As usual for a Northern summer – the best thing about it, really – the heat has been on and off even in July. Last week we had highs only in the 80s, and sometimes lows in the 60s at night. Those days gave way to hotter temps today, with the promise of more heat to come. For a few days.

Back on July 5, a fairly hot day itself, we buzzed out to Rockford, the furthest I’ve been for months now. After a hearty lunch at the Stockholm Inn, we visited the handsome and distinctive Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum & Gardens, which is just south of downtown Rockford. Known about the place for years, finally made time for it.

Another legacy of a wealthy American man who traveled to Europe long ago. Apparently he was besotted with the Swiss design of the time. That man would be Robert Tinker (d. 1924), though his story is more convoluted than most. During the boom early days of mechanical reapers in the 1850s, one John Manny ran a reaper works in Rockford as one of the more nimble competitors of Cyrus McCormick (who sued Manny for patent infringement and lost). John Manny died suddenly in 1856, as even wealthy people sometimes did in those days, leaving his widow Mary in control of the company.

Young Robert Tinker (younger than Mary) worked in some sort of management position at the company. He had not, himself, come from a wealthy family, but apparently was a man of sideways ambition. In 1862, Mary paid for Robert to spend an extended period in Europe, while still drawing pay from the company. So not only was he able to take a sort of sabbatical from factory operations, and skip out on risking his life for the Union, he got to take a Grand Tour.

The docent was clear on all this as we toured the interior of the house – and I later discussed it with the museum’s director of education and collections, who affirmed the gist. Less clear is exactly how that happened. Mary and Robert were clearly close, very close, though their exact relationship is obscured from prying minds of the 21st century by a screen of Victorian propriety. Eventually (1870) the two married, and lived a long time as prominent Rockford citizens.

Robert was already at work on the Swiss Cottage before that, starting construction in 1865 on a limestone bluff overlooking Kent Creek, near when it meets the Rock River. (Germanicus Kent being one of the founders of Rockford.) I understand the gardens in the name used to be more extensive, but much remains.

Behind the house is a bridge across the creek, leading to an undeveloped patch of land, formerly part of the gardens, along a rail line.

Of course we had to cross the bridge, despite the heat. It’s a personal motto of mine: cross that bridge if possible. In this case, you’re rewarded by a view of the back of the Swiss Cottage, perched above the creek.

The property, now belonging to the Rockford Part District, also includes a three-story Swiss inspired barn. Formerly home to cows and horses and such, these days it’s a shop and visitors center and such. An unusual sort of barn, I’d say.

After Robert Tinker’s time, a factory was developed near the house. Nothing to do with the reapers or the Tinkers. Just an opportune spot near the Rock River. Its hulk remains behind sturdy brick.

The factory has been abandoned for some years. But I understand that socks, and indeed sock monkeys, used to be made there.

As they have been for a long time in Rockford.