I am not related to this family in any way, but spotted this item in my local newspaper which was running archive stories from long ago. This caught my eye because it was an unusual story.
From the Archives of the Rockford Register Star, Aug. 18, 1847
STRUCK BY LIGHTNING
It is said that a man was struck by lightning at Big Bottom by a discharge from a cloud which passed to the north of this place last Monday. He was not killed but so much stunned as to be insensible for some time.
Another instance of the singular operation of electricity was furnished a week or two since in Westfield Precinct in the south part of this county in the early part of an evening. A familiy by the name of Vibbard, residing in a log house, had retired to rest, the children in the trundle bed under that of the parents. The house was struck on the ridge pole at the end where the family were lying, throwing down the logs in the gable end, passing along the logs to one corner of the house where there was a crockery closet, playing sundry pranks with the contents, leaping on to the bed, running diagonally across the person of the man, only slightly marking him, descending to the post of the trundle bed and shivering it to splinters, passing off through the floor into the ground without further injury.