McGovney-Yunker Farmstead

This farmstead on LaPorte Road in Mokena, Illinois, preserves the layout of a working farm that grew over more than a century. John McGovney, the first permanent non-native resident of Frankfort Township, squatted on the land and obtained it from the federal government in 1841. His youngest son, Elijah, expanded the farm and built much of its early structure. The surviving complex includes a T-plan farmhouse from about 1860, a gable bank barn, a well house, a smokehouse/woodshed, a chicken coop, a brooder house, and later cattle, hog and corn-storage buildings from the 1940s and 1950s. The house was modernized in the early twentieth century with Arts and Crafts details and remodeled again in the 1960s and 1970s. Buildings cluster around a farmyard, and LaPorte Road divides the original 116 acres. The property was recognized for its link to agricultural development in rural Will County, with a period of significance from 1841 to 1956. It is listed as a district with nine contributing buildings and structures plus several noncontributing ones.