard.

My hayfield now would have an orchard at one point.

So like apple trees have a life span of a 100 years.

So when my grandparents bought this in 1979 there was only one apple tree left and it was in very poor shape.

- Yeah.

- So no more apples.

- Okay.

Well, let's take a look inside.

- Sure.

- [Mark] After you.

- [Rebecca] Thank you.

- Looks familiar, huh?

(Rebecca laughs) Did you play here a lot when your grandparents- - Yes.

- Did you come out and play a lot?

- Yes, we did.

We spent a lot of time out here.

So my grandparents lived on a property just 15 minutes away.

So when we were at their house and it was a nice day we came out here to play.

- Yeah - Yeah.

- Parts of this 1867 house are original.

- Yes.

- Obviously the tile floor is not.

- No.

- But over there that sink or that- - [Rebecca] The cabinet base.

- [Mark] Cabinet, right.

- [Rebecca] Yes.

The cabinet based there is original.

- [Mark] And that would have been made by Mr. Cambre?

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- Because that's what he did.

And if you look at the woodwork in here as well, like the window trim and everything, the door trims, it was all made made by him.

I would like to see his workshop.

I would like to see where- Would you think he had a workshop on this property?

- Obviously somewhere.

- Yeah.

I'm not positive exactly where it was at.

- It might've been in the barn.

- It might've been in the barn or the pump house.

One or the other would be my guess.

But I don't know for sure.

- Another interesting aspect about this- not all of these older homes had full basements.

- Yes.

- And they stored their apples in many cases down there, didn't they?

- [Rebecca] Right.

- Which kept them cool.

They would last longer that way.

This would have been a very small dining room for 10 people.

(Mark laughs) - Yeah.

(Rebecca laughs) So yeah.

This is the dining room.

I'm told that they once rented this out occasionally.

So my lane here is actually part of the stagecoach route that came through here.

- Is that right?

- Yes.

- From where to where?

- From Niota to French town, which was at the end of my lane here.

- Yeah.

- An incorporated town that's no longer here.

And then on into Nauvoo.

- I'll be darned.

- So- - Okay.

So if they wanted to, people could stop off here and get a meal, right?

They'd feed them and make a few bucks and off they go.

- I would assume, yeah.

- Okay.

- I know that they had definitely rented out this room to stay in.

I always point out the pegs.

The pegs on the wall are an Icarian feature.

So the Icarians had a large communal dining hall, and everyone had a numbered chair.

And at the end of the meal they would hang their chairs up on the pegs to reuse that large dining room.

- Hey, this is a good time to talk about the Icarians a little bit, because people keep hearing us use that term and they may not be familiar with this group.

I'm going to sort of distill it a little bit and then ask you to fill in the blanks.

- Okay.

- Around the time of the French revolution- - Yes.

- There was a man named, - Etienne Cabet.

- Cabet who wrote a book.

- Yes.

- [Mark] The Road To Icarie?

- [Rebecca] Voyage on Icarie.

- [Mark] The Voyage on Icarie.

Okay.

Hence, the Icarians?

- [Rebecca] Yes, right.

- [Mark] Or Icarians.

- [Rebecca] Exactly.

- They left France when all the tumult was occurring and then they brought their popular- I guess it was not a colony, it was more like a, well, what sort of a cultural mix was it?

- Kind of like a commune.

It was- They sold everything they owned and gave it to the society.

And then they formed this big communal society where they all lived and worked together.

- They left France.

- Yes.

- They came to the new world up the Mississippi river.

- Yes.

- And about that time the Mormons at Nauvoo had disbanded.

- Yes.

- Right?

- Right.

- So they needed a place for their community and it was perfect timing, wasn't it?

- It was.

So they bought the property from the Mormons after they left.

Most of the Icarian society was underground.

Temple Square there in Nauvoo.

So they had built large apartment complexes that were on Temple Square.

And of course, those are no longer there.

- Did they inhabit at any of the Mormon buildings?

- Yes.

- Of course those are all stone and brick and they're in very good condition.

So they would have used too.

- They would've used those buildings as well.

- While they were building their apartments.

- Yes.

- And their apartments may have looked something like this house?

- Something like this.

- Yeah.

- They were one room apartments.

Everybody was assigned a room.

And yeah, it's interesting.

- So they all- Actually they were not really interested in in making a lot of money, were they?

- No.

- They were more interested in the community remaining.

