Full text of "Du Page County, a descriptive and historical guide"

DU PflCE

AN
GU I Dl SERIES

American Guide Series
THE

DU PAGE COUNTY
GUIDE

Illustrated

Special Edition
Commemorating

the

Twenty-filth Anniversary

DU PAGE TITLE COMPAXY
1925-1950

"... It stands as a highly worth while part of
the American Guide Series . . . Well illustrated
and well documented ..." FREDERIC BABCOCK,
Chicago Tribune.

"Here we have a fine example of what should
be done in other counties, not only in Illinois
but throughout the country. It is a guidebook
that brings home to residents of Du Page County,
and to outsiders as well, all of the interesting
and unique things to be found in that county, and
how these things originated." JOHN DRURY,

author of Old Chicago Houses, Historic Midwest
Houses, Midwest Heritage, Old Illinois Houses,
etc.

(Continued on back flap)

T 3 -

From the collection of the

2 m

Prelinger

i.. a

library
t P

San Francisco, California
2007

These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful
For which the speech of England has no name-
Tie Prairies. 1 behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness . . .

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

(Nan: The poem of which these are the opening linn wa* published in a two-volume edition of Bryant's poetry
issued in 1855 by D. Appleton and Company, New York. Richmond and Vallette. in their 1857 history of Du Page
County, printed the same excerpt without naming the author and with the third line altered to read: "And fresh as
the young earth ere man had sinned.")

DU PAGE COUNTY GUIDE

DUPAGE COUNTY

A DESCRIPTIVE AND HISTORICAL

GUIDE

AMERICAN GUIDE SERIES

EDITED BY
MARION KNOBLAUCH

SPECIAL EDITION

PUBLISHED IN COMMEMORATION OF ITS
TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY

1925-1950
BY

DU PAGE TITLE COMPANY

WHEATON, ILLINOIS

reproduce this book or portions thereof

in any form except that of brief

quotations embodied in

critical reviews

First Printing September, 1948
Special Revised Edition June, 1951

Lithoprinted by Edwards Brothers, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PRESENTATION

QUARTER OF A CENTURY is a short span, as time is
measured. But when a business organization reaches its twenty-fifth birth-
day in a career of service to a community, it is fitting that the occasion
be suitably marked. And so, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary
of its founding, Du Page Title Company is proud to present this special
anniversary edition of the Du Page County Guide to its good friends and
neighbors in Du Page County.

In 1925 Du Page County was expanding rapidly as part of the growing
Chicago metropolitan area. Large tracts of farmland were being sub-
divided, and the population of the county, which jumped from 42,120 to
91,998 in the decade between 1920 and 1930 an increase of 1 18 per cent
practically doubled in the short space of one year. Because buyers of real
estate needed legal evidence of their ownership of property, the sudden
increase in real estate activity meant a tremendous growth in the need for
abstracts-of-title. The small local abstract office of T. M. & D. C. Hull did
its best to meet the increasing demands for service, but its facilities were
inadequate to cope with the situation. The result was the formation of Du
Page Title Company, which purchased the abstract indexes and records
of the Hull organization.

Incorporated on October 9, 1925, Du Page Title Company immedi-
ately began to increase the existing physical facilities and personnel of the
old organization. After confining its activities from 1925 through 1930 to
the making of abstracts, the new company in 1931 began to issue title
guarantee policies as an agent for Chicago Title and Trust Company. Six
years later, in 1937, it started issuing its own Du Page Title Company
policies, a service which today comprises the major part of its business.

Three presidents have guided the destinies of Du Page Title Com-
pany. The first of these was the man who had organized it, A. R. Marriott.
A native son of Du Page County with 50 years of title experience in
Chicago Title and Trust Company, he headed the new organization until
his death in 1932. He was succeeded by his son, Arthur C. Marriott, who
previously had served the company as vice-president and manager. The
present head of the company, Byron S. Powell, succeeded Mr. Marriott
in June, 1948. Other officers of the company have included Alva J. Shaw,
vice-president and manager from 1932 until his retirement in 1940; Gus
Buchholz, A. J. Yates, and William J. Rose, each of whom served as secre-
tary; and Kenneth E. Rice, who held the office of treasurer for many years.
Current officers of the company, in addition to the president, are Orville
H. Ross, vice-president; Louis J. M. Pommier, secretary; Roderick A.
Mette, treasurer; Harry E. Madsen, title officer; James J. Tomisek, as-
sistant secretary; and Webster S. Davis, assistant treasurer.

The original staff of 8 or i o employees has grown into the highly trained
present staff of 70, which is housed in a two-story, fireproof brick building
on East Liberty Drive, Wheaton, with a fireproof record warehouse nearby.

For 25 years Du Page Title Company has served Du Page County. It
has helped to secure for men, their families, and their institutions the
rightful enjoyment of their ownership of land our basic resource. The
company's growth in the past quarter of a century has paralleled and
contributed to the growth of the community it serves. It dedicates to a
continuation of that service the energies and abilities of the men and women
who are Du Page Title Company.

Intended for publication in 1939, the year of Du Page County's centennial,
this book as a result of the eleventh-hour backing out of its sponsors unwittingly
acquired the distinction of being the last work published in the American Guide
Series, when it finally appeared in 1948. Regrettable though it was, I feel that
the delay in publication did not seriously impair the essential value of the
Guide which, incidentally, is the first historical work devoted exclusively to the
county since Rufus Blanchard's county nistory of 1882.

Lithoprinted from the page proofs pulled in 1939 (which accounts for some
of the technical imperfections), the original text was left virtually intact, except
for minor revisions including the correction of typographical and other errors
which came to light in rechecking (more having come to light since, additional
revisions have been made for this edition). Appendix I and notes referring to
it were added, to tell the reader which points of interest no longer existed and
which had undergone major changes. As population figures throughout the text
were from the 1930 census, Appendix II was added, listing both 1930 and 1940
figures. Now that has been revised to include preliminary 1950 figures. In other
respects the book follows the general format of the American Guide Series.

Although the passage of time has relegated to history numerous details that
were current in 1939, the general picture of the county today is not markedly
different from what it was then. The most notable exceptions are the large in-
crease in population since World War II (which, while it did not bring big
industrial plants to the county, brought an influx not only of families deriving
employment from such plants nearby, but of people driven to the suburbs by
Chicago's housing shortage), the thousands of new homes built by the newcomers,
the new semi-rural communities that have sprung up to accommodate them, and
the establishment here of the Argonne National Laboratory- M.K..

FOREWORD

GROWING TENDENCY in present-day American
historical research is toward regional and local studies. Now that the nation
as a whole has been properly surveyed in numerous standard works, greater
emphasis is being placed on the nation's parts on the various regions which
compose the country, on the states that make up the regions, on the counties
that comprise the states, and on villages, cities and townships within the
counties. This is a natural evolutionary step and bespeaks the coming-of-age
of the United States as a whole.

It is for this reason that the Du Page County Guide is of great value.
Here we have a fine example of what should be done in other counties, not
only in Illinois but throughout the country. It is a guidebook that brings
home to residents of Du Page County, and to outsiders as well, all of the
interesting and unique things to be found in that county, and how these
things originated. In it, too, future generations may learn what one American
county was like from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

When I saw the manuscript of the Du Page County Guide at the New-
berry Library in Chicago, shortly before the book was published, I was
impressed with the wide scope of its subject matter, with the thoroughness
of its historical aspects, and with the literary ability displayed. It then
occurred to me that the citizens of Du Page County were most fortunate
to have had a county guidebook prepared for them as part of the dis-
tinguished American Guide Series and to have had for that Guide such
an editor as Marion Knoblauch, without whose perseverance and personal
investment of time and money, the skillful research and writing expended
on this work never would have been placed in permanent record form.

Today the book is owned not only by most of Du Page County's public,
college, and school libraries, but by major public, university, and historical-
society libraries throughout the country. It even has traveled as far afield
as the Provincial Library, Victoria, British Columbia. Because a knowledge
of local history and the local scene is important in understanding the world
we live in, I am pleased that the Du Page Title Company has seen fit to
increase the Guide's local circulation by publishing and distributing this
special edition.

JOHN DRURY
CHESTERTON, INDIANA
September 24, 1950

The County Took Its Name from the River, the

River, from the French Trader du Page

Who May Have Looted lilce This

PREFACE

Du Page County Guide is the latest brush-
stroke in the portrait of America that the Federal Writers' Project set
itself to paint. The portrait, of course, remained unfinished when the
Project closed. Even had the work continued indefinitely, the picture
could never have been completed, such is the infinite variety of the face
of our great country. The books brought out by the Project that have
been most widely acclaimed and read are the State Guides. This is
natural, since they, because of their wide geographic coverage, have the
widest appeal. But the multitude of smaller publications, like the present
volume, perhaps in the end will prove the most valuable to future his-
torians. The State books deal in broad generalities of a great community's
history, culture, politics, and economy, and, of necessity, cannot give
a close-up of the local scene such as the local Guides, which view the city,
county, or village through the magnifying lens of an historic microscope,
are able to do. To me, these local books always had the sharp flavor of
the particular territory they covered, and most vividly illustrated the
flowing pattern of American civilization.

In New Jersey, for example, the Project most frequently interpreted
the small town and city through the history of its fire department, which
in that State seems to have been the center around which revolved the
eddy of the community's social life. In one town, if I remember correctly,
the local pyromaniac kept the volunteer fire force busy, even to the point
of burning down the jail in which he had been lodged. In a number of
towns throughout the country it is strange how the local conduct-pattern
repeats itself the high point and crisis of history was the fight for the
privilege of becoming the county seat. In one case the rival town
abducted, vi et armis, the county records out of the old county court-
house, a procedure which ended unlike the similar happening in Du
Page County just short of bloodshed. In many towns the old cemetery is
a central point of interest, for in it are buried the town's founders, not-
ables, and "characters." I recall the case of the man who lies buried sur-
rounded by his six wives and whose stone proudly records the fact that
he outlived all of them.

We, today, are apt to think of the frontier as having existed vaguely
somewhere west of the Mississippi. But actually the first frontier was in
the backyards of the Puritan Fathers in Plymouth, and only gradually

moved westward across New-England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the
Middle Western States, and from there receded slowly toward the Pacific.

The general pattern of frontier communities was the same: the coming
of the first settlers and the building of log cabins, a log church, and the
first schoolhouse; conflicts with the Indians; the building of the first
roads; the clearing of stumps; the laying out of a town. The successive
gold rushes which claimed some of Du Page County's pioneers actually
depopulated some Western towns, but the deserters often returned to
transmute their gold dust into enterprises that brought prosperity to
the community. In Northern towns you have the development often in
opposition to a small but articulate minority of abolitionist sentiment,
the establishment of stations of the underground railroad, and mass
enlistment in the Union forces during the Civil War. The contest to
have the canal and, later, the railroad come to town is another part of
the general pattern. On the Pacific Coast that battle was fought between
Tacoma and Seattle for the better part of a generation, with Seattle the
final victor. The boom-bust is less a part of the pattern of the East than
of the West, although many Eastern and Middle Western towns boomed
and declined with the wanton cutting of the lumber in the great forests
and the exhaustion of coal and oil in certain localities, just as in the West
lusty towns of ten thousand and more shrank to ghost towns when gold or
lumber sources petered out. Labor conflicts, as labor fought for recog-
nition, have punctuated local history almost everywhere. Du Page
County, however, essentially a nonindustrial area, has been spared any
spectacular part in this unhappy portion of the general picture. The
struggle for good government, the fight against local corruption, and the
effort to attain to better techniques of local administration are every-
where characteristic of small communities as of large. All over America
these and many other general developments have taken place, but in
each community they have followed along special lines, always differing
in this or that point from the generalization.

This is what makes these little guidebooks so intersesting. Reading
them, one is able to follow the large developments of American civili-
zation; but the survey is never monotonous because of the infinite variety
of detail in each community. These little books they are little merely
in the sense that they cover only a comparatively small area these "little"
books, like the Du Page County Guide, are the living flesh and blood of

American history.

HENRY G. ALSBERG
NEW YORK, N. Y.
December 37, 194"]

CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NDER THE DIRECTION of John T. Frederick, state
head of the Federal Writers' Project for Illinois in 1938-39, three editors
were responsible for the production of the Du Page County Guide:
Ethel Eyre wrote the Downers Grove and Glenbard sections and con-
tributed considerable material used in compiling the general essay "So
They Came to Du Page" and the points of interest on the motor tours.
Oril Brown wrote part of the Hinsdale section and also much of the
material used in the motor tours. For the balance of the book and the
over-all editing the present editor was responsible.

All three editors shared in the field and library research, much of
which was done by a number of specifically designated research workers.
Chief credit in th'is category goes to Mrs. Madolyn Banghart. Others who
deserve mention are: J. Adams, Conway Ferguson, Ella Golden, H. W.
Humphrey, Pearl Lawson, Florence Le Vitt, Clarence D. O'Connell, John
F. Pickering, William Smith, George Whitehead, and O. Winkfield.

The scratchboard drawings were done by Catherine O'Brien and Mil-
dred Waltrip, then of the Federal Art Project for Illinois. The jacket
design was done by Erel F. Osborn, of the Art Project. All but three of
the photographs were taken by John Clinton, also of the Art Project.
The exceptions are the photographs of the Bailey Hobson House, the St.
Francis Retreat, and the Naperville swimming pool, taken, respectively,
by Howard Clark of the Writers' Project, a Chicago Daily Times staff
photographer, and Burke 8c Koretke, commercial photographers.

The maps were prepared in 1947-48 by Harold F. Steinbrecher, civil
engineer and surveyor, Wheaton, Illinois, and the editor.

Finally, much valuable assistance, without which the book could not
have been written, was contributed voluntarily by interested citizens.
Most of them, of course, were residents of Du Page County in numerous
instances the descendants of the county's pioneers. Others, however,
contributed from as far afield as Monmouth, Oregon, and Washington,
D. C. It is impossible to name all who aided in the gathering of this
material, but an attempt has been made to include in the following list
the consultants to whom those who produced this book are most indebted.
These people gave freely and extensively of their knowledge, research,

records, and time. Regretfully as in the case also of the research workers-
some of them are not alive today to receive even this small recognition
for their pains.

Du Page County Consultants

Adam Emory Albright

Edward A. Amacher

Mrs. Cornelia Neltnor Anthony

W. H. Baker

Mrs. Abbie E. Bartholomew

Mrs. Mary Bcrning

Julia E. Blanchard

F. Blount

Mrs. Harvey W. Brookins

James Oliver Buswell

John J. Butler

Otis R. Cushing

Mrs. Lucy Wheaton Darling

Edward M. Dieter

Harold P. Dunton

H. S. Durant

Mrs. Robert Durham

Mrs. William H. Fischer

E. L. Gates

Rollo Givler

Walter Givler

Hattie P. Glos

Louis J. Goebel

Mrs. Mabel Givler Goetz
i Walter Graue
. Mrs. W. F. Graue

Irvin Green

Charles W. Hadley

Mrs. R. Louise Haight

Theodore F. Hammcrschmidt

Henry Harmening

Ada Douglas Harmon

Harry Hatch
.Lawrence Hattendorf

Henry Heidemann

Mrs. Sarah Heinemann

Frank Herrick

C. E. Hogeboom

Mrs. E. B. Holmes

R. S. Hopkins

Mrs. Roy Jellies

Rev. E. L. Kavasch

Raleigh E. Klein

Mrs. William Kuntze
Carrie Lambe
Timothy Lehman
Mrs. Thomas McCarty
Charles McChesney
C. W. McDonald
Mrs. Florence McDonald
Robert L. McKee
Fred Meisinger

C. E. Miller
Edward G. Mochel
Theodore Mohlman
Lane K. Newberry
Mrs. M. Noble

N. W. Paulson
Theodor Pawlik
Joseph Pearson
Mrs. R. S. Peirce
Wilmer Peters
Walter H. Rogers
Charles W. Rohr
^^Mr. and Mrs. George Ruchty
Chas. and Edw. Sass
L. M. Schwartz
E. C. Schwerdtfeger
Mrs. Harry Sleep
George M. Smith
Etha Snodgrass
Mrs. F. D. L. Squires
W. J. Staats
Harold F. Steinbrecher
Henry Copeland Taylor
Margaret Thackaberry
Mrs. John Torode

D. L. Townsend

Mrs. Mildred Torode Vaillancourt
Kay Vergie
Caroline Wade
Clarence V. Wagemann
George Wagner
John Warne

Consultants Elsewhere

Paul M. Angle, Springfield
Arthur C. Bachmeyer, Chicago
Mrs. Michael Bloze, Chicago
Louis B. Cella, Chicago
W. H. Cochrane, Chicago
H. R. Collard, Chicago
Charles Dumper, Chicago
Julia M. Fink, Aurora
L. H. Fischer, Monmouth, Ore.
Mrs. Alex Gallon. Western Springs

J. W. Taylor,

Rev. L. W. Goebel, Chicago
Nellie Gorgas, Chicago
W. W. Howes, Washington, D.C.
Will Johnson, Aurora
John R. Keig, Lockport
Rev. Oliver Kimmick, Chicago
Godfrey L. Larson, Chicago
Mrs. J. J. Miller, Chicago
H. W. Reiher, Chicago
John P. Stankowicz, Chicago
Indianapolis, Ind.

Xti

CONTENTS

PRESENTATION v

FOREWORD vii

PREFACE ix

CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv

LIST OF MAPS xvii

PART I
COUNTY PROFILE

THE COUNTY TODAY 2

THE GOOD LAND 5

"THE GREAT WHITE FATHER MUST HAVE SEEN A BAD BIRD ..." 8

So THEY CAME TO Du PAGE 12

PART II
CITIES AND VILLAGES

DOWNERS GROVE 28

ELMHURST 46

GLENBARD (Glen Ellyn and Lombard) 65

HINSDALE 96

NAPERVILLE 118

WEST CHICAGO 150

WHEATON 160

PART III
MOTOR TOURS

TOUR I: CENTRAL AND SOUTH SECTIONS OF THE COUNTY 188

Elmhurst Villa Park Lombard Glen Ellyn Wheaton
Winfield West Chicago Warrenville Batavia Junction
Eola Naperville Lisle Belmont Downers Grove Westmont
Clarendon Hills Lace Palisades Hinsdale

xiii

TOUR II: NORTH SECTION OF THE COUNTY 214

Bensenville Wood Dale Itasca Medinah Roselle
Bloomingdale Ontarioville Schick's Crossing Wayne-
Wayne Center -Cloverdale Addison Churchville

KEY TO POINTS OF INTEREST ON COUNTY MOTOR TOURS MAP 230

APPENDIX I: CHANGES IN POINTS OF INTEREST SINCE 1939 232
APPENDIX II: POPULATION FIGURES, 1930, 1940, AND 1950 CENSUSES 234

BIBLIOGRAPHY 235

INDEX 239

The first settlers took land in the timber

xiv

ILLUSTRATIONS

DRAWINGS

"THESE ARE THE GARDENS ..." Frontispiece

THE COUNTY TOOK ITS NAME FROM THE RIVER, THE RIVER, FROM
THE FRENCH TRADER DU PAGE WHO MAY HAVE LOOKED
LIKE THIS vi

"THE FIRST SETTLERS TOOK LAND IN THE TIMBER ..." xiv

THE GRAUE MILL, FULLERSBURG xviii

AMERICAN WOOD GOTHIC:

ST. JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NAPERVILLE 2

BAILEY HOBSON: Du PAGE COUNTY'S FIRST SETTLER 11

DEACON WINSLOW CHURCHILL, JOHN B. TURNER, WILLIAM

ROBBINS, GERRY BATES 45

THE PRE-EMPTION HOUSE, NAPERVILLE 63

THE MANSION HOUSE, GLEN ELLYN 64

JESSE AND WARREN WHEATON, BENJAMIN AND JACOB FULLER 91

HOBSON'S MILL, NEAR NAPERVILLE 95

CAPT. JOSEPH NAPER, WILLARD SCOTT, SR. 148

THE RAILROAD COMES TO NAPERVILLE:

CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY, 1864 149

"THE PIONEER": GALENA 8c CHICAGO UNION RAILROAD, 1849 150

ERASTUS GARY 186

THE ALBRIGHT GALLERY, WARREN VILLE'S OLD METHODIST
CHURCH 229

GREEK REVIVAL DOORWAY: ROBERT N. MURRAY HOUSE,
NAPERVILLE 231

PHOTOGRAPHS

Between pages 74 and 75

GLEN ELLYN PLAYS IN THE SHADOW OF ITS TOWNSHIP
HIGH SCHOOL

A COAL MAGNATE'S ESTATE Is Now THE ST. FRANCIS RETREAT,

NEAR HlNSDALE

GREEK REVIVAL WAS THE VOGUE IN 1833:
GEORGE MARTIN HOUSE, NEAR NAPERVILLE

AN OLD QUARRY MAKES A NEW SWIMMING HOLE:
CENTENNIAL PARK, NAPERVILLE

A MANSION OF THE VICTORIAN ERA:

THE VON OVEN HOUSE, NEAR NAPERVILLE

VICTORIAN BATTLEMENTED TOWER OF WHEATON COLLEGE

Between pages 128 and 129
ONCE PART OF MILLIONAIRES' Row, Now ELMHURST'S PUBLIC LIBRARY

COUNTY SEAT, WHEATON: OLD COURTHOUSE, SHERIFF'S HOUSE,
NEW COURTHOUSE

TYPICAL OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA Is THE WILLARD SCOTT HOUSE,
NAPERVILLE

NAPERVILLE'S KROEHLER COMPANY Is THE WORLD'S LARGEST
UPHOLSTERED-FURNITURE MAKER

ELMHURST HAS BEEN QUARRYING SINCE 1883:
ELMHURST-CHICAGO STONE COMPANY

COTTAGE HILL AVENUE GAVE ELMHURST ITS NAME IN 1868

Between pages 206 and 207

MOUNT EMBLEM CEMETERY'S CHIMES ARE BROADCAST
FROM A GRISTMILL OF THE i86o's

THE GOOD LAND, GENTLY ROLLING AND PUNCTUATED WITH GROVES
BARNS LIKE THIS ARE TYPICAL

THE HOUSE OF BAILEY HOBSON, Du PAGE COUNTY'S FIRST SETTLER,
NEAR NAPERVILLE

MODERN CALVES ARE UNIMPRESSED BY CENTURY-OLD FARMHOUSES

THE BIG WOODS CONGREGATIONALISTS BUILT THIS CHURCH IN 1849,
WINFIELD TOWNSHIP

xvi

MAPS

DOWNERS GROVE 3

ELMHURST 53

LOMBARD 85

GLEN ELLYN 92

HINSDALE no

NAPERVILLE 138

WEST CHICAGO 159

WHEATON 176

Du PAGE COUNTY (motor tours map,

with inset of Warrenville) Tipped in at back

xvn

The Graue Mill Fullersburg

COUNTY PROFILE

American Wood Go t hie:
St. John's Episcopal Church, Naperville

THE COUNTY TODAY

HE century-old county of Du Page extends
over 338: square miles of fecund, broadly undulating land, hemmed in
on two sides and part of a third by Cook County. Three lines of cities
and villages extend like fingers out of. sprawling Chicago. Each line
follows a railroad right-of-way, but most of the communities comprising
them existed prior to the coming of the railroads, which merely acceler-
ated their growth and development. Only 4 of the 18 municipalities
engage in manufacturing. Two railroad towns stand out against the
pattern of dormitory suburbs. Although close to and integrally depend-
ent upon Chicago, with its larger communities considered as western
suburbs, Du Page County has both towns and byways that are far
removed, inwardly as well as outwardly, from the life and physical
characteristics of the metropolis.

Surrounding its cities and villages, and liberally sprinkled with tiny
crossroads settlements, is some of the finest rural landscape in Illinois.
The terrain is more markedly rolling in the north and south sections
than in the center, where urbanization is more concentrated. From
numerous dairy farms fresh milk is shipped into Chicago, and green-
houses and nurseries are widely distributed throughout the countryside.
In vivid contrast to the many small general farms are the lavish country
estates of a few wealthy Chicagoans. Of the many thick groves of native
trees which punctuate the landscape along the watercourses and on the
higher ground, 27 have been developed as county forest preserves. These;,
in addition to 22 golf courses in connection with which are some of
Chicagoland's most elaborate country clubhouses characterize the
county as a play area.

Many of the aged farmhouses strung out along the roads are Greek
Revival, a style prominent also in the older communities. A surprisingly
large number of buildings date from the late iSgo's, the forties, and the
fifties. Because residents of Du Page are homeowners, there are few
apartments and fewer hotels. American Wood Gothic churches, tall-
spired and white, emphasize the bucolic quality of the landscape.

In 1933 the Chicago Regional Planning Association induced Du Page
County to adopt a zoning resolution. First county in Illinois to pass
such legislation, Du Page was influential in getting the State legislature
to pass a county zoning act in 1935. training thereby the legal means to
enforce its own ordinance, Du Page County revised its law and made it
more strict. Through the zoning ordinance, the use of both buildings
and land is regulated to prevent the encroachment of business and in-
dustry upon residential areas outside the limits of incorporated cities
and villages and to keep the highways free from unsightly dumps and
automobile "graveyards."

Singularly free from crimes of violence, the quiet countryside of Du
Page County was recently rocked by its involvement in two kidnappings
which attracted Nationwide attention. In 1934 and again in 1936 -the
Karpis gang of St. Paul, Minnesota, chose the little village of Bensen-
ville as the hiding place for their victims, both prominent citizens of
St. Paul. In late years the county has been invaded by numerous
"bookies" and slot machine establishments controlled by outside syndi-
cates. In 1938 Chicago papers wrote banteringly of the "homey matrons"
who played the ponies in the staid, God-fearing communities of "proud
and prissy" Du Page. A majority of the local citizenry comprised chiefly
of circumspect farmers and commuters as well as government and church
officials, have waged a hard battle against the gambling syndicates, and,
in spite of some lapses, Du Page County remains conspicuous in the
metropolitan outskirts for its comparative lack of vice and crime.

The population of about 100,000 (91,998 in 1930) is predominantly
American-born. Among the 13 per cent foreign-born, Germans comprise
the largest single group, totalling above 3,700. Ranking second is x the
English group, which is only a third as large. People everywhere are
descended from the county's pioneers, and one finds 20 or 30 names
familiar to the local histories cropping up over and over in the various
communities. (See p. 234.)

THE GOOD LAND

BEFORE either Indians or white men came to
Du Page County, its history was made by nature. During the long geo-
logic past, nature operated in many ways to form the topography and
resources of the land. About 600,000,000 years ago this region, like all
the territory from the Alleghenies to the Rockies, was subject to repeated
invasions of the sea, which covered the land for several million years at
a time, then retreated and left the surface exposed to weathering and
erosion for eons more, then advanced again. With each submergence
the surface of the land acquired new layers of sediment. Varying accord-
ing to the different periods in which they were laid down, these strata
were composed of sandstone, limestone, and shale; another deposit which
stored the oil pool of southeastern Illinois; and a layer of marshy land
in which grew the giant trees and ferns subsequently to be pressed into
the coal that underlies two-thirds of the State. Only the first three of
these various strata lie beneath Du Page County; the two later ones were
probably removed in the erosive processes that followed. Although the
county was thus deprived of two great economic resources, it was left
with two others. The limestone in some sections has been a profitable
source of road and construction materials. The sandstone beneath carries
water from central Wisconsin that is tapped by the artesian wells of
the region.

At the close of the Pennsylvania period of the Paleozoic era, most of
Illinois remained above sea level. The wind and rain worked upon the
land, eroding and creasing it into valleys and ridges. A climatic change
brought snow to the long winters of the North, so deep that the ephe-
meral summer sun was unable to melt it. The result was the glacial era.

Four times in the course of several hundred thousand years an inert
mass of ice moved slowly down over the upper portion of North America
and covered Illinois in varying degrees of extensiveness. The fourth
glacier, called the Wisconsin, occurred only 50,000 years ago. This ice-
sheet extended no farther south than the northeastern part of Illinois.
As it slowly expanded, plucking off bedrock and filling in contours, it

shaped the terrain of Du Page County to its present aspect. When melt-
ing caused it to lose its grip on the debris it had accumulated, the glacier
dropped great quantities of clay and stones. The hills of Du Page
County are terminal moraines, formed when the ice front paused for
extensive periods of time and piled up the debris in large masses. Ap-
proximately one-third of the area is ground mpraine, deposited more or
less evenly by a steadily retreating ice front. Common throughout the
area of ground and terminal moraines are kettle holes, circular depressions
in the surface ranging up to 100 feet in diameter.

The majority of the rocks deposited in this region range in size from
fine pebbles to boulders 2 or 3 feet in diameter. The largest erratic
boulder is at Downers Grove, standing as high as a man's head and
embedded to a depth at least twice its height. The rocks are chiefly
limestone, but enough other stones are present to assure the variety of
minerals essential to plant growth. In addition to this unstratified mass
of debris, the ice left some rudely stratified layers and pockets of gravel
and sand, called glacial outwash. The gravel and sand have been widely
utilized as road and construction materials. Glacial clay has been put
to commercial use in the manufacture of common brick and drainage
tile. Besides providing these resources, the ice-sheet left in its wake a
gently rolling surface especially adaptable to cultivation.

The waters of the melting glacier formed a lake between the Val-
paraiso Moraine and the retreating edge of ice. Given the name Lake
Chicago by geologists, it was the ancestor of Lake Michigan. Its shore,
withdrawing by stages north and east, left still visible boundary lines.
The westernmost of these runs north and south through La Grange and
Bellwood, about two miles east of the Du Page County line. It is an
important and easily discernible physiographic boundary. The land to
the east of the ridge, formerly the lake bed, is flat, comparatively low
and unwooded, and was, until drained, too marshy for general culti-
vation; that to the west is markedly rolling and is dotted with fine groves.

Before there was vegetation to protect the surface left bare by the
retreating ice, the wind picked up fine material from the glacial drift
and scattered it across the land. This, known as loess, produced the best
soil of the county wherever it was deposited.

The formation of the major soils of the county followed the devel-
opment of vegetation. In the uplands, under the groves, the brown
loams formed; under the tall prairie grass, the fertile black earths. On
the poorly drained lowlands, two other types developed: along the water-
courses, the rich alluvial soils; in the marshes, the peat beds.

Although there are few natural lakes, the county is well supplied
with ground water. Farmers depend chiefly on shallow wells 20 to 40
feet deep. The mean annual rainfall, slightly over 36 inches, is in gen-
eral evenly distributed. The altitude averages 750 feet, 152 feet
higher than that of Chicago. The climate is generally moderate, although
Du Page encounters greater extremes of heat and cold than Chicago, whose
climate is tempered by Lake Michigan. Like the rest of Illinois, the county
is subject to occasional droughts.

The Du Page River, Salt Creek, and several smaller streams flow
through the area. The two branches of the Du Page rise near the north
boundary and come down east and west of center to meet in the upper
part of Will County adjoining Du Page County on the south from
whence the course leads south and west until it meets the Des Plaines
near Channahon. Although always a non-navigable stream, it formerly
carried much more water, furnishing the power for grist- and sawmills
erected on its banks by enterprising pioneers. Salt Creek traverses the
northeast corner of the county down to a point below center, crosses into
Cook County, and enters the Des Plaines. Small lakes dot the region at
infrequent intervals, and some swamp land remains near the water-
courses, but on the whole the land is well drained. The Des Plaines
River marks the southeastern boundary of the county.

Oaks predominate among native trees, which include elms, maples,
willows, ashes, aspens, basswoods, cherries, hickories, walnuts, thorn-
apples; plums, wild crab apples, hackberries, and American hornbeams.
Wild flowers, including goldenrods, phloxes, spring beauties, hepaticas,
mandrakes, wild geraniums, asters, and violets grow in profusion on the
prairie and in the woods. Purple martins, woodpeckers, wrens, thrushes,
blackbirds, crows, owls, pheasants, jays, grackles, cardinals, flickers, and
meadow larks are among the many kinds of birds that either migrate to
the locality or remain throughout the year. Only a few small mammals-
squirrels, gophers, rabbits, woodchucks, opossums, weasels, skunks,
minks, and moles still exist in the county, but in pioneer days red foxes,
prairie wolves, deer, elks, and bears were common.

It was a land rich in wild life and natural resources that the Indians
inherited, to enjoy for no one knows how many centuries, to lose in 1833.

f THE GREAT WHITE FATHER
MUST HAVE SEEN A BAD BIRD..

HEN the first white settlers came to north-
eastern Illinois, they found it inhabited largely by the Potawatomi
Indians, with possibly a few small bands of the Illinois and Ottawa
tribes scattered about the region. In the northwestern part of the State
were Winnebagoes and the united Sauk and Fox tribes.

Little concrete evidence of the Indian occupation of Du Page County
is to be found today, but four major Indian villages are believed to have
existed in the area in the early iSoo's. In addition, there were minor
villages, camps, mounds, signal and chipping stations. The village and
camp sites, the signal and chipping stations probably belonged to the
Potawatomi, but the mounds are thought to have been made by earlier
occupants of the land.

One of the major villages lay along Salt Creek, just south of present
Elmhurst. To the north of it were two camps and a signal station; to
the south, two chipping stations and a mound. A second large village
was on the Indian trail that has become St. Charles Road, situated be-
tween present Lombard and Glen Ellyn. Nearby were a mound, a camp,
chipping and signal stations. In the southeast corner of Milton Township
on a trail now roughly paralleled by Butterfield Road, was the third
major village, surrounded by mound, chipping station, and camp. On
the present site of Naperville was the fourth big village, reached from
Chicago by an important trail which became Ogden Avenue (US 34) .
Just south of it was a chipping station, and below, on the river about
where Hobson built his mill in 1834, was a minor village. There was a
camp on the present site of Warrenville and a signal station around the
east end of what is now West Chicago. Up on the north border of Wayne
Township was a signal station and mound, and in Addison Township
a signal station was located just east of the junction of two important
trails, now Lake Street (US 20) and Army Trail Road, the latter of
which led up to the big Winnebago village on the present site of Beloit,
Wisconsin. Two important trails ran diagonally through the southern
end of Downers Grove Township, one later to be known as the Chicago-
Plainfield Trail, the other as the Chicago-Plainfield-Joliet. Both are in

use today, the latter having become a national highway, US 66. Irving
Park and Warrenville Roads also had their origin in Indian trails. A
trail running south from the village in the Glenbard vicinity and known
as the Buffalo Trail led to the Sag village on the south bank of the Des
Plaines, which forms the southeastern boundary of the county. Many
other Indian trails criss-crossed the area, all of which gave the pioneers
their first lines of travel between settlements, most of which persist today
in modern highways and country roads.

Through a treaty made by the Sauk and Foxes with the United States
Government in 1804, the Indians had ceded 15,000,000 acres of land .in
Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois to the whites for a $1,000 annuity
and arrangements for their transfer farther west when the land should
be sold. Within this vast tract, at the mouth of the Rock River, lay
Saukenuk, one of the largest Indian villages in the country and head-
quarters of the Sauk and Foxes. Chief Black Hawk was the leader of a
faction which opposed the treaty. He had not signed the disputed agree-
ment, and he claimed that neither he nor his band had sold or intended
to sell their village or farms. According to the terms of the treaty, the
Indians were to retain the privilege of living and hunting on their lands
as long as they should belong to the Government. It was violation of
those terms by encroaching white squatters as early as 1823 that caused
the trouble which led to the Black Hawk War* in the spring of 1832.

From all of the region around Chicago the frightened pioneers left
their cabins and poured into Fort Dearborn. Other forts, including one
at Naper Settlement in present Du Page County, were hastily erected in
the outlying territory. Although the Black Hawk War can scarcely be said
to have touched the Du Page area, the panic-stricken settlers there fled
to Fort Dearborn, where the women and children were left in safety, and
the men joined or formed various companies to search for Indians and
protect their property. During the building of Fort Payne at Naper
Settlement one or two men were shot from ambush, but that was the
extent of the war in their own territory.

At the battle of Bad Axe on August 2, 1832, Black Hawk's forces were
routed. With their defeat, the Sauk and Foxes conclusively lost their
lands in northwestern Illinois, to be banished forever across the Missis-
sippi. A treaty made by General Scott and the Winnebagoes in Septem-
ber, 1832, secured for the United States the rest of northwestern Illinois,
as well as land in southern Wisconsin.

Through a treaty negotiated at St. Louis in 1816 the United Nation
of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi Indians had ceded to the

Government a strip of land ten miles wide extending from Chicago
down to the navigation head of the Illinois. The white men had early
foreseen the advantages of constructing a canal between the two points
and so completing the waterway between the Mississippi and the Great
Lakes. Following the Des Plaines River course, the diagonal canal strip
stretched well into the future Du Page County area, including most of
Downers Grove Township and thin triangular slices of York and Lisle
Townships.

After the Black Hawk War it remained for the United States to get
title to the remainder of northeastern Illinois in order safely to open up
to settlement the territory already acquired. So a great council of the
Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi tribes was called at Chicago in the
autumn of 1833. To the white official who announced at the opening
of the council that the President had heard of large holdings in the
region which the Indians desired to sell, an Indian spokesman replied:
"The Great White Father must, have seen a bad bird which told him a
lie, for, far from wishing to sell our land, we wish to keep it." Neverthe-
less, after many days of delay on the part of the Indians and wheedling
on the part of the whites, a treaty was signed on September 26. Probably
not more than six of the Indians fully understood its provisions at
the time.

In exchange for 5,000,000 acres spreading out along the western shore
of Lake Michigan and extending north to the foot of Lake Winnebago,
the Indians were to receive an equal amount of land beyond the Missis-
sippi. Those living within the boundaries of Illinois were to remove to
the reservation immediately, while those farther north were permitted
to remain three years. Annuities of $14,000 a year over a 2o-year period
were granted and the Government agreed to pay all costs of transporta-
tion and support the dispossessed for one year after their arrival on the
reservation. In addition, the Government was to make payments to
various individuals who had asked for disallowed reservations; to in-
demnify the Chippewa for certain lands along the lake shore which they
claimed but which had been ceded to the United States by the Meno-
minees; to satisfy all approved claims made against the United Nation;
to erect mills, houses, and workshops on the reservation; to purchase
agricultural implements; to provide for education and the support of
physicians, millers, farmers, blacksmiths, and such other mechanics as
the President should see fit to appoint. All in all, the United States was
spending about $775,000 to free northern Illinois of the Indians.

