Taft Farmstead

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

From the record

“The Taft Farmstead is a historic farm located west of Rochester, Sangamon County, Illinois. Established in the early 20th century, the farm is one of the few intact farmsteads from the period which was not a renovation of an earlier farm.”
Wikipedia article Taft Farmstead, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 68 National Register listings published here for Sangamon County · listed in 1980 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 10 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. SR 3, Rochester, 62563
When was it listed? November 1980
Category. building
Township. Rochester township
Architectural style. Neoclassical architecture
National Register reference number. 80001409 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

12,276 words

The chapter on Rochester Township in History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881 names Rochester. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

The village of Rochester is one of the oldest in the county. The lands on which the village was located were entered by Archibald and Robert Sattley, and transferred by them to L. V. Ilollenbeck, one of four brothers - Lawrence V., Andrew F., William Henry and Henry William - who came to what is now Rochester township in 1829 or 1830.

Passage source: History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881.

The town of Rochester was surveyed and platted by James Gregory, Esq., December 16, 1831. L. Y. Hollenbeck was proprietor of all north of Main street. A. F. Hollenbeck, administrator, acknowledged the plat before C. B. Stafford, justice of the peace, which is recorded in book H, page 141 of records.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Rochester Township - 12,276 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

2 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Taft Farmstead between 2001 and 2012, burning about 201 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1
Recreation and ceremony	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
28 July 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	200 acres	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	BUCKHART
13 May 2001	Recreation and ceremony	1.0 acres	Illinois State Fire Marshal's Office	not named

Every fire recorded in Sangamon County

Mines and quarries near this property

6 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 6 workings within 5 miles of Taft Farmstead: 3 producers, 2 past producers, 1 prospect. 3 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Fire Clay (Refractory), Clay. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Poston Brick & Concrete Prod. Clay	Clay	Prospect
Springfield Clay Prod.Co.Pitclay	Fire Clay (Refractory)	Past Producer
Clear Lake Dredge	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Sangamon Valley Dredge	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Springfield Sand & Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Springfield Sand&Gravel Co. Dredge	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer

Every working recorded in Sangamon County

Storms near this property

7 since 2013

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Rochester, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 2013 and 2023: 6 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
June 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Rochester	$80,000	Multiple trees and power lines were blown down throughout Rochester. One tree fell onto a house and car.
April 2013	Thunderstorm Wind	Rochester	$7,000	A fruit tree was snapped in half. A large fence was blown down and a few shingles were ripped from a roof.
June 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Rochester	-	Several large tree branches were blown down.
May 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Rochester	-	A tree limb was blown onto a power line.
July 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Rochester	-	A 4-inch diameter tree branch was blown down.
June 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Rochester	-	Two power poles were blown down on Buckhart Road just east of Rochester.
March 2020	Hail	Rochester	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Sangamon County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Strawbridge-Shepherd House	3.7 miles	2015
Abraham Lincoln Memorial Garden	3.9 miles	1992
Brunk Farmstead	4.1 miles	1999
Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals-Springfield Mine Rescue Station	5.0 miles	1985
Elijah Iles House	5.2 miles	1978
Route 66 South of Lake Springfield	5.3 miles	2009

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 80001409 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Sangamon County	All 68 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.