It was very important that the community remained together.

They took all their meals together.

- Yes.

- And they did everything together, I guess.

And when when they had rifts in their society, that sort of tore the whole thing apart because togetherness was the whole idea, right?

- Right, right.

Etienne Cabet took a group to St. Louis, and then a group went took onto Corning, Iowa and actually was in Corning, Iowa active until 1899.

- [Mark] Oh.

So they probably have still have some buildings there that they've preserved only for Icarian- - They do.

They do.

- Interesting.

Interesting.

Okay.

Well, that's a 101, 101 kind of on the Icarians.

So when we use the term people know what we're talking about.

- Right.

- But that peg, that kills me.

That's so funny because, I guess, also what that would do is if you're going to clean up the mess hall, you get to hang the chairs up so we can sweep, right?

- Right, right.

And then they could use the mess hall for other activities.

I'm told they had dances.

Dancing was a big thing for the Icarians.

- Okay.

Now this, I don't know, would this have been a living room parlor or would this have been a bedroom?

- This would've been a living room.

- Okay.

- Yeah, yeah.

This would have been a living room.

So the fireplace there was not a working fireplace as you would think of it.

They would have had a potbellied stove sat in the middle of the floor there, but obviously- our wood worker.

- [Mark] And the built-in wood is original.

- [Rebecca] Yes.

All the cabinetry there is original.

- [Mark] That's nice to have very nice to have.

Yeah.

You can see where the pipe would have gone up through.

- [Rebecca] Exactly.

- [Mark] And of course then all the woodwork along the chair rail and down, it's all really, really, really nice.

- [Rebecca] Thank you.

- Now this room it has a lot of the original features.

- Right.

- Now the floors in here is original, not in the rest of the house, but in here it is.

- This is this an original floor.

However, my grandmother painted this in the 80s.

She researched what would have been typical for that time period and hand stenciled all of this on the floor.

- And she chose the colors that she thought someone then from 1867 would have used?

- Yes, yes.

- Okay.

- My grandparents absolutely loved history and they loved antiques.

And this was, like I said, she did a lot of research to figure out what would have been typical for that time period to redecorate this floor.

- I'm sure she enjoyed it a lot.

- Yeah.

- Now this behind you though, this was not an original feature.

- No.

- This was extra.

When your grandparents moved into this house the outhouse was still in use.

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- [Mark] So they needed to change that pretty quick.

- Yeah.

There was no running water here.

And I had to use that outhouse, which there were some rather large spiders in there.

(Rebecca laughs) On the edge of the woods like that.

Oh my goodness.

They didn't want to change anything here.

That was a big thing for them.

They didn't want to change anything.

- Yeah.

- So they put a bathroom in upstairs in an attic area.

So they don't want to change the floor plan.

They put that a little attic area bathroom and in the 80s, and then around 2000, my original stairs there got a little bit too much for my grandma.

So she put this bathroom here downstairs.

- They were going to tough it out as long as they could.

- As long as they could, and then, yeah.

So this is kind of like tucked into a corner, unobtrusively, but we have bathroom inside.

- I'm glad for her sake she finally got her bathroom.

- Yes.

- Now this we're talking about Mr. Cambre's woodwork.

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- He made this too, didn't he?

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- And this is one huge thing.

- Yes, yes.

This is huge original cabinet built by Adolf Cambre.

And when my grandparents bought this house all the furniture was sold out at auction.

So this cabinet actually left the house.

It was sold.

Which is- I have a hard time picturing as big as this cabinet is.

- How did they get it in and out?

It looks to me like you have to build the house around it.

- It came out.

And so then when they found out what my grandparents were doing here with the house, preserving the history here, the cabinet was donated back to my grandparents and it came back in and my uncle says he has not not very fun memories of moving this cabinet.

And it will never move again.

- But they're glad to have it though.

- Oh.

My goodness.

Yes.

So excited to have it back.

- Yeah.

- For sure.

- Okay.

Let's take a look at the steps because those look like they've been- had a lot of traffic over the years.

- Those are- - Had a lot of traffic.

- Original, obviously.

- Oh yeah.

Look how steep that stairway is.

- Yes.

And I love the wear, the wear on how these have been well used.

This is the original milk paint on the stairs here from the 1860s.

- Yeah.

Well, let's go up.

- Okay.

Here we go.

- Old, old stairs.

Old, old floor.