Within the immense area thus acquired by the United States lay a
comparatively small parcel of land comprising less than a twentieth of the
total acreage that six years after the signing of the treaty was to become
Du Page County.

In the summer of 1835 the remaining Indians assembled at Chicago
to receive their annuity and prepare for their journey westward. Before
taking final leave of their ancient council ground, their hunting lands,
their village sites, and their well-worn trails, the warriors staged a mag-
nificent war dance, colorful and savage. "With beautiful appropriateness
the red man thus celebrated the end of his era. Defeated but defiant,
he took up his journey toward the sunset. Over Chicagoland the day of
the white man had dawned." (Milo Milton Quaife, Checagou.)

Bailey Hobson: Du Page County's First Settler

SO THEY CAME TO DU PAGE

'EGINNING with the 1830*5 strong forces both
here and abroad sent a 4o-year tide of immigration into northern Illinois
and surrounding areas.

Much of the land in the north and middle Atlantic states had become
unproductive from too strenuous cultivation, and the small farmer
whose land did not lie in the more fertile valleys found himself hard
put to earn a living. The attractive possibility of selling scrubby eastern
farmland and trekking westward to prairies where the soil was both un-
spoiled and free put ideas into the heads of the less successful husband-
men. The adventuresome started coming out while northern Illinois was
still inhabited by the Indians, but it was after the close of the Black Hawk
War that immigration really became significant. The returning soldiers
of General Scott's army had carried back to the East enticing tales of
rich land that stretched mile upon rolling mile and only awaited some-
one to come and take it.

By land and by water came countless thousands to make their homes
in the West. The way to the good land was made relatively easy by the
opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the development of steam navigation,
and the construction of a harbor at Chicago in 1833. Before 1833 most
of the newcomers traveled by wagon, driving their stock before them.
In 1831 only a few pioneers arrived by boat, some in the schooner Tele-
graph, piloted by Captain Joseph Naper, others in the Marengo. In 1833,
however, 20,000 immigrants landed at Chicago, all but a few of whom
continued their journey by foot or wagon on into the verdant prairies
beyond the muddy little frontier town. Some of these remained within
the confines of Cook County, organized in 1831, avidly taking up the
fertile acres in its western portion which later were separated from it
and organized as Du Page County.

Political, religious, and economic conditions in most of the northern
European countries during the 1830*8 resulted in a tide of foreign immi-
gration, of which, because of its rich soil, Illinois drew more than its
quota. The Germans far outnumbered the other foreign arrivals. Firm

believers in freedom, having left their own country as a result of the
failure of their revolution against oppression in 1830, they wanted to
settle in a free state, and many came to northern Illinois. Frugal and
industrious, the Germans made good farmers, but they were something
more that made them good citizens, as well. Many of them' members of
the intelligentsia of the Fatherland; they brought culture and education
to the prairies, gradually tending to elevate the ideals of the frontiers-
men. Although they adapted themselves to the simpler standards of
their neighbors, they often had better houses and their settlements were
characterized by fruit trees and flowers, books and music, Lutheran and
Evangelical churches.

The prairies excited the wonder of all the early immigrants. Morris
Sleight of Naper Settlement wrote back to his wife in New York in 1834:
"The first view of a Michigan prairie is delightful . . . but the first view
of an Illinois prairie is sublime." Strange it must have been, after
leaving behind the ugly little town of Chicago, to come upon vast
stretches entirely covered with a coarse grass that varied in height from
18 inches on the uplands to 9 feet in the lowlands, that bore brilliantly
colored flowers at one stage and at another was yellow, and resembled
young wheat. Not only did the prairie grass serve as fodder for cattle,
making the planting of hay unnecessary for a number of years, but it
also served as inspiration for pioneer poetry. In a trunkful of old papers
at Warrenville, Rufus Blanchard, the historian, found the following
lines, the beginning of a long poem:

O fly to the prairie, sweet maiden, with me.
'Tis as green, and as wild, and as wide as the sea,
O'er its emerald bosom the summer winds glide,
And waves the wild grass like the vanishing tide.

Under the preemption law, the settler could claim as many acres as
he could care for and reserve them until the land went on sale, at which
time he would be given the first chance to buy. His early claims were
staked by plowing a furrow around a tract in the prairie, or by blazing
a trail through the timber land, cutting a few logs, and arranging them
as a cabin foundation. Speculators thronged the region during the
1830*8, staking out large areas on which they made slight improvements,
and which they held for high prices. For a decade prior to the Govern-
ment survey the settlers wrangled with claim-jumpers, a name given to
unscrupulous squatters and speculators who attempted to claim land
previously preempted. In self defense the bona fide settlers of the Du
Page region formed a protective organization at a meeting in 1836 on

the eastern fringe of the wide forest that ran for nine miles northeast of
Aurora. Six months after its establishment the name Big Woods Claim
Protecting Society was adopted. Its membership ran to more than 90.
In October, 1839, the Du Page County Society of Mutual Protection was
organized at Naperville. Members of the societies were asked to provide
definite descriptions of their claims, and a system of recording them
was set up. Fees of 2r,c to the clerk for each claim recorded and $1 to
board members for each day spent on official business were established.

The organizations held the claims of their members, to be bid in as
blocs at the time of the Government sale. In addition to the two main
societies, subordinate organizations were established throughout the
area. Nearly all of the settlers joined one of the protective organizations,
and the men who wanted to bid for land under an individual claim
aroused strong resentment. Peaceful methods of adjusting feuds were
employed whenever possible, but sometimes the use of force was neces-
sary to drive a speculator or a claim-jumper from the land. In later
years the original settlers enjoyed recalling their various means of
frightening off the undesirables. Humor, also, entered into the proceed-
ings with the formation, in 1834, of the Hognatorial Council, which bur-
lesqued the actions of the claim societies. In one instance this council
returned the following verdict:

We, the jurors in this case, decide that Mr. Clark
is justly entitled to a piece of land lying on the
Du Page River, and described as follows, to wit:
commencing at a certain point on the east bank of
said river, and running perpendicular to the hori-
zon straight up.

Through the establishment of the claim societies the Government
was deprived of thousands of dollars, since the best as well as the poorest
land went at $1.25 an acre, when the land was put on the market in the
early forties. However, much trouble was saved the Government in the
adjusting of claims, and a dependable type of permanent resident was
encouraged to establish himself and improve his property.

The first settlers took land in the timber and along the streams. For
one thing, they doubted the value of soil on the open prairie; for another,
they needed water power for their saw- and gristmills. Springs along
the banks of the water courses determined, in many instances, the location
of cabins. The great flocks of ducks and wild geese that migrated annu-
ally along the Du Page River, the wild game that came to drink at its

banks, and the fish that swam in its current all served to draw the pio-
neers toward the water. By 1837 there was little timber land left.

The first cabins were constructed of logs fitted closely together and
mortised with mud. The single window, placed high in the wall for
safety, was hung with gunny sacks or covered with lard-greased paper.
In the winter, it was often boarded over. Nails were scarce, so wooden
pegs were used instead. The stone fireplace, which had a wooden chim-
ney crusted with clay, was used for both cooking and heating, except in
warm weather, when much of the cooking was done outdoors. Candles
afforded the only illumination. Matches, patented by 1836, were long a
luxury. Flint and steel were used to start the fire. If these were unavail-
able, the settler had to carry an iron pot several miles to his nearest
neighbor and borrow some burning embers.

Hospitality was warm, and the traveler was given the best in the
house and invited to stay as long as he liked. The newcomer was given
assistance if he needed it, his hosts helping him to build his cabin and
even donating livestock, if he had none. Only one rule the new settler
might not transgress and remain popular with his fellows. He must not
criticize the new country, complain of its disadvantages, or talk of the
superiority of the place he had come from. The frontiersman did not
even welcome complimentary remarks. His hospitality was given in a
simple, unassuming manner, and he expected it to be received in the
same way.

It has been said that whatever else he might lack, the Yankee immi-
grant never arrived without what he considered the indispensable ar-
ticles: a plough, a bed, a barrel of salt meat, a supply of tea and molasses,
a Bible, and a wife.

In many cases the original rude huts Were not used long. Known for
their energy, thrift, and ingenuity, the New Englanders raised their
living standard as soon as possible to a level approaching that to which
they had been accustomed on the eastern seaboard. It was generally not
many months after their settlement on the new land that they replaced
their log cabins with neat little white frame houses of Greek Revival
architecture.

The first pieces of furniture constructed by the settlers were crude,
but some of the houses contained finer pieces that had been carted out
from the east in the Yankee wagons. Bake ovens were built into the
fireplaces, when women held long-handled, covered pans over the flames
for certain types of cooking, and broiled their meats in open griddle pans.

Hard the life of the settler may have been, yet, after one summer,
there was little danger of his having to go without food. An abundant
and varied diet was his for the taking. Wild strawberries, plums, grapes,
cherries, and black raspberries grew in profusion, and in the woods were
hazel, hickory, black walnut, and sugar maple trees. Prairie chickens
stalked in large numbers through the tall grass, or flew low in coveys
over the tree tops. Their eggs provided amply for the needs of the
farmer. Wild turkeys and quail were often on his table, while deer and
other wild animals furnished food or skins.

Agriculture and the raising of livestock were the twin industries of
the prairie. It had not taken the newcomers long to discover that, con-
trary to their belief, the prairie soil was much more fertile than timber
soil. They solved the problem of water supply on the open fields by
digging shallow wells. But Yankee farmers throughout the thirties had
difficulty in cultivating the new land. They found the soil tough and
matted, and it stuck to their primitive bar-share plows. Everywhere
farmers were discussing their plows and what could be done to make
them more efficient. Every blacksmith with an inventive turn of mind
was tinkering with plows. Sometimes moldboards of cast iron were tried
on the plows by way of improvement. Then it was found that polished
steel worked better than cast iron. As early as the thirties, threshing
machines were being discussed by the progressive, but it was not until
the next decade that a good self-scouring plow was developed.

Pioneer farmers produced chiefly corn, wheat, rye, oats, and potatoes,
also raising some barley, buckwheat, and garden vegetables. Because of
the shortage of man-power, corn best met the needs of the settlers, as it
could be harvested over a longer period of time. It was also favored
because it gave a greater yield per acre than wheat. Fed to the stock 'dur-
ing the winter, it often constituted the main article of diet in snowbound
cabins. Few regions were so favorable to hog raising as the Illinois
prairies, so that the settler was usually well supplied with pork.

Livestock was allowed to wander freely over the fields. Hogs fed
themselves on roots and acorns. Cows -strayed for miles on the open
prairie and were identified by the tones of bells placed around their necks.
The settlers had to fence in their crops to keep the animals out. Rail
fences required too much labor for their relatively short period of use-
fulness to be practical, so farmers began to substitute ditches or sod
embankments. In the late forties, after Jonathan B. Turner had experi-
mented successfully with the Osage orange hedge, fencing by means of
hedgerows was adopted throughout the State, to be used until the advent
of wire fencing.

To the fast-growing markets of Chicago the farmers hauled their
produce, selling potatoes for loc a bushel, oats for i8-25c, wheat for 35-
5oc, butter for 8-i6c a pound, eggs for 4-6c a dozen, and hay for $1.25 a
ton. For their pork they got $1 per hundred pounds. Because of the
marshes and sloughs which extended from the Des Plaines valley into
Chicago, the trip often took several days or a week. When the river was
swollen by freshets, teamsters had to wait until it could be forded. In
1840 the settlers of what became Milton and York Townships in Du Page
County constructed a crude floating bridge over the Des Plaines to facili-
tate their trips to market.

For a time most of the necessities of life were produced on the farm.
Household industries included spinning, weaving, quilting, and the
making of candles, soap, butter, and cheese. The lot of the farmer's wife
was not lightened by her lack of utensils. Because of the high price of
iron-, tin-, and stoneware, it was necessary to indulge in a great deal of
borrowing back and forth in order to accomplish the various kitchen
tasks. The scarcity of containers accounted to some extent for the fact
that dairy products were not produced commercially to any great degree
for several decades. The tubs and barrels that arrived packed with goods
from the East were received with double enthusiasm, for they could be
used as rain barrels and "pounding," or pork, barrels.

The pioneer's daily life was a varied one. Besides erecting his build-
ings, cultivating his farm, repairing and improving his agricultural im-
plements, hunting, and doing the limitless chores, he found time to set
up schools, form religious societies, and enter into local government.
The settler who was an artisan or merchant endeavored to establish
himself as soon as possible in' his own business. Besides the trading
posts and mills, grew up blacksmith shops, plow works, and wagon shops.

The pioneer had his amusements as well as his work, but they were
mostly of a practical nature. There were, of course, spelling bees, singing
and debating societies, and a few staid dances, but more frequent were
the quilting parties, corn huskings, rail splittings, house and barn rais-
ings, and the gatherings for paring apples or pumpkins, dipping candles,
making soap, or washing sheep. In fact, every homely task that could
make use of more than one or two pairs of hands was turned into a
communal festivity at which the usual frugality was dispensed with and
feasting lightened the labor. Wolf hunts, wrestling, shooting matches,
and horseracing were accepted sports, but card playing was generally
considered a snare of- the devil. Weddings were great social events, guests
from all the neighboring settlements gathering for a celebration that
occasionally lasted for several days.

Important in pioneer life were the camp meetings, held by evangelists
who traveled in pairs, one to preach, the other to exhort. Among the
New Englanders temperance societies were soon formed, avidly urging
all non-members to "take the pledge," in days when whiskey was sold in
gallon jugs for the same price as vinegar.

At the various gatherings political and religious questions were dis-
cussed freely, often keenly, and sometimes violently, and news of the
outside world was passed from settler to settler. The Yankees tried as a
rule to keep in touch with current events through subscriptions to East-
ern publications, but newspapers and periodicals were, none the less,
rather scarce in the prairie settlements. Before the establishment of
libraries, pioneers suffered a sort of literary starvation. The Bible, al-
manacs put out by patent medicine houses, Fox's Book of Martyrs, Lives
of the Apostles, Pilgrim's Progress, Rollin's American History, and
Weems' Life of George Washington constituted the main reading matter.

Although the Du Page County area was proverbially healthful, there
were some bad times in the fall and during long dry spells, when different
types of fevers and the ague were common, but the frequency of disease
diminished as more land went under cultivation and the swamps were
drained. Soppington's Pills were the great ague cure to be found in
nearly every medicine chest carried out from the East. Doctors were few,
and the job of nursing the family back to health after sickness or injury
usually fell to the housewife. Sometimes she employed home remedies
learned in the East, sometimes she adopted methods learned from the
Indians.

In the beginning there was mud. The slightest rain turned the rich
soil into a mire. Horses, wagons, and men alike sank into its oozy depths,
and teams were slowed up to two miles an hour. Frequently the teamster
had to unload his wagon and carry its contents to firmer ground, unless
a passing driver assisted him by "rolling on the wheel." Farmers pushed
and pulled, coaxed, exhorted, and swore. It was a by-word in the country-
side that the most fluent user of profanity got the most out of his horses.

Improved roads were needed in order that farmers could more easily
transport their produce to the Chicago markets and to open up regular
lines of stagecoach transportation which would facilitate both travel and
the delivery of mail. Laying out road districts, the settlers elected road-
masters and sent them out to remind the inhabitants that each man must
do his share of road building. In those days a man usually paid his poll
tax by grading the portion of road nearest him. Disliking the labor,
many preferred to donate a strip of land to be used for a road. As a

result, the neglected roads became a series of furrows which turned into
bogs in rainy weather. It was many years before any permanent solution
to the road problem was reached, but the pioneers early developed a
system of east-west highways focusing upon Chicago.

Of the first two Cook County highways marked out by the commis-
sioners in April, 1831, one went through the southeastern portion of the
area which later became Du Page County. Called the "high prairie trail,"
it led from Chicago to Laughton's Tavern on the Des Plaines, passed south
of Brush Hill (Hinsdale), then continued on down to Walker's Grove on
the Du Page, near present Plainfield in Will County. In 1834 Dr. John
Taylor Temple ran the first stagecoaches west of Chicago over this route,
carrying the mail to Ottawa. That same year he opened two other routes
to Ottawa,- one of which passed through Brush Hill and Naperville. Identical
with the Chicago - Naperville - Ottawa route as far as Naperville was the
southern stage route to Galena. Also opened by Dr. Temple in 1834, this
route followed the Indian trail used by General Scott in his westward march
during the Black Hawk War.

The army of General Scott, taking a different westward course than
its commander, had followed an Indian trail leading up to Beloit, Wis-
consin. Soon afterward, the tracks left by the heavy army wagons became
a pioneer highway. The route, still known as the Army Trail Road,
passed through Meacham's Grove (Bloomingdale) and crossed the Fox
River at a point about five miles south of Elgin. In 1836 the State legis-
lature authorized the continuation of the road between Chicago and
Meacham's up to Galena. In order to give Elgin then a nameless com-
munityan outlet to Chicago, enterprising settlers from there and the
Grove started out on July 4th to cut a road between their two settle-
ments, connecting with the Army Trail at the Grove. Hitching their
oxen to heavy logs, they scraped out the route. When the two groups
of workers met halfway, they celebrated Independence Day and the re-
sult of their labors with a hearty dinner of cornbread, bacon, and cold
coffee. Their industry was rewarded when the Cook County commis-
sioners came to lay out the State road and followed the course thus
blazed. As early as the fall of 1836, the Galena coach went by way of
Meacham's Grove rather than Naperville. The firm of Frink 8c Walker,
which bought out Dr. Temple's stage lines late in 1837, maintained two
other mail lines west of Chicago, one to St. Charles via the St. Charles
Road, graded by settlers in 1836, arid the old one to Ottawa via
Naperville.

The three principal pioneer highways through the Du Page area are,

with minor alterations, in use today: the northern route to Galena as
present Lake Street (US 20) , the Ottawa or southern Galena route as
Ogden Avenue (US 34), and the St. Charles Road.

With the laying out of the highways, taverns sprang up. Welcome
oases to the weary traveler and gay gathering places for pioneer festivities,
they were often uncomfortably crowded and far from immaculate.
According to the rates established by Cook County officials in 1831,
breakfast or supper could be had for 2$c, dinner for 37i/<>c, and a night's
lodging for i2i/c. A horse was fed for 25C, kept overnight for 5oc. The
traveler could refresh himself with a pint of cider or beer for GI^C,
regale himself on wine, rum or brandy at 371/2' or settle down to some
serious whiskey drinking for iSs^c. These odd transactions were made
possible by the use of currency based on the Mexican i2i/2C-piece, which
came to be known as a bit. Teamsters driving to the Chicago markets
patronized the taverns sparingly. Unless it was very cold, they slept in
their wagons, ate the food they had brought along, and turned their
horses into the prairie. From autumn to June there was little grass left
on the prairie because of the fires which annually swept across it, and
often the drivers were forced to spend some of their scanty resources for
hay at some wayside inn.

The starting of construction on the Illinois-Michigan Canal in 1836
brought an influx of laborers into the southeastern fringe of the Du Page
area. Completed in 1848, the canal was of vast importance in the devel-
opment of Chicago as a central market, but it appears to have been little
used by farmers of Du Page County.

In 1837 the ambitious plans of the settlers were retarded for a time
by the financial panic which affected the whole country and was abetted
in northern Illinois by the collapse of the wild land speculation.

On February 9, 1839, the organization of Du Page County was ap-
proved. The county took its name from the river which ran through it
in two branches. Settlers at Walker's Grove (Plainfield) had named the
river after a French trader who operated in the region of their settlement
in the 1820*5. The county boundaries as originally specified included
the north half of two townships in Will County, with the provision
that they were to be officially included in Du Page only if their inhabi-
tants so voted at an election to be held the following August. The
proposition lost by one vote. In June, 1839, Naperville was selected as
the county seat. Until 1850 the political subdivisions of the county were
called precincts and constituted only voting districts.

During the 1840'$, when the county population averaged from two to
six inhabitants per square mile, the handling of livestock was still un-
scientific and inefficient. The problem of housing and feeding of stock
through the severe winter was a serious one in this region. Small farmers
were opposed to legislative measures aimed at the improvement of stock.
When the State passed a law prohibiting small bulls from running at
large, many farmers denounced it as undemocratic.

As the amount of acreage under cultivation increased and the settlers
came to own more and more head of cattle and sheep and larger droves of
swine, the farm produce and livestock sold in the Chicago markets greatly
increased in volume. No longer were farmers consuming the bulk of
what they produced. Chicago in 1842 was exporting almost as much as it
was importing. Farmers were raising more wheat now and taking most
of it to the city, where they could get 87c a bushel, as against the 500
offered in rural communities. In 1847 about 1,300,000 bushels more of
wheat than of corn were exported from Chicago.

In the decade of the forties, anti-slavery sentiments, which had been
strong in Du Page County from the beginning, assumed important pro-
portions. A few citizens among them Jesse Wheaton voted for James
G. Birney, the Abolitionist candidate for the Presidency, in 1840, and
stations of the underground railroad came, within a decade, to be estab-
lished at some of the settlers' houses. In 1 844 an anti-slavery massmeeting
of all Baptist churches in Illinois was held at Warrenville. Delegates
called for the establishment of an anti-slavery newspaper, with the result
that in January, 1845, tne Elgin Western Christian began publication.
The paper attacked certain Baptist associations in the State for not
standing up to the issue. According to Pease, the attitude of Illinois
churches on the slavery question during this period was "fascinating
because of its vagaries and inconsistencies." The Methodists did not
protest against the general pro-slavery attitude of their denomination as
did the Presbyterians, but by 1845 anti-slavery pronouncements made
their appearance in the Methodist ranks. Congregationalists were gen-
erally outspoken in their opposition to slavery, although they, too, oc-
casionally hedged. The Universalists were frankly against slavery, while
Philander Chase, the Episcopal bishop, was repeatedly attacked for his
hedging.

It was the decade of .the forties, too, which ushered in a county
temperance society, as an auxiliary to the State society, an educational
society for the promotion of public education, the first Masonic lodge,
the first local newspaper, and the first public library.

"These days," says H. E. Cole, "were circumstanced in dried apples,
salt pork, baked beans, cornbread, all frequently irrigated with fluid
from handy flagons ... It was the era of phrenology, of the first sulphur
matches, of cascading tobacco juice on board walks, the romantic under-
ground railway, vast woodpiles, and whittling in front of the general
store." The newspapers advertised "cholera mixture, vitalized air, pic-
tures painted by the sun's rays, galvanic belts, Arabian liniment for
neuralgia, coach-wheel quilts, buffalo robes, bootjacks, bed-cords . . .
melodeons."

In spite of the resentment which some of the Germans had at first
aroused among the native settlers because of their different habits and
their criticism of American institutions, the immigrants had rapidly en-
trenched themselves in the American scene. When the Mexican War
came in 1845, they offered their services as readily as any other settlers
of Du Page County. Following the failure of another revolution in
Germany in 1848, an even greater wave of Germans engulfed the Illinois
prairies over a 1 2-year period. Figures for Du Page County are not
available, but by the middle of the nineteenth century there were 38,000
foreign-born Germans in the State.

A disastrous hail storm which swept across the northern portion of
Du Page County in June, 1847, stripping fruit from the trees in the
Duncklee orchard in present Addison Township and leveling or up-
rooting half the crops, led to the founding in 1852 of the Addison
Farmers' Mutual Insurance Company, today the oldest mutual fire
insurance company in the State. Another hail storm in 1854 went down
in local history. The hail fell for only ten minutes, but so large were the
stones and so fierce the storm that a path of destruction a mile or more
wide was cut through the northern reaches of the county, and losses of
the farmers ran up to $900 apiece.

Blame for the severity of the cholera epidemic of 1848-49 was laid
to the widespread use of streets as dumping grounds and public hog-
pens. The settlers had been too busy rooting themselves in the new land
to bother about public improvements in their little communities, which
were, moreover, as yet too small to be able to afford such luxuries. Naper-
ville, the oldest and largest settlement, was hardest hit by the epidemic.

The more adventuresome of the pioneers joined the Gold Rush in
1848-49. More went West in the revivals of the gold fever in 1852 and
1859, and some trekked out to Kansas and Nebraska in 1854, when those
States were opened up. But the majority of the settlers were content

where they were, and the places left empty by the others were quickly
filled by new arrivals from the East and abroad.

In 1848 the plank road idea, which had come to America via Russia
and Canada, struck the Chicago area. The settlers were tired to death
of their muddy, rutted highways. They had tried corduroy roads, made
by laying logs crosswise in the earth, but that had proved a dismal failure.
Now they believed they had finally found the solution to their problem.
A general Plank Road Corporation Act was passed in 1849, but plank
road companies had been established earlier under special charters.

Three main lines of plank roads were constructed out from Chicago.
Following the course of the old stage route to Naperville, the first ten
miles of the Southwestern were completed in September, 1848. Its
owners made $1,500 the first month from tolls. Early in 1850 the South-
western reached Brush Hill (Hinsdale) , and by the end of 1851 it ex-
tended as far as Naperville, from which point various companies built
branches to Oswego and Sycamore. A few miles east of Naperville a
branch left the main road for Warrenville and St. Charles. The two other
main lines, called the Northwestern and Western, were started in 1849,
the latter passing through the northern part of Du Page County. Within
a period of a few years the entire Chicago area was covered with a net-
work of improved highways.

The construction of a plank road consisted of three-inch boards laid
across stringers embedded in the ground and cost about $2,000 per mile.
Toll gates were set up at intervals of five miles, at the termination points
of each corporation's stretch of highway. The toll rate allowed by law
was 2i/ 2 c per mile for a man on horseback, double that for a single team
and wagon, and yy^c for a four-horse vehicle. By 1851 some of the plank
roads were paying 40 per cent to their investors, and the editor of the
Chicago Democrat declared them to be the "best investment afloat." But
soon the heavy planks, exposed to the weather, became warped and
loosened. Wagons passing over them made a tremendous clatter that
could be heard "for miles around." Enthusiasm over the plank roads
died down as suddenly as it had taken hold.

Construction of the Galena & Chicago Union first railroad line west
of Chicago begun in 1848, had been completed as far as Elgin by Janu-
ary, 1850. The interest of the settlers turned from the plank road to
the railroad, and their disappointment over the failure of their highway
improvement was alleviated by the thrilling new mode of transportation.
The right-of-way passed through the middle of Du Page County. The
little wood-burning steam engines clattered faithfully along the hazardous

strap rails at a top speed of 25 miles an hour, altering the entire course
of events in the straggling communities through which they passed. The
lot of the passenger was not always one of ease in the early days. Some-
times the engines ran out of water and he had to trudge back and forth
with pails between the train and the nearest creek, or he might be
pressed into service helping to fill the tender at a wooding station.
Sometimes snake-headsends of rails loosened from their moorings ap-
peared in the roadbed, and the engineer would have to stop the train,
jump off with hammer and spikes, and nail them down. But all in all,
the railroad proved a great boon to the settlers, and in a surprisingly
short time it became an efficiently working mechanism.

With the organization of nine civil townships early in 1850, Du Page
County discarded its old voting precincts and set up local governing
bodies in the form of town boards.

The outstanding feature of life in the Illinois of the 1850*8 was the
passing of the frontier. In this period the farmer began to take account
of himself. Instead of going along in his old individualistic and none
too progressive way, he commenced to think about improving his meth-
ods. Farm machinery was rapidly being introduced, even the more
backward husbandman coming to see its necessity. A desire for education
along agricultural and mechanical lines took hold and resulted in the
formation of societies for the purpose of experimentation, exchange of
ideas, and advancement of scientific methods. In 1853, the year of the
formation of the Illinois State Agricultural Society, the Du Page County
Agricultural and Mechanical Society was founded.

According to the local census of 1855, ^ u Page County's population
had reached 12,807 or an average of 38 per square mile. The census
listed one Negro and one Indian. The value of the manufactured pro-
ducts in the 52 small industrial plants was $161,095. The value of live-
stock was $876,185, and close to 105,000 pounds of wool were produced.
Mills for grain and lumber, quarries, brickyards, plow works, and brewer-
ies constituted the principal industries in this period.

There were in the area 72 common schools, 3 incorporated academies,
and 6 private schools. Monthly wages in the public schools ranged from
$16 to $30, plus board, for male teachers, and $8 to $16 for female
teachers. In his annual report the Rev. Hope Brown, school commis-
sioner, divided the 64 schoolhouses into four classes, grading 20 "extra,"
20 "good," 16 "passable," leaving 8 "for the fourth class, which may
justly be called miserable." The total number of pupils in the district
schools was about 2,000. The school term ranged from six to eight
months.

Into the educational scheme in 1860 came the county's first college,
to be followed by two others in the seventies and two in the early i goo's.

From the groves farmers and villagers were taking large numbers of
maple, elm, ash, and butternut trees to be transplanted around their
homes and on their streets. As pioneers, the farmers of Illinois had had
no time to set out fruit trees. Later they had simply neglected doing so.
The Duncklees planted an orchard in Addison in the early thirties, but
it was not until 20 years later that the practice became general in the
State. The nursery started at Naperville by Lewis Ellsworth in 1849,
was the first in Du Page County. All over the State during the 1850'$
farmers were finally awakening to the importance of cultivating fruit
and ornamental trees. Other Du Page residents were quick to follow
Ellsworth's lead, and horticulture gradually came to be important in
the county's economy.

With the start of the Civil War, prominent citizens of the county
took an active part in raising companies of troops. Altogether the
county gave more than 1,500 men, distributed through almost 40 regi-
ments. The county authorities spent $180,000 in bounties and for the
support of soldiers' families, the township officials contributing about
half as much more.

The war augmented agricultural opportunities.. Despite the drain on
farm labor, acreage increased, and Illinois became the country's center of
agriculture. Even conservative farmers were forced by the labor shortage
to use machinery, and women and children went into the fields. A revival
of foreign immigration at this time somewhat relieved the labor problem
in northern Illinois, however. The war brought high prices for grain and
livestock, and wages rose. The size of farms began to decrease in the decade
of the sixties, and stock raising to increase. Modern dairy industry is said
to have got its original start in Illinois with the commercial manufacture
of cheese on a farm in the Hinsdale area in 1 864. A new sense of professional
pride developed among the farmers in this era, and they began to form
small clubs in addition to the agricultural societies.

The region was growing not only in population, production, and
wealth, but also in comfort and refinement. On April 25, 1867, the
editor of the Aurora Beacon wrote: "The school, the church and the arts
are doing for the rising generation what energy, practical shrewdness and
hard work have done and are doing for the present." Anxious to im-
prove the quality of public education, the county school superintendent
founded an institute in 1866 for the training of the school teachers. The

question of women's rights was beginning to assume a place of import-
ance in people's thinking and discussion, activated by the notice received
by the women during their wartime years in the fields, shops, hospitals,
and soldiers' aid societies.

Back in 1855 a branch railroad line running between Aurora and
Turner Junction (West Chicago) had become the Chicago, Burlington
& Quincy Railroad. Seven years later the Burlington decided to accede
to the requests of leading citizens of Du Page County's southern line of
villages and lay tracks between Aurora and Chicago. In 1864 the line
was completed. In the same year the Galena & Chicago railroad consoli-
dated with the Chicago 8c North Western.

Of a total county population of 16,685 in 1870, 3,243 were foreign-
born Germans.

In 1872-73 the Chicago & Pacific Railroad, now the Chicago, Mil-
waukee, St. Paul and Pacific, was constructed from Chicago to Elgin,
passing through Acldison and Bloomingdale Townships. The coming
of the railroad immediately gave birth to several hamlets along its
right-of-way in Addison, communities whose lifeblood was the dairy
industry. All over the county in this period the manufacture of butter
and cheese developed extensively.

At the same time, with the opening up of wheat fields in the West,
Du Page County, like the rest of the region, went back largely to the
raising of corn, its original chief agricultural product. Formerly grown
mainly as a means of subsistence, corn now was produced for export.

The decade of the eighties brought four more railroads out through
the county the present Santa Fe, Chicago Great Western, Illinois
Central, and Elgin, Joliet & Eastern lines.

After the turn of the century, as the population in and around Chi-
cago became more and more concentrated, the making of butter and
cheese was shifted to points farther away from the metropolitan area,
and dairy products in the communities close to the big cities were limited
to fresh milk, which could not be so easily shipped from a distance. At
the same time much of Du Page County's agriculture gave way to horti-
culture, as nurseries and greenhouses came to dot the landscape at more
and more frequent intervals.

Now began the change by which the little country towns were trans-
formed into commuting suburbs, depending more and more upon
Chicago for the employment and professional activities of their citizens,
a change in which the coming of an electric line, the Chicago, Aurora &
Elgin, and the automobile played no small part.

CITIES AND VILLAGES

POPULATION (1930):
8.977 (See p.

DOWNERS GROVE

General Information

DISTANCE FROM CHICAGO:
22 mi.

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION (from Chicago) :

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Two stations, one in business section.

ACCOMMODATIONS :

Central Hotel, 1010 Warren Ave.; Tivoli Hotel, 900 Warren Ave.; usual restuarants.

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICE:
City Hall, 5200 Main St.

BUSINESS SECTION:
Main and Curtiss Sts.

STREET ORDER AND NUMBERING:

Numbering starts at continuation of 55th St. from Chicago at South end of town
(5500) and runs north to Ogden Ave.

RECREATION, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPECIAL EVENTS:

Tivoli Theater (motion picture).

Downers Grove Golf Club, g-hole daily fee course, Fourth Ave. and Prospect St.

Forest Preserve (Maple Grove), west of village on Maple Ave.; baseball diamond

in Memorial Field.

Oak Knoll Pool, Ogden Ave. and Belmont Rd.

Belmont Pool, Maple Ave. and Belmont Rd.

Tennis Courts at High School, Forest Ave. and Grant St.

High School band concerts .

Garden Club flower shows; held twice a year in winter and summer.

Little Theater Guild; three plays a year.

Washington Birthday dinner; Methodist Church.

Volunteer Fire Department dinner; Masonic Hall; Thanksgiving Day.

Catholic Church 4th of July carnival; 3 days; Memorial Field, Maple Grove.

Veterans of Foreign Wars dance and carnival; held out of doors at corner of
Forest and Warren Avenues; June.

DOWNERS GROVE

The Island on the Prairie

HEN the first white settlers in Du Page County
were seeking a place to build their homes, some of them came upon a
grove in the prairie which "looked from a distance like an island, and
the prairie around it like an ocean surrounding it." This was the site
of the present Downers Grove.

From a sleepy little village with a graveyard and a muddy main street
lined with wooden shacks, Downers Grove has grown into the second
largest municipality in Du Page County. The population has grown to
10,000, 15 per cent Poles, and a large number of descendants from the
early German and English settlers. The town lies in the midst of a rich
farming land, and many of the inhabitants are retired farmers. Others
are engaged in business in Chicago, less than an hour's ride away.
Downers Grove has been and is the home of several important writers.
James Henry Breasted is well known, in addition to his works on Egypt,
for his readable volumes on ancient and medieval history. The Breasted
homestead was later occupied by Edwin Griswold Nourse, economist,
and his sister, Alice Ti'sdale Hobart, author of Oil for the Lamps of
China, and Yang and Yin. Sterling North, who wrote Night Outlasts the
Whippoorwill, is literary editor of the Chicago Daily News, and lives in
the Grove. Lane Kay Newberry, a painter, who joined the Chicago art
group in 1921, is another present-day resident.

Inward from the periphery of the island-like village roll historic old
streets Main, Maple, Curtiss, and others once narrow trails and mud
roads, now broad and well-paved thoroughfares. On these streets are
the quiet suburban residences: modern brick and pioneer frame
buildings standing side by side. Maple Avenue is lined with gigantic
maples grown from the saplings planted by Israel Blodgett and Samuel
Curtiss when they laid out the avenue in 1838. These two early settlers
yoked a team of six oxen to a huge log and drove up and down a cleared
pathway 2 miles long, pressing down the prairie turf to make a well-
marked trail for stagecoaches. This improvement created a short cut for
the stages past the claims of Blodgett and Curtiss. Symbolic, perhaps, of

JJi

DOWNERS GROVE

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. Rogers Pioneer Homestead

2. Downer Monument

3. Breasted House

4. Cap/. Theodore S. Rogers Residence

5. Downers Grove Free Public Library

6. Main Street Cemetery

7. Cressy Auditorium

8. Cole and Thatcher's General Store Bldg.

9. Blodgett Homestead

10. Methodist Episcopal Church

11. Avery Coonley School

12. Maple Grove

the broad outlook of the pioneer is the wide avenue with its rows of
sugar maples planted at generous distances apart.

There are other village trees that have historic interest or are unusual
in themselves. A Ginkgo biloba, or maidenhair tree, so called because of
its fernlike leaves, stands on the southeast corner of Chicago Avenue and
Elm Street. The ginkgo has been cultivated for centuries as a temple
tree in Japan, Korea, and China. A number of thornless honey locusts,
one of them over a hundred years old, are growing on the Lyman farm,
planted there by a pioneer. A single tamarack grows near by in the
middle of the sidewalk, to be exact inspiring constant friction between
practical-minded public officials and nature lovers of the village. The
hackmatack, as- the Indians called it, grows naturally in the marshy soil
of the far West and North, so that the presence of this particular speci-
men 75 years old is a rarity in the community.

Along Maple Avenue and other old residential streets the suburban
charm of the village is apparent. There is a peacefulness, a sense of sub-
dued and quiet living that makes the visitor from the city feel as though
every day were Sunday. Only the occasional bark of a dog and the
constant clamor of the birds break the silence.

Downers Grove has always encouraged this atmosphere of quiet.
When the village was incorporated in 1873, some of its first ordinances
were against noise and disturbance of the peace. A section of one law
forbade "the annoyance of others on Sunday, by dancing, fiddling, singing
songs, jumping, drilling, skating, running foot races, racing horses, play-
ing ball, ten pins, billiards, cards, marbles or other games, wrestling,
boxing, pitching quoits, fishing, hunting, or any amusement of like
nature." A fine of ten dollars was imposed for breaking this ordinance.
A similar law prohibited any disturbance of the peace by "loud and
unusual noises, or by blowing of horns, trumpets, vessels or implements,
or by loud or boisterous laughing, or by hallooing, bellowing, singing,
whooping, screaming, scolding, traducing, swearing, cursing, challenging
to fight, engaging in obscene language or conversation, or by creating
false alarms, or by assembling in disorderly gatherings."

