I've been doing some research into my family that moved to Dayton Township around 1870 from Kane County, Illinois. In doing my research, I have come across many family names, and found numerous nuggets of information that only make me want to learn more about life near Buck creek in the late 1800's. My gggrandfather was Stephen Durnan and he farmed in section 33 of Dayton Township and owned land just down the road in Franklin Township. He was Irish Catholic amongst many German Lutherans. He attended church in Fairbank as opposed to Sumner. I took on a project here at home by transcribing the old property boundaries as they were in the 1894 Atlas onto a current satellite image of the area today. In doing so, I tried to research each family a little bit. They are just names on a piece of paper, but I am interested if there are any stories or books out there about life around my gggrandfather's area south of Buck Creek. Some of the names I came across was Louis Mohlis, the shoe maker turned farmer. August Meier the blacksmith and farmer. The Pohler family which owned quite a bit of land. Then there was the Nicholas Mersch family who also were Catholic and very well may have traveled to church with my grandfather's family if they also went to Fairbank instead of Sumner. The Lutheran minister William Adix owned some land near my grandfather's farm as well as John Koch, the Swiss Jacob Glattly, and Fritz Bunzow. There are many more families than this that lived there in and around sections 32 and 33 of Dayton township. My gggrandfather is said to have been called upon to help build many of the barns there in the area and he died on July 15, 1888 from injuries sustained while lifting a beam while raising a barn, which caused a hernia to occur which led to infection they say. My family hung on until 1903 when my gggrandmother passed away and the children sold the farm. When I look at the 1917 Atlas that is available online, much has changed from the late 1800's. I really would like to learn more about the families that made up the community there and have even toyed with the idea of writing a fictional book based upon the families that lived there in that time. I'd appreciate any information anyone may have. Thanks. -Eric Durnan