When Joseph Naper arrived in Illinois in July 1831, it was too late in the season to plant wheat to get him through his first winter. He planted buckwheat instead, which by autumn was a bountiful field that attracted prairie chickens who had never tasted the likes of such a grain. Over the years, his farm thrived and required farm labor to break new ground, seed, harvest, and mend fences. This simple house was built on Naper’s property on the east bank of the DuPage River in the 1850s and is believed to originally be the home of a farm laborer and his family. The building was moved to Naper Settlement in 1983.