Downers Grove, like any other town its size, has its Main Street, with
the usual chain stores, general stores, super-service stores, drug stores, and
movie theater. It also has the Bateman Lumber and Coal Company,
located at the extreme eastern end of Burlington Avenue, which has
manufactured poultry and brooder houses since 1905, and the Dicke
Tool Company on Warren Avenue, which occupies a building nearly a
block long in the manufacture of electricians' supplies and hardware

specialties. Casper H. Dicke, the founder, came from Germany in 1881
and settled in Downers Grove in 1890. His tools won the grand prize
at World's Fairs in Chicago (1893) , Buffalo (1901) , and St. Louis (1904) .
The present manager, Henry C. Dicke, is mayor of Downers Grove. As
a result of the depression, Downers Grove has been without a bank since
1933. The Citizens State Bank, chartered in 1939, has not yet started
functioning.

Unlike most other towns, however, Downers Grove has its early-day
cemetery right on Main Street. Only a low concrete wall and a line of
shrubbery separate the living from the dead. Several years ago a Chicago
paper commented: "The graveyard is still a conspicuous feature of the
main street, but it is conspicuous now by contrast to its surroundings.
A few years ago it seemed symbolic."

Since September 18, 1915, when the village adopted the commission
form of government, it has been governed by a mayor and board of com-
missioners. In the early part of 1939, the council took steps to create a
park system. Strangely enough, Downers Grove has less park area than
any other town its size in the county.

Two weekly newspapers are published: the Reporter and the Journal.
The former is the only early-day local newspaper to survive the vicissi-
tudes of pioneer times, although its numerous changes of ownership
show that its existence at times was precarious.

Twenty-five volunteers form .the fire department. In 1929 Fire Chief
Grant Dicke read his men an account of the fire department of Portland,
Oregon, which was repairing broken toys to be given to underprivileged
children at Christmas time. Members of the Downers Grove department
were so impressed that they, too, began collecting discarded toys to be
renovated during their spare time, and every Christmas for five years
thereafter they distributed several thousand playthings. At the end of
that time the project was turned over to the high school, where students
of manual training carry on the work.

Since the days of the circuit-riding ministers, religion has been of
great significance to the villagers. Eight churches, representing Catholics,
Congregationalists, Lutherans, Baptists, Christian Scientists, Methodists
and Episcopalians each with its own social organizations and activities-
play a vital part in the life of the community. Organizations other than
religious are also active in the Grove. The Downers Grove Women's
Club has been prominent since February 3, 1897, when it was founded,
with its object "the mutual improvement of its members in literature,
art, science and vital interests of the day." Among its early endeavors

were three traveling libraries. The American Legion Post sponsors a
25-piece band. Three village choruses include a local unit of the Mother
Singers of the National Parent-Teachers' Association, the Women's
Choral Ensemble, and the Arion Singers, a men's chorus of 16 voices.
The latter two give a free Christmas concert every year as their contri-
bution to Yuletide festivities.

From the time, more than a century ago, when Israel Blodgett built
a lean-to against his house, where school was "kept" for his own and a
few neighbors' children, educational facilities have developed with the
community. Today they include four public elementary schools, a com-
munity high school, two elementary parochial schools, and the Avery
Coonley Experimental School. The combined enrollment of the four
public grade schools is about 1,600; the total faculty, about 47. About
1,125 students from the village and outlying communities attend Downers
Grove Community High School, which has a faculty of 35. Dramatic
productions are held in its auditorium, and athletic facilities include
football and baseball fields, track, and tennis courts. Of the two paro-
chial schools, St. Joseph's, with ten faculty members and an enrollment
of 385, is the older, dating from 1910, although the present building was
erected in 1925. St. Mary's of Gostyn's, established in 1920 by the Rev.
Stanislaus Koralewski, teaches its 81 pupils in both English and Polish.

Supplementing the work of the schools is the Works Progress Ad-
ministration recreation project, with which, in 1935, the Associated
Leisure Groups of Downers Grove merged. Villagers showed their enthus-
iasm by donating to the Recreation Center the necessary equipment, such
as pianos, sewing machines, and furniture, and by establishing a govern-
ing board of representatives from 14 local clubs. Painting, drawing,
pottery, the making of plastic jewelry, basket weaving, woodcraft, square
and folk dancing, dramatics, ping-pong, and other indoor games are
some of the advantages enjoyed by children and adults alike.

Among such surroundings the citizens of the Grove live: some pros-
perous, some not so prosperous, all interested in the welfare of the com-
munity, active in its undertakings, and anxious to preserve the tradi-
tional quiet and dignity of their "island on the prairie."

Founder of the Grove

Late in the year of 1832, a solitary rider drew up his horse and
camped for the night at the fork of two Indian trails. He was Pierce
Downer, journeying on horseback from New York to Chief Waubansie's
favorite camping grounds. The spot where he chose to camp is now

bounded by Oakwood and Linscott Avenues, Lincoln and Grant Streets,
in the village later named for him and the grove in which he soon staked
his claim. Downer had been drawn to the Chicago area partly to seek a
homesite, and partly to visit his son, Stephen, who had just finished
building Chicago's first lighthouse.

Downer established a claim on 160 acres of prairie and timber land
on the northeastern fringe of the grove still a part of the village today,
though streets and railroad tracks intersect it for which he paid the
Government $1.25 an acre. To mark the trail to his cabin, he seized the
branches of a small sapling and bent the tree to the ground, where he
secured it with a stake. This tree is still standing at 4714 Oakwood
Avenue.

Where Downer had opened the land, others quickly followed. The
next year he was joined by his son, Stephen, and the rest of his family.
Two men, Wells and Cooley made claims southeast of the grove. In
1835, Israel Blodgett arrived and on August 14, 1836, sold part of his
claim in the center of the grove to Samuel Curtiss for $1000. Curtiss put
up a tavern with stables near the center of the present village and in
1838 helped Blodgett lay out Maple Avenue to facilitate stage coach
traffic past their claim. The old Galena Road passed through the grove
on present Ogden Avenue (US 34) . Three years after Downer's arrival,
every available acre of timber land in the grove had been claimed.

It was inevitable in such rapid settlement that boundary disputes
should arise. Among the protective agencies organized for the purpose
of keeping claim jumpers and land sharks off the claims of bona fide
settlers was one which met in Downer's home. Its members declared they
would consider men who should "attempt to claim pre-emption or to
seize any part ot another's claim as thieves and robbers," and that they
would do whatever they could to keep such men from buying land in the
neighborhood. Eventually, this group passed a resolution to the effect
that any person attempting to jump a claim would be hanged.

Downer personally dealt with two men who were trying to annex
part of his land. Wells and Cooley, coveting a portion of Downer's
claim, started to erect a cabin on it. Years later Downer told the story:

I went to Chicago one day to buy some provisions, and on re-
turning thought I saw someone working near the northeast corner
of the grove. I went home and deposited my cargo (a back load)
and although very tired, went out to reconnoitre my premises. To
my great surprise .1 found that Wells and Cooley had commenced
erecting a cabin on my claim. I went to a thicket close by and cut
a hickory gad, but found I had no power to use it, for I was so

mad that it took my strength away. So I sat down and tried to cool
off a little, but my excitement only cooled from a sort of violence
to deep and downright indignation. To think that my claim
should be invaded, and that, too, by the only two white men be-
sides myself at the grove, made the vessel of my wrath to simmer
like a pent sea in a burning volcano. I could sit still no longer.
So I got up and advanced toward them, and the nearer I ap-
proached, the higher rose the temperature of my anger, which by
the time I got to them was flush up to the boiling point. I said
nothing, but pitched into them, shelalah in hand, and for about
five minutes did pretty good execution. But becoming exhausted
and being no longer able to keep them at bay, they grappled with
me, and threw me down on the ground and after holding me down
a short time they seemed to come to the conclusion that "discretion
was the better part of valor" and let me up, when they ran one
way and I the other, no doubt leaving blood enough upon the
field of action to induce a stray prairie wolf to stop and take a
passing sniff as he went that way. But sir, they didn't come again
to jump my claim.

Pierce Downer, however, possessed qualities other than the traditional
hardihood of the pioneer which marked him as exceptional. His library
was once the largest in the northwest. Because of his reputation for
honesty and fairness, he was often made arbiter of disputes arising be-
tween early settlers when courts of law were not accessible. He was ac-
knowledged leader of the first settlers in the grove, and his name was
given both to the township, when it became a recognized part of Du Page
County, and to the village which grew up round his log cabin.

Pioneering in the Thirties

The 1830'$ brought many settlers to Downers Grove. From the east
came trains of covered wagons drawn by horses or oxen, moving slowly
across the prairies. The high, well-drained grove attracted settlers be-
cause its timber furnished wood for fuel and building materials, while
the prairie which surrounded it was suitable for cultivation.

The only pathways in the settlement were tortuous Indian trails that
wound in and out through the forest. The new settlers set to work, first
to build their log cabins and then to "mark off" their claims by carving
their initials on "witness trees" at the four corners of their land.

Around his cabin the early settler built barns, animal shelters and
corn cribs. He planted corn, raked hay and harvested wheat with a
cradle a scythe-like implement with wooden fingers. The first cast-iron
plows used in the district were made by Israel Blodgett in his black-
smith shop.

In early days when livestock was allowed to wander freely on the
open prairie, the settlers fenced in their crops. Six years after the coming
of Pierce Downer, one pioneer, Elisha Smart, established a regular busi-
ness of making fence rails.

The Methodist Episcopalians were the first to organize. In the late
thirties two men, the most colorful zealots of their day, were responsible
for the founding of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Downers Grove.
One of these, Stephen R. Beggs, was the son of a Revolutionary War
soldier. He was 6 feet tall, weighed 200 pounds, had the reputation of
being the strongest man in Du Page County, and possessed a magnificent
voice. An early pioneer declared that his voice could be heard a quarter
of a mile away, and that at meetings "he just yelled from the start."
Beggs was also the author of a book called Pages from the Early History
of the West and Northwest. He pursued his business of saving souls at
any place and at any time. "Those who would not come to church I
followed to their houses, conversing with them on the highways and by
the wayside." The other founder was William Gadis, familiarly known
as Father Ged, an itinerant preacher who came across the prairie on
foot from Barber's Corners near the present southern boundary of Lisle
Township to preach to the people at the grove, beginning his periodic
visits in 1839.

The year 1836 was a boom year. Laborers working on the Illinois-
Michigan canal settled along the southeastern boundary of the town-
ship, and a fever of speculation overtook the pioneers. Walter Blanchard,
David Page and Gary E. Smith were among those who came about this
time. Blanchard and Henry Carpenter bought a farm, part of which
was in what is now Downers Grove village. Later, Blanchard returned
east for a bride. He apparently did not see eye-to-eye with that other
young man of the vicinity who declared: "I ain't going to pay no freight
on a woman, no how, when there's enough here!"

The first schools in the grove were organized in private houses.
Hiram Willson (or Stillson) taught the first of these in the winter of
1836-37 in a lean-to attached jo Israel Blodgett's house. In 1837-38, a
school was opened in a house built by John Wallace, and later L. K.
Hatch taught a school in what was known as the "Norwegian House"
or the "old shoe shop" which stood some distance west of the Blanchard
place. In 1838 a schoolhouse was built near the home of L. W. Stanley
on the "west side." In 1839 Norman G. Hurd was teaching a school
held in the back part of a log house owned by Samuel Curtiss. This

was a private enterprise which kept going five or six months a year for
about four years.

Cole and Thatcher's general store marked the beginning of com-
mercial enterprise on Main Street.

In 1839, when Du Page County was officially separated from Cook
County, the Downers Grove post office was established with Eli Curtiss
as first postmaster.

The Underground Railway

The welding room of the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry,
Virginia, rang with the clash of metal on metal. The foreman stood in
one corner, his muscular blacksmith's arm beating out the iron upon
the anvil. From among the workmen, a young mulatto stepped forward.
Fellow workers knew him to be intelligent and capable. He walked
over to the foreman as though he wished to ask him something about his
work, and spoke low and earnestly in his ear. He was a slave, he told
the foreman, whose earnings were turned over to his master. He desired
to escape to Canada, where he could live a free and independent exist-
ence. What should he do?

It was, perhaps, foolhardy, but the young Negro knew his man.
Israel Blodgett was known to sympathize with enslaved Negroes. Without
looking up from his work, Blodgett continued the attack upon his anvil,
answering at the same time: "Travel only by night, and then over un-
frequented roads; follow the North Star."

Some inkling of this incident came to the ears of the armory's man-
agers, and Blodgett was discharged. Not at all discouraged, he left his
wife and family and started for Illinois with a large party of prospective
settlers. He built a cabin at the forks of the Du Page River in Will
County where he was joined by his family. One day a man on horse-
back rode up to their cabin door leading two Negroes whose hands were
tied by a rope attached to the horse's saddle. The rider asked for a drink
of water. Mrs. Blodgett took a tin cup and went to the spring, which
was not far from the house. Returning, she handed the water to the
Negroes, and suggested to their outraged white master that whereas he
was perfectly capable of helping himself to water, the Negroes were not.

When Blodgett moved to Downers Grove, he was able in the midst
of his activities as blacksmith, gunsmith, inventor, farmer and cattle
raiser to take a leading part in the abolition movement. At a time
when such activities were dangerous, he established a station of the
underground railway to assist runaway slaves to escape.

Blodgett was assisted in his work by other abolitionists in the grove:
David Page, Robert Dixon, Henry Carpenter and Rockwell Guild. In
those days the expression of a political doctrine like abolitionism could
cost a man his life. Robert Dixon was told by a preacher that "aboli-
tionists were on the road to hell." But as one historian puts it, Dixon
"took no fear upon himself."

One of Israel Blodgett's sons, Judge Henry W. Blodgett, was among
the first anti-slavery representatives elected to the general assembly of
Illinois. Judge Blodgett was a member of the Free Soil party whose
slogan was "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men."

Changes on the Frontier

Downers Grove in the 1840*8 and '50*8 was a typical frontier village
of the Middle West. Its progress in education, religion, medicine, trans-
portation and public services was slow and often crude; but considering
the handicaps and disadvantages of being so far removed from centers
of culture, the village did remarkably well. What it did not have in the
way of equipment it made up in enthusiasm.

Take, for instance, the breaking out of a fire in the town. An excited
citizen rushes into the middle of the street shouting, "Fire! Fire!" at the
top of his lungs. Other voices take up his cry until it echoes and re-
echoes down the village streets. The citizens come running to volunteer
their services, a little confused at first as to where the fire actually is.
Soon enough volunteers arrive upon the scene to form a bucket brigade:
two lines of men facing one another, a few feet apart, extending from the
nearest well or cistern to the burning building. Men and women in the
background fill a bucket with water and pass it to the end men intone
line. From man to man it passes up to the leader who dashes the water
onto the flames. The empty bucket then travels down the other line for
refilling.

Later, more effective alarms were used. John Sucher, a fire fighter,
made a piece of railroad iron into a triangle and struck it with an iron
bar, producing a sound that, if the stories be true, could be heard in
the placid country atmosphere for miles beyond the village limits. Not
until 1906 was a bell used.

The opportunity for fighting fires was considered such a privilege that
twenty young men formed a volunteer fire brigade with the exclusive
rights of wearing red flannel shirts and arriving first upon the scene of
the fire, without benefit of salary. In fact, at one time, they even paid
dues in order to belong to the brigade.

In the middle forties a site was purchased and a schoolhouse was
built near the residence of F. M. Woods. Some of the early teachers were
O. P. Hathaway, Mary Blodgett and Captain T. S. Rogers. "Unless
some class was continually on the recitation floor," says an old history,
"all could not find seats." This school has been described *by one of its
first pupils, Mrs. Emma J. Miller:

It was taught in a little unpainted one story building set in a
clump of trees. It faced north on the street now called Maple
Avenue, then called Chicago Road. The building was heated by a
long cast iron stove set in the center of the room. When the stove
was too full of ashes to draw well the teacher and some of the boys
would carry it out and empty it. We always had a man teacher for
the winter term and a lady in the summer. Directly over the stove
was a hole in the ceiling. It was a favorite pastime of the boys to
climb into the attic and disconnect the stove pipe. School closed
then on account of smoke. Teacher birched all the boys to get
the right one.

Before the time of the traveling doctor, the pioneers picked up the
art of using herbs from the Indians who had developed many uses for
them. One of Israel Blodgett's sons says in his reminiscences:

One day my elder brother Henry was bitten by a rattlesnake
while we were cutting corn. I had heard of rattlesnake weed and
quickly dug some up. As we came to the house a company of
Indians was riding past. A squaw got off her horse and asked me
what I was going to do with what I had in my hand, I told her.
She snatched it out of my hand and threw it away, grunting, "No
good!" Then she took my hoe and ran off and dug up another
kind of weed. She bound a leaf of the rattlesnake weed she had
dug up about Henry's leg above the swelling, and while the foot
and leg swelled up terribly, the swelling did not go above that leaf.
She made a poultice out of another kind of weed and some tea, and
he got well.

The religious societies that had organized in the thirties began to
build their churches a decade later. In the early days the Baptists per-
mitted no musical instrument other than a tuning fork to be used. A
proposal to install a small organ was hotly contested. As the original
building was too small to allow for indoor baptism, the congregation
would go to Salt Creek in Fullersburg. When St. Joseph Creek was deep
enough, baptism rites could be held there, even though in winter, the
ice had to be broken. Later, when a baptistry was built into the church,
it had to be filled by hand and heated by warm bricks thrown into the
water.

In 1846 the town was platted by Norm'an Gilbert. The year previous
to this, a store and blacksmith shop had been erected by Henry Car-

penter and N. A. Belden. Carpenter had to sell mainly on credit. "Any
one who came into his store with his shoes tied up, could get trusted."
In the middle of the century the Southwestern Plank Road was con-
structed through the grove following the old stage route to Galena. By
1857, the town's population had increased to 1,200 people, most of whom
were engaged in farming.

The Plow Boys

One day in the year 1860 a large wagon rattled down Main Street in
Downers Grove. It was followed by most of the townspeople, children,
and dogs. In the wagon a flag pole towered 40 feet in the air, sup-
porting a large American flag. Arranged in tiers around the pole were
45 young men of the village, dressed in white trousers, patent leather
belts, red flannel shirts, and glazed caps. The townspeople gaped and
cheered. These were the Plow Boys, a political organization led by the
Republican, Sheriff Theodore S. Rogers. They held banners which pro-
claimed: "Lincoln for President!" . . . "Vote for Old Abe." Four years
before, their banners had exhorted: "Buchanan for President! Vote for
James Buchanan!" Into every nearby town and community they went,
banners flying, bringing the townsfolk all the excitement of a political
campaign. A generation later, the sons of the original Plow Boys organ-
ized a similar group to serve during the campaign of Benjamin Harrison.

A few months after campaigning for Lincoln, the men of Downers
Grove were- called upon to give more serious proof of their loyalty than
the forming of a political society. When Captain Theodore Rogers was
commissioned to organize the first company of 100 men in Du Page
County for service in the Civil War, 138 men promptly enlisted. Captain
Rogers was put in command of Company B, io5th Illinois Infantry, a
regiment which participated in Sherman's march to the sea and in the
siege of Savannah.

Captain Walter Blanchard, also of Downers Grove, commanded
Company B of the igth Illinois Infantry. In the Battle of Ringgold Gap
he was mortally wounded, but rallied his men as he fell. In his report
on this battle, General Hooker said of this company: "It has never been
my fortune to serve with more zealous and devoted soldiers." In an en-
gagement at Missionary Ridge the Thirteenth, although outnumbered,
captured an entire Confederate regiment.

Coining of the Railroad

Ever since the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad had gone through
the central part of the county in 1849, citizens in the line of villages to

the south had been jealous. A committee had been selected from Brush
Hill (now Hinsdale) , Downers Grove and Naperville to request the
Chicago, Burlington 8c Quincy to build a branch from Aurora to Chicago
through their villages. On July 28, 1858, this committee filed a petition
with the railroad company, which read in part:

Downers Grove, five miles west from Brush Hill and 21 miles
from Chicago, is also the center of a rich farming country which
is well settled. This point would draw> the business of a large sec-
tion the produce of which now finds a market either at Lockport
or is taken directly to Chicago by teams. The grain raised in this
section of the country, which would make this its depot, during the
last year was 397,560 bushels.

The merchandise tonnage for the same time, to and from
Chicago, amounted to 250 tons, or 500,000 pounds, besides lumber.
That may be safely estimated at 550,000 feet, or 1,650,000 pounds.
Total, 2,150,000 pounds of freight. The passenger traffic at this
point would be no inconsiderable item.

Not until October, 1862, however, was construction on the railroad
begun. The first train arrived on May 20, 1864. For a number of years
only one train a day passed in each direction, and often passengers had
to ride in a freight car.

Until the building of the railroad Downers Grove was little more
than a crossroads hamlet. Only a few things could be purchased in its
shops, and people traded extensively with John Graves, who ran a big
general store at what is now Belmont (see Tour). In fact, the first rail-
road station in the vicinity was almost awarded to the latter settlement.
But Downers Grove awakened with the coming of the trains, and Blan-
chard, Carpenter, Blodgett, Whitney, two of the Curtisses, and several
others contributed $500 to buy a station site on land belonging to John
Coates. Coates was unfriendly to the railroad and would not sell short
of this sum.

In 1872 a company headed by General Ducat bought 600 acres, in-
cluding most of the eastern part of the original grove, and laid it out in
streets, with lawns and rustic parks. In 1873 the first sidewalk made of
two-inch planks was built on Maple Avenue. The same year the village
was incorporated. Captain Rogers was elected first president; Eugene
Farrar, clerk; and Robert Dixon, judicial magistrate. When a drunken
man instigated a row during the erection of a building on Salt Creek,
Dixon fined the offender $15. After this, anxious to set a good example,
the magistrate refused to touch liquor again. A village hall was erected
in 1877, containing jail cells, as well as offices and courtrooms.

The village grew steadily. An annual directory published in 1899

contained 575 names and included Gostyn, a Polish settlement lying
between Downers Grove and East Grove. The Poles had settled in this
area (now a part of Downers Grove) when a Polish real estate agent
started a subdivision. The population of Downers Grove was 2,601 in
1910. Three years later the village had two banks, three hotels, and
four major industrial units: The Kelmscott Press, Dicke Tool Company,
Illinois Heater Company, and the Austin Nurseries.

In 1922 Mrs. Lottie Holman O'Neill of Downers Grove, elected to
the Illinois General Assembly, became the State's first woman legislator.
Thousands of women, overjoyed by this victory of one of their sex,
gathered at the State Capitol to celebrate her induction into office.

The economic depression of the 1930*5 saw the failure of the Downers
Grove Bank.

Under Miss Kate Ward the Associated Leisure Groups was organized
in 1933, "to assist in making the life of the community more enlightened,
tolerant, co-operative and creative." During the first year, 150 people
studied economics, world affairs, journalism, public speaking, printing,
wood and metal work, etching, creative writing, dramatics, puppet show
technique, folk dancing, foreign languages, and current books. Under
the auspices of the League of Women Voters the participants served the
community in various ways.

Main Street and Minor Streets

1. The large two-story frame house on the east side of North Main
St. near Ogden Ave. is the ROGERS PIONEER HOMESTEAD (pri-
vate), built by Joseph Ives Rogers, father of Captain Rogers, in 1845-46.
The Rogers family lived in a log cabin until the building was completed.
The frame is of oak timbers cut and hewn on the Rogers farm, which
adjoined Pierce Downer's claim, on Ogden Ave. northwest of Downers
Grove. On this farm, on the north side of Ogden, was the original site
of the Rogers homestead.

2. The DOWNER MONUMENT between Grant and Lincoln Sts.,west
of Linscott Ave., marks the grave of Pierce Downer. A granite boulder-
taken from the foundation of Downer's barn about five feet in front of
Downer's grave, draws attention to the spot where the pioneer spent his
first night in this locality in 1832. Here, also, was the intersection of
two Indian trails. (Path to graveyard not clearly visible.)

3. In the BREASTED HOUSE (private), 4629 Highland Ave., James
Henry Breasted (1865-1935), director of the Oriental Institute of the

University of Chicago, spent part of his boyhood. The house was built
in 1874 by his father. After the Breasted family moved to Chicago in
1881, the house was occupied for a number of years by Edwin Griswold
Nourse, the economist, and his novelist sister, Alice Tisdale Hobart.

4. At 1024 Warren Ave. is a remodeled building that was originally
the CAPT. THEODORE S. ROGERS RESIDENCE (private). The
house, now painted white with blue trim, was built by Captain Rogers
shortly after the Civil War. He served as mayor, sheriff and captain of
a Civil War company.

5. At 1050 Curtiss St. is the DOWNERS GROVE FREE PUBLIC
LIBRARY (open n-6 Man., Wed., Fri.; 11-9 Tues., Thurs., Sat.; closes
i p.m. Wed. during June, July, August). The building and site were
made possible by a bequest of $2,000 left by the late John Oldfield. For
maintenance of the library, a tax upon the citizens of the village was
necessary. The citizens objected to this for many years. Nevertheless,
a group of public-minded women, who had yet to achieve suffrage, were
able, by enlisting the support of prominent men, to get the tax bill
passed on June 3, 1911. The library opened its doors in October, 1912.

6. MAIN STREET CEMETERY, a short distance south of the C. B.
& Q. station, was not always on Main Street. Its location, back in the
early fifties, was south of Maple Avenue and east of Main. However,
Henry Carpenter, one of the town's pioneers, was obliged to gaze at a
child's grave every time he opened his door, and complained that the
sight made him sad. So the townspeople moved their three-grave ceme-
tery to a sheep pasture, for which they agreed to pay $15. Ten years
later, when the Burying Ground Association was organized, $10.50 of
this sum had still to be raised. When the village was platted it was
discovered that the cemetery faced directly on the town's main thorough-
fare. In 1876, a proposition that it be moved was voted down, and the
little cemetery became a permanent fixture. Many early pioneers lie
buried here, among them Israel Blodgett, Samuel Curtiss, and Capt.
Walter Blanchard.

7. A garage at 5208 S. Main St., a remodeled brick building, was
known in the iSgo's as the CRESSY AUDITORIUM. Originally built
as a temporary place in which to hold political rallies, its pine board
construction proved so sturdy that it was allowed to stand as a social
hall and town meeting place. Here, for many years, the high school
commencements, school dinners, and revival meetings were held. It was
also used as a drill hall for the Boys' Brigade and as a lecture hall where
Jane Addams and other well-known persons spoke. The building was

originally three stories high and was the only structure to survive a fire
in that district of town.

8. A delicatessen near the northwest corner of S. Main St. and Maple
Ave., occupies the original COLE AND THATCHER'S GENERAL
STORE BUILDING. Cole and Thatcher's was the first store in Downers
Grove, built in the late 1 830*5.

9. The BLODGETT HOMESTEAD (private), 812 Randall St., is a
pioneer structure made of beams cut from black walnut trees built by
Israel Blodgett in 1836. It has been removed from its original site at
831 Maple Avenue to its present location.

10. The METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 1032 W. Maple
Ave., Gothic in architecture, is one of the most imposing structures in
the community. Built in 1928, it is equipped with a fine organ, an audi-
torium seating 750, an educational unit seating 500, a gymnasium, and
a public address system. Records of the First Methodist Episcopal Church
extend back to 1838, when meetings were held in a schoolhouse and the
Rev. Stephen R. Beggs was an early preacher.

11. The AVERY COONLEY SCHOOL (open by arrangement; tel.
Downers Grove 800), 1400 W. Maple Ave., is one of the country's pioneer
progressive schools. In 1911, Mrs. Avery Coonley, who lived in River-
side, Illinois, established an institution known as the Kindergarten Ex-
tension Association on Grove Street. She chose Downers Grove for the
site of this school because she believed it was a place where children
were living wholesome, normal lives in typical American homes. When
the school was removed to its present location on a i5-acre plot of land,
skirting woods, its name was changed to the Avery Coonley School. The
school maintains a capacity enrollment of 200 boys and girls.

12. MAPLE GROVE (county forest preserve], in the west central
section of the village is bounded by Maple Avenue on the south and by
the right-of-way of the C. B. & Q. on the north. The grove has a souvenir
of the glacial period in a kettle hole, which is located 300 feet west of
St. Joseph Creek. Found in the ground and terminal moraines of glaciated
regions, kettle holes are steep-sided hollows without surface drainage, formed
by the melting of blocks of ice protected by drift. This kettle hole, affection-
ately named Eddie by boys who played here a quarter century ago, is about
20 feet deep and nearly 100 feet in diameter. It is lined with trees, brush,
and flowers in season.

Deacon WJHS/OW Churchill

William Robbins

John B. Turner

Gerry Bates

ELMHURST

General Information

POPULATION (1930):
14,055 (See p. 234.)

DISTANCE FROM CHICAGO:
17 mi.

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION (from Chicago):

Chicago & North Western Ry. Stations in main business center.
Chicago, Aurora & Elgin R. R. (electric). Stations in south section.

ACCOMMODATIONS :

Private tourist homes. Crane Sanitarium, 203 S. York St., accepts transients
when rooms are available. Usual restaurants and taverns.

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICE:

Chicago Motor Club, 105 S. York St. Elmhurst Trade & Civic Association,
152 N. York St.

BUSINESS SECTION:

Main one centered in vicinity of C. & N. W. Ry. station, with York St. its
principal thoroughfare. Minor ones centered around York St. and Spring Rd.
stations of C. A. & E. R. R.

STREET ORDER AND NUMBERING:

No directional distinction between streets and avenues. Numbering is N. and S.
from the C. & N. W. Ry. tracks. In the section N. of the C. A. & E. R. R.,
numbering is E. and W. from York St. In the section S. of the C. A. & E. R. R.,
numbering is E. and W. from Euclid Ave.

RECREATION, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPECIAL EVENTS:

East End Park, NE. corner of city, entered from Third and Schiller Sts.
Swimming pool, children's Avading pool and playground equipment; when com-
pleted, will also have tennis courts, athletic fields, and .bird sanctuary.

Salt Creek Park, on the creek, outside of NW. section of city, entered from
111. 54. Children's playground and wading pool, picnic facilities which include
outdoor fireplaces, tennis courts, snow slide, ice skating rink. Ice hockey games
at night throughout winter.

Wilder Park, in heart of city, bounded by Virginia and Church Sts., Prospect
and Cottage Hill Aves. Children's wading pool and playground; tennis, bad-
minton, volleyball, and horseshoe courts, fieldhouse, picnic facilities including
outdoor fireplace.

York Park (county forest preserve No. i), l /i mi. S. of city at intersection of
Roosevelt (US 330) and York Rds. ; on E. bank of Salt Creek. Boathouse and
picnic facilities including outdoor fireplaces.
York Theater, 152 N. York St. (motion picture) .

York Golf Club, 2350 York Rd.; daily fee course; dining room.
Spring concert by the Women's Choral Club.
Garden Club show, usually in June.

Flower shows at Wilder Park Botanical Conservatory (free): Easter lilies (ac-
cording to season), chrysanthemums (Nov. 15-30), poinscttias (Dec. 15-Jan.
3), night-blooming cacti (usually June 1-20).

Two or three plays during the season by The Masquers, local amateur group.
Two or three presentations during the season by Elmhurst College Theater.
Easter and Christmas programs by Elmluirst College Chapel Choir.
Annual concert by l.lmlunst College Band

ELMHURST

Urban Countryside

,ARGEST city in Du Page County, Elmhurst ex-
tends from the central eastern boundary west to Salt Creek. Lying for
the most part in York Township, the city extends northward into Addi-
soh. The leafy avenues, landscaped parks, wide lawns, and gardens
combine the openness and heavy foliage of a countryside with the trim-
ness of a well-kept suburb. Less than a century ago this was unbroken
prairie land, fringed with groves along the creek.

From the early Cottage Hill days to the present, a fortunate sense of
values has prevailed among the residents. Their desire for gracious
living has resisted all attempts to mar the spacious housing pattern with
either apartments or commercial quarters. In all sections housing is
limited to one-family units of five rooms or more. Strict zoning regula-
tions prevent the encroachment of commerce or industry upon the resi-
dential areas, which comprise by far the greater part of the city. Houses
have been well built and, usually, well designed.

There is no predominant architectural style. A number of Greek
Revival buildings recall Elmhurst's earliest period; there are some houses
in the colonial tradition typical of the Civil War era; and several gauche
"mansions" of stone or frame are stolid reminders of a gilded Victorian
past. The majority of homes, however, exhibit more recent types of
design, as Elmhurst's period of greatest growth has been since the World
War. Remodeled from an elaborate homestead of the i86o's and situated
on a wooded acre adjoining attractive Wilder Park, the Elmhurst Public
Library building is notable for its charm of line and setting, for the
comfortable informality of its interior. The post office is housed in a
large Federal building of modern design, erected in 1935.

This suburb of approximately 17,000 inhabitants is the shopping
center of the county. While most of Elmhurst's business and professional
people commute to Chicago, many operate their own enterprises in the
community, in which about 500 workers find local employment. Among
the 175 shops and offices are units of several national chains. Local

industry comprises qtfarrying, millworking, fertilizer manufacturing, ami
horticulture. Oldest and largest industry is the Elmhurst-Chicago Stone
Company, founded in 1883. The company employs between 50 to 75
persons and does business over a hundred-mile radius. The firm of
Hammerschmidt & Franzen, dealing in coal and building materials, as
well as millwork, originated in 1885. The Hydralizer Company is a
small concern started about 1935. The most extensive and oldest green-
houses are those of Wendland & Keimel, covering 21 acres in an un-
developed section at the east end of town. Employing about 20 men,
the firm specializes in roses, shipping to Chicago and Milwaukee. Offices
of the Addison Farmers' Mutual Insurance Company, incorporated in
1855 and Illinois' oldest mutual fire insurance company, have always
been in Elmhurst. An old saddlery building and a few aged frame taverns
and blacksmith shops stand close to modern store fronts, reminders of the
day when they, with the general store, carried the bulk of local trade.
In the rural area surrounding Elmhurst are nurseries, a mushroom farm,
large-scale truck gardens producing for the Chicago markets, and more
greenhouses.

A five-story building of Bedford stone in the main business center
houses the Elmhurst State Bank. Started as a private bank by Henry L.
Glos in 1894, it is now the largest financial institution in the county,
with total resources of more than $3,500,000. The city's only other bank,
the York State, is at the south end of town.

Two bi-weekly newspapers, the Press and the Leader, are under the
same management. Older of the two, the Press is the successor of the
News, founded in 1894. Formerly Republican it is now independent.
Its circulation is the largest among local papers in the county.

Incorporated as a city in 1911, Elmhurst is under the council form
of government, with a mayor and ten aldermen. The city tax rate is a
little less than the average among Chicago suburbs. Founded in 1920,
the Elmhurst Park District has completed two parks and begun two
others. When the projects are finished, the city will have 70 acres of
recreational grounds.

Most notable civic feature is the public school system. Four elemen-
tary schools with six grades, a junior high school with eight grades, and a
township high school 'are housed in large, unusually well-designed build-
ings of brick and stone, surrounded by lawns and playgrounds. Finest
architecturally is the Tudor Gothic Hawthorne Junior High School,
designed by E. Norman Brydges, local architect. More than 70 teachers
serve a grade school enrollment of about 2,000. A department for chil-

dren with special needs or disabilities was established in 1929. Ranking
among the best in the State, the high school has 60 teachers and 1,600
students.

In addition to its public schools, Elmhurst has two parochial schools,
belonging to the Lutheran and Catholic churches, and an Evangelical
college. Outgrowth of a seminary and a proseminary which moved here
.in 1870 and 1871, respectively, Elmhurst College only recently became
co-educational.

The police personnel is under civil service. The department's modern
equipment includes a radio system. Started in 1928, the bureau of identi-
fication has on file more than 300 fingerprints. Overnight lodgers in the
jail, as well as all persons arrested in Elmhurst, are fingerprinted. Police
departments all over the country have found the Elmhurst department
of value in submitting information leading to the apprehension of
criminals. Elmhurst itself, however, is relatively peaceful, and less than
20 persons have been sentenced here since the beginning of the depart-
ment in 1925.

Since 1916, when the city took over the water system and installed
new equipment, the record of Elmhurst's now 45-year-old volunteer fire
department has been so good that residents obtain the lowest insurance
rate issued for a community of this size.

Elmhurst's city health department is the only orie in Du Page County
whose record of contagion is published weekly by the State health depart-
ment. Eye and ear surveys are made among the school children; records
and files recently added to the health department make possible the checking
for contagion of all school children, food store employees, milk wagon drivers,
and workers in dairies. Tne Elmhurst Community Hospital, a privately
owned institution, is one of the two general hospitals in the county.

One of the most influential local organizations is the Woman's Club,
with a membership of about 300. Founded in 1913, it has promoted and
sponsored a number of important civic developments. For many years
the club has maintained an infant welfare station, and through its efforts
the tax levy which made possible the establishment of a public library
was passed. So strong was the minority opposition of the Woman's Club
and the Citizens' Protective Association to a re-zoning proposal which
would have permitted the erection of a coffee roasting plant, that al-
though a post card ballot in December, 1938, was cast in favor of the
measure two to one, the plan was abandoned by the manufacturer.
Originating as departments of the Woman's Club, the Women's Choral
Club and the Garden Club which now has one male member are self-

sustaining organizations. Also active in civic improvement is the Trade
and Civic Association, with a membership of about 235. Other important
organizations include The Masquers, amateur dramatic group, and the
Welfare Association, administering poor relief. The Boy Scout band is
the oldest in Illinois.

In 1860 there was no church within a radius of several miles.
Today Elmhurst has 14 churches, embracing the Baptist, Catholic, Chris-
tian Science, Congregational, Episcopal, Evangelical, and Lutheran
faiths. The Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church and St. Peter's
Evangelical Church still hold services in both German and English.

About 18 per cent of Elmhurst's native-born population is of German
stock; 3 per cent is foreign-born; Negroes comprise only a few families.

