In August 1974, Charles and Betty Staver bought the Mullican's 74 acres. Like the Huffords and Mullicans before them, the Stavers had lived in a town (Freeport) prior to moving to the country. The timing of when they arrived is unclear, but it seems the Stavers bought the property with the intention of building a new house on it. In November 1973, the Stavers applied for a permit to build a home on Farm School Road. In May 1974, the Stavers held an auction at the property for various items that included small farm equipment used for hay baling and transporting livestock. We don't know why they were able to do this prior to owning the property in August 1974, but the permit application and auction suggest they might have already been living in our house.
In June of 1977, Charles Staver placed an advertisement in the Freeport Journal-Standard for the sale of their new house. An over-the-road driver, Charles was away from home frequently and his wife didn't like to be alone in the country. Stephenson County real estate transactions show that the Staver's purchased a house in Freeport in March of that same year. Their life in the country was over. The Staver's sold their newer house to our neighbors, Jim and Janaan Ingram, and the original house and acreage to Harry Espenscheid.
From there, our home began about a 20-year period as a rental property. A 1977 plat map of Rock Run Township (below), as well as various rural directories from the late-1970s and 1980s, do not even show the original house. At that point in its life, the house probably was in need of modernizing, which may have been why the Stavers chose to build a new home. Charles was in his early-50s in 1973, and possibly at a point in life where the motivation for remodeling, rewiring, re-roofing and re-everything wasn't there anymore.
Charles Staver died in 1983 and is buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery in Freeport. Betty was buried beside him after her death in 2007.