- Yes.

Yes.

- Old, old house.

- Yes.

This is definitely the original floor up here.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

You could tell.

This is one big room so I assume the kids probably would have just spread out here and slept wherever and however they could.

- Right.

Right.

This would have been the kids' room.

- Ten kids, ten kids- - Just boggles my mind every time.

- I know, I know.

Well, you know, when you love your family, you stay close together.

- For sure.

- And master, probably the master bedroom.

You know these windows all look, they all look original.

- Yes.

So these are all the original hand-blown glass.

Obviously, you know we've had to replace a few and- - You're fortunate.

You're fortunate to be able to have it.

- Yes.

Yeah.

That's one of the most interesting features here to think about all the original glass on all the windows.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

So I also want to take a look- This is always, it's a shock and it's gonna be a shock to everybody that that would say, okay well let's just go outside.

And we saw the tripping outside.

The door to nowhere.

- The door to nowhere.

- Oh my goodness.

- Everyone asks about that.

- It's that first step to get you.

Yeah.

Isn't that a beautiful view.

Look at the river.

Isn't that gorgeous.

- Yeah.

- And you had- you said that Mr. Cambre did a lot of research and a lot of traveling and he built here because he said this was the prettiest place on the whole Mississippi river.

- Yes.

Yes.

He came to America from New Orleans and said he'd gone all the way to the beginnings of the Mississippi river and then had come back and decided that this was the most perfect view on the river.

- Well, you're lucky to have it.

And your, your poor grandmother, again, she, she didn't want to change the place but she had to have an indoor restroom and a bath.

So she took part of the attic.

- [Rebecca] Right.

She didn't want to change the floor plan.

So this is the strange little attic bathroom that- - [Mark] It's neat.

It's neat.

- [Rebecca] It's cute.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Mark] And, and this, you really get a good view of- this is one of his pieces too, isn't it?

He made and you call this a, what?

- [Rebecca] I call this an apple bench.

That's what always been told it is, as an Apple bench.

That supposedly sat out in orchard.

Put apple baskets underneath of it.

- [Mark] Good view from here too, because you can, if you, if you use your imagination and you look out there just past the pump house and the barn you can see that open area and that would have been the orchard, huh?

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- [Mark] Hundreds of apple trees.

Yeah?

- [Rebecca] Yeah.

- [Mark] And you, it's a hayfield now?

- [Rebecca] Yeah.

It's a hayfield now.

Yeah.

- [Mark] Well, it's very pretty.

Rebecca your latest addition is this mammoth patio that you have overlooking this ravine.

Now, the reason this is here is because under this is the foundation of the old apple shed.

- Yes - Right?

- So why this is so large is, this is the size of the apple shed.

So when we bought the property here, it was kind of sliding down this ravine and we chose to take the apple shed down versus having it fall down itself.

- Or have somebody get hurt playing in there and it gets, or they fall- - Right.

- Well, you can see how steep it is.

My goodness gracious.

If you got started you'd, you wouldn't finish for a long time.

- Right.

And after we took that building down and we were trying to decide what we're, what it was doing out here.

I had everybody walked right up to the edge of this ravine.

And I said, well, there has to be a fence.

- Yup.

Yup.

- First things first, we will put a fence.

And then yeah, we just decided to do this concrete patio.

- If you look over the edge here you can see that there's the old stone foundation of the apple shed.

Well, they built that thing strong, didn't they?

It was going to withstand a lot of, a lot of apples.

- Yes.

For sure.

- This is very nice.

This is really nice.

And I really like the reason it's so big is because it had to be.

- Right.

Right.

- Now, there's, there's a spring down there.

Cause I can see, I can see there's water running.

I guess most of the year, but they used it didn't they?

- Yes they did.

So this is a natural mineral spring there.

It's called Mormon Springs and they use that water to water all of their crops and stuff.

So they had not only the apple orchard, but a huge garden, when I show pictures- - Yeah.

- Yeah.

So they had a gas engine that actually pumped water up out of that ravine and take, took the water and put it in their pump house over here.

So underneath the pump houses, the 2,000 gallon cistern.

And they, they would fill that up in the morning with water from the mineral spring and then use that water in the afternoon to water all of their trees and- - And for whatever else they, they had a need for water.

Can we take a look?

- Sure.

- They may have built this even before the house.

You know cause you're going to need, if you're going to have a farm out here, you're going to have to have water.