Ever since the 1850'$ Elmhurst has attracted people outstanding in
the professional, business, and social affairs of Chicago. It still likes to
recall that when Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria, was Prince of Wales,
he was entertained here at the country house of diplomat Lucian Hagans.
Although the brilliant social life which came into full swing in the iSyo's
has long since been forgotten, it is to the wealthy owners of the extensive
and lavishly landscaped estates of the past century that the suburb owes
the start of its city-beautiful ideal. Still living in Elmhurst is Caroline
Wade, one of the three women artists whose work was exhibited at the
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, who came to the suburb as a
small child in 1863. Also prominent among present-day residents are
Dr. Jens Christian Bay, head librarian of the John Crerar Library in
Chicago; Lee Sturges, artist; Rosamund du Jardin, novelist and short
story writer; Otto Brenneman, German artist and designer; Miles Sater,
artist, designer of the stamps for the Panama-Pacific Exposition and San
Diego Fair of 1915; Ralph Dobbs, pianist; Dr. Harlan Tarbell, magician;
and Mayor Claude L. Van Auken, railroad engineer and publisher.

The Cottage on the Hill

In 1837 came Elmhurst's first settlers, the John Glos family. German
immigrants who had for some years been living in Boston, they had
sent their son, John, Jr., out a few months previously to find a suitable
spot for farming on the frontier prairie. Young John had staked a claim
to the northeast corner of section 12 of present York Township, and
to this land the Gloses now came, to build a home on the south side
of St. Charles Road. A few miles northwest of them, in a grove just below
the town line, were the Graues, also from Germany. Several miles south,
in a grove known as the Frenchman's Woods, centering around the pre-
50

sent intersection of Roosevelt and York Roads, were John and David
Talmadge of New York; the Torode family from the French settlement
on the Isle of Guernsey; and John Bohlander. Near these settlers, on
land around the present junction of Roosevelt and Butterfield Roads,
were Edward Eldridge of New York and Jesse Atwater of Connecticut.
The Thurston family, too, lived somewhere in the vicinity. All 'of these
earlier settlers had staked their claims between 1834 and the year in
which the Closes arrived. Like all the other first pioneers in the region,
they had taken the wooded land along the waterway. By the time the
Closes arrived there was little, if any, timber land left in the county.

School was started in 1838 at the cabin left vacant by the suicide of
Elias Brown, who had settled in the Frenchman's Woods. Mary Fuller
was the first teacher. Some of the earliest religious services of the town-
ship had been the "praying matches" held by Brown. The school moved
to John Talmadge's home in 1839, and Miss C. Barnes became teacher.
Here, too, the settlers of the vicinity gathered for religious services.

In 1842 came the man who is credited with the founding of Elmhurst,
although he was not its original settler. This was Gerry Bates, born of
English stock in Massachusetts in 1800, and named after Elbridge Gerry,
signer of the Declaration of Independence. In late March, Gerry Bates
left Ohio in a light one-horse cutter, reaching Chicago in early May.
After resting a few days, he went to the land office and looked up
the location of unoccupied tracts. Driving west to Du Page County,
he came to the settlement of the Torodes and Talmadges. John Tal-
madge accompanied him a couple of miles north to look over the
available land. Choosing 45 acres in section 2 of York Township, Bates
consummated his purchase the next week, paying $1.25 an acre. His
tract lay along the north side of St. Charles Road, a half mile west of
the Closes.

Returning to Ohio, Bates sent his brother-in-law, John L. Hovey, to
build a house on the new land. Hovey arrived in 1843 ancl erected Hill
Cottage Tavern, named both for the knoll on which it stood and for
the Bates home in Ohio, which was called Hill House. Serving his
guests at his own table, Hovey soon acquired a wide reputation as an
excellent inn-keeper and many travelers over the St. Charles Road stopped
for refreshment and perhaps a bed for the night.

Unable to dispose of his business enterprises in Ohio until 1844,
Bates did not come to Hill Cottage until the following year. In Decem-
ber, 1845, a post office was established at the tavern, with Hovey as post-
master. Upon receiving the petition for the office, the authorities in

5 1

Washington had suggested changing the name, to Cottage Hill. Until
1868 the community which grew up around the tavern retained this
name. Shortly after the establishment of the post office Diedrich Mong
opened a tavern.

Edward Bonney, who became second postmaster in 1847, played a
leading part in the capture of a notorious band of robbers and murderers,
one of the many that infested the region during the forties, preying upon
settlers and travelers over the lonely roads. In a book entitled Banditti
of tlie Prairies, or the Murderer's Doom!!! A Tale of the Mississippi
Valley, which he published in Chicago in 1850, Bonney described three
murders and how he ran down the cutthroats. Bonney's house may have
been a gathering place for one of the self-appointed bands of citizens,
called Regulators, who went about the countryside rounding up the
desperadoes and meting out extra-legal punishment, but Du Page County
was apparently never menaced by the "banditti" of the period.

In 1848 Gerry Bates moved from the tavern to his new house half a
mile north. Hovey, too, moved out and shortly afterward started building
his own house. Before its completion a windstorm wrecked it and, dis-
couraged, Hovey returned to Ohio. Bates started the community's first
general store in a building erected near his house and in 1849 became
Cottage Hill's third postmaster. Old account books in the possession of
his grandson reveal the fact that the early villagers charged their postage
stamps along with their groceries. Living and dying were both compar-
atively inexpensive in those days. Five quarts of whisky, for instance,
cost only 32 cents, and lumber for a coffin, 40 cents. Mong's and another
tavern along St. Charles Road, opened by a Mr. Bingham, took the place
of Hill Cottage, which had started its long career as one of the com-
munity's most notable private residences. Later Mong turned his tavern
into a general store.

In the autumn of 1849 tne Galena & Chicago Union Railroad came
through, over a right-of-way donated by Gerry Bates in return for the
erection of a station on his property. Later Bates sold the railroad a
strip of land along the south side of the first track for a carload of wood.
Cottage Hill became the most important station between Chicago and
Turner Junction (West Chicago). A large well was dug on the railroad
property, and all trains stopped here for water, later furnished by the
local water company, until about 1916. The line set up a wood depot
and employed about a dozen men in unloading the logs hauled from
the groves, sawing them into pieces of suitable size for the little wood-
burning engines, and loading them onto the trains. The circular saw,

ELMHURST

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. Old Hill Cottage Tavern

2. Peter Torode House

3. Andrew Schuman House

4. Cottage Hill Avenue

5. Elmhurst Public Library

6. Wilder Park

7. Elmhurst College

8. Gerry Bates House

9. Old Ludwig Graue Store

10. Elmhurst-Chicago Stone Co. Quarry

run by horse power, was in constant operation during the day. There
was also, for a good many years, a turntable at the Cottage Hill stop.

In 1850, York Township was organized, and it arrived at its name
because a large number of its pioneers hailed from western New York
State. Edward Eldridge, elected first town supervisor, did not fill out
his term and was succeeded by Gerry Bates. Adam Glos was first collector.
In 1851 Peter Torode became town clerk, to be succeeded by Adam Glos.
The following year Cyrenus Litchfield, who had settled south of Cottage
Hill when he came from New York in 1846, became one of the .two
justices of the peace. The first public school district was organized in
1850 at a meeting held in Gerry Bates' back parlor. The first public
schoolhouse was erected soon afterward. Georgia Smith, its first teacher,
married Gerry Bates in 1856.

On May 25, 1854, Gerry Bates platted part of his land into town
lots, the first of which he sold to Ludwig Graue, who erected Cottage
Hill's first brick building and opened a grocery.

From Cottage to Mansion

In 1856 came Thomas B. Bryan, lawyer, real estate operator, and
leader in Chicago financial circles. Bryan bought Hill Cottage to live
in while his own estate across the road was being developed. The follow-
ing year G. P. A. Healy, who has been called "the very pioneer of true
artists in the Northwest," stayed at Hill Cottage as Bryan's guest and soon
afterwards bought the place from him, renaming it Clover Lawn. The
Healys lived here until 1863. Another prominent buyer of property at
Cottage Hill in 1857 was Lucian Hagans, merchant, political figure, and
publisher. Born in West Virginia, Hagans came to Chicago for three
years, returned to his native state in 1860, where he served as Secretary
of the Commonwealth during the Civil War, and in the early seventies
returned to live in Elmhurst.

In 1857 York Township had a population of about 1,500, of which
number 200 lived at Cottage Hill. The township had the largest school
fund in the county. Cottage Hill at this time had one hotel, five stores,
and several smajl manufactories. Some religious societies in the village
met in private homes or in the schoolhouse, but the German Lutherans
attended services at Churchville, a few miles north of Cottage Hill.
The Cottage Hill station was handling more than 2,000 tons of freight
annually, with receipts totaling about $3,600. It is said that up to 1860
the village boasted only one resident carpenter, John Hahn.

The John Case family moved out from Chicago in 1860 to land south

of St. Charles Road. John Case, Sr., set out a large cherry orchard, one of
the first in the Chicago area. Some years later, toward the end of the Civil
War, Case bought another, adjoining tract of land, on which he planted
an apple orchard. During the peak years of the two orchards Case sold
between two and three thousand barrels of apples and a thousand cases
of cherries annually.

In 1861 a group of Catholics from the locality organized and built a
small church in the southwest part of the township. Two years later
the members from Cottage Hill erected the village's first church. Regular
Protestant services were started in October, 1862, in Thomas B. Bryan's
private bowling alley. Aroused by seeing a church in Chicago converted
into a bowling alley, Bryan had determined to reverse the procedure at
his Cottage Hill estate. He was licensed as a lay reader by the Episcopal
bishop, and with other members of the congregation led the services when
no clergyman was available. In 1864 Bryan erected Byrd's Nest Chapel on
a corner of his estate, which bore the maiden name of his wife, a member
of the Byrd family of Virginia.

Bryan had been a prominent figure in the Civil War activities of
both Chicago and Du Page County. For his activity in raising volunteers,
S. F. Daniel's company, one of the four from Du Page which, with six
from De Kalb, made up the io5th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers, was
called the Bryan Blues. Bryan had also been a member of the first War
Finance Committee in Chicago and other wartime organizations, and in
Bryan Hall, the concert auditorium built by him, were held many of
the mass meetings of the period.

The Civil War era brought an influx of prominent Chicagoans:
Lieut. -Gov. Andrew Schuman, editor of the Chicago Evening Journal;
Jedediah Lathrop, brother-in-law of Thomas Bryan and also a prominent
Chicago real estate man; Seth Wadhams, ice manufacturer; and Henry
W. King, clothing manufacturer.

The Chicago Fire sent a number of families out to the hamlet. Land-
scape architects employed by Elmhurst's wealthy estate owners were
transforming what had been more or less unwooded prairie into garden
plots filled with trees and hedges. One after another, leaders in the
social, financial, and professional fields of Chicago built homes in Elm-
hurst, where prairie chickens were still so numerous that they were called
"food for newcomers." Arrivals during the seventies included George
Higginson, president of the Illinois State Microscopic Society; George
Sawin, lawyer; and Francis Hoffman, Jr., Chicago's first president of the

Board of Election Commissioners, Corporation Council of that city, and
United States Appraiser under President Cleveland.

Now began the brilliant social life which occupied Elmhurst's "first"
'citizens until well into the twentieth century. Although the hamlet itself
was nothing more than a crude one-street country town, totally lacking
in civic improvements, the great and near-great from Chicago and beyond
jolted out over the hazardous roads, or came in comparative comfort
over the rails, to attend the garden parties, musicales, amateur dramatic
productions, and elaborate balls given by the owners of the big estates.

Elmhurst's first private school, which lasted only a few years, had been
started about 1865. The early seventies brought to Elmhurst an Evan-
gelical seminary, forerunner of the college of today. In 1870 it was voted
by the townsmen to extend the public school term to 1 1 months, include
German in the curriculum, and build a sidewalk from the school steps
out to the street. The school expense account listed a pound of candles,
three candlesticks, a lamp, a lightning rod, firewood, and eleven stove-
pipes. The following year it was voted to hire two teachers for the winter
term and grade the school. Although the townspeople voted against the
engagement of any "female teachers," a woman was hired ^the next fall
at a salary of $30 a month. In 1875 another private school, the Cutter
boarding and day school, was opened to Elmhurst's young ladies. St.
Peter's Evangelical School, familiarly known to village children as "Pete's
Institute," was established in 1876 and ran until 1921.

Country Becomes City

The Glos family, Elmhurst's original settlers, had taken an active
part in local affairs, so that when the village was incorporated in 1881,
Henry L. Glos school teacher, and later banker was elected president.

Until j88i Elmhurst had no police force and infractions of the law
were handled by the county sheriff and the town constable. Squire
William Litchfield, who served as justice of the peace for many years,
held court in the living room of his Elmhurst residence. Upon incorpor-
ation, the village elected a police marshal, and from then until 1891, when
the first policeman was appointed, the preservation of law and order
remained a one-man job. Fred Wandschneider, who built the village
jail, using 2o-inch limestone blocks for the walls, is said to have later
admitted putting one of the blocks on rollers, just in case he should
ever be locked up.

The dairy business was still important around Elmhurst at this
time. The raising of vegetables, particularly potatoes, was increasing,

replacing to some extent the corn and wheat crops which had formerly
been the chief items of farm production. Wheat, however, was raised
within the present limits of Elmhurst for a number of years after the
turn of the century. Everything east of the row of shops and houses
strung along the east side of York Street from St. Charles Road up to
Elmhurst Avenue was farmland, or still undeveloped prairie. The North
Western tracks cut the village into almost equal halves. Most of the
streets or walks were merely wagon tracks or cowpaths. York Street had
four-foot plank walks on both sides and Cottage Hill Avenue also had a
wooden walk. A few streets east of York had been graded, but loose
boards placed over the bad spots were their only other improvement.
During wet weather portions of the sidewalks often floated away. The
village had a population of about 300 at this time, and local business
establishments comprised, in addition to the stone quarry, three saloons,
a dance hall, two blacksmith shops, one wagon shop, four general stores,
one hardware store, a shoe store, two tin shops, a paint store, the small
Robbins Cheese Factory, the Strange lumber yard, and a feed and lumber
concern.

Three years after Elmhurst's incorporation, John C. Neltnor of
Turner Junction (West Chicago) began to publish its first newspaper,
the Enterprise. Also being published in the i88o's was H. C. Paddock's
Eagle, an Elmhurst edition of his Wheaton Illinoian.

That Elmhurst was comprised largely of families of German stock
and Republican sympathies is attested by the roster of the Republican
Marching Club in 1888, most of whose 65 members bore German names.

A large public school was erected in 1888, years ahead of its time in
both size and design. Better than statistics or factual data a picture of
this fine old brick building expresses Elmhurst's traditional progressive
attitude toward education and its housing. It burned to the ground
in 1917.

One night in 1861, heralded by a great explosion, a spring had burst
forth on the Talmadge farm, south of the village. Given the name Mam-
moth Spring by the Talmadges, it was put to no other use than that of
supplying their farm with drinking water and irrigation until 1889.
In that year a number of Elmhurst's leading citizens decided that it was
about time that the village had running water, and accordingly they
bought the spring, organized the Elmhurst Spring Water Company, and
issued $20,000 worth of bonds for the construction of a water tower,
pumping plant, and pipe lines. Similar in analysis to the well-known
Waukesha Water, the water from Mammoth Spring added to Elmhurst's

reputation as a good place to live. Before the expiration of the water
company's go-year franchise, however, the capacity of the spring was no
longer adequate for the growing needs of the community. Supplementary
wells were drilled between 1915 and 1927, and then Mammoth Spring
was abandoned.

Dr. Frederick Bates organized the first public library, of which he
was librarian, in 1890, but nothing more is known of this initial venture.
Later, in 1919-20, Bates wrote a series of articles for the local newspaper
which, under the title Old Elmhurst, constituted the community's first
history.

The year 1893 brought several municipal improvements. A volunteer
fire department was organized; the first sewage ordinance, under which
a brick sewer system was to be constructed, was passed; and the first
health ordinance was adopted. Until the installation of the sewers, large
sections of the village had often been under water in wet weather, while
disposal methods had been primitive or, at best, semi-sanitary. A picnic
held in Graue's Woods, just west of Elmhurst, netted the fire department
$1,000 with which to supplement its meager equipment.

By 1894 the village population had reached 1,500. In addition to the
Chicago & North Western, which carried a hundred commuters to Chi-
cago daily, two other railroads, the Illinois Central and the Chicago
Great Western, had stations here and maintained passenger service to
and from the city. "Independent in Politics and Unsectarian in Re-
ligion," the Elmhurst News was started by Gushing 8c Company on
January 6, 1894.

Following the trend toward more active types of recreation, both a
golf and a saddle club were formed in 1900. The grounds of the former
were laid out on the site now occupied by the high school and its athletic
fields. When the expanding community could no longer harbor a golf
club within its corporate limits, a new clubhouse and links were devel-
oped in Addison Township, to which the organization moved in 1927.
Highlight of the riding season was the gymkhana held on the Hagans'
track.

In 1910, when the ]x>pulation had reached 2,360, Elmhurst was re-
incorporated as a city. First mayor under the city council form of govern-
ment was Henry C. Schumacher.

In 1912 the first air mail was sent from Elmhurst to Chicago, one
of the pioneer air mail flights in history.

Although Thomas Bryan had died in Washington, D. C., in 1906,

the little Episcopal congregation had continued to meet in Byrd's Nest
Chapel until it was finally closed in 1914.

Elmhurst's third mayor, Otto W. Balgemann, was the son of a village
blacksmith of the old days. Having previously been village treasurer,
postmaster, and member of the county board, Balgemann held the office
of mayor during the city's period of greatest expansion and civic develop-
ment from 1919 to 1931. In the decade between 1920 and 1930 the popu-
lation increased from 4,598 to 14,055. It was in these years that most of
the streets were paved, the municipal water works department was for-
mally organized and the system further expanded, ornamental street
lighting was installed, the park district and police department were or-
ganized, the newly-established community high school was opened, and
four new elementary schools were built.

Elmhurst weathered the financial crash of 1929 and ensuing depression
fairly well. Although three of its banks disappeared in mergers between
1930 and 1932, none failed.

POINTS OF INTEREST

i. The OLD HILL COTTAGE TAVERN (private), 413 S. York St.,
was built in 1843 by John L. Hovey for his brother-in-law, Gerry Bates.
The house originally stood on the northeast corner of St. Charles Road
and Cottage Hill Avenue. Thus situated on the pioneer highway between
Chicago and St. Charles, a lonely building atop a bare knoll that was the
highest point within a radius of almost two miles, it became a popular
stopping place for travelers and farmers. It is thought that Margaret
Fuller, writer and lecturer, stopped here one night during her trip
through the region in 1843. James Lusk bought the house from Gerry
Bates in 1851.

The list of owners and renters who followed Lusk reads like a Who's
Who, and includes such notable Chicagoans as Thomas B. Bryan, builder
of Bryan Hall, founder of Chicago's Graceland Cemetery, founder of
the Fidelity Safe Depository, which saved Chicagoans millions of dollars
in the Great Fire, and later vice president of the World's Columbian
Exposition; G. P. A. Healy, artist; George Wheeler, real estate man;
Henry W. King, founder of Browning King 8c Company; George F.
Rumsey, grain commission operator; Mahlon D. Ogden, lawyer and real
estate man; James L. Houghteling, banker; Gen. A. C. McClurg, pub-
lisher; Frank Sturges, manufacturer; and Mrs. Emmons Blaine, bene-
factress of education.

The original style of the house was Greek Revival, but subsequent
alterations and additions have almost obliterated its former aspect.

2. The PETER TORODE HOUSE (private), 331 S. York St., was
erected in 1856 by the son of Nicholas Torode, one of York Township's
early settlers. The architectural style is Greek Revival, the i2-paned
windows are flanked with shutters. Having seen John Hovey's partially
completed two-story house wrecked by a windstorm, Torode built his only
a story and a half high, but later alterations completed the second story.
Carl Sandburg occupied the house from 1918 to 1928, while working on
his biography of Lincoln.

The summer kitchen attached to the rear was Elmhurst's first public
schoolhouse, erected in 1850 and moved to its present location and
status in 1857.

3. The ANDREW SCHUMAN HOUSE (private), 313 S. York St.,
was built in Civil War days by the editor of the Chicago Evening Journal.
Formerly located on the opposite side of York Street, near the original
site of Hill Cottage Tavern, the house was moved in 1894. The bracketed
cornices and hip roof are typical of the period.

4. COTTAGE HILL AVENUE, extending south from Park Ave. to
the Chicago Great Western R. R. tracks, is noted for the unusual beauty
of its elm trees, whose interlocking branches form a continuous arbor
eight blocks long. The trees were set out in 1867 or 1868 by Jedediah
Lathrop and Seth Wadhams. The two men were close friends and often
went on hunting trips together. While on one of these trips they con-
ceived the idea of their lane of elms. Each standing for half the expense,
they purchased a carload of saplings and had them planted on Cottage
Hill Avenue, the street on which their large estates fronted.

In 1868, when the hamlet of Cottage Hill was casting about for a new
name, Thomas B. Bryan, Lathrop's brother-in-law, anticipating the future
stateliness of the young elms, suggested the name Elmhurst.

5. The ELMHURST PUBLIC UBRARY (9-9 exc. Sun. and holi-
days) and its acre of ground adjoin Wilder Park on the south, with en-
trances on Cottage Hill and Prospect Aves. Founded in 1916, the library
was first housed in a small room in the old Glos Building, on the present
site of the Elmhurst State Bank. It possessed only 830 books, and was
open two afternoons and evenings a week. Since moving into its present
quarters, the library has grown rapidly, now (1939) contains 17,400
volumes, and subscribes to 55 periodicals. Registered borrowers number
almost 9,000.

Built in 1868 by Seth Wadhams, who called his extensive estate White
Birches, the library building was remodeled in 1936, under the direction
of a local architect, E. Norman Brydges. The informal, residential aspect
of the interior has been carefully preserved. Every room has its fireplace,
and Early American maple furniture has been used throughout, with the
exception of the Wilder Room. There, eighteenth century English fur-
nishings include crystal chandeliers, lounge chairs, and divans.

6. WILDER PARK, bounded by Cottage Hill and Prospect Aves.,
Virginia and Church Sts., occupies 18 landscaped acres which formerly
comprised the greater part of the Thomas Edward Wilder estate. Seth
Wadhams, who established the original estate, White Birches, on this
site in 1868, was an enthusiastic horticulturist and employed an English
gardener, William Coney, to do his landscaping. Today the park, with
its large assemblage of trees and shrubs, reflects Coney's ability. Flower
shows are held spring, fall, and winter in the botanical conservatory
(open daily 8-8 in summer, 8-6 other times, exc. during shows, when open
8-9). Gardens and lily ponds are scattered throughout the grounds. Ad-
joining the conservatory on the north are the offices of the park district.
Just west of the conservatory entrance stand two historic urns. After the
Chicago Fire of 1871 the walls of the courthouse still stood, bearing on
the cornices of the east and west wings large ornamental limestone urns.
When the building was wrecked, people took the urns for souvenirs.
These are two of the seven which have been traced by Laura Kendall
Thomas, local resident.

7. ELMHURST COLLEGE (guides by arrangement) lies in the heart
of the city, its ^o-acre wooded campus bounded by Alexander Blvd.,
Prospect, Elm Park, and Grace Aves. The seven college buildings occupy
the south half of the campus. Oldest of these is Music Hall, erected in
1873. Second building owned by the institution, and first constructed by
it, Music Hall in the beginning housed classrooms, dining hall, dormitory,
and studios. The Administration Building, or Old Main, erected five
years later, was completely renovated in 1923. The Speckmann and
National Museum collections are notable among the exhibits of fossils,
rocks, ores, minerals, mollusks, and fish in its laboratories. The co-
operative store is also in this building. Irion Hall, women's dormitory
built in 1911, contains the school of music and college chapel. Dedicated
to the soldiers of the Evangelical Synod killed in the World War, the
Memorial Library building was completed in 1921. Containing approxi-
mately -31,000 bound volumes, including 3,580 periodicals and 1,000
public documents, the library (open Alon.-Fri. 8-5:30, j-io, Sat. 8-1, Sun.

2-5; closed during Christmas and spring vacations; summer hours Mon.-
Fxi. 8:30-5, Sat. 8:30-12) is growing at the rate of about a thousand vol-
umes annually. Six newspapers and more than 100 periodicals are on
current file. Largest gift to the library was the private collection of
Thomas B. Bryan. A modern building of brick, concrete, and steel con-
struction erected in 1922, the men's dormitory, South Hall, contains 50
two-room suites. The gymnasium, designed in the Georgian colonial
tradition and completed in 1928, houses a stage and seating facilities for
800, in addition to athletic equipment. Both cafeteria and infirmary are
housed in Dining Hall.

Accredited by North Central Association and a member of the Asso-
ciation of American Colleges and the American Council on Education,
Elmhurst College is supported and governed by the Evangelical Synod of
North America. Bachelor degrees in liberal arts and science are con-
ferred. Because of the annual appropriations of the Synod, the college
can be operated without a large endowment and at the same time main-
tain a low tuition rate. The entire plant, valued at more than $900,000,
belongs to the Synod. The average enrollment of less than 300 is drawn
mostly from Illinois, but other States and several foreign countries are
also represented.

The student body is not self-governing, but the Student Union pro-
vides for co-operative action between students and faculty. Other organ-
izations comprise the Women's Union, Student Christian Association,
band, men's and women's glee clubs, Goethe Verein, Le Cercle Francais,
and Elmhurst's College Theatre. Founded in 1894, the men's glee club
is the oldest and is comprised of 30 members. It goes on concert tour
annually and has broadcast over several Chicago radio stations. The
dramatic group stages two major productions a year. Student publica-
tions are the weekly Elm Bark and the annual Elms. The Student
Guidance Committee and a psychiatrist are on hand to help students
with personal problems.

The background of Elmhurst College rests upon two theological
schools. In the early i86o's a small private seminary was 'established at
Waukegan, Illinois. Taken over by the Evangelical Synod of the North-
west in 1865, it was transferred to Elmhurst five years later, under the
name of Melancthon Seminary. Its campus consisted of ten acres of land
given by Thomas B. Bryan and an additional 20 acres and a house pur-
chased by the institution. In 1867, the German Evangelical Synod of the
West founded a normal school at Cincinnati, Ohio. Reorganized to em-
brace a preparatory theological school as well, it moved to Evansville,

Ind., in 1870, and took the name Pro-seminar. When the two Synods
united in 1871, the proseminary moved to Elmhurst, where it joined forces
with Melancthon Seminary. On December 6 of that year Pres. Carl Kranz
arrived with 14 students. Since Melancthon House was inadequate for
both housing and school purposes, most of the students lived in temporary
quarters of their own construction until the erection of Music Hall in
1873, at which time 34 men comprised the total enrollment. The original
plan of the founders of Melancthon Seminary had been to develop a
college, but the financial assistance that the churches were able to give
at this time was only sufficient to cover the training of teachers and the
preparation of students for theological seminary work. From 1906 to
1919 the institution grew rapidly; in the latter year it reorganized as
Elmhurst Academy and Junior College. In 1924 junior and senior college
years were added and in 1930 Elmhurst College became co-educational.

8. The GERRY BATES HOUSE (private), 112 Adell PL, was built
in 1848 by the man credited with having been the guiding spirit in the
development of the Cottage Hill (Elmhurst) community, of which he
was the founder. Originally fronting on Park Avenue, the house was
moved around the corner to its present position in 1908. Gerry Bates
became Cottage Hill's third postmaster in June, 1849, an< ^ near his house
was erected the first post office building. The old home is now (1939)
occupied by his son, Charles W. Bates.

9. The OLD LUDWIG GRAUE STORE, 138 W. Park Ave., was
constructed about 1854, the first brick building in Elmhurst. A later
addition to the east doubled the building's size.

10. The ELMHURST-CHICAGO STONE COMPANY QUARRY,

on W. First St., west of Highland Ave., was founded in 1883 by Adolph
Hammerschmidt and Henry Assman. Its equipment is of the most
modern type.

The Pre-Emption House, Naperville

MANSION -HOUSE
I

The Mansion House, Glen Ellyn

GLEN ELLYN

General Information

POPULATION (1930):
7,680 (See p. 234.)

DISTANCE FROM CHICAGO:

23 mi.

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION (from Chicago) :

Chicago & North Western Ry. Station at Main St. and Crescent Blvd.
Chicago, Aurora & Elgin R. R. ( electric). Station at Main and Duane Sts.

ACCOMMODATIONS :

Tourist rooms in private homes. Usual restaurants.

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICE:

Village Hall, 498 Pennsylvania.

BUSINESS SECTION:

Main St. and Crescent Blvd.

STREET ORDER AND NUMBERING:

Numbering runs from west to east and from Roosevelt Rd. at the south end of
town, north.

RECREATION, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPECIAL EVENTS:

Glen Theater (motion picture), 540 Crescent Blvd.

Glenbard Golf Club, Roosevelt and Joliet Rds., a daily fee course of 18 holes.
Glen Oak Country Club (for members only), East Hill Ave. at village limits.
Sunset Park, bounded by Fairview, Sunset Ave., and Main St. : two tennis
courts, a soft ball diamond and a playground.

Forest Park, between Park Blvd. and Forest Ave., adjacent to C. A. & E.
tracks: horsehoe court.

Benjamin T. Gault Park, bounded by Main St. and Forest Ave., Hawthorne
and Linden Sts.: bird sanctuary, and wild flower preserve.

Memorial Park, bounded by Crescent and Park Blvds. and Park Row and the
North Western Ry.: tennis courts, baseball diamond with grandstand. A Com-
munity House, 662 Crescent Blvd., is in the northeast part of the park. It is a
two-story frame building containing a room large enough to seat 100 people, a
kitchen, study rooms and the offices of the Park Board.

Stacy Park, bounded by St. Charles and Geneva Roads, provides playground
equipment, a tennis court and a small pond used for ice skating in winter.
Ellyn Lake Park, bounded by Lenox and Essex Rds. and Lake Ave. ; play-
ground equipment, warming house for ice-skaters, picnic tables, badminton
courts, ping-pong tables, boating.

Stanton Stables, Butterheld Rd. and Bryant Ave., riding.
Glen Ellyn Drama Club, two plays a year.

Sunday Evening Club Lectures; five during winter at High School auditorium.
Winter ice-skating meet on Lake Ellyn.
Volunteer Fire Department Ball, Glenbard High School auditorium.

LOMBARD

General Information

POPULATION (1930):
6,197 (See p. 234.)

DISTANCE FROM CHICAGO:

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION (from Chicago) :

Chicago & North Western Ry.; station at Main St. and St. Charles Rd.
Chicago, Aurora & Elgin R.R. (electric) ; station on South Mam St.

ACCOMMODATIONS:

Tourist rooms in private homes ; usual restaurants.

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICE:
Village Hall, 48 N. Park Ave.

BUSINESS SECTION:

Main St., St. Charles Rd.

STREET ORDER AND NUMBERING:

Main St. divides East and West; St. Charles Rd. divides North and South;
numbers start at division points.

RECREATION, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPECIAL EVENTS:

Du Page Theater (motion picture), 109 S. Main St.

Glenbard Golf Club (see General Information, Glen Ellyn).

Village Hall Park, 48 N. Park St. Baseball diamonds; 3 tennis courts; ice skating

in winter on courts.

Lilacia Park, in the center of the village, has the third largest collection of lilacs

in the world. Annual lilac and tulip show during Lilac Week, early in May;

250 varieties of lilacs and more than 135 varieties of tulips on display.

baseball diamond and 2 tennis courts on grounds of Westmore School, Division

and Westmore Avenues.

Lombard Recreation .Parlor, 3 E. Ash St., 8 bowling alleys; 4 billard tables.

Lions Club Easter Hunt.

Youth Week, ist week in May, sponsored by American Legion. Children take

over Village Hall ; closed by Fathers and Sons Banquet.

Lombard Garden Club flower show, usually in September; held in Lincoln School.

Annual Volunteer Fire Department dance, late November or December.

GLENBARD

Sister Villages

,YING in the eastern central section of Du Page
County, respectively 20 and 23 miles west of Chicago, the adjoining
villages of Lombard and Glen Ellyn have much more in common than
their contiguity. At their inception they were, for a short time, one
community, known as Babcock's Grove, because the Babcock brothers
were the first who claimed land in the region. Their history has
differed in detail; its broad outlines have been the same: the slow
development of pioneer settlements from self-supporting farm centers
to dormitory villages, parasitic in the sense that most of their wealth
is acquired through Chicago trades, professions, and industries. Today
both towns are typically suburban and non-industrial, with populations
well under 10,000. Their citizens are,, for the most part, prosperous
middle-class people.

Both communities operate under the village form of government,
headed by a president and board of trustees. The contrast between the
villages is not great. Glen Ellyn is larger, wealthier, older; a smaller
percentage of its citizens is on relief. But the aggregate picture of its
composite partsits homes, churches, schools, parks, public library, its
police and volunteer fire departments, its modern improvements is re-
produced in Lombard on a slightly smaller scale.

Glen Ellyn's News and Courier, and Lombard's Spectator are Repub-
lican in their political point of view, and all three come out on Friday.

Of Glen Ellyn's 7,680 residents and Lombard's 6,197, many are de-
scended from English New England ancestors who first settled the com-
munities or from the Germans who came in large numbers from 1840
to 1860. About 11 per cent of Glenbardians are foreign-born, and in
1930 less than 40 Negroes lived in the villages.

Topographically the villages differ somewhat. Glen Ellyn is situated
in an area of knolls and glens, while Lombard is on more gently rolling
terrain.

When Glen Ellyn's history began, in the iSgo's, the little hamlet was
one mile north of the present business district, where Stacy Park now
lies. In 1849, when the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad went through
a mile to the south, the settlement moved downhill. The name Glen
Ellyn was adopted in 1885, when "Professor" Thomas Hill, then village
president, renamed the town in honor of his wife. Before this, the
village was known at one time or another by each of six names: Bab-
cock's Grove, Du Page Center, Stacy's Corners, Newton's Station, Danby,
and Prospect Park.

Today Glen Ellyn centers around the railroad it came downhill to
meet. The visitor arriving at either of the two railroad stations finds
himself looking down Main Street, with its rows of stores and offices.
The shops, many with English half-timbered fronts, continue for about
a block on each side of the intersecting side streets. The Glen Ellyn State
Bank Building which today houses no bank is a three-story structure
of Indiana limestone, standing on the northeast corner of Main Street
and Crescent Boulevard, historically one of the village's most important
sites. From this point, in the Civil War era, the proud and gay Mansion
House dominated the town's social life.

Lombard had its beginning when Sheldon Peck built the first frame
house in 1838. Today Main Street divides the village into east and west;
St. Charles Road, into north and south. The north and south sections
each have their own business centers, clustering about the steam and
electric railroad stations. In the Hammerschmidt Building, on Main
Street a half block north of St. Charles Road, are the York Township
offices. Lombard's village hall, on North Park Avenue, is removed from
the business districts.

Host to thousands of visitors who annually attend its famous spring
festival and flower show in Lilacia Park, Lombard is known as "The
Lilac Town."

Recreational facilities in Lombard are centered about the village hall,
on grounds leased by the park board. Glen Ellyn's park district, organ-
ized in 1910, maintains recreation grounds in five parks. A sixth, the
Benjamin T. Gault, is a bird sanctuary and wild flower preserve, where
an effort is being made to collect examples of each kind of tree and flower
native to the region.

Rimming the banks of Ellyn Lake, which lies in a valley in Glen
Ellyn's northeastern section, are some of that suburb's finest modern
homes. Late in the nineteenth century, by reason of mineral springs in

the vicinity, the village developed into something of a health resort.
Although this function ceased with the burning of the Glen Ellyn Hotel
in 1906, the lakeside community still retains, because of its unusual set-
ting, a resort flavor.

Life in the two towns follows the contemporary American pattern.
Although the business and professional interests of the majority of the
villagers lie outside of their home communities, all share in the local
social and cultural life. Glenbardians are "joiners." From house raisings
and spelling bees to gay dances at the Mansion House, social activity has
progressed with the times, culminating in this century in the more formal
bounds of societies of every sort. Local groups of which there are about
60, include national organizations known to every American, and clubs
peculiar to the villages themselves. The Glen Ellyn United Charities
provides medical and dental care for the unemployed and raises relief
funds by operating shops for the sale of used furniture and other house-
hold articles. A Works Progress Administration recreation project in
Lombard creates leisure time interests. A Civic Club has recently been
founded with 100 Glen Ellyians as members, to take the lead in all plans
for civic betterment.

A Tudor Gothic tower marks the Glenbard Township High School,
which Glen Ellyn and Lombard share; and a four-faced clock tower of
colonial design crowns the attractive and strikingly large junior high
school building. Both these towers stand out above the treetops near
Glen Ellyn's main business center. The junior high school, attended by
350 students, occupies the site of the village's first frame schoolhouse on
Duane Street. Four public elementary schools, two private schools, a
business college, St. Petronille elementary Catholic school with an en-
rollment of almost 200 the Country Day School, which comprises pre-
kindergarten, kindergarten and the first four grades, complete the list
of Glen Ellyn's educational units. In Lombard are two public elementary
schools, with a combined enrollment of 750, and two parochial schools
attended by 300 pupils. A special feature of the Westmore public school
is its State sight-saving room.

Katharine Reynolds, a Lombardian, made her home town the locale
of her two novels, Green Valley (1919) and Willow Creek (1924).
Another villager, William R. Plum, wrote the Military Telegraph (1882)
and The Sword and the Soul (1917), both dealing with the Civil War
era. Artists, as well as writers, have made Lombard their home. Desal S.
Rao, native of Hyderabad, Deccam, India, is a commercial and fine arts
painter. Christia M. Reade is a designer, chaser, and modeler in silver

and copper. F. De Forest Schook, one-time president of the now defunct
Du Page Society of Artists and Writers, is a member of the faculty of
Chicago's Art Institute. When Lombard boasts of Harold Gray, origin-
ator of the "Little Orphan Annie" comic strip, Glen Ellyn counters with
Dick Calkins, creator of "Buck Rogers."

"All Went to Meeting"

In 1833, the year in which all of northeastern Illinois was ceded by
the Indians to the white men, two brothers, Ralph and Morgan Babcock,
laid claim to a grove that was to be the site of the town of Lombard in
York Township, Du Page County. It was the custom in those days to
name the various groves for the first men who settled them, so this claim
became known as Babcock's Grove.

