PEORIA MAGAZINE November 2023

PEORIA RETRO

PEORIA’S ‘MOST USEFUL CITIZEN’

Aaron Oakford was a successful 19th century businessman who helped turn Peoria into a real city, and his contributions are still felt today

BY STEVE TARTER PHOTOS BY RON JOHNSON

W e talk about the devel opment and disruption that occurs in our dai ly lives these days as if other generations never had to cope with change. While Aaron Samuel Oakford grap pled with numerous changes during his lifetime, he also developed institutions that have sustained Peoria now for more than a century. He was born in Limestone Township in 1845, the same year that Peoria — then with a population around 1,600 — was incorporated as a city. When Oakford died in Peoria in 1933 at age 87 — when the city’s population topped 100,000 — he was proclaimed the River City’s “most useful citizen” by the Peoria Journal, saluted not only as a successful businessman but also as a philanthropist, banker and civic leader. Oakford’s story started simply. His family left the farm for Peoria when he was just a child. The first of four generations of Oakfords to attend Peo ria High School, Oakford spent only a single year there before going to work as a clerk at the grocery of H.H. Potter

school work a very important factor in my life,” Oakford recalled years later. As a grocery clerk, Oakford worked 12 hours a day, making $15 a month. He delivered groceries by horse and wagon, relating to customers while learning the many operations of the grocery trade. Oakford noted that the horses he favored for delivery work were those that had been “retired” from the fire department, said Dick Oakford, the 89-year-old grandson who has compiled an extensive record of his grandfather’s many accomplishments. ‘AARON S. OAKFORD WAS AN INFLUENCE IN PEORIA, NOT SIMPLY A MERCHANT’ In 1868, at the age of 23, Oakford bought the business along with two other clerks. In 1872, H.H. Fahnestock became a partner and the company of Oakford and Fahnestock dropped the retail business to focus entirely on be ing a food wholesaler. — Dick Oakford

(later Potter & White), then the largest retail store in the city. With the high school still under con struction at the time, Oakford’s classes were held in the basement of the old Methodist Church at Madison and Ful ton streets. “There was no playground, no gym nasium, no stately auditorium, no li brary … but there were brainy teach ers and, notwithstanding the meager equipment, I count that one year of high

116 NOVEMBER 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE