The Rich Boys: Bill and Adam Mosgrove
by Loren Thompson and Everett Thomas
William and Adam Mosgrove were brothers who grew to manhood on
their parents' farm, located about three miles south of McHenry on
Barreville Road. The loyalty that developed in their youth lasted
all their lives, and the odd twosome of "Bill and Ad" was widely
known in our community. Though they eventually became the owners of
1000 acres of rich farm land, neither of them ever married, and
their local fame resulted from their increasingly eccentric
lifestyle.
Their parents were John and Jane Mosgrove. He was an Irish
immigrant, born in 1805; she was born in Virginia in 1800. They met
in Ohio and were married in 1832. Their first son, Adam, arrived a
year later, and soon thereafter they moved to Illinois and settled
south of McHenry in Irish Prairie. Three more children were born:
Jane Isabelle, William, and John C.: who died at the age of three
and was buried in the family plot on the property.
Hardworking John Mosgrove prospered in his new world. He
acquired several farms, while his less diligent sons were acquiring
familiarity with the pool halls and saloons of nearby McHenry. His
daughter, Jane Isabelle, married James Kittle, the son of Canadian
immigrant parents, and they made their home on the Mosgrove
farm.
John Mosgrove died in 1854, Bill and Ad knew they would inherit
his vast acreage, and that the income from the farm was sufficient
to support them and their mother without the necessity of their
farm labor. But little did they realize that the idleness they were
anticipating would result in their downfall.
There was a girl, Nancy, who lived on an adjoining farm and
caught Adam's fancy. As the months passed, he grew desperately in
love with the comely lass, but to his dismay Nancy would have no
part of him, and shunned his every advance. Results were even worse
when brother Bill tried to help him win the girl's favor. Her
response was to move away. She went to live with distant relatives
where she would no longer be annoyed by these unwanted suitors. Ad
was heartbroken to lose the girl he deeply loved; Bill grieved for
his disappointed brother.
While their sister, Jane Isabelle, and her husband, Jim Kittle,
raised three children on the farm, Bill and Ad spent more and more
time and money in taverns, and their lives deteriorated. When their
mother died in 1869, 36-year-old Ad and 32-year-old Bill were no
longer the eager and impetuous youths who had wooed a neighbor
girl, but unkempt hard-drinking men. They moved into a small house
on a 20-acre farm adjoining one of their farms and sank deeper into
their slovenly existence, sleeping in the same worn clothes they
wore all week. Inseparable as they were, little conversation passed
between them, and they quarreled nearly as often as they were
amiable.
They kept a buggy and a horse in an old unpainted shed near the
house, and they were a familiar sight in the countryside, traveling
to McHenry or Woodstock, but never riding in the buggy together.
Their peculiar preference was for one to drive and ride, and the
other to walk, but even that mode of travel was queerly executed.
If Bill was driving the horse, Ad could be seen walking behind,
sometimes at a great distance. But if Ad was driving, Bill walked
in front, ahead of the horse.
The reason for these trips to town was of course, their
insatiable thirst for liquor and their taste for the trivial and
uncouth gossip that accompanied that drinking. Regular patronage of
local saloons did little for their money-handling acumen, and
steadily they relied more and more on their credit as the heirs of
the Mosgrove properties. In fact, by the end of a decade their cash
inflow was almost terminated, but that in no way curtailed their
lifestyle or diminished their gruff demands, for by that time they
had forgotten that they owed anybody anything.
In 1904 the aging brothers were taken into court in Woodstock by
creditors seeking settlement of long-standing claims. On December
12, they were declared "spendthrift" and "drunkards" and
incompetent to handle their own affairs. Mr. William McMillan, a
neighbor, was appointed by the court as conservator, and the sale
of all assets and the payment of all claims was ordered. According
to court records, the assets totaled $80,000 and the claims were
$5,000.
Nineteen days later, on New Year's Eve, 1904, Adam Mosgrove
died. He was 71 years old, and his death resulted from severe
frostbite incurred while walking home from McHenry. Bill survived
for two more years. They were buried in the family lot where a tall
stone monument still designates the resting places of their parents
and the brother who died in infancy. Their obituaries are on file
at the Plaindealer office in McHenry, but their graves are
unmarked. The area in which the Mosgrove plot was located now
belongs to the McHenry County Conservation District, so the
preservation of the little family cemetery can be expected.
Their estate of approximately $75,000 was equally divided among
Jane Isabelle's three children, Willis, Henrietta and John Arthur
Kittle.
from the May, 1980 "Bull Valley Bullseye"
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