But the Indians did not at once remove from the vicinity. Two years
passed before the last of them collected" their blankets and horses and
trailed off toward the West. When the first white settlers came to Bab-
cock's Grove, they found that their log cabins overlooked a Potawatomi
village of about 500 red men, on the east branch of the Du Page River,
south of the present St. Charles Road. Here the People of the Place of
Fire as their name means continued the old customs. At the Feast of
the Dog, offerings of tobacco and cedar smoke rose pungently into the
autumn air. Deer and black bears, the beaver, the mink, and the muskrat
fled from the Indian lance or bow and arrow. For three days after the
death of one of their tribe, the air was filled with singing and praying to
propitiate the dead man's ghost, as though they were not already ghosts
themselves.

The year after the Babcock brothers made their claims, another new-
comer appeared at Babcock's Grove. Deacon Winslow Churchill, with his
wife and 1 1 children, sailed from New York to Chicago on the schooner
La Grange. Three of his sons brought their own families. This little
group claimed land on the western fringe of Babcock's Grove, site of the
present village of Glen Ellyn in Milton Township. For this tract, Deacon
Churchill paid $1.25 an acre.

Working together, the Churchills put up five log cabins and one house
of "hewn timbers and rough boards" during the first year. The next
year they added two log buildings and a schoolhouse to the settlement.
When the buildings were completed, a stockade was built around them,
and the new owners of the land moved their possessions into their new
homes. The stock was led into the lean-to, and what furniture was lack-

ing, the men made out of timber: low benches for the children, three-
legged stools, tables, and bedsteads. Most of the houses had only one
room; although the Deacon's own cabin had in addition to a large main
room, a bedroom, a lean-to, and a loft, as well. The boys slept in the
loft, which they reached by a crude ladder. The smaller children slept in
a trundle bed, kept during the day beneath their parents' larger one.
The main room had two small windows and a fireplace where the cooking
was done.

The settlers soon discovered that the prairie offered more than tall
grass. The children picked violets, strawberries, and other wild flowers
and fruits. For food there were all the deer, hare, turkey, quail, and
pigeon the men could shoot. At night the wolves howled around the
stockade. When the earth was plowed and the grain planted, it was
promptly scratched up by gophers and prairie chickens. A greater trial
than this was the inevitable mosquito.

In the autumn a new danger, prairie fires, menaced the little com-
munity. The Indians were accustomed, in the fall of the year, to set
fire to the prairie because the high grass impeded their view. Then, too,
the fire drove the wild game into the forests where it could be easily
trapped.

For a year the Churchills had Du Page Center as their portion of
Babcock's Grove came to be known all to themselves. The winter was
long and severe and forced both men and women to indoor occupations.
While the women added to their store of linen, the men looked after the
cattle, husked their corn, prepared timber, and split boards for future
building. Hunting was suspended. "At evening," said Amos Churchill,
"we would sit around the .table and read; candles were used for lighting."
They read the Bible, and a book called Our Country's History.

But the winter at last came to an end. The "boom-boom" of the
prairie chickens early in March told them that the tedious winter months
were over. And with the spring came neighbors.

Of those who came in 1834 and the half dozen years following were
some whose names were to be closely linked with the development of
the places in which they settled. Elisha Fish, who claimed land on the
site of Lombard, was one of these, Moses Stacy was another. He came
down the Great Lakes from New York in a sailing vessel, reached Du
Page Center, and built his log cabin. David Churchill came from New
York, married one of Deacon Churchill's daughters, Christiana, and built
the first frame house in the settlement. Peter Curtis, Jabez S. Dodge,

James McChesney, Milo Meacham, Horace Barnes, Royal Walker, F. D.
Abbott, and John D. Ackerman came to Du Page Center, built homes,
and plowed the land. Sheldon Peck left Vermont in a prairie schooner
in 1837, bound for the Indian country west of Chicago. He reached the
present townsite of Lombard the following year and staked out a claim.
Some records give Luther Morton, who built his log house near the
present depot, the distinction of being the first settler on the site of
Lombard. Dr. Theodore Hubbard pre-empted a large tract of land
nearby. They were mostly New Englanders, tidy and hard-working.

Primitive as the social life of the time was, it was enjoyed by every
settler. "All went to meeting, singing school, spelling school and dancing
parties," reports Amos Churchill. More often than not, the scene of
communal activities was the schoolhouse. In the second year after their
arrival, the Churchills, with the help of other settlers, built the first
school. It was a small log building, one story high. In the "reception
room" all classes stood in a line across the floor, and in this formation,
recited their lessons. There were two aisles with a row of desks and
seats made of common, unpainted lumber on each side. In the corner
stood a number of ironwood whips 4 to 6 feet long, and on the desk lay
a black oak ruler, ii/ 2 inches wide and 18 inches long, symbols of stern
discipline. Amos Churchill reports that one scholar, whipped with an
ironwood, went home to bed and died. Whether this is accurate or not,
certainly the misdemeanors of pioneer children were met with severe
punishment.

His experiences as impromptu host to an occasional traveler led Moses
Stacy to become a professional innkeeper. Unable to turn away the
strangers who came to the door of his cabin seeking shelter, Stacy built
a tavern in 1837 on the south side of present Geneva Road. He moved
his own cabin up just west of the tavern and used it to house the over-
flovi of guests.

To add to the confusion of names, the arga surrounding the tavern
became known as Stacy's Corners. The two settlements which were to
become the villages of Glen Ellyn and Lombard in Milton and York
Townships, respectively, were at this time scarcely divided. With the
establishment of Stacy's Corners (later Glen Ellyn), however, they began
the process of separation, the one Stacy's Corners to develop rapidly;
the other Babcock's Grove to follow after in a more leisurely style.

Stacy's Tavern was a low, rambling building with a Greek Revivaf
doorway which faced Geneva Road. It was a frame house, built of
lumber prepared at Gary's sawmill, on the west branch of the Du Page.

A sign swinging in the breeze in front of the tavern beckoned pioneer
farmers on their way to Chicago with a load of grain. Indians, also on
their way to Chicago, used the tavern as a halting place. Many stayed
overnight, loaded wagons arriving late from the west and leaving early
in the the morning.

The Frink & Walker coaches bound for St. Charles changed horses
and deposited mail and passengers at Stacy's. Dr. Theodore Hubbard
was appointed postmaster by President Polk. Moses Stacy's children
were brought up in the exciting atmosphere of the pioneer hotel. The
farmer coming in to exchange the latest news and gossip, the departing
and arriving guest, the stranger and his tale, the overturned coach, the
arrival of the mail, the constant change of faces in the circie about the
great log fire all were a part of their lives.

In 1839 a frame church was built on St. Charles Road, opposite
Stacy's Tavern. It, too, was made of lumber from Gary's Mill and
was of Greek Revival architecture, white, prim, with high narrow
windows containing small panes of glass, lacking spire or a bell. The box
pews were entered through little doors or gates. For a year before the
building of the "meeting place," church services had been held in a
blacksmith shop, and before that in the schoolhouse or in private homes.

The church was of the Methodist denomination, but with the liber-
ality of pioneer days, other denominations worshipped within its walls.
As yet there was no regular preacher; circuit riders served instead. Two
names remain to local fame: James McChesney and Charles Gary. They
were paid $200 to $300 a year, but often received their salary in produce.
A circuit rider might be given a load of cordwood, a bushel of cornmeal,
a smoked ham and two yards of flannel, instead of cash. He always car-
ried a Bible, a few tracts and printed sermons, Pilgrim's Progress and
other books, along with the supply of food in his saddle bag. He preached
a fiery gospel which offered only unquenchable fire or heaven to choose
between. He also discussed all the problems of the day, among them
temperance and slavery. People came from neighboring towns to hear
their favorite speaker. As one old settler put it: "the greatest speaker in
the sarkit was to be thar. The people all thought a power of him."

There were few, if any, hymnals, so the preacher would "line" the
hymn, that is, he would read two lines, then pause while these were
sung by the congregation. There was no organ, of course. That was
only "the devil painted red." The singing master placed a tuning fork
between his teeth, withdrew it suddenly, and held it to his ear; then he

sounded the note. After delivering his seimon, the preacher went to
Stacy's Tavern to be entertained.

Sunday gave the women a chance to put on their best bib and tucker.
They came to church carrying Bibles and sprigs of rosemary folded in
their handkerchiefs. Slate-colored silk gowns, stiff and full, with white
muslin kerchiefs folded across the breast were the fashion, and the hoop-
skirt was in high favor. Bonnets were capacious. The more conservative
wore prim poke bonnets, but others, more daring, decked theirs gaily
with bows of corn colored silk or artificial flowers mingled with ribbons
of rainbow hues.

By this time Stacy's Corners had not only a church and a schoolhouse,
but a factory, one wagon and one harness shop, two blacksmith shops,
two stores, and a dozen or. more houses. Storekeepers supplied the set-
tlers with articles they needed, such as food, clothing, farm implements,
and medicine, receiving in return, wheat, corn, sugar, beef, and bacon.
One pioneer bought two pair of shoes for ten bushels of wheat, and a
plough and two tin milk pails for 20 bushels of wheat. Coffee cost a
dollar for four pounds.

Meanwhile, pioneer sawmills worked away steadily, rapidly bridging
the gap between the age of the log cabin and that of the frame house.

Company to Dinner

For the people in Stacy's Corners as well as the rest of the State, the
important events during the decade of the forties were: recovery from
the nationwide financial panic of 1837, to which the collapse of land
speculation and internal improvement projects had largely contributed
in Illinois; the development of railroads; war with Mexico; and the dis-
covery of gold in California. The period was characterized in the Middle
West by a substantial growth in population and wealth. Criss-crossing
major happenings, were local affairs. To the townspeople it was a decade
of singing school, spelling bees, and company-for-dinner. Meals were
enormous. There was always plenty of fresh beef and pork, venison,
prairie chicken, wild turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, turnips, eggs, buck-
wheat cakes, fritters, stewed peaches, pumpkin pies, honey, doughnuts,
cider, and clabber.

In the spring of 1840, the first wedding at Stacy's Corners took place,
when Gilbert Way married Harriet Fish. In that year, the settlers of
York and Milton Townships built a bridge over the Des Plaincs, facili-
tating trips to market. Isaac Bradford Churchill, a son of Deacon Chur-

Glen Ellyn Plays in the Shadow of Its Township High School

A Coal Magnate's Estate Is Now the St. Francis Retreat, near Hinsdale

Greek Revival Was the Vogue in 1833: George Martin House, near Naperville

Nfe*fc

An Old Quarry Makes a New Swimming Hole: Centennial Park, Naperville

A Mansion of the Victorian Era: the von Oven House, near Naperville

ST-? *

Victorian Battlemented Tower of Wheaton College

chill, records in an old account book of 1841 that he paid $2.50 for staying
five times in Chicago, that his taxes were $2.57, and that he paid i8c for
one bottle of Geoffrey cordial, 25C for a bonnet, and $8c for two bushels
of potatoes. A man with a team could earn a dollar a day, if he worked
for ten hours.

Before the coming of the railroad, Babcock's Grove (Lombard) was
regarded by settlers as a center for a future village, when the countryside
should be well enough settled to need one. In 1846, Nathaniel B. Morton
sold his portion of Babcock's Grove to Reuben Mink, who in turn sold
it to Josiah L. Lombard the following year. Lombard's holdings of 227
acres constituted the main part of the settlement.

In 1848, Miss Almeda J. Powers taught school in Stacy's Corners.
For two years previous she had taught in Babcock's Grove. Thirty chil-
dren were under her jurisdiction. For her wages she collected $18
whether for a month or a term, the records do not say charging each
family according to its number of children, in the following manner:

David Whitman for

Warren Whitman $1.3662

Jane W T hitman 1.3662

Abigail Whitman 1.3662

For school books, the children of the sister villages had Cobb's Ju-
venile Reader, the Elementary Spelling Book, Daball's and Colburn's
Arithmetic and Peter Parley's Geography. Their pens were made from
goose quills.

Although a charter for the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad had
been granted in January, 1836, construction was not begun until 1848. For
some years the people of Stacy's Corners had heard rumors that a new
invention was at hand, "a powerful piece of machinery that ran on iron
rails and drew after it a string of coaches buckled together . . . and which
went along at breakneck speed." The villagers chose a council of leading
citizens to investigate the rumor, and if it were true, to persuade the company
in Chicago to lay the tracks through Stacy's Corners.

But in spite of these measures, construction was begun a mile south
of Stacy's Corners and the village had to come down the hill to the
railroad. One of the first physicians in the vicinity, Dr. Lewey Quitter-
field Newton, built the first railroad station on land bought from Wil-
liam Churchill. In recognition of this service, the village again changed
its name, Stacy's Corners becoming for a while Newton's Station.

In the fall of 1849, Newton's Station received word that the first
train over the line would leave Chicago on October 24th. Settlers, de-
termined not to miss such an important occasion, began to leave their
homes at four o'clock in the morning, and with their families and picnic
lunches, gathered around the track for a long wait.

It was not until the middle of the afternoon that the whistle of the
locomotive was heard. Old Deacon Landy stood in the middle of the
track ringing a cowbell, while Dr. Newton, carrying an American flag,
led a band of drums and fifes, and, followed by the excited citizens,
escorted the "Pioneer" through the settlement, watching it as it chugged
out of sight.

Excitement over the discovery of gold took some of the interest away
from the railroad. In 1849 the caravans that passed the settlement took
on a new character. "California or Bust" was lettered on their wagon
tops. Many men from Newton's Station and Babcock's Grove joined
them. One of these, Horace Churchill, died near Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

Horse and Buggy

The decade of the fifties found Newton's Station a thriving little town
with a population of between three and four hundred, one hotel, two
drug stores, three dry goods stores, one cabinet shop, a gristmill, a tin
and hardware store, a blacksmith shop, and a lumberyard. Babcock's
Grove, on the other hand, had but five frame houses, one store, a rail-
road station, and a hotel kept by a Mr. Parsons, and belonging to the
railroad company. In 1851, nine citizens of Babcock's Grove organized
the Congregational church under the leadership of the Rev. E. L. Wells,
agent of the Western Home and Foreign Missionary Association. For
several years the Congregationalists held their services in the village
schoolhouse. They welcomed all believers to the Lord's Supper, but
added: "Persons engaged in the manufacture, sale or use of intoxicating
liquors as a beverage, slave-holders and apologists for slavery are not
included in this invitation."

At the beginning of the fifties, Milton Township was organized, and
soon after the hamlet in its northeastern part changed its name for the
fifth time. David Kelley, the station agent and postmaster, was respon-
sible for calling Newton's Station, Danby, after his birthplace, Danby,
Vermont. Horace Brooks, a justice of the peace, county surveyor and
assessor, planted a row of elm trees on what was to become Danby's South
Main Street, then just a lane on his property, which he valued at $1.50
an acre.

School was held in the Danby School with Walter Sabin as teacher.
During his administration the school ranked as one of the best in the
county. He was a small, awkward man, ungainly, and with one eye
missing, but he was "devoted" to his work. The children analyzed and
parsed "Thanatopsis" and Pope's "Essay on Man." Grammar classes
were held ir> the evening. About two years later another schoolhouse was
built the Duane^with Henry Benjamin as its first teacher. Students
were posed with problems such as: "The hour and minute hands of a
clock are together at noon. When will they be together again?" Web-
ster's Elementary Spelling Book was still used for the inevitable spelling
bees. On Friday, routine was relaxed and the afternoon devoted to
"declamations."

The first gristmill in the town, a Dutch windmill, was built on Penn-
sylvania Avenue, where it was well patronized. A year later, 1855, Danby
was officially platted and recorded. In this year Danby folk and their
neighbors at "The Grove" went to see and weep over Uncle Tom's Cabin.
During the years before the Civil War a number of citizens showed their
sympathy with the southern slaves in a more vital way than weeping in
a theater. There were two branches of the underground railroad at
Babcock's Grove, operating on a chain with Plainfield. Sheldon Peck's
house, which still stands on the southwest corner of Grove Avenue and
Parkside Street in Lombard, was one of these. The other branch was at
Thomas Filer's house on present Crescent Boulevard, about a mile west.
An ardent abolitionist, Thomas Filer used his basement to conceal run-
away slaves sent to him, perhaps, by Professor Matlack at Wheaton.
Filer or Peck would then transport the Negroes, concealed in wagons
loaded with produce, to the Tremont House station in Chicago. The
songs the slaves sang and the scars of lash wounds on their bodies made a
deep impression on the Peck children.

In 1852 two men built taverns at Danby which quickly became the
hub of the town's social life. David Kelley built the Mansion House on
the corner of Main Street and Crescent Boulevard, across the street from
Dr. Newton's Galena and Chicago Union Station house. Milo Meacham
built the Danby House on the southwest corner of Main and Crescent.
Both taverns were three story frame buildings, but the Mansion House
boasted a large parlor and a ballroom on the third floor. The Danby
House was the scene of many political debates. Men argued hotly the
horrors of slavery or the evils of liquor.

The horse and buggy occupied a place in the social scheme of the
fifties comparable to the automobile of today. Guests arrived at the

Mansion House in carryalls, chaises, and coaches from the neighboring
towns of Naperville, Wheaton, and Warrenville. The women came in
hoopskirts and ruffled taffeta gowns. Men wore swallowtail coats and
tight-fitting breeches. Their vests and chokers were embroidered. Fid-
dlers provided the music, for pianos were scarce. Guests danced the
Money Musk, the Sir Roger de Coverley, the Virginia Reel, and jigs.
Wine was served with supper, and the more worldly used snuff.

The first veranda of the Mansion House was used to store hogsheads
of beer, which were rolled across the street from the railroad station.
On the west end of the veranda stood the town pump, where the farmers
left their horses to be watered while they themselves went to buy a beer.
Many a head was held under the town pump after its owner had visited
the bar.

Also on the veranda, at any time of day, a row of men could be seen,
tipped back in their chairs, feet on the railing, smoking and chewing,
watching the strangers arrive.

The Mansion House veranda was not the only place where men of
the village were accustomed to idle away their time. Another popular
spot was the village dry goods store, a general country store, stocked
with every sort of commodity from a needle to a barrel of flour. On the
shelves were dress goods, woolens, shirting, bonnets, hats, caps, boots,
shoes, and underwear. On tables were overcoats, overalls, trousers,
groceries, tinware, harnesses, saddles, rope, spades, pitchforks, and chains.
In an adjoining shed, perhaps, there might be plows, ox-yokes, and bar-
rels of flour, salt, and molasses. The whisky barrel stood next to the
molasses barrel.

Villagers gathered in the store or sat outside on boxes, telling stories,
exchanging gossip, commenting on the weather, the roads, the crops,
the new circuit rider, and the latest arrival in the village. Most of the
men carried pipes and knives, and whittled and smoked as they talked.
"With the talkers it was puff, puff, with the listeners it was cut, cut,
whittle, whittle." During cold weather the general store became a sort
of village club where people gathered. Past the gossipers' watchful eyes
and wagging tongues flowed the affairs of the village.

Civil War

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the young men of Danby and
Babcock's Grove cut short their debates on slavery at the Danby House
and departed to join Union armies marching southward. The veranda

of the Mansion House was deserted; membership at the "village club"
outside Charles Du Bock's store on the southwest corner of Main and
Pennsylvania dwindled noticeably. Albert Janes, who had recently been
appointed postmaster, went to war leaving his wife to take his place.
Those who were left behind trudged over to the Mansion House to listen
anxiously while the war dispatches were read.

When the war was over, returning soldiers in blue uniforms wandered
up and down the streets observing the changes that had taken place in
their towns during the years they had been away. The Galena 8c Chicago
Union Railway had merged with the Chicago & North Western. Josiah
Reade, who was to become one of Lombard's leading citizens, three times
president of the village council, clerk in the First Church of Lombard
for 43 years, and organizer of the town's library, arrived in 1864.

In Danby, the schoolhouse on Duane Street had been torn down and
rebuilt. The day of the ironwoocl was over. Boys who climbed up on
the belfry and threw things down on the teacher were smacked with the
ruler for their pains. A few members of the Congregational Society,
residents of Danby, had purchased the old Baptist Church at Stacy's
Corners and moved it clown into their village. "It took the church,"
says Ada Douglas Harmon, "three weeks to make its journey down the
hill and change its creed from Baptist to Congregationalism"

The whole town came out to watch the moving and laugh at the
enthusiasm of Deacon Yalding, who, fearing that the church was travel-
ing too rapidly downhill, ran ahead to push it back single-handed. There
was still no permanent organ, but Deacon Yalding, ever zealous, carried
his own small one on his back to church and home again.

In Babcock's Grove, the Congregationalist organization had lapsed.
The confusion incident to the war and the subsequent death of some of
the society's e^irly supporters were the chief causes. But immediately
after the war, the population of the village was increased by many fami-
lies interested in supporting Christian institutions, and on July 6, 1866,
the First Church of Christ was formed. Six denominations were repre-
sented in the new church, which continued to hold its meetings in the
schoolhouse. Two years later, however, a chapel was built on the north-
east corner of Main and Maple Streets and was dedicated December 3,
1868.

On the night of August 27, 1869, the chapel was destroyed by what
was believed to be an incendiary fire. As there was no efficient fire fight-
ing equipment, the church burned to ashes. A new one was promptly
erected on north Main Street.

The Congregationalists of Babcock's Grove, whose activities had been
suspended during the war, now reorganized and formed the First Con-
gregational Church, on October 22, 1869. All but 3 of the 13 original
members came from the First Church of Christ. The Congregationalists
built their church on the southwest corner of Main and Maple Streets.
Between the two churches ran the railroad.

At this time, Babcock's Grove unlike its vacillating neighbor, changed
its name for the first and last time. On April 23, 1868, the town of
Lombard was platted and recorded, named in honor of Josiah Lombard,
a Chicago banker. The plats were made by Lombard, Captain Jones,
and General J. B. Sweet, each of whom chose a street to which to give
his wife's first name. Elizabeth Lombard, Martha Sweet, and Charlotte
Jones all had Lombard streets named after them. In 1869, Isaac Claflin
was elected first president of the town council.

Begun in the excitement of war, the i86o's came quietly to an end.

"/'// Never Turn Back"

Danby folk celebrated the advent of the new decade in a manner
peculiarly their own: they changed the name of their village to Prospect
Park. The name was made official on July 11, 1870, but the town con-
tinued to be known as Danby until 1882.

The summer of 1871 brought intense heat and a drought to Danby,
Lombard, and the surrounding country, in the fall, the Great Fire broke
out in Chicago. Mattie Janes Coe gives an account of the effect of the
fire on Danby as she remembers it:

The light from the burning city was so brilliant that we,
twenty-two and a half miles away, could see to read newspapers all
night, tor several nights (sic). At the same time a fire had in some
manner started in a low-lying bit of ground south of Danby, which
caused much anxiety and was watched night and day for weeks, as
it was feared it might spread to the adjoining fields which were
literally as dry as tinder. Wells and cisterns were dry and the
suffering among stock was quite a serious problem for farmers
that year.

The air was filled with the acrid, pungent odor of the burning
peat fields, and the dark smoke clouds hanging over Chicago were
for weeks the only clouds that floated in the dazzling glare of that
October sunshine.

Danby people rallied to help the fire sufferers. Homes were
opened to friends whose own homes had been destroyed; strangers
came to board . . . collections were taken at church and public

meetings . . . requests were sent out for food. I remember how my
mother made hundreds of doughnuts, in the intense heat, over a
coal stove . . .

Relics of the great fire at that time were found in every home,
for no one went to Chicago but who brought home some evidence
of the havoc wrought by the fire . . . Many of these relics adorned
the old fashioned "what not" cabinets for years.

It was a period of social organization. In Danby the Odd Fellows,
who had disbanded some time before, reorganized, and young women
formed the Utili Dulci Society for the purpose of promoting "social and
gainful" affairs for the village, such as New England dinners, bazaars,
and strawberry festivals.

The Danby School began to present dramas at the Congregational
Church. The playbill for one of these records that A Little More Cider
had as its cast: Joseph Smith as E. Applejack, David Smith as Z. Apple-
jack, James Hogan as D. Peachblossom, Clem Dodge as I. Peachblossom,
and Joseph McChesney as H. Drinker.

By 1874 a patron's directory of Du Page County listed as the trades
and callings of Danby citizens: real estate operator, watchmaker, jeweler,
farmer, merchant, insurance man, hotelkeeper, carpenter, grocer, boot-
and shoemaker, wagonmaker, blacksmith, maker of gig saddles and coach
pads, and "capitalist."

Some of the lectures given in the Duane School at this time show a
preoccupation with the supernatural. "Phrenology" and "Spiritualism"
were among the titles. A school report of 1876 lists 46 pupils in the
"Higher Department of Prospect Park," and some 75 in the lower grades.

In 1878, Philo Stacy, carrying out the hospitable traditions of his
family, entertained the veterans of the io8th Illinois Infantry and the 8th
Illinois Cavalry at their i4th reunion. Stacy Grove on Main Street was
decorated with red, white, and blue bunting, and flags. A grandstand
was erected and long rows of tables were burdened with food to feed
2,000 guests.

In the late 1870^ William Hammerschmidt established the Lombard
Brick and Tile Company, which for many years was one of the village's
few industries.

In 1878 the Free Methodist Church was established in Danby as a
result of a series of "protracted meetings" held in the neighborhood the
year before. A Free Methodist protracted meeting was something in the
nature of a revival, held usually in the open. Meetings lasted anywhere
from two days to a week, and were attended by people of all clenomina-

tions, many of whom brought their own tents and camping equipment
in order to be nearby while the meeting was in session. Sometimes there
were as many as 150 or 200 conversions. Among those converted were
always a number of "rounders," or backsliders, so called because they
"got" religion at every protracted meeting, only to lose it a few weeks
later. The favorite chant of the enthusiastic, if not altogether truthful,
rounders was:

I'll never turn back any more,
Any more, any more,
I'll never turn back,
I'll never turn back!

But at the next protracted meeting, they would reappear, completely
fallen from grace, and ready for conversion again.

Family Album

In the years between 1870 and 1900, the American scene emerged as
a "family affair." Social life centered around the closely integrated
family. If the entertainment, such as straw rides, coasting or skating
parties, did not originate in the home, it usually ended there, with the
participants engrossed in taffy pulls and parlor games. One historian
records that "sleighing parties on cold moonlight nights were the favorite
pastime of young people" in 1890.

In this period, Danby became more urban in its outward aspects and
began its gradual change to a suburban community; Lombard on the
other hand, for many years remained more or less a country town.

The first telephone at Boyd's hardware store had been installed, in
1880. A year later the first library was started. An agent for Harper &
Brothers the principal publishers of the time sold 100 volumes for
$100 to 20 citizens, each of whom paid $5. The hundred books were
stored in an old walnut bookcase in the basement of the Congregational
Church. The founders called themselves the Prospect Park Library Asso-
ciation. On July ist, Danby was incorporated as the village of Prospect
Park. J. R. McChesney was elected first village president with a board
of seven trustees, and William Luther was made first village clerk.

Three years later the village changed its name for the last time.
Thomas E. Hill, village president, was instrumental in naming the town
Glen Ellyn, in honor of his wife, Ellyn Hill. Mrs. Hill is described as
being the envy of the town. She "was a dainty little woman whose fine
diamonds, real lace and shimmering silk gowns were the despair of the

other women in the village. Professor Hill wore a plum colored overcoat
with a cape to it and a black slouch hat."

School life in the two villages reflected home teachings. In the
morning, before classes, there would be a brief religious exercise, usually
a Bible reading, a prayer or a song. At the 15-minute recess boys played
"hornaway" or marbles in the school yard. Girls wept over Elsie Dins-
more, and Little Women which they concealed behind their schoolbooks,
while the boys devoured Oliver Optic, the Rollo Books and the novels
of Jules Verne and J. T. Trowbridge. At home, their elders read Mar-
garet Deland's John Ward, Preacher, Mrs. Humphrey Ward's Robert
Eisner, the Lives of the Presidents, U. S. Grant's Personal Memoirs, and
Over the Hill to the Poorhouse. Tennyson was popular, but Walt Whit-
man and Herman Melville were unknown.

"Numbers," geography, reading, and writing were the stock subjects
for study. Pupils were expected to recite each morning such verses as:

When bright the day is breaking,
And school day bells are waking,
With joy our homes forsaking,
We hail our pleasant school.

Not until 1894-95 was a high school course started, and that a very
loose one. The first commencement of the Glen Ellyn High School at
the Congregational Church, June 15, 1894, found the graduates reading
their own essays on subjects such as "Good Humor," "The Geometry of
Life," and "National Reform, a Pressing Necessity."

Toward the end of the eighties, people from Chicago began using
Glen Ellyn as a resort. Glen Ellyn people in turn began taking trips into
the city to see Modjeska, John McCullough, and performances of Pina-
fore. Ada Douglas Harmon says of Glen Ellyn at this time: "The little
village with its New England flavor lost its simple Puritan character and
became a summer resort."

Black At aria

With its change in function, Glen Ellyn began in the nineties to find
a number of improvements necessary to making itself pleasant as a sum-
mer resort. The first of these projects was the creating of Lake Ellyn. The
Glen Ellyn Hotel and Spring Company, which had been organized by
Baker, Riford and Goodridge in 1890, acquired title to 116 acres of land
within the village limits, and gave Glen Ellyn part of it for a park.
Thomas Hill landscaped the grounds and planned an artificial lake to
be called Lake Ellyn. Philo Stacy superintended the excavation and con-

struction of a dam, for which villagers had pledged $2,500. The lake was
dug on land that had once been used as a ballpark by boys of the village.
In 1893 after a man from another town had fallen through the board-
walk on Main Street, Glen Ellyn, broken his leg, sued the town for $500,
and collected it the sidewalks were kept in better repair. The outcome
of the suit amused the more ironical townsfolk because the village fathers,
who had always been a bit "cautious" about spending money for public
repairs, had to appropriate $500 for the cost of damages due to their own
economies.

A further sign of sophistication was the organizing of a country club
and the building of a clubhouse on Hill Avenue. Here members could
ride and dance, and play tennis, baseball, croquet, and even polo. A
drugstore had come to the village, and in 1895 telephone service was
established. In the fall of that year the Glen Ellyn Woman's Club organ-
ized as a Study Club with nine members. Later, the first kindergarten
was organized in the basement of the Congregational Church by Mrs.
Charles H. Kerr.

In spite of urban advances, Glen Ellyn still retained many of the
characteristics of a small country town. A creek ran through the center
of the village, crossing Pennsylvania and Forest Avenues, and over the
north end was an old red bridge with railings on either side. Here the
boys of the village found their best playgrounds, and dug for crawfish, of
which there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply.

One of the town's institutions was "Black Maria," a large bus owned
by Nadelhoffer's Livery Stable and used by the women as a conveyance.
Black Maria was " a black and melancholy vehicle," but was seen on all
important occasions. She carried guests to weddings, pall bearers to
funerals, and crowds of people to affairs. "She was a comfort and a main-
stay on a wet day. In fact she entered intimately into all the affairs of our
lives."

Lombard did not begin to make her public improvements until the
twentieth century, but already, by the end of the nineties, Glen Ellyn
had become a gay summer resort, its hotels filled with guests from Chi-
cago and other points in the State.

Twentieth Century

The twentieth century found the villages of Glen Ellyn and Lom-
bard with no sidewalks except wooden ones, mud filled streets which
were lower than the sidewalks (customers had to walk up and down

_J LJLJJLJLlJ.lJal

LOMBARD

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. Sheldon Peck House

2. First Church of Lombard (Cong't'I)

3. Lilacia Park

4. Helen M. Plum Memorial Library

5. O'Connor Building

6. Old Gushing Home

7. Village Hall

various levels of steps to reach different store levels), no adequate fire
control or public water facilities, no street lights, and only kerosene
lamps for domestic lighting.

In the period between 1900 and 1.930, the increase in population
enabled both towns to take advantage of the advances of science, bringing
about complete modernization. Development, in general was similar,
but differed in specific instances.

In the second year of the new century, the Aurora, Elgin & Chicago
Electric Railroad was built through the village of Glen Ellyn. Two years
later the first automobile to be seen in the town was bought by S. T.
Jacobs. "It was painted red and the springs were none too good." From
then on, horses went slowly out of fashion, and buses came in. Pastures
became subdivisions, and the town's major business of grain shifted to
coal and lumber.

In 1903 Ruskin College, a Socialist institution founded in Ruskin,
Tennessee, and later moved to Missouri, was established in Glen Ellyn.
'"Ruskin Rays," a bulletin for October, 1904, stated that the purpose of
the college was to combine "honest toil" with education. The first page of
the bulletin listed as college departments: the Ruskin University, Ruskin
Sanitarium, Ruskin University Press, Ruskin Industrial Guild, Ruskin
Industrial Bank, and the Ruskin Co-operative Association. The latter
two institutions were housed in the old Elders Building which was pulled
down in 1926 to make way for the Glen Ellyn State Bank Building. The
Ruskin Novelty Works and Engineering Laboratory were established in
the old Duane Street School on Crescent Boulevard; and the Ruskin
University Press operated in the church built in 1839 at Stacy's Corners,
now also on Crescent.

The president of the college persuaded Isaac A. Poole, a botanist,
to come to Glen Ellyn and take charge of the botanical work. Poole
lived and worked until his death except for a brief interval in the county
poor farm in a shack across the road from the Kettlestring house on
Crescent Boulevard. He claimed to have antedated some of Burbank's
discoveries; he did develop a beautiful iris, white with blue border and a
tall stem, many specimens of which are seen today in Glen Ellyn's gardens.

The college closed its doors following a student strike protesting
capitalist donations.

The town's first newspaper, the Glen Ellyn Echo, was published by
the Men's Club in 1905. The following year another newspaper, the

Glen Ellyn Enterprise, was started by Wade Garfield, a young lawyer.
The population at that time was 1,500.

Several new businesses were started before 1910. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Stanton established Sittyton Farm on Butterfield Road at the corner of
Bryant Avenue, and raised shorthorn cattle. They raised one of the
highest priced shorthorn heifers ever sold in the world Sittyton Queen
which was sold in Argentina for $35,000. George Ball started a green-
house; Otto and Herman Miller opened the Glen Ellyn Auto Company
in an ice-house on Crescent Boulevard next to the Glen Ellyn State Bank.
"It would only hold one car," said Otto Miller of his pioneer garage,
"but we did most of the work outside under a tree. There were only
four cars in town then . . . but there was enough to keep us busy. We
had to tow them in with horses but they never got far those days, only
about half way to Naperville, or out to the Great Western tracks." By
1928, 1,600 automobiles were owned in the village.

In 1911 the Study Club's efforts to abolish saloons met with success
and saloon doors were officially closed on February 14.

Civic improvements followed rapidly: a sewage system was installed,
and gas and electric light were made available. Street paving was begun.
A village orchestra was started. Glen Ellyn's population grew to 2,000.

Around this time villagers were fascinated by the sight of movies in
the making, A cinema company, replete with actors, Indians, covered
wagons, and horses, camped on the edge of Lake Ellyn to film a version
of the Black Hawk War. Townsfolk went down to watch frontiersmen's
wagons being pulled out of the lake by horses that waded and struggled
through the water and up the steep bank of Honeysuckle Hill, "with
Indians on ponies whooping and yelling in full chase."

By 1926, the population of Glen Ellyn had increased to 6,000. There
were 924 grade school pupils and 485 high school students. The Glen-
bard High School at its i2th commencement in June 1928, graduated 83
seniors. In the national elections of that year there were 3,546 votes for
Hoover, 7 1 1 for Smith.

Lombard's advances were of a nature similar to its neighbor's across
the township line. On August 25, 1903, a special election was held for
the purpose of organizing the town of Lombard as a village. There were
74 votes cast, 52 for and 22 against. On the igth of October, the incorpor-
ation proceedings were completed. An ordinance passed in this year pro-
hibited speeding over eight miles per hour.

The first public waterworks was built in 1905, and a municipal well,
with a capacity of 475 gallons per minute, was drilled to a depth of 84
feet. Water mains were laid on the streets in 1906, and the reservoir tank
that is seen from miles around was built the following year.

A few years later Lombard business men established a Lions Club.
The Lombard Sanitarium was founded at Main Street and Roosevelt
Road, and in 1915 the Lombard Women's Club organized, its object "the
intellectual advancement of its members, the promotion of higher social,
educational and moral conditions in the community and a united effort
toward the higher development of humanity."

In June, 1927, the Lombard Park District was organized. Five com-
missioners and a president, William Ralph Plum, were elected at the
first park board meeting. Colonel Plum died in that year and left his
estate to the village to be used as a public park. He had been devoted
to his hobby of collecting lilacs, and the town's first lilac festival was held
three years after his death, in the park he had given.

In 1934, more than half a century after the founding of their com-
pany, the Hammerschmidt family stopped manufacturing tile and brick
and started selling lumber and coal.

The Lombard Beautification Committee was organized in 1933 for
the purpose of eliminating or minimizing public eyesores, such as auto-
mobile grave-yards and general dumping grounds. Committee members
are drawn from 14 of Lombard's major organizations. The committee
receives or formulates constructive plans for local beautification or con-
servation. Plans, when drawn up and in blue print, are turned over to
the county forest preserve superintendent for tentative projects.

"Memory Lane" on North Main Street south of North Avenue, repre-
sents some of the finest work the Committee has done. Fifty-eight fine
elm trees were planted here in honor of deceased residents of Lombard.
Among the citizens so honored were Col. William R. Plum, soldier, law-
yer, traveler, and horticulturist; his wife, Helen M. Plum; Allen B.
Wrisley; Mrs. E. J. Andrews, founder of the Lombard Women's Club
and the Lombard Garden Club; Josiah T. Reade, teacher, scholar, and
founder of the Lombard Free Library; and many others outstanding in
the civic life of Lombard. In years to come Memory Lane will be the
most beautiful approach to the town.

