Tonight, during their pledge drive Channel 11, WTTW, Chicago’s PBS station aired two very cool programs put together by Geoffrey Baer. Sarah and I ended up watching both of them.
The first was called Chicago’s Lakefront that was filmed 5 years ago or so. It covers the lake front of the city and many of the sites and pieces of architecture along the lake. It was well worth the time to watch and I recommend it if you get a chance to see it.
The other was called South of Chicago: Suburbs, Steel Mills, and Shorelines. It started in Gary, Indiana, and traveled up Lake Michigan, and then down the Calumet river, to the Cal-Sag Channel, and then south when the Channel starts to cut west. It was really interesting and I know a lot more about the southern suburbs then I did before I watched it. I also recommend watching this one if you get the chance.
One reason we decided to watch this one as well was to see if it mentioned South Holland and its history. We were interested in South Holland for a number of reasons. One reason is that South Holland was the onion set capital of the world . The most important reason is the fact that the Peter Peerbolte Company was there. The Peter Peerbolte Company was an onion farming company. They even had their own train cars, which you can now find as models.
In any case, Sarah is a descendant of Peter Peerbolte. He was her great-great grandpa. What we’ve been told is that with the onion company, he owned most of the land that is now the town of South Holland. Unfortunately, the Great Depression took its toll and he had to sell everything. Its worth nothing that he did not end up buried in debt as he managed to pay back everyone he owed money to with the proceeds from selling off the company. He had enough money to buy a farm in Kankakee, which is how my wife’s mom’s family ended up there. But I digress…
In any case, during the discussion of South Holland, the Peerbolte family wasn’t mentioned. Sarah was upset about that. However, its caused us to question how big the farm was, and if they were the only farm in South Holland. I think we may be visiting the South Holland historical society to do some research as we’re both interested. Why are we interested? I’m not sure, it might be only so we can tell Dinah more of her family history when we get that far.
Baer is currently working on a new documentary about the North-West suburbs that I’m looking forward to seeing when WTTW airs it.
[Update 5/26/2011: Sarah was doing some web searching and came across some found film footage of Peter Peerbolte and his family in 1929.]