On the last day of 2025, it may be good to look back on 11 years of Dayton posts on this site.
The first was on February 27, 2015. In my enthusiasm I thought I could post something once a week. There have been times when I regretted this schedule, but by and large I’ve kept to it. There have been 575 posts through 2025.
These are the 15 largest numbers of posts by category.
193 biography
158 social
59 history
41 school
36 Fox river
21 farming
17 businesses
13 woolen mill
12 grist mills
12 cemetery
12 medical
11 news
10 travel
10 weather
9 humor
When I started this site, I thought of it purely as a personal way to collect my Dayton information. I didn’t expect it to be of interest to anyone else, except possibly to family members. I told a few people about it but didn’t make any effort to promote it. However, thanks to Google, occasionally someone would land here, read a little more, and stick around. It may not sound like much, compared to influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers, but I’m delighted to see that I have 48 subscribers and an unknown number of people who just drop in occasionally. The La Salle County Genealogy Guild has publicized it, for which I am very grateful. I’ve actually made contact with people who are researching someone that I have posted about, which is always a thrill.
There’s more to this web site beyond the weekly posts. As a matter of fact , they were sort of an afterthought. I was lucky to inherit a good deal of family information. As the historian of the Dayton Cemetery Association, I did a lot of research into the persons buried there and collected it all here. Plus which, most of the people of early Dayton were Greens or Green in-laws. They are all family and I’ve researched many of those who married in.
I want to thank everyone who has stopped by, especially those who have left comments. They are the best part of my day.
Dayton and the Greens 
Happy New Year! Your posts always brighten my day and result in some reflection about modern times vs the past. The newspaper clips have been especially enlightening. Interesting to read what was considered news–details of parties and community celebrations; who was in town, visiting; illnesses and deaths; politics (often as it related to local businesses), etc. It is a rather intimate record, but one that seemed to have been replaced with celebrities, today, instead of our neighbors. It has been a change. The old journalism style was much more an aid to local historians. Have to wonder when reporting on everyday people could no longer sell newspapers. Or perhaps, it was about privacy…
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Yes, the focus on everyday people and events was certainly stronger a hundred years or more ago. People would read the local news to know what their neighbors were saying and doing. There was also the telephone party line, which did a good business in spreading the news.
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