Our Rich History
Building a Village, House by House
Jim Yard's legacy is the homes he built before the turn of the 20th Century in Montgomery—including his own, which still stands on South River Street.
Jim Yard was 90 years old when Charles Pierce Burton interviewed him in 1937 for his Now and Then column. He talked about his birth in Oswego and about moving to Montgomery in 1869 when he was 22 years old. His parents, John and Juliet, left London, England in 1842 hoping to pick up some of the gold rumored to be littering the streets in wonderful America. They came west from Chicago in a covered wagon driven by oxen and settled in Oswego, where Jim was born five years after their arrival, on St. Valentine’s Day of 1847. His father, disillusioned about the gold, hitched his oxen up to the wagon and went three miles to pick up a Mrs. Bean, the midwife. The trip took half a day because of the road conditions and the weather. The family did …
