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Matilda Traver was born in 1899 in Volo. Her mother was Mary Ross, daughter of Anna Maria Wagner & Nick Ross. Matilda's father was Fredrick Traver, who at age 8 , was placed in the county poor house in New York when his parents neglected him. He died before Matilda was 10 years old so she, her mother and older sister Clara, moved into Matilda's grandparents' house at 8020 East Street.
Art Oxtoby was the son of James Oxtoby. He was born near Staceyville, IA in 1896 and moved to Spring Grove with his parents. He married Matilda on September 10, 1919. They had two sons, Eugene and Robert and one daughter Marie. A son, Clifford, died in 1922 at six months old.
They purchased the old Shotliff farm east of the old train depot on Blivin St. where the old farm house still stands far back off the road.
Like his father, James, Art must have been a lover of fine horses, but his life work was spent mostly in the cab of a truck. He hauled gravel and dirt for village and county projects, but the biggest job he ever had must have been when he played an integral part in building the cement pond walls at the Fish Hatchery in 1932. Art "hauled nearly three thousand yards of gravel to build the ten thousand feet of cement walls and footings to make four new ponds at the hatchery. He hauled the gravel from the gravel pit on Jacob J. Freund's farm, carrying about one and one-half cubic yards at each trip, a distance of one and one-half miles, making three miles for each load of gravel. This totaled almost two thousand trips or nearly six thousand miles", according to a story in the Fox Valley Mirror publication from that year. That gravel pit was located where the private Kazimier Lake is today, the location of the old Jacob Freund farm.
Art also used his truck to pick up everyone's garbage in Spring Grove in the 1940s. He held the office of Village Clerk from 1928-1930, and assistant fire chief in 1935. He worked as a firefighter into the 1950s and was a patrolman for the village for a time.
The community was saddened when Arthur died of a sudden heart attack in his home at the age of 72. He lived in Spring Grove for sixty-six years and left behind his widow, three children, four grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
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