Points of Interest in Lombard

i. The SHELDON PECK HOUSE (private), southwest corner Grace
Ave. and Parkside St., was built in 1838 by Lombard's pioneer settler and

used as an underground railroad station prior to the Civil War. Of non-
descript architecture due to numerous additions and alterations, the
dwelling still makes a comfortable home for the fifth generation of the
Peck family. The last alterations were made in 1910 by Frank Peck,
who raised the roof and removed the wings from either side. In the
basement the dirt wall has been plastered over, but the bark-covered
log sleepers are still visible. The hewn timber of the outer walls has
been covered with a buff stucco.

Of Sheldon Peck's 12 children, Charles, born in. Vermont in 1827,
was a noted painter, one of the founders of the Chicago Academy of
Design, predecessor of the Art Institute.

In 1849, at the age of 22, Charles Peck set out for California with his
brother John. It was on this trip that his interest in western scenery
was awakened, an interest which later found expression in his paintings,
some of which attained national fame. One of his most notable works
was the "Panorama of California," a mammoth folding canvas painted
in the early fifties. Peck toured the country exhibiting it, accompanying
its unfolding with a lecture. The following description appeared in
the Democratic Press of Chicago in 1853:

It contains 2,460 yards of canvas, nine feet in width; and on ex-
hibition shows scenes eighteen feet long and eight feet, six inches
wide. There are represented thirty-eight cities and towns in Cal-
ifornia, five thousand miles of country . . . forty scenes on the
Pacific, Isthmus, Gulf of Mexico and San Francisco, and more
than one thousand figures of men and animals, many of them
life size. . . .

2. The FIRST CHURCH OF LOMBARD (Congregational), at
the southwest corner of Maple St. and Main St., with its steeple rising
a hundred feet above the ground, is an outstanding landmark in Lom-
bard. The building, erected in 1869, is of frame construction and
American Wood Gothic design, unusual for its vertical siding. The
First Church of Lombard was originally the First Congregational Church,
founded in 1851. For several years after its organization, its nine mem-
bers held church services in the village schoolhouse. In 1873 the Con-
gregationalists united with the members of the only other church in
town at that time, the First Church of Christ.

3. LILACIA PARK (open free exc. during Lilac Week, when ad-
mission for non-residents is i^c], occupying a ten-acre square in the
center of the village, at Park and Maple Sts., has the third finest collection
of lilacs in the world. Early in May (date variable) the village cele-
brates its Lilac Week. Thousands of visitors come at this time to see

the 250 varieties of lilacs, the more than 135 varieties of tulips, and the
uncommon trees that grow in the park (conducted tours may be arranged,
but plantings are adequately marked for those who prefer to go through
alone).

There are more than 800 lilac bushes on the -grounds and 400 more
in the nursery. The paths are lined with tulips that run a color gamut
of bright and subdued tones from white through yellows, golds, reds,
oranges, bronzes, browns, and purples, to black. Most of the tulips were
planted in 1935, when 125 new varieties were imported from Holland.
In 1939, fifty thousand tulip bulbs were planted. Scattered about are
narcissuses, poppies, peonies, and irises. At the south entrance are two
Chinese globe elms of singularly perfect shape. In front of the library,
in the southeast corner of the park, are a huge silver aspen and a Schwed-
ler maple tree. The latter is noted for the brilliant coloring of its leaves
during both spring and fall. Nearby are fine specimens of the ginkgo
tree, and several old apple trees.

The origin of the lilac center dates back to 1868, when Col. William
R. Plum, then recently married to Helen M. Williams, a descendant of
Roger Williams, bought and built a house on the seven-acre tract that
is now part of the park. Colonel Plum, who had served as a telegrapher
in the Civil War while still in his teens, receiving his title after the
war for exceptional service in the Intelligence Department, was a lawyer
and naturalist. He named his house Lilacia and devoted his leisure
time to raising lilacs. In 1908 he visited the famous gardens of Victor
Lemoine at Nancy, France, and brought back many specimens. He died
in 1927, having bequeathed his estate to the village, the grounds for a
park, the house to be the Helen M. Plum Memorial Library.

4. The HELEN M. PLUM MEMORIAL LIBRARY (open 2-9 week-
days) stands in Lilacia Park. Architecturally in the colonial tradition,
the two-story white frame building, erected in 1868, was formerly the
home of Col. and Mrs. William R. Plum. Bequeathed by Colonel Plum
for the establishment of a library memorializing his wife, the building
was opened to the public on November 12, 1928. Containing 7,300 vol-
umes, the library has 2,500 listed borrowers and an annual circulation
of 45,000. In honor of Josiah Torrey Reade, who organized the first
village library in 1869, the north room bears his name.

5. The O'CONNOR BUILDING, a three-story stone structure on
the southwest corner of St. Charles Rd. and Park St., is a landmark in
Lombard. Built in 1889, it is the only three-story building in the village
and will remain so unless there is a change in building regulations.

Warren Wheaton

Benjamin and Jacob Fuller

Jesse Wheaton

GLEN ELLYN

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. Forest Hill Cemetery

2. Stacy's Tavern

3. Old Methodist Meeting House

4. Glen Ellyn Public Library

5. Glenbard Township High School

6. Ellyn Lake Park

Constructed of blocks of hewn native stone, with walls a trifle over one
foot thick, the square building has been used, in turn, as a hotel, dram
shop, and bank, today housing stores and offices. Around the walls and
between the windows of the shallow third story are still faintly discern-
ible, in tall black letters, the words Lombard Hotel.

6. At. 126 W. St. Charles Rd. stands the OLD GUSHING HOME, a
i4-room two-story frame house, recently sold to a local contractor who
plans to convert it into an apartment building. The history of the
old house dates back some 90 years to the time when the present second
floor was a four-room cottage, one of the only two buildings that stood
between the Churchill farm and the Peck homestead.

The house and land were bought by Deacon Gushing, a prominent
member of the First Congregational Church. Raised bodily from its
foundation, the little cottage became the second floor of a pretentious
residence, for many years the home of the Gushing family.

7. The VILLAGE HALL, 48 N. Park Ave., is an attractive red brick,
two-story building of modified colonial style, erected in 1927. On the
first floor are the village offices, police department, and judges' chambers.
The council meeting room and an assembly hall occupy the second floor.
Surrounding the village hall are public recreational grounds, leased by
the park board.

Points of Interest in Glen Ellyn

1. In FOREST HILL CEMETERY, southeast corner of St. Charles
and Riford Rds., are buried many soldiers from the War of 1812, the
Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the World
War as well as the pioneers of Glen Ellyn. The land for the cemetery
was'donated by David Christian about 1835.

2. STACY'S TAVERN (private), 557 Geneva Rd., was built in 1837
by Moses Stacy, who had settled here two years before. Around the pio-
neer inn, situated at the junction of two early highways now St. Charles
and Geneva Roads grew up a settlement known as Stacy's Corners. In
this tiny hamlet, which moved a mile south to meet the railroad in 1849,
Glen Ellyn had its origin. Originally white frame, the Greek Revival
tavern is now painted buff. Both Indians and stagecoach passengers used
to spend the night here. Now the building is a two-family house.

* Built in the 1840^, the OLD SCHOOLHOUSE (open) at 570 Cres-
cent Blvd. today houses an antique shop operated by the Woman's Ex-
change. *(See p. 232.)

g. Next door, at 574 Crescent Blvd., is the OLD METHODIST
MEETING HOUSE. The prim, white frame building of Greek Revival
style was erected in 1839 on St. Charles Road, opposite Stacy's Tavern.
Later the frame was covered with stucco. A quarter of a century later
it was moved downhill to its present site and elevated upon a one-story
foundation. A porch with stone pillars has been added, and today it
is used as an apartment building.

4. The GLEN ELLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY (open weekdays 10:30-
5:30, and 7-9; Sun. 3-5 j, northeast corner of Crescent and Park Blvds.,
is housed in a one-story brown brick building with a red tile roof, erected
in 1915. Containing 14,000 volumes, the library circulates about 71,000
books yearly.

The library movement began in Glen Ellyn in 1881, with the pur-
chase of a hundred books from Harper & Brothers by 20 townspeople.
The volumes were kept in a bookcase in the basement of the Congrega-
tional church until 1907, when local women organized the Library Associ-
ation and the village board donated a room in the village hall to be used
as library. More books were bought with public contributions In 1911
Philo Stacy contributed $100 on the condition that an equal sum be
raised. The aid of Andrew Carnegie was enlisted by the Library Associa-
tion, and the villagers assessed themselves a two-mill tax for the erection
and maintenance of the present institution.

5. The GLENBARD TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL, 670 Crescent
Blvd., crowns Honeysuckle Hill on the shore of Lake Ellyn, facing the
street on one side, the lake on the other. A rambling building of red
brick in the Tudor Gothic style, its design conforms to the contour of
the hill, ramps and long flights of cement steps leading up to its several
levels.

The first unit of the building was completed and occupied in 1923,
the second in 192(1, and the third in 1931. Another wing is now (1939)
under construction. The building and grounds are valued at $750,000.
The student body has grown from 120 in 1918 to 1,150 today; the
faculty, from 5 to 37.

6. ELLYN LAKE PARK, bounded by Lennox, Essex, and Lake Rds.,
and Ellyn Ave., embodies the artificial lake excavated and landscaped
in the early 1890*8 on land donated to the village by the Glen Ellyn Hotel
and Spring Company, which erected a large resort on its eastern shore.
Lying in a hollow", with high wooded banks, the lake provides a charm-
ing and unusual setting, for the township high school, the fine residences

which encircle it, and for recreational purposes. There is boating in
summertime (25^ per hour] and skating in winter. At its edge are ;i
children's playground, a modern recreation house, (ping pong joe per
hour) equipped with kitchen facilities, picnic tables and park benches,
and winding crushed stone walks.

18541

Hobson's Mill, near Napervilk

HINSDALE

General Information

POPULATION (1930) :
6,923 (See p. 234.)

DISTANCE FROM CHICAGO:
1 8 mi.

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION (from Chicago):

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. Central, east- and west-end stations.

ACCOMMODATIONS:

Both usual and better-grade restaurants, including the celebrated Old Spinning
Wheel, 421 E. Ogden Ave. (US 34) , (closed Mon.) .

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICE:

Travel directions at filling stations. Data on civic activities and history at village
hall and public library, both in Memorial Building, 19 E. Chicago Ave.

BUSINESS SECTION:

Main one lies for the most part immediately south of the C. B. & Q. R. R. tracks,
with Washington St. its principal thoroughfare. Minor one centered around the
intersection of Ogden Ave. (US 34) and York Rd.

STREET ORDER AND NUMBERING:

Avenues run E. and W.; streets run both E. and W. and N. and S. In general,
E. and W. streets north of the railway track are named for trees; those south are
numbered. N. and S. streets for the most part are named for presidents of the
United States or local celebrities. Numbering is N. and S. from Chicago Ave.,
E. and W. from Washington St.

RECREATION, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPECIAL EVENTS:
Hinsdale Theater, 29 E. First St. (motion picture) .

Midwest Golf Club, 35th St. at Canfield Rd.; daily fee course; dining room.
York Golf Club, York Rd. at 22nd St.; daily fee course; dining room.

Fullersburg Park (county forest preserve No. 5) , Spring Rd., north of village;
trails, bridle paths, outdoor grills, rowboats, canoes, refreshments, fishing.

Stough Park, Town Place, Stough and Railroad Sts., has tennis courts.

Burns Field, Madison, North, Vine and Hickory Sts., has a playground, wading
pool, tennis and horseshoe courts, Softball fields and facilities for basketball,
roque and loop tennis.

Emmet Riding Club, 600 W. 35th; White's Riding Academy, York Rd. at 33rd.

Public games every Sunday afternoon throughout the summer at Oak Brook Polo
Club, York Road and 22nd St.

Annual Oak Brook Horse Show in midsummer at Oak Brook Polo Club, York Rd.
and 22nd St., for benefit of Hinsdale Infant Welfare Society.

A series of plays is presented each winter by the Hinsdale Little Theater, an
amateur organization, usually in the auditorium of the Hinsdale Club.

HINSDALE

"Gold Coast City of Du Page'

PILLING over the Du Page-Cook county line in
the northeast part of Downers Grove Township lies Hinsdale, the richest
municipality in per capita wealth in Du Page County. At first glance it
might seem easily dismissed with that well-known phrase of Baedeker's,
"There is little here to detain the tourist." Actually, it has a high quota
of both physical charm and socio-historical interest.

Modern Hinsdale is compounded of the once separate communities
of Hinsdale and Fullersburg. Hinsdale, the younger of the two, was de-
liberately created by real-estate promoters of the i86o's and iSyo's to
serve the same function it now serves that of upper-middle-class dormi-
tory suburb. Fullersburg, on the other hand, originated as a pioneer
settlement which took root in the 1830*8 on a hazel-brush-covered rise of
land that soldiers of the Black Hawk War had dubbed Brush Hill, and
survived as a more or less self-sustaining, unincorporated, agricultural
hamlet until it was absorbed by the growing village to its south in 1923.

Of Hinsdale's population of 6,923 in 1930, 85 per cent were native-born
whites, 14 per cent were foreign-born whites, and i per cent were Negroes.
That most of the resident Negroes are house servants living on the
premises is evidenced by the small number of dwelling units occupied by
non-whites.

Nonindustrial, its business sections strictly zoned, its dwellings single-
family houses, and populated from the start with the exception of its
Fullersburg section by people with the means and desire for attractive
surroundings, Hinsdale has become increasingly worthy of the title given
it by Campbell's Illustrated Journal in 1897: "Hinsdale the Beautiful."

"Gold Coast City of Du Page" is what the Naperville Clarion calls
Hinsdale, and the aptness of the title cannot be denied, however much
some of the villagers resent its implications. For it is true that Hinsdale
proper has been from the outset, as Campbell's said, "the home of many
of the big city's most influential business and professional men," and, as
such, always has had a profusion of substantial homes, imposing man-
sions, and, along its outer fringes, many-acred estates. There are simpler
houses, too, of course, but, whether they belong to the cottage or mansion
category, or, like the majority, are typical examples of upper-middle-class

suburbia, the homes that line the tree-bordered streets are scrupulously
well kept and set amidst well-tended lawns and gardens.

Characteristic of Hinsdale proper's nucleus are the big white frame
houses of the post-Civil War and late Victorian periods, those of the
former still pleasing in their simple dignity, those of the latter now in-
teresting mainly as architectural extravaganzas, along with the same
era's ostentatious masses of stone and brick. Greek Revival remnants are
to be found only in Fullersburg. The American Wood Gothic style is ex-
emplified in Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church; Romanesque
Revival, in the Unitarian. Hinsdale's newer buildings reflect the Midwest-
ern predilection for less inbred adaptations of European styles Georgian
colonial, English half-timbered, Spanish, French provincial, etc. The one
Frank Lloyd Wright house is in Dutch-colonial rather than his own
earth-hugging prairie style, but the latter is represented in a home de-
signed by one of his pupils.

On the village outskirts are Hinsdale's two private country clubs and
polo club, two public golf courses, and a no-acre county forest preserve.
Two village parks have softball diamonds, tennis courts, and playgrounds.

Village government is conducted by a president and board of six
trustees, who are elected to four-year terms and serve without salary. The
only other elected village officials are the clerk, whose office is a salaried
one, and the police magistrate, who is paid on a fee basis. Members of the
various boards and commissions all of whom serve without pay are
appointed, with the exception of the board of local improvements, which
consists of the village president and trustees, and the library board, whose
six directors are elected to six-year terms.

In December, 1922, the village board established the Hinsdale Plan
Commission. Upon the latter's recommendation, the board passed the
first zoning ordinance in 1923. Soon afterward, the zoning commission
was established. Enforcement of the zoning ordinance is vested in the
building commissioner. A quasi-judiciary board of appeals hears appeals
from his rulings. Appeals from its decisions must go to the circuit court.

Because Hinsdale believes in nonpolitical local elections in which the
office seeks the man, nominations to elective offices are made by the Hins-
dale Community Caucus, a voluntary organization having no basis in law
and existing only by consent of the governed. Membership in the caucus
is organizational and sectional. Any voluntary local organization having
25 or more members may designate one caucus member. The caucus itself
elects two sectional members from each of four equal sections into which
Hinsdale is divided for the purpose, and, to act only on school-board
nominations, from each of two sections of Clarendon Hills and from
Westmont. Noncaucus candidates may be put up by petition or write-in-
vote, but, since the start of the caucus in 1934, its candidates have been
elected consistently.

Village administrative offices and the public library are housed in the
Memorial Building. Crowning a landscaped knoll in the center of town,
the building dominates the view from railway station and business cen-
ter, vividly typifying the community it serves, not only in the conservative
elegance of its Georgian-colonial design and the beauty of its grounds,
but in the story behind its construction.. That story is a prime example
of the civic pride and community spirit that characterize Hinsdale.

At its first meeting, the plan commission had begun working on a
plan for a war memorial civic center. With professional help, a model
Hinsdale Plan was produced, some of the main features of which were:
a layout for the civic center; the grouping of all other future public build-
ings, except schools, in an area east of the proposed center, where already
the power and water-softening plants stood; and the adoption of a uni-
form architectural style, Georgian colonial, for all public buildings.

In 1923 the village bought half of the site intended for the civic center,
but no further progress was made until January, 1927, when, through the
efforts of the local American Legion post, the Hinsdale Memorial Build-
ing Committee was formed, comprised of representatives of the Legion
and its auxiliary, village board, plan commission, board of education,
and several civic and social organizations. The original plan for a three-
building civic center having been modified because of the cost, the com-
mittee's purpose was to promote the construction and financing by public
subscription of a single civic building. By May the building fund had
been completely subscribed. By July real-estate mortgage notes covering
the purchase price of the remaining half of the site had been bought
by a group of 12 citizens to expedite acquisition of the land. On Novem-
ber ii the cornerstone was laid. On July 4, 1928, the completed building
was presented to the village by the committee. A second public-subscrip-
tion campaign was started in March, 1929, to pay for landscaping and a
tower clock and bell. On July 4, the landscaping already done, the clock
and bell were installed. Completed in two and a half years at a total cost
of about $260,000, only $83,000 of which came from the corporate funds
of the village (the amount spent on the land) , the Memorial Building
and its park represent a notable community achievement, in the financing
of which practically every family in the village participated.

Although the original Hinsdale Plan has not been adhered to strictly,
it has influenced numerous developments. New public buildings, except
schools and the police and fire station built in 1935, have been located
in the designated area and, barring one school, have followed the pre-
scribed style. Plans now (1939) are under way for building a Federal
post office.

Public utilities and services, gas and telephone excepted, are munici-

pally owned. Although rates are moderate, the water works and power
plant the latter the only municipal one in the county contribute a
sizable sum to the corporate funds. The present water-softening plant re-
placed in 1925 the original one built in 1915. In 1931 a municipal garbage
incinerator was built, and in 1928 the Hinsdale Sanitary District, which
includes Clarendon Hills and Westmont, built a sewage disposal plant.

Hinsdale's freedom from burglary and theft is reflected in low insur-
ance rates, and the main concerns of the police and fire departments,
which share one chief, are traffic violations and the frequent prairie and
peat fires on the outskirts. Unlike the police department, which was
created officially upon the hiring of a constable in 1877, the fire depart-
ment did not begin to outgrow its volunteer status which it still largely
maintains until 1928.

Although many of its pupils come from an economic class that usually
frequents private schools, Hinsdale's public school system is supported
by the patronage, as well as the taxes, of the whole community. In the
village are three elementary schools, a junior high school, and the Hins-
dale Township High School, which is accredited by the North Central
Association and is distinctive among public schools throughout the State
in that more than 60 per cent of its graduates enter college. To its build-
ing, completed in 1916, was added the adjoining gymnasium-auditorium
in 1921. An annex built in 1927 increased the student capacity from 350
to 525.

Six of Hinsdale's 1 1 churches stem from the nineteenth century: Union
(under which name the old Congregational and Presbyterian churches
merged in 1918) ; Grace Episcopal; the Unitarian (formerly Unity) ; Zion
Evangelical Lutheran; Evangelical Mission Covenant (formerly Swedish
Evangelical Bethel) ; and Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran. Twentieth
century churches are the Hinsdale (formerly Swedish) Baptist; Seventh
Day Adventist; Redeemer English Lutheran; St. Isaac Jogues (Catholic) ;
and Christian Science.

Three churches maintain parochial grade schools: Zion Lutheran,
the Seventh Day Adventist, and St. Isaac Jogues.

The weekly Hinsdale Doings, started in 1895 by Daniel Merrill, 17-
year-old son of a local printer, has been the village's only newspaper since
the turn of the century, with the exception of The Community, which
quickly came and went in the 1920'$. The Doings is published by the
Merrill Printing Company, established in Hinsdale in 1888 by F. M. Mer-
rill, father of Daniel and grandfather of the company's present head. Also
published by the company is the Du Page County Life, a monthly paper
started in 1932.

The Morris Greenhouses, founded in Hinsdale in 1896 and now
moved just outside, serve the Chicago and local markets. A recent ad-

100

dition to Hinsdale is the Dispensa Merchandising Company, which runs
benefit street carnivals for organizations throughout the area. Notable
among Chicago-area restaurants is the Old Spinning Wheel, opened in
1935 in a rambling log building on Ogden Avenue (US 34) . With these
exceptions, local business is limited almost entirely to stores and services
supplying the community's daily needs.

Hinsdale's First National Bank, chartered in 1922, is an outgrowth of
the Hinsdale Trust and Savings Bank, started in 1910. Unlike most
communities, Hinsdale did not suffer a bank failure in the 1 930*8. That it
did not was due to the merger effected in 1932 of the village's first bank,
the Hinsdale State, and the First National. The Hinsdale Federal Savings
and Loan Association was chartered in 1934.

Three organizations date from before 1900: the Hinsdale Club, Hins-
dale Woman's Club, and Hinsdale Golf Club. Also noteworthy are the
Parent-Teacher Associations, infant welfare societies, Boy Scouts and Girl
Scouts, two garden clubs, two Masonic organizations, Ruth Lake Country
Club, Oak Brook Polo Club, Hinsdale Music Club, Hinsdale Little
Theatre, Friends of the Library, and Hinsdale Chamber of Commerce,
representing a recent reorganization of the Hinsdale Commercial and
Civic Association, which itself represented a merger in 1923 of the Hins-
dale Commercial League and Lions Club. In 1936 the Hinsdale Com-
munity Service was founded to provide employment service, relief, and
medical aid in the high school district.

Outside the village are three notable institutions more or less identi-
fied with it: the Godair Memorial Old People's Home; King-Bruwaert
House (for elderly women) ; and Katherine Legge Memorial ( a residen-
tial country club for women employees of the International Harvester
Company) .

The Conquest of Brush Hill

For centuries Brush Hill belonged to the Potawatomies. One of the
major Indian villages believed to have existed in the Du Page County
area in the early iSoo's lay along Salt Creek between present-day
Hinsdale and Elmhurst. South of it was the Indian trail between Chicago
and Naperville that General Scott and a detachment followed to the Black
Hawk War front in 1832. Where it passed to the south of the Potawatomi
village on Salt Creek, the trail began to climb the gradual slope of the
Valparaiso Moraine. It was not much of a hill, but it was the first one
the soldiers had seen since leaving the East, and it was all covered with
hazel brush. So they named it Brush Hill or so the story goes and the
name clung to the surrounding area for many years.

Lt. Sherman King, Scott's advance agent and later member of Captain
Naper's company, is said to have been sent to Brush Hill at the war's end
to observe the Indian village. If so, he probably was Brush Hill's first

101

white settler. Some sources say he ran a sawmill on the creek; he may have
operated his own mill or been associated with Torode's (see p. 188).
About 1834 the brothers Orente and David Grant staked a claim at Brush
Hill and decided to build a tavern on the Indian trail that daily was bring-
ing more settlers to the region. Not only by wagon, on foot, and on horse-
back were the new settlers coming now, but by stagecoach, for the trail in
1834 became one of the three Chicago-Ottawa stagecoach routes opened
that year by Dr. John Taylor Temple.

In 1834 or early 1835 Benjamin Fuller came by horseback from Broome
County, New York, to look over the land that was drawing so many Easterners
to Illinois. What he saw of Brush Hill pleased him so much that he went
back East for the rest of the family.

The rest of the family consisted of Benjamin's father and mother,
Jacob and Candace Fuller, his five brothers and six sisters, his wife, Olive
Atwater Fuller probably related to Jesse Atwater, another York Township
pioneer and his son, Edwin. Sometime during the good-weather months
of 1835 all the Fullers arrived by wagon on Brush Hill all, that is, but
two of Jacob's daughters, who followed by boat (their trip from Buffalo
to Chicago taking six weeks), and, perhaps, Jacob's son George, who is said
to have come the next year.

The diagonal northern boundary of the ten-mile-wide strip ceded by the
Indians to the United States in 1816 for the projected Illinois-Michigan
Canal ran through sections 24, 26, arid 34 of present York Township and
sections 4, 8, and 18 of present Downers Grove Township. The land within
this strip was put on the market in June, 1835. Thus, the southeastern corner
of York and all of Downers Grove Township except the northwestern corner
went on sale at that time. This included Brush Hill. Orente Grant bought
a large tract at Brush Hill on June 24, 1835. About the same time a New
York City speculator, Robert Jones, bought extensive holdings a mile south
of the Brush Hill settlement.

The original Fuller cabin and farm were a short distance northwest of
Brush Hill, on Ginger Creek, off present Spring Road. Here Jacob bought
a quarter section. Benjamin, however, who bought Orente Grant's land in
1843, eventually came to own everything from Salt Creek south to the present
railroad tracks in Hinsdale and from today's Garfield Street east over the
county line to what is now Western Springs.

Situated on the Chicago-Ottawa stagecoach route, which the southern
route to Galena, also opened in 1834, followed to Naperville, the Grants'
tavern, completed by 1835, had a long career. Castle Inn was one of its
names. In March, 1835, Orente Grant became first postmaster of Brush
Hill.

IO2

Most of the Indians remaining after the treaty of 1833 left Illinois in
the summer of 1835, but a few scattered groups continued to occupy their
old village and camp sites for several years. The Indians were friendly,
and the early white settlers who became their neighbors lived on amicable
terms with the dispossessed. Descendants of Brush Hill's early settlers
like to tell the stories handed down to them of how the Indians often were
seen paddling their canoes on Salt Creek in the early days, how they held
powwows not far from Castle Inn, and how they presented a pony named
Nidnodi to Benjamin Fuller's son, after Fuller, whose father, Jacob, had
been a blacksmith back East, had taught them how to shoe their horses.

Shortly before or after 1 840, John S. Coe came from Rockland County,
New York, to open Brush Hill's first blacksmith shop reputedly the
largest in Du Page County. Later he married Harriet Fuller, one of Jacob's
daughters, served as road commissioner, and started a general store.

As Jacob Fuller's sons and daughters married into the families of
neighboring pioneers, it came to be said that "everyone in the neighborhood
is a Fuller." Brush Hill's first schoolteacher was Mary Fuller, one of the
two girls who had come to Illinois by boat. Lacking a schoolhouse, Miss
Fuller at first gave lessons from farm to farm, tramping through the
shoulder-high prairie grass under escort of two huge dogs, Nero and Pedro.

In 1838, however, a log cabin in the Frenchman's Woods a grove to
the north in which the Torodes and others had settled became the area's
first schoolhouse, presided over by Mary Fuller. The cabin had been the
home of Elias Brown, who had committed suicide, an act rare in pioneer
days. In 1839 classes apparently were transferred to the home of John
Talmadge, also in the Frenchman's Woods, and Miss C. Barnes became
schoolmistress. The room in which she taught was outfitted with slab
seats cut at the sawmill. Religious services were held here, too, con-
ducted by the Rev. David Colson, a Methodist circuit rider. Whether
Mary Fuller continued teaching at Brush Hill, perhaps is not clear, but
not long afterward she married Barto Van Velzer, a former boatdriver on
the Erie Canal. Sometime in the 1 840*8 or early 1850*8 James M. Vallette
of Naperville became Brush Hill's schoolmaster, holding classes in the
ballroom of Castle Inn and every weekend walking the 24 miles home to
Naperville and back.

It was probably shortly after Benjamin Fuller's purchase of Grant's
land that he and his father moved from their farms into the heart of
Brush Hill. Just when Benjamin Fuller opened Brush Hill's second tav-
ern is not known. Situated on the north side of the stagecoach highway,
almost opposite Castle Inn, it was called Fuller's, or Fullersburg, Tavern.

103

In 1851 Benjamin Fuller platted the land he owned along present Ogden
Avenue, recording it in June, 1852 under the name of Fullersburg the
fourth recorded plat in the county. Centering at the present junction of
York Street and Ogden Avenue, it spread two or three modern blocks east
and west, immediately south of the York-Downers Grove township line. Each
of his five children received a parcel of land, and today there are in Hinsdale
grandchildren, great- and great-great grandchildren of the Benjamin Fuller
who came, saw, liked, and conquered Brush Hill, while the name Fullers-
burg still clings unofficially to the Ogden Avenue section and northern out-
skirts of modern Hinsdale.

Fuller's decisions to plat a town and start a tavern whichever came
first doubtless were influenced by the fact that early in 1850 the planking
of the highway, which now was called the Southwestern Plank Road, had
reached Brush Hill. A tollgate was set up and a tollhouse built on the north
side of the road, about midway between the two tavern sites, and Barto Van
Velzer, who is said to have invested money in the local plank-road corpora-
tion, became toll collector. It must have been a busy job while it lasted, for
in the peak seasons as many as 500 teams a day went through, some hauling
farm produce to Chicago, some pulling the prairie schooners of new settlers
westward, others drawing gaily painted stagecoaches in either direction.
Needless to say, the two inns did well.

In the year that the hamlet acquired its first officially recorded name and
boundaries, Frederick Graue opened a gristmill on Salt Creek that was
destined to hold a place in the county's economy for 77 years.

Born in the little village of Landesbergen in the Kingdom of Hanover,
on January 25, 1819, the third son of Frederick and Lucie (Thurmau)
Graue, Graue had come to America in 1833 with his father and mother,
seven brothers and one sister. The 'family first stopped at Albany, New
York. In the spring of 1834, they pushed westward to Chicago and during
the summer of that year moved to Du Page County. As the Grants and
Lieutenant King were pioneering Brush Hill, the Graues were building a
house in York Township, in the heart of a grove west of present Elmhurst
that has ever since borne their name. In 1838 Frederick the younger moved
down to Brush Hill, where, near the Torode sawmill on Salt Creek, he built
a frame house. In 1847 he started building his brick gristmill, virtually on
the site of the old sawmill, and, in 1858, a brick house close by. Both are
still standing (see Tour /).

Complex milling machinery was installed in the gristmill by a mill-
wright imported from New York. Otherwise, the three-story building re-
flected local resources. The bricks were made of clay from Graue's farm

104

and burned in a kiln near the site. Stone for the foundation and trim was
hauled from the Lemont limestone quarry, 1 2 miles southeast of Fullers-
burg. White oak for the posts, girders, and joists was cut from a rich
timber tract along the canal near Lemont. Construction was a triumph
of pioneer craftsmanship. The wooden structural frame was mortised and
tenoned with wooden pegs, and the girders at the tops and bottoms of the
posts were secured with dowels. The loading platform was "wagon high."
Sherman King built the first primitive dam of logs and brush, and power
originally was produced by an undershot water wheel.

With William Ashe as partner, Graue operated the mill on a share
basis, taking as fee a percentage of all grain ground. In 1858 the mill was
so flourishing a part of the county's trade that, when the citizens of Naper-
ville, Downers Grove, Brush Hill, and Lyons (in Cook County) petitioned
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad to lay tracks between Aurora
and Chicago on a right-of-way running through their villages, it was cited
as one of the inducements, inasmuch as it "keeps two teams constantly
on the road to and from Chicago."

Between 1850 and 1852 Marvin Fox arrived from Vermont with his
wife and ten children, bought 160 acres west and south of Fullersburg, and
built a house on the plank road. Here Vallette, the schoolmaster, came to
board.

The year 1853 gave Fullersburg its first and. only real schoolhouse.
Sherman King, one of Castle Inn's numerous proprietors, is said to have
built the one-story frame structure, while John S. Coe was among those
who gave money toward it. In May, 1854, County School Commissioner
Hope Brown certified Caroline Bates to teach here. Fifty years later, Coe's
son Clarence, a district school director, was among those who bought school
bonds to add a second story. The Fullersburg School functioned until 1938.

Rabbit Hill School also was built about 1853, on land northwest of
Fullersburg donated by David Thurston, husband of Katherine Fuller.
Now a private residence, it still stands at 3ist Street and Canfield Road.
Erection of the Torode School about 1 865 near the cabin where Mary Fuller
had taught completed the Fullersburg area's school facilities until 1921.

Just when Fullersburg became a preaching station of the Lutheran
church organized in Proviso Township, Cook County, in the 1840*5 is not
known, but Lutheran services may have been started here as early as the

A State business directory for 1854 lists Benjamin Fuller as postmaster,
Jacob and Benjamin Fuller as general and dry-goods merchants, and
Benjamin's son John as hotel proprietor. That same year, however, when
land around Brush Hill was selling for $5.25 an acre, Benjamin Fuller

105

sold most of his property to Alfred Walker of Vermont. Walker also bought
both taverns, operating the Fullers' as an eating house and Castle Inn as
a hotel, where the Walkers themselves lived for several years. Fullersburg's
business and professional directory now also included a sawmill operated
by Graue, Ashe, and Arthur Young; four carpenters and house builders;
two shoemakers; a lawyer; a doctor George M. Fox, son of Marvin; and
an Episcopal clergyman the Rev. F. Leonard. Soon afterward, Henry
Bohlander opened a harness shop, and in the i86o's a slaughter house and
meat market were started. In February, 1859, while Benjamin Fuller
was still postmaster, the name of the Brush Hill Post Office was changed
to Fullersburg. The name Brush Hill, however, stuck to Fullersburg and
the area around it for some time.

In 1857 the Walker family moved into their big farmhouse about a
half mile south of Fullersburg. Walker's farm soon became a model one,
and, in addition to raising crops and livestock, Walker became one of the
region's earliest cheese manufacturers. The southeast part of his land, lying
on the wooded ridge of the Valparaiso Moraine, was known as Walker's
Grove.

In 1859 the Foxes' farm, adjoining Walker's on the west, produced 7,000
bushels of grain, which were sold in Chicago at 45C a bushel for wheat,
I4C for oats. Other farm products brought the following prices: potatoes,
i8c a bushel; butter, ice a pound; eggs, 4C a dozen. Day laborers were
paid 5oc a day. In 1863 Marvin Fox's son Jarvis built a house on the farm.

On July 29, 1 86 1, the first meeting in Du Page County to recruit
soldiers for the Union army was held in Fullersburg schoolhouse. Enthusi-
astic crowds sang "The Sword of Bunker Hill" and other patriotic songs,
as they were to chant them again and again throughout the next few
months all over the county. Men and women alike spoke and sang and
wept passionately for the Union.

From Fullersburg ten men went to serve in the infantry and cavalry
regiments of Illinois. Among them were Morell Fuller, son of Jacob, and
Walter Van Velzer, chief musicians in the iO5th Regiment of Illinois
Infantry; Samuel A. Coe, son of John, in the i56th Illinois Infantry; and
Heman Fox, son of Marvin, in the 2nd Illinois Light Infantry.

In the first year of the Civil War, the only native of old Fullersburg
destined to become internationally famous was born in a bleak little bedroom
of Castle Inn, daughter of one of Jacob Fuller's sons. In the winter of 1861-
62 Reuben Fuller and his wife, Delilah, moved to Castle Inn from their
farmhouse at the present corner of Ogden Avenue and Wolf Road, because
the winter was so severe and Delilah was expecting a child. The baby born
to them, christened Loie, became one of the most brilliant dancers of the

1 06

Victorian era on the stages of New York, London, Paris and Berlin. Costume
and lighting effects which she invented were the progenitors of modern stage
technique. An expatriate throughout most of her life, she grew to be a leader
of American society in Europe and a member of the inner circles of European
courts. She became an intimate of Queen Marie of Rumania and helped to
arrange the United States loan to Rumania during the World War. In 1926
she accompanied Marie on her American tour, but did not visit her native
village. When she died in Paris two years later, at the age of 66, she was
still a vivid international figure, and her ashes were buried beside the grave
of Sarah Bernhardt in Pere-Lachaise Cemetery.

Around 1864 Marvin Fox's son Charles was connected with Benjamin
Fuller's store. In 1867 Fuller withdrew, and Charles and his brother Heman
formed a partnership that was to last 22 years, during which time Fox
Brothers was a leading store, first of Fullersburg, later of Hinsdale. Charles
married one of Fuller's daughters and was postmaster for 9 years.

In 1867 John F. Ruchty, former Frink & Walker stagedriver and one-
time proprietor of Castle Inn, moved his family from Naperville, where he
had operated the Pre-Emption House, to Fullersburg, where he became the
last proprietor of Fullersburg Tavern, now called the Grand Pacific, which
he ran until 1887. Castle Inn expired about the time Ruchty bought its rival.
When Jacob Fuller died in 1867 and his son Benjamin followed him
the next year, at the age of 58, a new settlement, sired by the railroad and
nursed by real-estate operators, was growing up a mile to the south a city-
bred, upstart subdivision to which Fullersburg was destined to play country
cousin for six decades.

Rise of a Commuters' Town

The petition signed on behalf of Brush Hill by Benjamin Fuller and
Frederick Graue in 1858, asking the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Rail-
road to build a line through Du Page County's southern string of villages
and, incidentally, offering a free right-of-way had had no immediate
effect. But finally, in 1862, work on the road had been started.

After the railroad surveyors had looked over the Brush Hill area, how-
ever, they had recommended that, because of the land contours, the road-
bed be built, not through Fullersburg, but a mile to the south, cutting
diagonally across the lower end of the Walker farm. Walker had been agree-
able to this in fact, had offered to deed the necessary five or six acres to
the Burlington for the token sum of 5c and thus Fullerburg's fate had been
sealed. For, simultaneously with the plotting of the roadbed and the laying
of the tracks, unexpected developments had mushroomed along them.