It's the most important thing.

This may be the oldest building on the property.

- [Rebecca] Yeah.

There's- pump house.

We use that for storage now, obviously.

- [Mark] Yeah.

Yeah.

It looks like it's been used in the past as a workroom too.

There's a workshop in there.

A wood workshop.

- [Rebecca] Right.

- [Mark] But you can see the pump and that goes down into the cistern that you were talking about.

- [Rebecca] Right.

- Boy, this thing is held up pretty well, when you consider a hundred and fifty years.

- Right.

Exactly.

- Yeah.

They don't build them like this anymore.

They don't have to.

- No.

- That's how that goes.

Let's take a look at this barn too while we're out here.

- Yeah.

- [Mark] I imagine, I don't know when this, this may have been the second structure they built, who knows.

- Right.

This one we've done quite a bit of work to get it kind of usable.

- And usable for what?

- So when I bought it and tried to figure out what I was doing with it afterwards, I, we I had had cousins get married out here.

- [Mark] Oh, okay.

- [Rebecca] So, we decided to open it up for weddings.

So.

Yeah.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Rebecca] So yeah.

- And the house too?

- Yes.

And the house too.

Mainly outside space which I have a lot of outside space, as you can tell.

But we've decided to kind of fix the barn up a little bit.

So if we needed some inside space for a wedding- - Nice if you wanted to- if it were a nice day and you wanted to get married outside, boy, with that overlooking the rivers are pretty spot.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

Beautiful pictures for sure.

- And so this was when the, when this was originally built courses would have housed whatever animals, did- they probably didn't have a lot of animals, did they?

- [Rebecca] Not really.

Obviously, a few horse or two.

And maybe a cow.

- [Mark] They had the chicken house.

We knew they had a chicken house.

So they had a lot of chickens.

- [Rebecca] They had a lot of chickens.

- [Mark] And of course they had the apple shed but that was not a, you know, they were they were primarily the hay and, and the apples of course.

- [Rebecca] Right.

- And the big garden.

- Yes.

- And chickens.

- And the big garden.

- And chickens.

- A lot of chickens.

- A lot of chickens.

That chicken coop was rather large.

And then, of course now it's gone, but yeah.

Huge chicken coop.

- Sweet.

- Yeah.

So we put windows in to kind of give it a little more sunlight, natural light.

And just- - Rebecca, your grandparents lived here a long time and they they learned a lot about the property just from poking around and cleaning things and you know, removing things.

Hence they find this split rail fence and you got to believe that it was, it's been here as long as the house.

- Yes.

So this property was pretty overgrown when they bought it.

In fact, when they came out here for the auction, it was so overgrown, you couldn't even tell it was on the river.

And then this was all brush in the spot and they found the fence when they cleared out the brush - It's a beautiful view.

I mean, this is really a nice piece- In this, this area, this mowed area here.

This has been like this for a long time.

This is their front yard, right?

It always was like this, huh?

- Right, right.

There would have been gardens.

So I have pictures from the 1930s when most of this was all garden, but yeah, this, this view's pretty much been the same since 1860s.

- Yeah.

Really, really nice.

And like I say, your, your grandparents, I think they would be, they, they didn't live long enough to know that you were gonna buy this did they?

- No.

I- After they passed away and we were discussing what we were going to do out here, we talked to, well we're going to probably sell it and- - Yeah.

- Yeah.

Then trying to figure out what would become of this?

And that was the, you know, I, I bought it to preserve it.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

You didn't, you didn't want to think about that because it might be, it might be a tear down.

You never know.

Somebody might want to come in and they want to build a house right there.

- Right.

- Right.

Because I mean, for the Cambre's it was a big three bedroom house.

For us today, it's kind of a small three bedroom house.

- Right.

Right.

- Right.

- Well, thanks for showing it to us and, and, and good luck with it, you know, I mean, for your events and, and whatever else you may host out here best of luck.

- Right, right.

It's all about, for me, it's all about preserving the home and keeping, keeping the history out here alive.

- Right.

- Well, it's on the National Register.

So that's, that's, that's a great place to start.

Where I, as I, as I told you earlier in the program, we're here near Niota which is North of Nauvoo on the river.

You got a beautiful view of the Mississippi river here.

And we got a chance to tour probably the oldest or the only Icarian in home, left, left in this entire area.

With another Illinois story near Niota, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

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