This intricately imagined Victorian house was home to the Probascos. William Bacon Probasco was born in Pennsylvania in 1834 and had his early training in carriage building as a boy there. He worked in the South for a time and eventually moved north to Bloomington where he worked in carriage building for a few years and then purchased the Burch Hotel. He ran the hotel for about five years and then entered into grain dealing. He had elevators near the Chicago and Alton station, Towanda and Covel.
The Probascos lived in this home at 909 North Main from at least 1880. They had four children, three of whom were still living at home when Mr. Probasco died suddenly of "grip" or the flu on a pleasure trip to the New Orleans Mardi Gras with his wife in 1901. He was only fifty-five years old at the time of his death. Mrs. Mary Probasco lived until 1929, and was still living in the family home at that time. There are so many charming features to this home -- the small second story porch, the square tower and ornamented dormers!
Mary's grandson Lewis Bacon Probasco (b. 1909) was a local athlete and amateur pilot prior to World War II. He was already working as an attorney in 1939, but trained to join the RAF in 1942. ('m not sure why he chose the RAF -- perhaps the US considered him to be too old to be a pilot at age 33.) When Probasco took an early retirement in 1967, photos of him and his wife "Bobby" at their Florida home were published in the Pantagraph. Lewis was still keeping fit and demonstrated gymnastics moves he practiced to keep fit at the age of 58!