By KAREN PARKER
County Line Publisher Emeritus
On Saturday, a milk truck similar to the one he had driven for 42 years bore the ashes of Edwin Bredlow of rural Norwalk to his final resting place in Hilltop Rest Cemetery in Ontario.
With Edwin went the last of the Bredlow line, an iconic group of sturdy German farmers who roamed the countryside in the early part of the 20th century.
They wheeled their giant steam engines from farm to farm, harvesting the crops, and in winter, they moved across the area with steam-engine sawmills, cutting lumber. The machinery was so heavy that on at least one occasion, it fell through a bridge into the Kickapoo.
The arrival of advanced technology sent the next generation into different endeavors. But they still prized their heritage and became collectors. Edwin had a prized Rumley Oil Pull tractor, among other items, while cousins Walter and Robert amassed sheds filled with steam-engine threshers, gas-engine machines and so many items in the 40-year collection that the auction drew hundreds of buyers from around the country and took days to complete.
It was a fascinating chapter in local history. Robert also was an artist. As a lonely enlistee in the 1950s, he documented a day threshing in a long foldout cartoon that stretched for six feet. Edwin shared it with the County Line, and for years it hung in the visitor center in Palen Park until it was swept away by the 2018 flood.