Hello,
My name is Erastus Ketchum. I came to this area in 1834 at the age of eight, as a member of the first family to settle here. My mother was Christiana Churchill Ketchum, one of the four daughters and five sons of Winslow and Mercy Dodge Churchill. My father died before the family left upstate New York. I was one of the 13 grandchildren who made the trek to homestead this area that soon was to become known as Stacy’s Corners. So, I guess I was one of Glen Ellyn’s original citizens.
In the 71 years that I lived here I became known as a carpenter, trapper, gun lover and choir boy. My nickname was “Old Ketch.” When I was 23, I married my cousin, Mary Jane Churchill. There weren’t a lot of options in those days when Stacy’s Corners was so sparsely populated. But we hit it off pretty well, I guess, given that we were happily married for more than 50 years. We lived in a house that I built at the southeast corner of St. Charles Road and Main Street.
Later in life I was known as a farmer and carpenter, but I always considered that my greatest exploits were in hunting and trapping. I became good friends with the few remaining Native Americans in this area. So good, in fact, that they once saved my life. I also maintained a cider mill in one of my outbuildings, where I would make cider for farmers who brought wagonloads of apples every fall.
I’m proud to say that I also was one of the founders of the Free Methodist Church in town, a church that actively supported the abolitionist movement in the days before the Civil War. I sang in the church choir and was told that I had a beautiful tenor voice.
Sadly, my wife passed away about seven years before I did. I continued to live in our home at Stacy’s Corners until 1905 where I died at the age of 79.
