Du Quoin Began With This House
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA["I remember my dad telling me after he bought his house in 1937 of a man by the name of Grills whose father actually stood up there on the corner and watched the team of oxen bring this house into Du Quoin," said Eric Pflanz.
"It was the very first house that came from Old Du Quoin (old town)," he said. "The man said the front two stories of the house were up on skids and logs were laid under the skids (so it would roll)," Pflanz said. The back of the house was added later.
The move--that took days--was part of a five-mile trek across the prairie waist-high in grass to the newly laid rails of the Illinois Central Railroad through Du Quoin.
It was the only house--the first house--in Du Quoin and the only thing around it were the surveyor stakes of founding fathers Keyes and Metcalf and the promise of prosperity as the railroad passed through Southern Illinois.
The house is located at 12 North Mulberry Street and the legal description reads: "Of the following tract, situated in the South 1/2 of the North West 1/4 of South West 1/4 of Section 9, Township 6 South, Range 1 West of the Third Principal Meridian, known as Lots 7 and 8 in Howell's Proposed Addition to the City of Du Quoin in the County of Perry and State of Illinois. Beginning at the iron pin South fifty-three degrees West, twenty-four and eight tenths feet of the southwest corner of the North West 1/4 of the South West 1/4 of Section 9, in said Township and Range, then Est 300 feet to the place of beginning, thence North 180 feet, then East 100 feet, then South 180 feet and West 100 feet to the beginning."
What's of interest are the words "beginning" meaning the Keyes and Metcalf surveyor's point of origin for the entire town at the southwest corner of Keyes Park near the intersection of East Park and North Division Street and the words "Howell's proposed addition"-- "PROPOSED."
The Percy Smith house near the eastern base of the Poplar Street overpass is another house that was dragged by oxen from Du Quoin. There are one or two others still standing.
A dozen buildings were already planned for downtown Du Quoin in the 1850s--hotels, mercantiles, a bank and two dry goods stores. The town would grow quickly and so would the one-house "neighborhood" around Keyes Park. "It was later, of course, but across the street from us was a concrete block house owned by a man by the name of Plumlee. He had a trained crow that rode on his shoulder when he walked from here out to the (Du Quoin) packing plant. A long daily walk for Plumlee and no walk for the crow. Then, somebody shot it," he remembers.
Eric grew up in the house. "It had a fireplace in the front room that was meant to burn coal," he said. Coal was $2 a ton and the fireplace was set up with a grate so you could shake down he ashes.
"I lived there until I got married in 1964 and bought a house on East Park Street," he said.
"Dad died in 1961 and my mother died in 1998," he said.
The house has been vacant since. Years ago, Pflanz promised himself he would restore and redecorate the house. "Old age catches up with you. I've got some health problems and I am going to have to have a pacemaker put in," he said. "There were layers and layers of wallpaper I had to steam off," he said.
"I had a man who stayed there for a while and he plastered everything so it is ready to paint," Eric said. "I had an offer for it, but they wanted it on contract for deed," he said. "I just need to sell it."
The house has two large front rooms, a kitchen in the back and a bath off the kitchen that was built at the end of World War II. It has a claw foot bath tub still sitting in it. There were very few building materials right after the war and "the kitchen cabinets were built out of panels," Eric said.
"The house is made out of yellow poplar and square nails. When I was young dad told me to drive some nails and the wood was so hard I couldn't do it," he smiles. The plaster is mixed with horse hair, a practice used decades ago to hold it together on the walls," he said.
The old staircase is beautiful. The back door lock has been painted over a 100 times. Some doorways are straighter than others.
Eric says so far the house has not attracted the interest of the Perry County Historical Society nor the Du Quoin Historic Preservation Commission.
And, if the house isn't sold for its historic significance or to someone who just loves Du Quoin history at some point the city will probably target it for condemnation. Yellow caution tape is already laced between the posts on the front porch.
But, in the right hands--as the right project--it can certainly see an afterlife as a great piece of Du Quoin history.