JAMES HARLEY: AURORA'S FORGOTTEN HERO
Prindle sold his home to James Harley in November, 1901, for $1550 Harley’s biography, though apparently lost to professional Aurora historians, reads like the classic American success story--the super-achiever who built our nation into what we’d like to believe it is today.
Harley was the oldest of eleven children, born during the 1860’s on a farm near Elwood, Illinois. He attended a country school and began a college education, yet quit when his father died and he was needed to run the family farm. He married Emma Linebarger and bought a fruit ranch near Grand Junction, Colorado, yet soon discovered it would be more profitable to sell fruit than to grow it. He moved back to the area in 1896 with his wife and daughter, Mildred, born in 1889, to open a produce company with two other men, Taylor and Morey, on Broadway. Before long, he bought out the shares of the other two owners and become sole proprietor.
Harley completely remodeled it in June 1905. The contractor, J. F. Bennett, built and remodeled other area homes during the same time period, including the Stolp home on Fourth Street and the Bornheim home at the corner of Lincoln and Bluff. Although we have found no documents, we believe Harley added the upstairs bathroom, back bedroom, storage area, and second staircase. The 1897 Sanborn fire map shows the back section having only one story and the 1907 Sanborn increases it to 1 ½, which supports our theory, as does the significant increase in property value when he sold it nine years later.
Harley moved to Fox Street in November 1910, but his story doesn’t end there. He went on to become a two-term Aurora mayor during the World War 1 years, install an extensive sewer system in the Oak Park area, become postmaster during the 1920’s and 1930’s, and attained leadership in more civic organizations than one can count. His death in 1948 merited a front-page headline with inch-high letters in the Aurora Beacon News.
Why isn’t there a street named after him?
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