During our winter closed period we are sharing the stories told during our 2024 Warrenville Cemetery Walk. We hope you enjoy reading about the people who helped shape Warrenville history. At our seventh and final stop, Cemetery Walk attendees got to learn a little bit about a Warrenville family with a farm on the western edge of town that were staunch of Methodists.

My name is Clara Etta Triplett. I was born the fourth and last child to my parents in 1880, a wonderful last child as I was their first girl after having three boys.

My parents met and married in Princeton, Illinois, southwest of DuPage County. My dad Moran Triplett’s family had come to the Americans from England in the 1650s. His ancestors served in the American Revolution. For generations the Triplett’s were proud Virginia farmers, but despite living in Virginia for 6 generations, the Triplett’s headed west, first stopping in Ohio before making their way to Bureau County, Illinois, in the 1830s. They were farmers there as well, but also ran a hotel in the bustling town right on the edge of Illinois River Valley. My dad met and married my mom Clara Johnson there in Princeton. Her family had also come to Bureau county prior to the 1840s, and had also been in the Americans before the Revolutionary War.

After their marriage my parents moved to this area in 1868 and my dad began farming full time. Our Triplett family farm was called the DuPage Valley Farm and sat in the area of your Batavia Road and Route 59. As I mentioned I was the youngest of four children, my brothers Harry, Sameul, and Louie and I ran pretty wild on our large family farm. Our days were full of fishing in the creek, enjoying the swimming hole on hot days, roaming our apple orchard, bathing our sheep in the DuPage River and even ice-skating along the river in the winter. It was quite a childhood.

Warrenville was a very small community and we liked it that way. The biggest change we saw in the late 1800s was the construction of the Elgin, Joliet and Easter Railroad, now the Canadian National, to the west of us. My oldest brother Harry who was just 17 then used our team of horses to grade the roadbed to prepare a portion of our land for the train right-of-way. He earned $35 in just ten days work, enough to pay for his tuition at Aurora Seminary for a year. He followed his calling to Wheaton College and the Chicago Theological Seminary, before becoming a Congregational minister.

Our family was very active in the Warrenville Community and with my brother a minister, my parents thought it was a terrible thing that the our Warrenville Methodist Church was turned into a party house! My mom threw a fundraiser to help raise enough money to keep the church in business. We strongly supported the lawsuit against what the Live Wires Club was doing. Julius Warren had stated the land would have to be used for religious purposes and the Naperville Methodists had no right to go against his wishes, but sadly the Warrenville Methodist Church was not to be. As you heard the Live Wire Club won in the end and took the steeple off the building and continued their parties. My mother died in 1911, long before those famous artists came to town and changed the old Methodist Church even further. It is nice to hear the building is still standing though and serving the community as a museum, much better than a beer hall!

My brother Louie stayed on the family farm and ran it as a successful dairy farm. I moved with my brother Samuel back down to where my dad had been born, just a little bit south near Peoria where I lived out the rest of my life.

Our Triplett farm was finally sold in 1971. Our family farmhouse was moved to make way for what is now Emerald Green. It is hard to imagine all that area was once our childhood playground.

Warrenville 2024 Cemetery Walk: Clara Etta Triplett