107

Upon the heels of the Burlington surveyors had come William Rob-
bins, who cast a keen business eye over the wild prairie south of the right-
of-way and forthwith bought between 700 and 800 acres of it. A native of
New York State, Robbins had been a country schoolteacher in Illinois
and dry-goods clerk in Chicago in the 1840% a California-Gold-Rush
miner and banker in the 1 850*5, a St. Louis banker briefly around 1860,
and now was in real estate in Chicago. Except for the Walker and Fox
farms north of the right-of-way, there was no sign of habitation nearby,
and except for the grove, mainly of oaks, on the morainic ridge along the
county line, there were no trees on the land that Robbins bought for
about $14 an acre in 1862 or 1863 from the speculator Robert Jones-out-
bidding by about $2 John Hemshell, a recent English immigrant to Ful-
lersburg. But to Robbins' experienced eye it was another gold mine, and
he lost no time in working it-immediately building himself a frame
house, laying out the streets of a town, planting trees, and advertising lots
for sale.

By the time train service had begun, on May 20, 1864 one train a day
each way, with a station stop at Robbins' embryo subdivision Robbins
already was building his second house, an elaborate stone structure which
he named Woodside because it was near the grove and surrounded with
park-like landscaping. In the acreage around it he established a stock farm.

Robbins also had been building other houses, which, along with his
own first one, he soon had sold or rented. The first purchaser of one of his
houses was James Swartout. One of the first buyers of vacant lots was Nel-
son Lay, a Chicago merchant, who built a house and rented it to the Rev.
C. M. Barnes, a Baptist minister. To a son of the Barneses soon went the
lot Robbins had offered, as a promotional measure, to the first boy to be
born in his subdivision and the name William Robbins Barnes,

Just as the i86o's were bringing prominent Chicagoans out to Cot-
tage Hill (Elmhurst) , 6*/ 2 miles north, on the Galena & Chicago Union
Railroad, they were bringing a similar group of Chicago's first commuters
out to Robbins' well-advertised lots to form a new kind of community;
a deliberately planned real-estate development with no roots in the
pioneer past.

In August, 1866, Robbins recorded the original plat of his town, giv-
ing it the name Hinsdale. Between 12 and 13 square blocks in area, it
lay mostly south of the railroad track, its northeast corner adjoining the
southwest corner of the Walker farm. In the same year he made an ad-
dition to Hinsdale on the east. Several theories have been advanced re-
garding the origin of Hinsdale's name, but it seems unlikely that the

1 08

question ever will be settled. It is interesting to note that the first sign
put up at the railroad stop had been Hazel Glen; the second, Brush Hill.
Meanwhile, another astute Chicago real-estate man, Oliver J. Stough,
had begun buying and developing land that year on the north side of the
track, west of the Walker farm. Stough's first purchase was Jarvis Fox's
8o-acre farm. Like Robbins, he at once set to work building a home, laying
out streets, planting trees, and building houses for sale. In 1868 he made
two additions to Hinsdale. By 1872 he had bought and subdivided a total
of about 1,200 acres. In 1871 Robbins made his second addition, immediately
south of his first. His own estate was in this one, so to its planning he gave
special attention, engaging H. W. S. Cleveland, a noted landscape architect,
to plot curving streets to follow the undulations of the terrain.

Both Robbins and Stough built schools, Robbins, in 1866^ Stough, a
year or two later. Robbins' school, a two-story stone structure with two
schoolrooms on the first floor, a meeting hall on the second, and a bell tower,
was called Academy Hall. Conducted on the subscription basis, Robbins'
school was taught by a Miss Stocking; Stough's occupying a two-story
frame building which also had a meeting hall by "Professor" Gleason, a
well-known Chicago educator. In 1867 Hinsdale was incorporated into the
Fullersburg School District, and Academy Hall became a public school with
B. F. Banker as principal and a Mr. Wiley and Georgia Blodgett as teachers.
In 1868 the school board bought the school from Robbins for $8,000, re-
named it South Side, created a separate South Side School District, and
named Gleason principal (he must have taught simultaneously at Stough's).

Circuit riders of various denominations provided the settlement's
first church services, held in the railway station. To the stiff benches
of the waiting room were added a reed organ and a portable pulpit.
In 1866, ten Congregationalists organized the village's first congregation.
They, too, adopted the station for their early services. After a few years,
however, they moved to the lecture room of Academy Hall.

In the meantime, Baptists of the village, numbering 15, had estab-
lished a congregation. After a few months of meeting in the railroad
station, they built a church. When the liquidation of building costs
and the support of a minister almost depleted their treasury, they in-
vited the Congregationalists to meet with them. After the latter
left to build their own stone church in 1872 on land donated by Rob-
bins, Baptist financial resources were again exhausted. The following
year the Baptist church was converted into a community meeting hall
and the congregation disbanded.

A few months after the start of construction on their building, how-
ever, the Congregationalists also had run into financial difficulties. When
only a basement was completed, their treasury was empty. Roofed over,

109

HINSDALE

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. Castle Inn

2. Toll House

3. Benjamin Fuller House

4. Jacob and Morell Fuller House

5. Marvin Fox House

6. Fullersburg Cemetery

7. Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital

8. Memorial Building
r 9. F. O. Butler House

10. J. W. Butler House

11. William Bobbins House

"this queer church, which resembled a great sod-house, though its interior
was commodious and fairly comfortable" served as a meeting place until
1882, when funds were raised to complete the structure. Robbins gave land
for an adjoining parsonage, which was erected in 1889.

Stough also assisted a religious group, building, about 1870, a $3,400
Universalist church. The congregation petered out by 1877, however,
and the building burned down in 1882. When the present Unitarian
church was organized in the late i88o's, Stough again gave financial as-
sistance.

Robbins and Stough were not alone in the development of Hinsdale.
In 1869 the names of more than 20 property owners appeared on a real-
estate journal's map of Hinsdale. Some had bought land previously sub-
divided by Robbins and Stough, but others were making their own ad-
ditions to the town. Among the latter, whose plats were recorded between
1868 and 1872, were Alfred Walker, D. S. Estabrook, Anson Ayres, and
J. I. Case.

Along with the founding of schools and churches came the start of
local trade. The first business building is said to have housed a grocery
and general store run by Lewis E. Moreley, who became Hinsdale's first
postmaster with the establishment of the Hinsdale Post Office in May,
1867. Isaac Bush soon opened another general store and in 1869 became
the second postmaster. Livery and baggage-delivery services also were
started, and a little frame hotel, the Hinsdale House, was opened by
D. S. Estabrook.

In the first few years the railroad directors must have rued their choice
of right-of-way more than once, as the tracks repeatedly sank in the
marshy flat that, south of Fullersburg, extended about a mile east of the
county line. It is said that on one occasion a locomotive mired and had
to be pulled out by two other engines, and the railroad's annual report
for 1865 mentioned the extensive earthwork that had been necessitated
by the sinking of the embankment. Actual suburban service, with a
special Hinsdale accommodation train, began in 1869, and by 1872 the
road had been double-tracked west through Hinsdale to Downers Grove.
The Chicago Fire of 1871 sent numerous families out to seek country
homesites, and among those who chose Hinsdale were Alanson Reed and
his son John W., piano and organ manufacturers and retailers, and H. L.
Story, founder of the Story & Clark Piano Company. By 1873 Hinsdale's
population was about 500, which meant that within a decade about 100
families had moved into the new town, some from Chicago, to become
commuting suburbanites, some from the surrounding countryside, to set
up the local businesses. Lots were now selling at $10 or more a front
foot.

On May 15, 1872, was launched the first local newspaper, the monthly
Hinsdale Index, published by T. E. Lonergan and Frederick S. Shewell.

On March 29, 1873, 62 ma ^ e citizens cast their ballots at the railway
station on the question of incorporating Hinsdale as a village. The vote
was 60 to 2 in favor of incorporation, and on April 3 the county judge
issued the decree of incorporation. The first village officers, elected soon
afterward, were: Joel Tiffany, president; N. H. Warren, clerk; Isaac L.
Hinds, police magistrate; E. P. Hinds, Winsor Leland, William Robbins,
George H. Wells, and W. W. Wood, trustees. Robbins became second
village president in 1874, and on his board was Stough. The early village
boards met successively in the railroad station and schoolhouse and over
a store.

In 1875 the North Side was incorporated into the school district, which
now took the name Hinsdale School District. In 1879 the schoolhouse
was enlarged and a four-year high school course was added.

When Stough's school terminated, probably in 1875, Stough's Hall
continued to be used for social gatherings. Here were held the annual
masquerade balls inaugurated in the early 1870*5 by the Stoughs social
events so important that special trains were run out from Chicago and
back. In the i88o's Stough sold the hall to H. A. Gardner, who renamed
it Gardner's Hall.

Grace Episcopal Church was organized in 1875 by a society started in
1872. Between then and 1898, five more churches were established in
Hinsdale, while to the Fullersburg area, in 1878, came its first and, to
date, only formally organized church, St. John's Evangelical. Both St.
John's and Zion Lutheran, organized in 1888, were outgrowths of the
Proviso Township Lutheran church, were started by German groups, and
held their first services in the Fullersburg schoolhouse. St. John's build-
ing, American Wood Gothic in style, was erected just north of Fullers-
burg in 1881. Zion Lutheran's first building was erected in Hinsdale in

i88 9 .

In the meantime, more business and professional people were settling
in the little business center south of the railroad: Dr. J. C. Merrick, first
doctor and druggist; J. H. Papenhausen, tailor (his business is still car-
ried on by a descendant) ; Isaac L. Hinds, general merchant and third
postmaster; John Bohlander, hardware merchant; the Fox brothers; Wil-
liam Evernden, druggist (and favorite of village youths till 1920) ; and
others.

Robbins had plowed and graded three streets of his original town
when he platted it. Later, other streets and sidewalks had been covered
with planks or cinders by both the real-estate men and the residents. In
the period 1875-80 the village board appropriated funds for the first pub-
lic improvements: grading and ditching the streets, graveling the main
business street, bridging Flagg Creek, and planking more walks.

I 12

There were no telephones yet, but, because so many railway officials
lived here, telegraph lines ran into numerous homes. The Cultivators'
Society, started in 1873, studied Shakespeare and gave readings. Baseball,
hunting, and fishing were leading sports, and Fourth-of-July celebrations
were noisy, eloquent, and long. Recherche was a pet word of journalists
describing Hinsdale doings. Republicans then as now, Hinsdaleans in
1880 raised a go-foot flagpole in the schoolyard to fly a Garfield- Arthur
banner, and after the election changed the name of Main Street to Gar-
field.

In 1886, when Hinsdale's population was estimated at 1,400, the Hins-
dale Building and Loan Association was organized with E. P. Hinds as
president. In that year, too, the village board not only built a village
hall but bought a horse-drawn fire engine to replace the donated hand-
drawn cart. Just when the volunteer fire department had been started is
not known. In 1888 the number of village trustees was increased to six,
and in 1890 the first village attorney, Linus C. Ruth, was appointed. In
1887 the Romanesque North Side School was built, and when the South
Side School burned down in 1893, ^ was replaced by Garfield School,
also Romanesque, built on the same site. Both are still in use.

The Hinsdale Library Association was incorporated in 1887, an out-
growth of a group which, with the aid of a Chicago publisher living in
Hinsdale, had started a rental library in 1886. This library, taken over
by the association and operated on a yearly-fee basis, formed the nucleus
of the public library opened in 1893. One of the association's directors
was Dr. Daniel K. Pearsons, millionaire Chicago real-estate man who,
upon his retirement in 1889, distributed his wealth among small colleges
and Chicago's cultural, social, and medical institutions. To Hinsdale's
library upon his death in 1912 went his home and the block of property
on which it stands, with the stipulation that the money realized from their
sale be used to build a public library bearing Pearsons' name. No use
has been made of the bequest to date, however, because the amount
received from the sale of the property has not approachd the cost of
erecting a modern library.

The village's second newspaper, the weekly Hinsdale Beacon, began
publication in 1888, founded by Charles H. Gushing, head of a Chicago
printing concern. Shortly afterward, G. K. Wright started the Herald.

A men's club started in 1887 was incorporated in 1889 as the Hinsdale
Club, which erected a big frame clubhouse in 1899 and became one of
the most exclusive clubs in the Chicago area. Three years after Marvin
Fox's death in 1889, his Fullersburg home was loaned by its new owner
to the Hinsdale Fresh Air Association for the purpose of giving groups
of Chicago's underprivileged mothers, children, and working girls week-
long summer vacations a project which lasted until 1920.

The year 1890 ushered in Hinsdale's era of public improvements with
the completion of the municipal water works on land given by John C.
Ross. In 1892 the sewer system and the hard-surfacing of the streets were
started. Early in 1896 came the municipal power plant, privately built
by a company organized by Village President J. C. F. Merrill and then
sold to the village for $i down and a $10,000 liability. A member and
later president of Chicago's Board of Trade, Merrill was the brother of
the local printer.

On October 5, 1895, when Daniel Merrill, one of the latter's three
sons, was 17, he launched the weekly Hinsdale Doings, which today is
Hinsdale's only newspaper, the Index having expired shortly after the
Doings appeared, the Beacon and Herald, around 1900.

Originating in a mothers' class, the Woman's Club of Hinsdale was
organized in 1893 with 100 charter members. A tennis club also was formed,
and in 1894 a group of 23 men laid out a small golf course that led to the
founding of the Hinsdale Golf Club in 1898. The Village League took up
civic problems and public welfare, later evolving into the Hinsdale Relief
Society, forerunner of today's Hinsdale Community Service.

More than a quarter of a century after Hinsdale's incorporation, it
was discovered that the village had neglected to notify the proper State
authorities of the incorporation proceedings and therefore never had
received a charter. On September 17, 1901, the charter finally was ac-
quired.

With the new century, the little hotel and general stores went, and a
number of the commuting executives became gentlemen farmers. One of
these was George B. Robbins, son of Hinsdale's founder, who started/ a
pure-bred Guernsey farm one of the first in Illinois north of Fullers-
burg. Named Natoma (Running Water), its 160 acres along Salt Creek
contained the hearthstone of the Fuller cabin. In 1908 Robbins sold
Natoma to Frank Osgood Butler, millionaire paper manufacturer, under
whom it became a model dairy farm and one of suburban Chicago's major
dairy centers. Butler also started the Oak Brook horse farm. Both F. O.
Butler and his father, Julius W., had moved to Hinsdale in the 1890*8.
The elder Butler died in 1912. When F. O. Butler moved away, about
1925, his son Paul operated Natoma until 1937, when the Butler Com-
pany bought the land and, in 1938, sold the dairy business (see Tour I) .
The company also owns the land and facilities of the Oak Brook Polo
Club, started by Paul Butler in 1924.

There was also Sedgeley Farm, on South County Line Road, where
Enos M. Barton, one of the founders of the Western Electric Company
kept a herd of 250 Swiss cows and about 60 horses. After his death in 1916,
part of his farm became the Chicago Guernsey Farm (see Tour I) .

114

Between 1902 and 1915, the Hinsdale Building and Loan Association
went into voluntary liquidation, paying in full plus a dividend of 8 per cent,
and its officers then organized the village's first bank, the Hinsdale State ; gas
was piped into the village under a franchise; the village board appropriated
$70,000 to replace the old wooden sidewalks with cement; Gardner's Hall
became the Swedish Baptist Church, familiarly known as the "Swedish
Maids' Church"; the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital opened, bringing
with it the nucleus of a Seventh Day Adventist church ; village mail delivery
was started, and Fullersburg's post office was discontinued, Fullersburg
becoming a star route emanating from Hinsdale ; a second bank, the Hinsdale
Trust and Savings, was opened; a telephone franchise was granted (Hinsdale
had had telephone service since about 1895, however probably through a
small, privately owned exchange) ; the first water-softening plant was built;
and a motion picture theater was opened.

In the igso's, which Hinsdale began with a population of 4,042, the
Ruth Lake Country Club was founded; the Hinsdale First National Bank
replaced the Trust and Savings; two more elementary schools were built,
and the old North Side School became a junior high school; Butler School,
its building and grounds north of Fullersburg donated by the Butler family,
replaced the old Torode School, which had absorbed Rabbit Hill School
shortly before; a new water-softening plant and the Memorial Building were
erected; and the village -manager system was tried out.

Five annexations were made to Hinsdale between 1910 and 1923, the
fiftieth anniversary of its incorporation. The fifth of these was Fullersburg.
Now at last the country cousin was placed on an equal footing with the city-
bred sophisticate, gaining through the move the long overdue stature and
advantages of a municipality, giving in return a rich heritage in the past.

Four more annexations enlarged Hinsdale between 1924 and 1928.
During the 1930*5 when Federal funds flowed into public projects to employ
the unemployed, the village plan commission turned its attention to the
erecting of new public buildings, the development of parks, the planting of
more trees, the installation of a booster water main, the cleaning of Flagg
Creek (part of the sewage disposal system), and the rounding of street
corners in the old section of town to increase the radius of the intersections
from the 10 feet of horse-and-buggy days to the 30 feet needed today.

Points of Interest

i. CASTLE INN (open to the public as an antique shop], 220 East
Ogden Avenue (US 34), one of the few remaining coach taverns of early
Illinois, was built by Orente and David Grant about 1835. Of historic interest
on several accounts, it deserves better care than it has received. Its age

and significance are instantly revealed to even the most casual glance by
its porch, which, built to stand slightly above the corduroy highway of
pioneer days, is considerably below the level of the present-day road. Both
Lincoln and Douglas are said to have stayed at Castle Inn. Before the Civil
War, the tavern was a station on the underground railway. In tavern days,
the room at the west end of the ground floor served as a barroom. The two
rooms east of the entrance were parlors. Behind them was a dining room.
On the second floor, the east room was a ballroom and the four rooms in
the middle, bedrooms. The room at the west end was unfinished. At one
time steps on the outside of the east elevation provided an outdoor entrance
to the second floor. In this tavern, in 1862, was born the world-famous
dancer, Loie Fuller.

2. The TOLLHOUSE operated by Barto Van Velzer in the days when
Ogden Avenue was the Southwestern Plank Road now is an addition on the
rear of Van Velzer's former residence (private) at 225 East Ogden Avenue
(US 34). Benjamin Fuller's tavern was a short distance west of here.

3. At 948 York Street is the BENJAMIN FULLER HOUSE (private) .
In this two-story frame building, probably dating from the i84o's, lived the
man who, in 1851, platted Fullersburg, which today comprises the extreme
northern section of Hinsdale. One of the earliest of Brush Hill's pioneers,
Benjamin Fuller first came here on horseback in 1834 or 1835. He died in
this house in 1868.

4. The west section of the residence at 108 East Ogden Avenue (US
34), comprises the JACOB AND MORELL FULLER HOUSE (private),
which probably was constructed in the early i84o's. Jacob acquired the
land on which it stands from his son Benjamin, and it is thought that he
then moved here from the original Fuller cabin, built in 1835, a mile' or
so northwest. Morell Fuller, another of Jacob's sons, later acquired the
house and added the east section. Inside, the old part is clearly distinguish-
able by its low ceilings and its balustrade of hand-turned cherry wood.

5. The ii/2- st ry frame house at 32 West Ogden Avenue (US 34) is the
MARVIN FOX HOUSE (private), former home of one of Fullerburg's
leading early families, built about 1852. From 1892 until 1920 it served as
the Hinsdale Fresh Air Home.

6. At Maumell and Garfield Streets is the entrance to the FULLERS-
BURG CEMETERY, established in 1862 by the families of Benjamin Fuller
and Marvin Fox. As Fullersburg grew, it came to be used as a village bury-
ing ground. Many of the earliest pioneers of Brush Hill, as well as Du Page
County Civil War soldiers, are buried in it.

7. The HINSDALE SANITARIUM AND HOSPITAL, 120 North
Oak Street, is primarily a hospital today, with a capacity of 125 patients.

116

It was founded in 1904 by Dr. David Paulson and his wife, Dr. Mary
Paulson. Ardent Seventh Day Adventists, the Paulsons formerly had been
connected with the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan and in 1899 had
founded a mission and medical center in Chicago as a branch of the
Battle Creek institution. The Paulsons were induced to transfer their
activities to Hinsdale by Charles B. Kimbell, local trustee and manager of
estates, who had been so favorably impressed with their work when he
was a patient at the Chicago center that he made it possible for them to
acquire the late Judge C. G. Beckwith's estate by making them a so-year,
non-interest-bearing loan. The Beckwith home, built in the 1870'$ by
John W. Reed, is today the student nurses' dormitory. Frame wings added
between 1904 and 1912, with the brick addition completed in 1921, form
the bulk of the main building. The old gardener's cottage is one of about
20 supplementary cottages. The Alanson Reed home, now an employees'
residence, formerly was a charity ward. A Seventh Day Adventist church,
to which most of the nonmedical staff members belong, meets in the hospi-
tal chapel.

8. The MEMORIAL BUILDING, 19 E. Chicago Ave., an attractive
Georgian colonial structure of red brick with white simplified Corinthian
columns, clock tower, and trim, designed by Edwin H. Clarke, houses the
village administrative offices, public library, and the headquarters of
the local American Legion post and the Hinsdale Community Service.
Built by public subscription and dedicated July 4, 1928, it memorializes
"all those who on land, sea, or in the air have offered their lives in the
service of our country." The sculpture and dedicatory murals in the foyer
were done, respectively, by Oskar J. W. Hansen and Ralph Fletcher Sey-
mour.

The public library, which occupies the north wing of the hall, has
16,000 volumes (open Mon., Thurs., Sat., y-(); other weekdays, 9-6).

9. The J. W. BUTLER HOUSE (private), on the northwest corner of
First St. and Orchard PL, dates from about 1890, when the head of the
J. W. Butler Paper Company moved to Hinsdale from Chicago, where the
firm had originated in 1844 as a jobbing house for the paper mills started
about 1841 at St. Charles, Illinois, by Butler's brother Oliver.

10. Atj230 E. First St. is the red-brick F. O. BUTLER HOUSED
(private), builtTn itigb Dy'the son of J. W. Butler. While engaged in the
paper business in Chicago, F. O. Butler operated the well-known NatomaO
dairy farm north of Hinsdale from 1908 until he moved away about 1925^

1 1. The remodeled stone residence at 425 East Sixth Street is the second
WILLIAM ROBBINS HOUSE (private), built in 1864 by Hinsdale's
founding father. In the 1890*8 it became the home of C. L. Washburn,
Chicago lumber dealer, who, with his father-in-law, O. P. Bassett, who
lived in the house directly west, established a well-known greenhouse.

117

NAPERVILLE

General Information

POPULATION (1930):
5,118 (See p. 234.)

DISTANCE FROM CHICAGO:
30 mi.

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION (from Chicago) :
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R.

ACCOMMODATIONS :

Y.M.C.A., 34 S. Washington St.; men only. Private tourist homes; information
obtainable at Y.M.C.A. The usual restaurants .and taverns.

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICE:
City Hall.

BUSINESS SECTION:

Four blocks S. of railroad station, centered in three blocks bounded by Benton
Ave., Washington and Main Sts., and the river.

STREET ORDER AND NUMBERING:

Streets run N. and S. ; avenues, E. and W. Numbering is N. and S. from
Benton Ave., E. and W. from Washington St.

RECREATION, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPECIAL EVENTS:

Centennial Park, along river at SW. corner of city; entered from Jackson Ave.
Usual park facilities plus swimming pool.

Burlington Park (county forest preserve No. 6), west-central edge of city;
entered from Jefferson Ave. Picnic facilities include open fireplaces, drinking
water, rest rooms. Small herd of elk in park. Fishing.

Central Park, extending S. from Benton Ave., between Library and Court St.
Weekly summer concerts by Naperville Municipal Band; other entertainment.

Pioneer Park (county forest preserve No. 18), 1.4 mi. S. of city on Washington
St. Picnic facilities include drinking water. Fishing.

Goodrich Woods (county forest preserve) , 2 mi. SE. of city, Goodrich Rd.
Naperville Country Club, 1 mi. E. of city, Chicago Ave.; daily fee course; dining
room.

Naper Theater, Jefferson Ave. between Washington and Main Sts. (motion
picture) .

Concerts by Woman's Club and Y.M.C.A. choruses, college glee clubs, band,
and orchestra.

Flower Show, June,at Y.M.C.A.

Mid-West Institute of International Relations sessions at North Central Collegej
approx. 10 days, end of June; information at 53 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago.

Fourth of July Celebration, 2-3 days; Centennial Pk., Kroehler Athletic Field.

118

NAPEE.VILLE

Time: The Present Setting: The Past

YING among the broad, rolling hills of the
southern half of Du Page County is its oldest town, Naperville, where
time-worn houses and work buildings call forth the adjective "quaint."
To wander its streets is to live for an hour in the past, or to be trans-
ported to an inland New England village. White frame houses most
of them Greek Revival in style alternate with brown or grey weather-
beaten structures that breathe their oldness to the passerby, and mingle
with a few Civil War era colonial bricks. A pioneer cabin, its walls of
ragged clapboards, its floors supported by logs, sags under the weight of
more than a century on the bank of the meandering stream. A tavern,
proud and renowned in the 1830*5, slouches gaunt and still on a quiet
corner that once resounded with horses' hooves and the crack of the stage-
driver's whip. Within leaning walls lie many museum pieces, some in
use, some being preserved with that reverence for things old often found
among those who live in small towns with a past. (See p. 232.)

The once-busy waterfront is now a ghost street, its water-power mill
gone, one of its big brewery buildings idle, its railroad tracks unused.
The Du Page River was a sizeable, active stream when the pioneers
found it. No longer capable of running a mill, its western branch flows
along the outer edge of the forest preserve at the city's western extremity,
turns east to form the southern boundary of Centennial Park, continues
into town as far as Washington Street, then winds its way out in a south-
erly direction. A creek west of Main Street, now tiled over, formerly
marked the eastern timber line of the grove in which the first settlers took
refuge, woods so thick that children lost their way in them even after
clearings had been made and several houses erected. One tree remains
of this original timber, standing among others of later growth on the
south bank of the river at Eagle Street.

Town of contrasts and contradictions, Naperville, for all its memories,

is in spots very much a city of today. Moreover, it is a city of some im-
portance in its own right. Having started out an industrial as well as
agricultural settlement, it has developed in the former respect, substituted
horticulture for much of its agriculture, and has avoided becoming a
suburb of commuters. From a present population estimated at 5,500,
only about 300 persons work in Chicago. Local business includes two
banks; coal, grain, feed, and lumber companies; dairies; a boiler works;
and a storage plant. One of Naperville's greenhouses specializes in
orchids.

Most important of Naperville industries is the Kroehler Manufactur-
ing Company, world's largest makers of upholstered furniture. About
550 men and 100 women work in the plant, which constitutes the chief
means of employment in the city. Also of national scope are Charles
Bond's greenhouse, which ships orchids all over the country; the J. L.
Nichols Company, publishers of the Nichols Business Guide; and the
National Bag Company, manufacturers of parcel post, coin, and indi-
vidual tea bags. Since the first edition of the Business Guide in 1886,
more than four million copies of the periodically revised work have been
sold throughout the United States. Publication offices only are in Naper-
ville. Founded in 1866, Naperville Nurseries, Inc., covers two large tracts
of land, one within the city, the other just outside (see Tour). From the
Prince Castles ice cream plant, started here in 1931, are operated 13 stores
in other Illinois towns. The firm name is derived from that of the owner
of the affiliated Dixon plant, a Mr. Prince. In a big red frame building
just north of the old waterfront is the Naperville Cheese Company. The
Naperville Mushroom Farming Company sells its product almost ex-
clusively to a canned soup manufacturer. Since 1904 the Arthur Beidel-
man Company has been manufacturing burial vaults, monuments, and
garden accessories, which are sold throughout the immediate area.

Four parks and a forest preserve lie within the corporate limits,
contributing to the attractiveness of the natural setting and the pervad-
ing air of unhurried ease. A fifth park, outside the present limits, is a
recent acquisition of the city. Naperville is surrounded by numerous
farms.

Together with the affiliated Evangelical Theological Seminary, North
Central College adds to the cultural life of the city and has developed
here a center of the Evangelical denomination. Because most of the
students come from out of town, the two institutions have had a part in
Naperville's economic growth. In 1937 the Mid-West Institute of Inter-
national Relations selected the college as the permanent location of its

120

annual sessions, thus making Naperville a yearly mecca for teacners,
students, social workers, and ministers, who come to hear authorities of
world-wide reputation discuss international and interracial problems.

Two politically independent weekly newspapers the Clarion and the
Sun give to Naperville's citizens all the local news and the headline
topics of national and foreign interest. The public library dates from
shortly before the turn of the century. One of the first schools in the
region was opened here in the fall of 1831. Today, in addition to the
college, there are two public elementary schools with an attendance of
587 pupils, a parochial school with 332, and a public high school with 430.

Tracing its formal religious services back to 1833, Naperville now
has ten churches, embracing the German Baptist Brethren, Catholic,
Congregational, Episcopal, Evangelical, Lutheran, and Methodist faiths.
The Dunkards, who established the Church of the Brethren in 1856, are
less rigid than they used to be, but they still perform the ritual, known
as the love feast, of washing one another's feet.

Music ranks high among the cultural and recreational pursuits.
About 775 adults and children are actively engaged in musical groups,
which comprise the Y. M. C. A. and Woman's Club choruses, a municipal
band, five college organizations, ten church choirs, and bands, orchestras,
and glee clubs of the public schools.

Among numerous other cultural, social, fraternal, and service organ-
izations are the Garden Club, which has a membership of about 250
men and women and holds an annual flower show, and the Knife and
Fork Club, an informal business men's weekly-luncheon group active in
the promotion of civic improvements. Most of the local business men
belong to this as well as to the Association of Commerce. The oldest
organization is the Masonic Order, chartered locally in 1849. Next, is
the I.O.O. F., dating from 1850. The W. C. T. U., established here in
1883, now has more than 250 members. The Walter Blanchard Post of
the G. A. R. mustered its original 22 members in old Scott's Hall on
January 7, 1884, taking its name from Captain Blanchard of Downers
Grove, killed at Ringgold Gap, Georgia, November 27, 1863. It was this
post which erected the monument in Central Park in honor of the Naper-
ville soldiers and sailors who fought in the Black Hawk, Mexican, Civil,
and Spanish-American Wars.

Although 95 percent of Naperville's residents are native Americans,
three-quarters of them are of German descent. There is no Negro popu-
lation. Most of the present inhabitants are descendants, if not of the
original settlers, at least of those who followed close upon their footsteps

121

and helped to build a city from the straggling prairie settlement. Com-
munity spirit is high perhaps higher than in any other town in the
county.

The city operates under the commission form of government and is
debtless. For all its external artlessness, Naperville is fully equipped with
the necessities of modern daily life. A fire department, now 64 years old.
consists of five regular members and twenty-five volunteers. The police
force of seven has little work outside of traffic control. The first municipal
wells were deep, tapping the water supply in the St. Peter sandstone. But
when extensive use of that source in this area caused the water line to
recede as much as eight feet a year, shallow wells, to the Niagara lime-
stone source, were substituted. Sewage is disposed of through modern
chemical treatment, but the problem has not been entirely solved and
Naperville is one of the communities criticized by downstream towns for
polluting the Du Page River.

The Thrilling Thirties (1831- 1839)

In February, 1831, Capt. Joseph Naper of Ashtabula, Ohio, came to
look over the region around Chicago. Since 1828 he had been master of
the schooner Telegraph, owned by Capt. Benjamin Naper (relationship
unknown). This two-masted schooner, with one deck, a scroll head, and
a square stern, was built on the bank of the Ashtabula River. Joseph
Naper and his brother John, also a seafaring man, decided to settle on
the fine prairie land that Joseph had seen west of Chicago. When
the Telegraph arrived at the mouth of the Chicago River on July 15,
1831, the Naper brothers delivered it over to a new owner and, with
their families and other pioneers who had made the voyage with them,
hastened out to the good land.

There were about 50 or 60 people in the Naper colony, including all
the children. Trekking out to the west branch of the Du Page River,
they unloaded their belongings and put up their first rude huts at a
spot about two miles north of Bailey Hobson's claim and a mile south of
Christopher Paine.

In the autumn the Naper brothers erected a sawmill, using iron-work
they had brought for the purpose from Ohio. Christopher Paine built
the dam, laying logs, which he held in place with stones, across the water,
and then building up the dam with mud and buckwheat straw. By the
spring of 1832 the Du Page River's first mill was in running order.

In partnership with P. F. W. Peck, who had come to the settlement

122

shortly after its founding, the Napers put up a trading post, where they
carried on an extensive business with both settlers and Indians. A Cook
County merchant's license for the operation of this store was granted to
Joseph Naper in 1831.

The members of Naper Settlement cooperated with neighboring pio-
neers over a radius of several miles to the south and east in establishing
a school. On September 14, 1831, the following contract was drawn up
in John Murray's handwriting:

We, the undersigned, whose names are here affixed, do agree
to hire Lester Peet to teach a school in our respective District, for
the term of four months, for the consideration of Twelve Dollars
per month. Said teacher doth agree on his part to teach a regular
English school, teaching Spelling, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic
and English Grammar if required. And the understanding is, that
said teacher is to board with the scholars. School is to commence
by the i.^th of November next. N. B. Each subscriber doth agree
to pay his proportionable part of the teacher's wages, according to
the number of scholars that he subscribes for or sends. And it is
likewise understood that Joseph Naper, Christopher Paine and
Bailey Hobson be and are a committee to superintend said school,
and to see that there is a suitable house built in due season.

Twenty-two scholars were subscribed for on this contract, signed by
12 men. The school building, a log cabin 14 feet square, was erected at
the present intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Ewing Street.

Captain Naper had met Stephen J. Scott, settler at the forks of the
Du Page River in present Will County, on his first trip to the region and
engaged him to break ten acres of prairie land for him in the spring.
Owing to the lateness of the season when they arrived, however, the
Napers had been able to plant only buckwheat and rutabagas, and it was
necessary to send three men to get provisions from the established farms
along the Wabash. The winter was unusually severe, and the little settle-
ment was practically buried beneath four feet of snow. Many wild ani-
mals starved or froze to death. Scantily supplied with food, the settlers
sometimes had little to eat except corn, w r hich they pounded by hand
into meal, or ground on the crude gristmill built after the completion of
the sawmill. Christopher Paine had made the grinding stones from
boulders, and each settler ground his own grain, using his team of oxen
or horses for power.

Then came the memorable spring of 1832. Crops were in the ground,
and the settlers were busy. improving their homes and rooting themselves
more deeply in the new land. Their labors were suddenly interrupted on

123

the iyth of May. Mrs. Bailey Hobson told the story of that day in
these words:

... we were just setting down to dinner when a man and boy
came in from a field near by and began to talk about the Indians
coming. The boy said they were killing and burning everything in
their way, and were at Hollenback, 30 miles away (that is where
Newark is now located). . . . The report was exaggerated, but there
was some shooting, but the fright was a good deal worse than it
should have been. I don't think we would have all been killed had
we remained at home, but I did think so then. A friendly Indian
came and advised us to leave. . . . We were frightened and went
into the woods where we remained until night. Then I came back
to the house with my husband and helped him fix the wagon and
hitch up the oxen for the journey. ... In the night, we loaded up
and started for Chicago, where we arrived the next day about sun-
down.

This was the beginning, as far as Naper Settlement was concerned, of
the Black Hawk War. Some say it was the son of Shabbona, the friendly
Potawatomi chief, who had brought the news to Naper Settlement, some
say it was Half Day's boy.

All the families except Christopher Paine's immediately left for Fort
Dearborn, some of the men remaining to look after the houses and
crops. The next day David Laughton, Indian trader and owner of a
tavern on the Des Plaines River, came with three Potawatomies and a
half-breed named Burrasaw in search of information regarding the ru-
mored invasion. Capt. Joseph Naper and a few other settlers decided to
join them in a trip over to the Potawatomi camp in Big Woods, a grove
that extended about eight miles in a north-easterly direction from Aurora.
They found the whole tribe occupied in a feast and not entirely sober,
but succeeded in drawing from the*m the information that a large band
of Sauks was encamped in Blackberry Woods, only four miles away.
Although some of the men said they would try to prevail upon the Sauks
to spare Naper Settlement, an old squaw warned the party to run for
their lives. Laughton, safe because of his position as a trader, remained
at the camp, while Naper and his companions hastened back to their
homes. There they made preparations for flight and awaited further
news. Laughton returned with about 50 Potawatomies and a warning to
depart immediately, as a band of Sauks had crossed the Fox River and
had refused to listen to the pleas for mercy. Their loaded wagons stand-
ing ready, and the things it was necessary to leave behind hidden in the
well, the remaining inhabitants of Naper Settlement started at once for
Chicago, where they arrived on May 20. At this time Fort Dearborn was
unoccupied as a military post, the troops of the garrison having been

124

I
sent to Fort Howard at Green Bay the preceding summer. The panic had

already become so widespread that the fort was fast filled.

When the men from Naper Settlement made known at the fort their
intention to return to look after their property, a company to go with
them was formed from Gholson Kercheval's volunteers, under the com-
mand of Jesse B. Brown. Leaving the fort on May 21, they spent the night
at Laughton's Tavern, and reached Naper Settlement the next day, where
they found that nothing had been disturbed. They continued on to Plain-
field, where settlers had erected a rude fort, and then on to Holderman's
Grove (Newark) . While there, an express from Ottawa brought the news
of a massacre at Indian Creek, where they found the bodies of the 15
victims. After burying the corpses, the volunteers went down to Ottawa,
from which point, joined by a reinforcement of 12 men, they started their
return march. They found Holderman's Grove in ruins and the settlers
of Plainfield so alarmed that they abandoned their fort and joined the
march to Chicago.

After their return to the fort, two new companies were organized.
Robert Kinzie headed a band of 50 Potawatomi scouts and runners, and
Capt. Jean Baptiste Beaubien commanded a company of about 25 whites
that included members of Naper Settlement. On June i, they started
out, Kinzie's band going directly to the settlement, Beaubien's making a
detour in order to inspect Capt. Harry Boardman's property at the Scott
Settlement, which they found unmolested. W 7 hen they reached Ells-
worth's Grove. Beaubien's company saw smoke rising from the vicinity
of Naper's house. John Naper volunteered to investigate. He was to fire
one shot if he found the other company, two, if Indians. Soon after
his departure, two shots were heard, and, when Naper did not appear,
it was concluded that he had been killed. Two members of the company
became frightened and started to ride away without orders. Captain
Beaubien rushed after them, but his cries of "Halt!" were disregarded.
Running them down, he drew his pistol, shouting, "You run? By Gar,
you run, I shoot you!"

