Gurler, George H., House

About this property

The George H. Gurler House or simply, the Gurler House, is a home in DeKalb, Illinois. The home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places to which it was added in 1979. The home was built in 1857 and was occupied by members of George H. Gurler's extended family as early as 1888. Gurler was the co-founder of the Gurler Brothers Creamery. Gurler was also the president of the DeKalb County Farmer's Institute, the predecessor of the American Farm Bureau Federation. The Gurler House was constructed in the Greek Revival style of architecture. It was possibly designed by Jacob Haish. The Gurler House is estimated to have been constructed in 1857; however, county records are not available for that time period. A sign in the front yard of the Gurler House lists it as 1857, and the Gurler Heritage Association celebrated the sesquicentennial of the house in 2007. In approximately 1857, a local banker, Ellzey Young, had the home built for himself and his new bride, Alida Ellwood. Alida was the younger sister of barbed wire baron Isaac Ellwood. George Gurler would not purchase the home until years later. There are conflicting reports on the original owners of the property. One assertion is that Wyman constructed the home and sold it to the Gurlers, which was also stated by Beatrice "Bea" Gurler in an interview with the Daily Chronicle in DeKalb. However, according to the property abstract this is simply not true. According to that document the Gurler House, as it eventually would become known, began its history as an 80-acre (32 ha) tract of land sold by the U.S. government to Steven S. Jones on April 13, 1844. Jones was a resident of Kane County. It is possible that Jones was a land speculator who gathered up pieces of property scattered across northeast Illinois. The 1878 collection "Past and Present of Kane County, Illinois," described Jones as a St. Charles attorney born on July 23, 1813, in Barry, Vermont. He moved to Illinois in June 1838 with his wife Lavinia where he has been credited with naming St. Charles. In 1846 the family sold the 80 acres (32 ha) in DeKalb (then known as Huntley's Grove) to Russell Huntley, a founding settler of DeKalb. Huntley, with his brother Lewis, co-owned the property until 1851 when an entry in the abstract indicates that John M. Goodell, another early DeKalb settler, received the land as a result of legal action against the Huntleys. Regardless, Goodell eventually sold the parcel back to Lewis Huntley in 1853. Huntley then platted the land as an addition to the town. He laid out 93 city lots in all. The property that would eventually become the Gurler House was sold to the man who would eventually construct the home which would become the Gurler House, Ellzey P. Young, in 1857. Young along with his wife Alida Young (who was the younger sister of Isaac Ellwood) paid Huntley $320 for the three lots that make up the property where the Gurler House stands today. This entry on the property abstract confirms the widely held and long standing belief that the house was constructed in 1857. There is, however, another possibility.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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