GALESBURG — Patrick Snyder says entering his new 125-year-old home is like opening a time capsule. And one of the discoveries has left him and his wife, Tammy, unsettled.
The Snyders bought the house at 453 E. Losey St. in March. Traffic whizzes by at a steady rate. Galesburg Cottage Hospital stands less than a block away.
According to Knox County records, the house built in 1896 remains in good condition with a strong frame. But it is in need of serious updating as the Snyders are turning it into their home. At one point in its history, the house was split into upstairs and downstairs apartments, like many older homes in the center of Galesburg.
Ancient yellowish-orange shag carpeting covered the floors of rooms filled with old but solid furniture: a full bedroom set downstairs. Several couches. An outdated but still working floor model console television.
Among the tasks of updating the house was removing the old chimney, and it was this task that exposed a secret on Saturday, Aug. 14.
Tammy was inside the attic, removing the bricks from what was left of the chimney while Patrick was on a lift platform outside.
“I put my hammer down on the floor,” said Tammy, “and when I went to pick it up, that’s when I saw right next to the chimney this deteriorated cardboard box with holes ... and with bones in it.”
“I yelled to Patrick and he thought it was a raccoon or something, but then I picked up and handed him a femur.”
“There was like, a pelvic bone, both the legs, a real skinny bone; just the lower half of someone.”
There was no skull, ribs or spine.
The Snyders called the Galesburg Police Department, which took possession of the human remains.
While the bones are clearly old, just how old is not yet clear and will have to be figured out by the Illinois State crime lab, according to Galesburg police Chief Russ Idle.
Idle explained that it will be checked to see if there is any marrow remaining in the bones and if there is the possibility of DNA extraction from them. If they are more recent, then tracing the past owners and residents of the home would be the next step.
Tammy Snyder is not so sure that the bones are quite so old.
The attic where they were found is dark and dirty, and while it has clearly been quite some time since the space was used, the other items make her suspicious. The attic remains lined with a layer of newspapers from the 1970s. One Register-Mail front page story from 1978 describes vandalism and destruction at the Knox County Jail.
Stained clothes and a dirty pair of boots concern her, while other items found are more unexpected.
A box of papers and notes discussing money matters turn out to be from a Japanese Carl Sandburg College student who lived in the house briefly in the early 1980s.
A Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders calendar from 1981, an Altoids tin of tobacco and letters written in Japanese also fill the box.
Pressing rewind on the home’s history brings more clues.
Clarence Glendening died in the home from a sudden heart attack in 1967, and his widow continued to live in the home until her death in 1986, with an unmarried daughter continuing to live there for the next 30-plus years as the last of her family to live in the Galesburg area.
But it was the owners of the home during the first half of the 20th century who provide what are perhaps the biggest clues.
Census records and city directories, beginning in 1900, show grocer John A. Peterson was the head of the household who lived there until his death in 1939, with his widow living in the home another decade. Their son, born in 1897, brings perhaps the biggest clue.
Evan Adolph Peterson graduated from Knox College in 1920 and then Rush Medical College in 1924. He moved to the Burlington, Iowa, area, where he served as a doctor in private practice and eventually as Des Moines County medical examiner. He died in 1972.
Could these bones have been left over from educational study by Peterson? Are they the bones of some person who many decades ago donated their body to medical science?
The Snyders have their doubts, due to the age of the other items in the attic.
And if they are from Dr. Peterson’s studies, why they were left in the attic, wedged mostly hidden against a chimney and wall for possibly 100 years, remains unanswered.
Whatever the case may be, Tammy Snyder feels unsettled.
“If something happened to them, I hope that their spirit is free. I never got bad vibes from the house, but it’s weird when you hear something that sounds like footsteps, but nobody’s up here.”
Patrick agreed with Tammy's account.
“Yesterday we both got home at the same time. I got home a few minutes before her and I came in and I could swear I heard footsteps, too. We went upstairs to check it out.”
For now, there are clues but no answers. In the meantime, the Snyders will continue to do the work on their home and wonder.
