My story begins and ends in Omaha, Nebraska, with an average young couple, their 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. Wonderful Americana oozes off the pages during their visit with an aged great aunt who lives on the farmstead in Danville, Illinois, area that was homesteaded by an ancestor in 1866. Several chapters, through flashback, present the Caleb Bennett family from the first homesteading in Ohio in early 1800, through the early settlement growth of the country, involvement in the Civil War, Ethan Bennett's dream culminating in his trek to the Illinois prairie land in 1866, with completion of his farmstead in 1869.