Dexter A. Knowlton, Sr. first visited Freeport in the year 1838, coming here as a pack peddler for the avowed purpose of inspecting opportunities for merchandising on the frontier. Peddlers in those days supplied householders with most of their needs unobtainable locally from other sources. The following year Mr. Knowlton, having been impressed with the opportunities offered in the then Village of Freeport, returned with his family to settle here and remained for most of the rest of his life. Occasionally he returned East for periods of several years and resided at Westfield, New York and in Brooklyn, but always returned to Freeport which he considered his permanent home.

A native of Herkimer County, New York, he was born in 1812. He commenced an autobiography of great historical interest, but unfortunately he never completed it. In in he relates that he was the son of poor but Christian parents engaged in farming. He characterized his father as a man of little taste for and no interest in business, who actively discouraged his son from pursuing any vocation other than agriculture. He, on the other hand, from the start demonstrated ambition and a capacity for business transactions and repeatedly urged his father to permit him to operate a general merchandising store. His father continued to refuse permission, and it was not until he attained his majority that he embarked on a business career. The store depicted in the diorama was established in Freeport in 1840 when he was 28 years old and had been married four years.

The original development in Freeport was near the downtown area on the banks of the Pecatonica River and was originally called Winneshiek. Most of the commerce and the little industry then established was located in this area. The settlement already had two general stores, and Knowlton's venture in the Broadway-Locust area away from the then main part of the town was considered rash by some of his fellow townsmen; but he contrived by what he called "strict attention to business" to prosper. He laid out the street now known as Broadway to carry stagecoach traffic into Freeport by that route, and he himself helped to build and grade that road.

As the store prospered and steadily increased in business, he invested in real estate and developed and sold residential additions to Freeport. This area now comprises an area of south-central Freeport, south of Stephenson Street to near the southerly city limits, comprising several hundreds of acres and including the sites of the present Junior and Senior High Schools as well as Blackhawk Elementary School.

A man of great industry and precise attention to business and accounting, he always meticulously paid his debts when due or before and was successful in getting others to be equally punctual with him.

For a number of years he was the Director of the Chicago and Galena Union Railroad, the first railroad to reach Freeport which ultimately became the North Western line and was recently abandoned in Stephenson County. In addition, he was President of the Savanna Branch Railroad. During his sojourns in the East, he engaged in business enterprises there, one of which included the purchase and operation of the Empire Spring at Saratoga Springs, New York. The Empire Spring Company was eventually capitalized at one million dollars, a prodigious sum for those days. As stated before, he periodically returned to and engaged in business in Freeport, living through prosperous and lean times. In 1869 he founded a bank in Freeport which was later operated by his sons, Dexter, Jr. and Charles David.

This diorama, fabricated entirely by hand, is the work of Merl Blackwood and Gladys Rourke Blackwood, local artists who have prepared other dioramas of local historical import, and is a memorial to Kenneth Homer Knowlton, who was a grandson of Dexter A. Knowlton, Sr. and the father of Judge Dexter A. Knowlton III who is the third member of the family to bear his ancestor's name in this community.