Shortly after Beaubien's return with the deserters, Naper appeared
with the news that the settlement was safely in the hands of Kinzie's men.
Relieved and hungry, Beaubien and his men hurried to the village, where
a feast and a party ensued. The next day, Beaubien's company left for
Big Woods, after first tying strips of sheeting to Kinzie's Indians, so that
they would not be shot by mistake. They scoured the prairies all day in
vain and returned to the village disheartened. On the following morning
they started back to Chicago, leaving Kinzie and his scouts to keep watch.

125

About the middle of June, Joseph Naper, Harry Boardman, and
other members of the Naper and surrounding settlements went to Ottawa
for assistance in building a fort at Naper Settlement. General Atkinson
gave them the services of Capt. Morgan L. Payne of Joliet and 50 Dan-
ville volunteers. One tragedy marked the building of Fort Payne. In
order to get materials which had been prepared for roofing shingles in
the nearby grove, Captain Payne sent out some young men with a wagon.
A volley from ambush killed one or two of them, and the horses were
taken by their assailants. This occurred on the same day that a Michigan
company under Col. Edward Brooks, sent out to escort the settlers back
to Fort Dearborn, had left the settlement, believing that the alarm which
had brought them out was false.

On July 10, Gen. Winfield Scott arrived at Fort Dearborn with part
of his troops and on July 29 Scott started out for the front, going in
advance of the main body of troops, with a few staff officers, a dozen men,
and two baggage wagons. Young Robert N. Murray was one of the
teamsters. Following an old Indian trail westward, Scott spent a night
at Fort Payne, on his way to Dixon's Ferry on- Rock River, from which
point he proceeded to Fort Armstrong at Rock Island. However, before
Scott and his army got into action, news came that the war had ended
August 2, with the battle of the Bad Axe.

It was sometime in July that Capt. Joseph Naper's own company had
been organized, too late to do active service, as a company, in the war.

Defeat lost to the Sauk and Foxes their land in northwestern Illinois,
and they were banished forever beyond the Mississippi. Under the Treaty
of 1833, through which the rest of northern Illinois was ceded to the
United States, the Government provided for payment of claims made and
approved against the United Nations of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and
Potawatomi Indians, by an apportionment of tneir ready money. Among
the many whites who entered claims was Joseph Naper, in the amount
of $71.

With the Indians gone, Naper Settlement grew fast. Its fort
became a barnyard, and the community took its place in the civic affairs
of the county. It belonged to Scott Precinct, one of the voting precincts
into which Cook County, organized in March, 1831, had been divided
On August 6, 1832, a poll was held at Joseph Naper's house for the pur-
pose of electing a State senator and representative, county sheriff, coroner,
and commissioners. Joseph Naper, Harry Boardman, and Stephen M.
Salisbury were election judges.

By the end of 1832 Naper Settlement numbered 180. Wooded land

120

all about the region was being claimed rapidly and the bona fide settlers
were aready being harrassed by claim jumpers and land sharks.

Although most of the immigrants to northern Illinois in this period
were Yankees, from New England and New York, the original Naper
colony had been composed, at least in large part, of Hoosiers from Ohio.
The straight-laced Yankees who filtered into the colony, or settled near it,
cast a stern eye upon their neighbors, and the remarks of various old
settlers indicate in general that the Hoosiers lived up to their reputation
for impiety, intemperance, and slothtulness. Although less intellectual
than the pioneers fresh from the East, the Hoosiers were jolly, and ex-
perience on a previous frontier had made them rugged and brave. Re-
calling the early days of Naper Settlement, Judge Robert N. Murray
said, half a century later:

... we were a sort of free born people with broad Christian
sympathies. We believed in doing just about as we pleased, so we
did not interfere with the rights of other men. The good brethren
of the East Branch Settlement [along the east branch of the Du
Page River, in Lisle Township] who came out here from New
England in 1832 used to come up here with their iron bed stead
and try to fit us to it, but they found it useless, and gave up the
people of Naper Settlement as children of the Devil, for whom
there was no hope.

George Martin, a new arrival at the settlement in 1833, wrote back
to his people in Scotland:

They like the dollars very well but they seem to know nothing
about farming and do not care much about work. . . . To say the
least -of it I never thought to hear and see so much swearing and
Sabbath breaking but in justice to them I must also say in my
travels through the States of Michigan and Illinois I never saw a
lock on their doors- when I asked them what was the reason, they
told me they would not like to live in a country where they were
required to lock their doors. ... A large party to come out and
bring a MINISTER with them, would ^find it a very comfortable
thing-but the FAITHLESSNESS of men is so great here. . . .

Through the influence of the Yankees, who followed close upon the
heels of Naper Settlement's Hoosiers, four religious societies took root
in the locality during the i83o's. Founded on July 13, 1833, by the Rev.
Jeremiah Porter and the Rev. N. Catlin Clark, missionaries in this area,
with the help of the Rev. C. W. Babbitt of Tazewell County, the first was
Congregational. Living within a radius of several miles of Naper Settle-
ment, its 19 members were mostly from the East Branch Settlemen.t and
Downers Grove. Meetings were held at Naper Settlement's schoolhouse
and in the East Branch colony. Punctuality was insisted upon, and a

127

committee called upon absentees for an excuse at the next meeting at-
tended by them. In 1834 the society raised $100 to pay the expenses of a'
regular preacher and the Reverend Mr. Clark, resident of Lisle Township,
was the first to hold the position.

In the fall of 1833 the Rev. Stephen R. Beggs was appointed Methodist
circuit rider for a district of 12 stations that included Naper Settlement.

Early in 1837 Zion (now First) Evangelical Church was organized
with 15 members, and in June of thtat year the Rev. Jacob Boas, who also
led services at Duncklee's Grove, Addison Township, preached the first
sermon. Meetings were held in various homes and in the schoolrooms
until the erection of a church building the first in the village in 1841,
on land donated by Joseph Naper.

St. John's Episcopal Church was founded in 1838. The first Episcopal
visitation was made the following year by the Rt. Rev. Philander Chase.

The year 1834 was an important one. Joseph Naper was one of the
Cook County Commissioners who laid out one of the first legally established
roads through what later became Du Page County, and Dr. John Taylor
Temple started stagecoach service from Chicago to both Ottawa and Galena
by way of Naperville (see p. 19).

Coincident with the opening of the Galena and Ottawa stage lines,
a tavern was built by George Laird. Called Pre-Emption House, it im-
mediately took a leading place among the wayside inns of the day, and
maintained its popularity for many years.

Bailey Hobson, whose settlement in the territory antedated that of the
Xapers by five months, started a large gristmill in 1834, in partnership
with Harry Boardman. Erected on the west branch of the Du Page,
about two miles south of Naper Settlement, this was the first flour mill
to run by water power within the limits of present Du Page County.
As soon as it was in running order, farmers came from all around with
their grain. As it was often necessary for his customers to wait over a
day for their flour, Hobson gave them accommodation at the large frame
house which he built near the mill, and which thus became known as
Hobson's Tavern. From the establishment of the gristmill, the Hobson
family came to be inseparably identified with Naper Settlement.

In 1836, anticipating the general movement throughout the State
toward improvement of agricultural methods, the Naperville Agricultural
Works started manufacturing the Naperville Plow, which became widely
known and used in the region.

On March i, 1836, a post office was established at Naperville with

128

M^i

Once Parf of Millionaires' flow, Wow Elmhurst's Public Library

County Seat, Wheaton: Old Courthouse, Sheriffs House, New Courthouse

Typical of (he Civil War Era Is the Willard Scott House, Naperville

Naperville's Kroehler Company Is the World's Largest Upholstered-furniture Maker

Elmhurst Has Been Quarrying Since 1883: Elmhurst-Chicago Stone Company

Cottage Hill Avenue Gave Elmhurst Its Name in 1868

Alexander Howard as first postmaster. Capt. Joseph Naper seaman,
merchant, miller, soldier, farmer became a representative in the State
legislature in 1836, a position he held until 1842, to be re-elected in 1852
for a term of two years. Opposed to the entire liquor licensing law, he
introduced a bill for its repeal in the session of 1839-40.

Willard Scott, son of Stephen J. Scott, moved up to Naperville from
"The Forks" in 1838. He brought his family with him and immediately
set about becoming one of the town's leading citizens. His first enter-
prise was the building of a three-story frame hostelry called the Naper-
ville Hotel.

The first election of officers for Du Page County was held at the
Pre-Emption House on the first Monday in May, 1839. Lewis Ellsworth
was elected first school superintendent. Another meeting at the Pre-
Emption in June resulted in the selection of Naperville as county seat.
Bailey Hobson, as county commissioner, secured a pre-emption on a
tract of land for the public square, and about $5,000 was subscribed by
Naperville residents for building a courthouse.

Banks and Planks (1840-1860)

A. S. Jones began manufacture of the Jones Plow in 1840. Later his
plant was absorbed by the Oliver Plow Company. Vaughn and Peck are
also listed as subsequent owners of the factory. In 16 years the output
gre\/ to 2,500 plows annually. Also in 1840 the Naper sawmill was torn
down and a gristmill with two run of stones put up in its place. The
latter venture was given the name Du Page Valley Mills. Joseph Naper
ran an ice business on the side, cutting and selling the ice that accumu-
lated on his mill pond.

The various local temperance groups banded together to form, on
February 16, 1841, the Du Page County Temperance Society, an auxiliary
of the State Society. The meeting was held at of all places the Pie-
Emption House, whose whisky barrels made stains even yet visible on
its aged floors. (See p. 232.)

Willard Scott established a big general store in the early forties.
Empty now, the old building still stands on the city's main business street.
To Naperville belongs the distinction of having started the first public
library (1845) in the county. Its 30 subscribers elected five trustees, and
shares were sold at $5, subject to an annual tax. The shareholders
donated some of the books, others were purchased, and a system of fines
and penalties was instituted. This library lasted about six years.

129

By the end of the 1840*5 German, English, Scotch, and Pennsylvania
Dutch settlers about equalled the number of immigrants from New
England. Money was scarce in this period, and credit popular. Doctors
and lawyers were beginning to hang out their shingles. A number of
farmers were making a special business of carting merchandise for local
sale back from their trips to the Chicago grain markets.

The ravages of the widespread cholera epidemic of 1848 took many
lives, but it left no permanent scar on Naperville, however, and the year
1849 saw the establishment of the Du Page County Nurseries by Lewis
Ellsworth; of the Naperville Brewery by John and Nicholas Stenger; of
another hotel, the New York House, by Robert N. Murray; and of the
county's first newspaper. Ellsworth's nurseries and greenhouse ushered
into the county the business which has become more and more successful
throughout this area. The brewery was for many years one of Naperville's
leading industries. The newspaper had a less fortuitous history.

A group of business men had offered to buy a printing press and type
for anyone who would publish a newspaper at Naperville. Hearing of
the offer, Charles J. Sellon, a stranger to the local citizenry/ had hastened
to accept. Supplied with $500 worth of second-hand equipment pur-
chased from a Chicago paper, Sellon brought out the Du Page County
Recorder on December i, 1849. The sneet seemed bound to succeed,
since it began with a circulation of 500 and the support of the county's
business men. Sellon, however, was lazy, extravagant, and incompetent.
The non-partisan political policy, agreed upon because of the diverse
affiliations of the paper's backers, did not suit Sellon. When his funds
ran low, he sought the financial aid of a couple of politicians, in return
for which he arbitrarily changed the paper's policy. Discontinuing the
Recorder at the end of nine months, he issued in its place the Democratic
Plaindealer. At about the same time, playing up to the growing interest
in the temperance movement which was spreading throughout the State
at this time, Sellon began publication of another weekly called Daughter
of Temperance. The increased cost of production, coupled with a sharp
decline in patronage because of resentment against his unscrupulousness,
quickly brought Sellon into financial difficulties. To save himself he
formed a partnership with H. S. Humphrey, a journeyman printer on his
staff, but in November, 1850, Sellon left Naperville, ostensibly to drum
up business, and never returned. Behind him were left $500 worth of
unpaid bills and a destitute family.

Messrs. Keith and Barnes assumed responsibility to Sellon's creditors,
and with Humphrey began publication of the Du Page County Observer

130

in January, 1851. The still-rankling memory of Sellon, however, pre-
vented the new. paper from achieving success. In 1852 Humphrey sold out
to Gershom Martin, and in 1854 the other partners dropped out. Martin
continued alone until the following September, when, having less than
275 subscribers, the paper was suspended. Charles Keith bought Martin
out, got a larger press, and in November issued the Du Page County
Journal, a great improvement over its predecessors. A partnership with
J. N. Edson did not last, long and Keith's place was taken by E. M. Day,
who in 1856 became sole owner and editor.

The middle of the nineteenth century brought to Naperville the
much-heralded Southwestern Plank Road. Up to this point it was
identical with the old stage route. On January 3, 1850, the following
advertisement appeared in the Du Page County Recorder:

Plank Wanted We will take anv amount of white or burr oak
plank from those indebted to us, if delivered at Naperville, or any
other place on the line of the Naperville and Oswego plank road,
before the first day of April, in payment of their accounts, or will
pay goodj for them. The planks to be eight feet long, three inches
thick, and not more than thirteen inches wide. 500,000 feet of
plank wanted for the stock of the company, Naper and Skinner;
Lyman and Company; W. Scott & Son; A. H. Howajrd & Company;
A." Keith; H. L. Peaslee and Company; George Martin.

By the end of 1851 the Southwestern Plank Road reached Naperville.
From there it was extended farther west by various corporations.

In 1848 the same year that work on the Southwestern Plank Road had
begun construction of the Galena 8c Chicago Union Railroad had been
started. The directors of the railroad had urged the residents of Naper-
ville to take stock in the company; they had offered to lay tracks through
the town without financial assistance, if only given the right-of-way; they
had suggested making Naperville a junction point all to no avail. Naper-
ville's leading citizens were satisfied with their plank road. Soon, but
much too late, they saw their mistake. Wheat and other farm products
went rolling into Chicago over rails, and commercial traffic over the
planks dwindled into inconsequence. In 1862, when another chance for
a railroad came along, a thoroughly chastened Naperville grabbed at it,
ruefully looking sidewise at her half-rotted planks, which were finally
torn up and given to the disappointed stockholders.

With the division of Du Page County into civil townships in 1850,
the Naperville community found itself divided, as far as government
was concerned, between two civil units. The west portion belonged to
Naperville Township and the east to Lisle.

The Naperville Academy, a private school, was incorporated in 1851
and opened at the close of the following year. Books and funds of the
public library were turned over to the Academy Association, which
included among its members John Naper, Lewis Ellsworth, and John
Collins. George Martin donated 40 cords of stone for the new building
from his quarry along the river. The first principal, the Rev. N. F. Atkins,
was succeeded by C. W. Richmond, co-author with H. F. Vallette, of the
first Du Page County history, published in 1857. In addition to the
ordinary school subjects of the day, the academy offered music, drawing,
and painting. In 1860 the academy building was purchased for use as a
public school, in which capacity it served until it was razed in 1928.

The population in 1853 was 1,200. Plank walks lined the main
village streets, paid for out of the proceeds of country fairs, organized
by the women when their petitions for sidewalks were ignored by the
town fathers. The streets themselves were unpaved and unlighted, and
the rest of the walks were meandering foot or cowpaths. One of Frink
& Walker's four-horse stages brought the mail daily now.

Cows and pigs roamed at large about the village, the hum of prairie
fowls filled the ain at dawn, and from the undrained sloughs came the
croaking of many frogs. Summer still brought prairie fires, but no great
losses resulted from them. The newspaper contained a little local news
and received outside items through publishers' exchanges and the New
York papers. When, as once happened, an editor's marriage delayed
publication three days, no one minded, as the paper had not been missed.
The school commissioner reported in March, 1853, that Naperville had
four school districts and 184 pupils, but no schoolhouse, and that further-
more, no effort was being made to erect one.

Late in 1853 Naperville had a murder trial. Sometime in October
Patrick Doyle murdered Patrick Tole in Winfitld Township. The Tole
brothers worked on the railroad. One payday, as they were staggering
along the road having celebrated in the customary payday manner-
Patrick fell down. When his brother stooped over to pick him up, Doyle
suddenly appeared and beat Patrick over the head with a fence stake.
Taking his money, Doyle went a short distance to a farmhouse where
he stopped awhile, then walked to Junction (West Chicago) and boarded
a train for Chicago. Apprehended several days later, Doyle was brought
to Naperville for trial. As he had no counsel, the court assigned the
Hon. Nathan Allen, former county judge and prominent Naperville
lawyer, and Robert N. Murray to the case. Doyie was convicted and

132

sentenced to death. The hanging, which took place the following spring
in Naperville was a public affair and the town turned out to witness it.

Willard Scott and his son Thaddeus opened a banking and exchange
office in connection with their general store in 1854. Advertisements of
Willard Scott & Company in the Journal at this time asked for wool,
yarn mittens and gloves, lard, butter, eggs, corn, oats, beans, potatoes,
and wood. . Advertisements of H. L. Peaslee 8c Company offered bales of
No. i buffalo robes and cases of buffalo overshoes.

An important local industry was founded in 1856, when George
Martin, Jr. moved his brickyard from what is now the northeast corner
of the cemetery to the forks of Oswego Road and Ogden Avenue near
his father's quarry where William King operated a tile works. The
manufacture of tile and bricks continued here until 1917.

John Haight came from New York in 1856 and entered into law
partnership with Bailey Hobson's son Merritt. He ran a fancy hog and
poultry farm and published John Haight's Circular, a periodical on
swine raising.

The year 1857 was important to Naperville on four accounts. On
February 5, 6, and 7 occurred what is still referred to as the "great
.freshet." The swollen river washed out the dams at both Warrenville
and Naperville, piling up large cakes of ice against the latter's four-
arched stone bridge erected the year before at Main Street. Blocked by
the jam, the water surged out over the banks, uprooting frame houses
and barns, one barn carried away with it the primitive wooden bridge
at Washington Street. Among the buildings destroyed was the one hous-
in the Journal.

On March 21 George Martin and James G. Wright, an Englishman,
founded the Producer's Bank. Dealing as it did in scrip, it was called
a shinplaster bank. A great financial panic held the country in its grip
during the late i85o's. Grain prices were low, but taxes went on, and
the State levy had to be paid in silver. Much wildcat currency was set
loose, immune to the unreliable bank-note detectors, as the published
enumerations and descriptions of worthless bank-notes were called. These
were bad times in which to start a new bank, but the Producer's lasted
16 years, and when it finally closed in 1873, it paid its depositors in full.

On May 4 Naperville, whose incorporation as a village had come
through on the last day of the flood, held its first election. Ballots
totalled 174, and Joseph Naper was elected president. His oath of office
read, in pdrt:

133

I ... do solemnly swear . . . that I have not fought a duel, nor
sent nor accepted a challenge to fight a duel . . . since the adoption
of the Constitution, and that I will not be so engaged or concerned,
directly or indirectly . . . during my continuance in office. . . .

Another election in May, 1857, created some stir at the time, but its
full implications were not realized until another decade had passed.
This was the poll on the question of moving the county seat to Wheaton.
Although behind Naperville in some respects, Wheaton had two ad-
vantages: it was in the center of the county, and it had the railroad. It
also had a college and two alert and active ruling families, the Garys
and* the Wheatons. It seemed only natural that Wheaton should be the
county seat to everyone except the residents of Naperville, who won
the election.

The well known Col. Jean Baptiste Beaubien, Chicago's second per-
manent settler, moved to Naperville in 1858. The Beaubien Tavern,
now a private dwelling, still stands northeast of town.

The Burch divorce case of 1860 brought the name of Naperville
before the eyes of the country's newspaper-reading public. The trial,
which took place in the courthouse from November 12 to December 10,
attracted national attention because of the wealth and social prominence
of Mrs. Burch's family. Mary Turner Burch, a niece of Erastus Coming-
Congressman, wealthy merchant, and railroad man of Albany, New
York was accused by her husband of adultery with the Hon. David
Stuart, a charge which she denied. As the Burches had lived in Chicago
since their marriage, the trial had been scheduled for the Circuit Court
of Cook County, but Mrs. Burch had been granted a change of venue
upon declaring that her husband "had brought undue influence to bear
upon the minds of the inhabitants of Cook County." Both sides engaged
several of the best lawyers of the day, and 1 1 of the country's leading
daily journals sent correspondents to Naperville for the trial. Orville
Browning, chief counsel for Mrs. Burch, had served in the Black Hawk
War and was a Whig politician. To him was given the credit for win-
ning the case for the defendant, with the result that he became a national
figure, appointed in 1861 to fill the unexpired term of Stephen A. Douglas
as Senator from Illinois, and made Secretary of the Interior in 1866 by
President Johnson.

War Again and a Railroad at Last (1861-1865)

On the evening of April 13, 1861, telegraph keys all over the country
clicked out the news that Fort Sumter had fallen at noon. Fear gripped

134

the residents of Naperville, and all night men remained in the streets,
gathering in little groups to talk, moving on to other groups. This was
a Saturday. On Sunday preachers in their pulpits were talking of war.
On Monday Governor Yates, ordered to muster six regiments for im-
mediate service, directed all commandants of military bodies to hold
themselves in readiness. On Tuesday the Governor called for the im-
mediate organization of six regiments to be mustered into the service.
On the following Sunday the first detachment of Naperville men left
Chicago for active service.

The women joined the Soldiers' Aid Society to knit, sew, scrape lint,
make bandages, slice potatoes, and fry bushels of doughnuts. The sliced
raw potatoes were packed in barrels, with layers of salt as a preservative,
and sent to the military camps.

In 1862 the Sentinel, a newspaper started in Naperville by D. B.
Birdsall, one of the publishers of Wheaton's first paper, came to an end.
In 1863 E. H. Eyer's Newsletter, which had followed the demise of the
Journal, was supplanted by Robert K. Potter's Du Page County Press.

On May 20, 1864, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad was
completed to Chicago. For some time the southern line of villages in
the county had been trying, by means of a committee formed to meet with
the railroad officials, to induce the Burlington to run a branch between
Aurora and Chicago. According to Bateman and Selby, the Burch divorce
case was indirectly responsible for the decision of the railroad company,
as it had brought out here from the East Erastus Corning and one Mr.
Rathbone, both large stockholders, who listened sympathetically to the
proposals of the settlers.

The Rape of the Records (1866-1875)

The wair over, Naperville resumed its temporarily retarded develop-
ment. In 1866 Ernest von Oven started the Naperville Nurseries, which
remain today one of the city's major commercial enterprises. In October
of that year C. W. Richmond, who had started an 1 1 year term as county
school superintendent in 1865, opened at Naperville the Du Page County
Institute. Its purpose was to train the county's public school teachers.
By 1876 Richmond had conducted 16 sessions, giving instruction to more
than 1,600 teachers.

In 1867 the Naperville Light Guard Band began its 33-year career,
and the Naperville Baseball Club was founded with four teams. Jacob
Keller opened the village's fourth hotel, the Washington House, that

135

year. The building, still standing at the southwest corner of Main and
Jefferson, now houses a saloon run by his son.

All was not well, however; Wheaton had not forgotten about wanting
to be county seat, nor had it let Naperville forget. Ever since the
county seat election ten years before, bitterness between the towns had
existed. In June, 1867, Wheaton called another election and won.
Naperville refused to admit defeat and flatly declined to give up the
courthouse records, in spite of injunctions, which were answered by
instituting counter proceedings. Then came the fatal morning in July,
1868.

Hiram H. Cody and his family, who lived opposite the Naperville
courthouse, awakened to see men's forms moving silently up and down
the broad courthouse steps. Some carried lanterns; the others, armfuls of
something they were putting into a wagon that stood in the road. Cody
knew what that something was. Skipping out the back way, he ran over
to the Congregational Church, where he rang the bell in wild alarm.
The Wheaton faction stationed a guard around the home of James
M. Vallette, then deputy county recorder, and seized him when he tried
to get over to the courthouse. This was rather ironical, as Vallette had
lived in Wheaton for 19 years before moving to Naperville in 1867.
Alec Riddler, cashier of the Scott bank, was also held, and in a short
time the county records permanently left Naperville's possession.

Naperville's plans to recover its loss by force were circumvented by
her president, Lewis Ellsworth, and County Sheriff James J. Hunt. In-
formed of the party being assembled at a saloon for the purpose of
counter attack, the two officials devised a scheme to prevent what they
considered a foolhardy escapade. They went to the saloon and pretended
to enter into the conspiracy. With false generosity, they bought drinks
for each of the active participants in such rapid ^succession that one by
one the heroes allowed themselves to be escorted home quietly. Last to
relinquish the chance of serving his town on the field of honor was the
man delegated to furnish transportation. Only by telling him that his
team would be shot on the streets of Wheaton, could he be deferred from
his noble aim.

The court upheld Wheaton's victory at the polls, and on December
31, 1870, the following notice appeared in the Naperville paper: "The
Wheaton Illinoian and the Naperville Clarion agree to drop all past
differences that have kept the people of this county in a state of un-
friendliness the past six years."

Naperville's citizens may have forgiven, but they have not forgotten.

136

Even today, at inter-city athletic meets, Naperville rooters sometimes yell,
"Yaah! You stole our records!"

False Fronts and Wooden Indians (1868-1899)

In February, 1868, David B. Givler bought the Du Page County Press.
In 1869 he changed its name to the Naperville Clarion, under which title
it is stilL published by his son, Rollo N. Givler, under the old motto:
"Neutral in Nothing; Independent in Everything." An advertisement in
the Clarion of April 16, 1870, read:

We are now manufacturing the long-sough t-f or plow that

existed once but long lost the old Naperville Plow. Ruch and

Strauss, Naperville Plow Works.

A little less than a year later the Naperville Agricultural Works,
under the ownership of Bouton, Whitehead & Company, distributed a
price list of Naperville Plows and Western Star Forks. The firm em-
ployed about 60 men. In 1882 Strauss & Goetsch were the owners. Plow
manufacturing was discontinued in 1893.

On October 4, 1870, North-Western (now North Central) College
was dedicated with addresses by Bishop Dubs, President Jonathan Blan-
chard of Wheaton College, Judge Hiram H. Cody, the Reverend Mr.
Cunningham, and Judge Robert N. Murray. Three years later the present
Evangelical Theological Seminary was founded as a department of the
college.

A fire in the New York House on July 6, 1874, impelled the village
council to action in the matter of fire protection. Until this time Naper-
ville had no fire department and no equipment beyond some buckets and
axes. So hopelessly inadequate were the activities of the bucket brigade
that when the hotel started to burn, help was called from Aurora. Soon
after the blaze a volunteer fire company was prganized, with Willard
Scott, Jr., as marshal. At the same time the village bought more than
$1,700 worth of equipment, which included a hand engine and a hose
cart.

In 1875 B. F. Russell started the village's fifth hotel, which he called
the American House. Naperville in 1877 was a town of some 2,000 in-
habitants and much manufacturing. Besides the tile and brick works and
the stone quarry, there were a cheese factory run by George Hunt; L.
Rosenstreter's Du Page Valley Mills (the old Naper gristmill) ; the car-
riage factories of Shimp, Hillenbrand, Saylor, and Strubler; L. S. Shafer's
planing mill; the boot and shoe factory of Martin Fest; and R. H.
Wagner's saddlery.

137

NAPERVILLE

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. Kroehler Mfg. Co. Home Plant

2. Evangelical Theological Seminary

3. North Central College

4. Site of Fort Payne

5. Old New York House

6. Old Egermann Brewery Building

7. Old Stenger Brewery Building

8. Naperville Cheese Co. Building

9. Centennial Park

10. Bethel Church of the Brethren

11. Old Stenger Brewery and Malt House

12. Willard Scott, Sr., House

13. Nichols Library

14. St. John's Episcopal Church

15. Mrs. Bailey Hobson's Town House

16. Naperville Cemetery

In 1878 Ernest von Oven bought out William King's interest in the
Naperville Tile and Brick Works. By 1886 the plant had grown from
one kiln and 4,000 feet of drying room to four kilns and 20,000 feet of
drying room with an annual output of one million tiles and a half
million bricks.

The big event of 1879 was the brief stop made here by the train
carrying General Grant and his wife on part of their world tour. H. W.
Knickerbocker made a speech in behalf of the throng at the railroad
station, and Grant spoke a few words.

By 1-882 the Stengers were producing about 5,000 barrels of beer
annually. A year later the local branch of the W.C.T.U. was established.

No longer entirely preoccupied with establishing themselves on the
soil or in business, townspeople were turning to athletic recreation
during these years. Thus an advertisement in January, 1884, announced
a "Brilliant Season of Roller Skating" at the rink of John Collins and
Arthur Cody.

Beginning in the i88o's and running for a decade or more was the
cheese factory of Egermann and Bauer, which occupied a former Stenger
brewery building on the waterfront. In 1884 Naperville acquired its
first public telephone, installed by the Chicago Telephone Company
(now the Illinois Bell) in Tom Saylor's confectionery store. The private
bank opened by George Reuss in 1886 and incorporated 11 years later as
a State bank still exists. The first publication .of the Nichols Business
Guide by Professor John L. Nichols of North-Western College in 1886 led
to the formation a decade later of the J. L. Nichols Company, now
nationally known.

The founding by Frederick Long of the Naperville Manufacturing
Company also known as the Naperville Lounge Factory marked the
year 1887. Starting the manufacture of lounge frames at the rear of his
combined mortuary and furniture store, Long moved his workshop the
following year to the old roller skating rink. Trade grew so fast that
within a few years he could not handle it alone, and in 1893 he engaged
P. E. Kroehler, just graduated from North-Western College, as secretary.
Kroehler's salary was a dollar a day, for which he did all the correspon-
dence, kept the books, sold, and helped in the factory. The business
expanded rapidly, and now, as the Kroehler Manufacturing Company,
is one of the outstanding industries in the Chicago area. The quarry
business started by George Martin passed through various hands and
flourished in Naperville until about 1914.

At an election held in March, 1890, in accordance with a petition

139

signed by 52 citizens the year before, the village of Naperville was re-
incorporated as a city.

The rapid growth of the frontier settlements had precluded for many
years any thought of municipal improvements. Streets were dumping
grounds, communal hogpens, and cowpaths. In 1885 a State law had been
passed in an attempt to keep swine and cattle from running at large
within the corporate limits of local communities. Although a woman
had been gored in the village streets, Naperville had paid little attention
to the law, the principle of which had become a political issue. In oppo-
sition stood the less affluent citizens, who contended that the streets were
the poor man's pasture. With incorporation as a city, Naperville finally
passed an animal law and saw to its enforcement.

Electricity furnished by a private concern began replacing kerosene
lamps in 1890, and nine years later the plant was bought by the city.

The old Scott bank was bought out in 1891 by the organizers of
Naperville's fourth bank, the First National, which functioned until the
bank holiday of 1933. In an old fork factory Adolph Seuss began the
manufacture of carved church altars.

The last third of the nineteenth century closed with Naperville a
city in more than name. Educational facilities had been increased by
three new schoolhouses, built between 1879 and 1892, the last of which
was a parochial school erected by the Catholic parish. Religious facilities
had been augmented by the erection in 1891 of an eighth church (dis-
counting the defunct Baptist) , the Grace Evangelical. Important addi-
tions to general cultural enterprises were the Woman's Literary Club
and the Nichols Library. Two more journalistic ventures had appeared
and disappeared: Hope R. Cody's The Ray, in 1884, and T. C. Ander-
son's Du Page Semi-Weekly Press, in 1896. The leading families were
moving into more pretentious, if less charming, homes than the little
white frame Greek Revival houses that had formerly sheltered them.

A Century Ends (1900- 1939)

Denizens along Water Street were surprised yesterday to see a
horseless carriage pass rapidly along that thoroughfare, cross the
stone bridge and disappear. An hour afterwards it returned,
rushed up the slight incline, and proceeded eastward. A man and
a woman occupied the vehicle. The Clarion, May 2, 1900.
The Stenger brewery had carried on successfully until improvements
in the manufacturing process of malt beer caused its discontinuance
around 1900. Later the brewery buildings were taken over by mush-
room growers.

140

These were good times in Naperville, as evidenced in an item by
"Rusticus" in the Clarion:

Our city certainly is prosperous. Every man, woman or child
who wants work may have it. Mechanics and artisans are taxed
far beyond their capacity with work. Our merchants are busy
with profitable trade and our banks reflect unerringly and impress-
ively the prosperity of the community.

To drink or not to drink was a burning question in 1908. Naperville
was often referred to as the "City of Churches," but cynics said that there
were more saloons than churches. The ladies of the W. C. T. U. staged
a temperance parade April 20, 1908, in which 500 women and children
took part. It was not without result, for in the election the next day,
held under the provisions of the Local Option Bill, the city went dry by
59 votes. Lisle Township also went dry, but Naperville Township, living
up to its reputation, perhaps went wet. Lying half in one township
and half in. the other, Naperville found itself in a complicated situation,
and much liquor business went on outside the corporate limits on the
Naperville side. Feeling that the student vote had swung the city elec-
tionthe college with its Biblical institute being situated in the Lisle
^h-alf the wets questioned the students' voting privilege. Much bitterness
arose. The wets claimed that the students were not permanent residents.
The drys pointed out that many of the young men remained throughout
the year, working as salesmen of the Nichols Business Guide in the sum-
mer, and topped off their argument with the reminder that a number of
former students from out of town had become prominent citizens of
Naperville. A committee from Springfield made a legislative investiga-
tion resulting in the decision that nothing could be done about the
matter. The pro-student faction had won, but so did the wets in the
1910 election. In 1911 the Lincoln Temperance Chautauqua held sessions
in Naperville, but the city remained wet until the advent of National
prohibition.

The question of changing to the commission form of government
was settled in favor of the proposition in 1912, by a majority of seven
votes.

The effect of the post-war depression was felt most severely by the
large cities and did not greatly disturb a small town like Naperville.
But the big-money period that followed was clearly reflected in general
expansion and in the onrush of civic improvements. The depression
that started in 1929 had its effect on building, employment, and banking.
During one of the worst years (1931), Naperville community spirit was

141

such that the city raised almost $24,000 for a centennial celebration, the
sum including $16,500 underwritten by a business men's syndicate for
the purchase of Centennial Park. In 1938 Naperville received a $90,000
Federal grant for a new post office.

Points of Interest

1. The KROEHLER MANUFACTURING COMPANY HOME
PLANT (tours by arrangement) occupies two city blocks between Ells-
worth and Loomis Sts., adjoining on the north the tracks of the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy R. R. Largest manufacturer of upholstered furni-
ture in the world, the concern was established by an undertaker in 1887
as the Naperville Lounge Factory. In 1907 the company began the
organization of branch plants in other cities, using for capital the divi-
dends paid to stockholders in the Naperville plant. The company was
re-incorporated with a capital of $1,115,000 in 1915, at which time P. E.
Kroehler became president and the present name was adopted. Branches
are now in operation at Binghamton, N. Y.; Kankakee, 111.; Cleveland,
Ohio; Dallas, Tex.; Los Angeles and San Francisco, Cal.; Montreal and
Stratford, Canada.

2. The EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY (open 7:30-
4 weekdays) occupies three buildings on School Avenue. The president's
house is on the northwest corner of School and Brainard. A block east, on
the northwest corner of School and Loomis, is the Administration Build-
ing, housing offices, lecture rooms, library, and. chapel. Across the street,
to the east, is Seybert Hall, the dormitory. The latter two are modern
structures of Collegiate Gothic design erected in 1912 and 1926 respec-
tively. Founded in 1873 as the theological department of the then North-
Western College, the seminary was first known as Union Biblical Institute.
In 1910 it became a separate but affiliated institution under its present
name. Bachelor of Divinity and Master of Sacred Theology degrees are
conferred, the latter upon students who have met the requirements of
the graduate school, founded in 1909.

3. NORTH CENTRAL COLLEGE (campus always open; buildings
open schooldays), with an educational plant valued at $1,300,000, spreads
over three separate tracts of land. The Main Campus (entrance on
Brainard St.) covers two city blocks, bounded by School and Benton
Aves., Brainard and Loomis Sts. In its center stands Old Main, the
original building. The north and central portions of this Italianesque
Gothic structure were erected in 1870 of locally quarried limestone; the
south, in 1890. The building houses administrative offices, classrooms,

142

and a small natural history museum. Old Main is flanked on the north
by Goldspohn Science hall, on the south by Carnegie Library, both com-
pleted in 1908. The former, Roman classic in design, was the gift of
an alumnus, Dr. A. Goldspohn, well known Chicago surgeon. The
latter, in Renaissance style, was the gift of Andrew Carnegie. The library
open by arrangement, contains 25,000 bound volumes and more than
150 periodicals. On the southeast corner of Brainard St. and Benton
Ave. is Barbara Pfeiffer Memorial Hall, also of Renaissance architecture.
This building, erected in 1926, houses the school of music and the large
chapel with its fine organ. Bounded by Brainard and Ellsworth Sts.,
Jefferson and Chicago Aves., is the Women's Campus, comprising three
dormitories and tennis courts. The entrance to Fort Hill Campus is on
Chicago Ave. at the foot of Ellsworth St. Here, surrounding the site of
Fort Payne is the president's house, Merner Gymnasium and Field House,
the infirmary, Kroehler Athletic Field, and the baseball diamond. The
big brick gymnasium of classic design contains a large swimming pool.

Endowed and supported by the Evangelical Church, North Central
College was founded at Plainfield, Illinois, in 1861, as the Plainfield
College of the Evangelical Association of North America. The name
was changed to North- Western College in 1864, and in 1926 the present
one was adopted. The average attendance for many years has been 500;
the enrollment usually includes students from 20 or more states, and
occasionally some from Canada. Member of North Central Association
and approved by the Association of American Universities, the college
offers the degrees of Bachelor of Arts; Bachelor of Science, in commerce,
home economics, physical education, engineering; Bachelor of Music;
Bachelor of Music Education.

Social and secret fraternities find no place in the democratic campus
life, but five national honorary fraternities, representing the fields of
oratory, social science, literature, drama, and biology, maintain local
chapters. Student publications are the weekly Chronicle, the Cardinal,
literary yearbook, the annual Spectrum, and the Student's Hand-Book.
Each week the Naperville Clarion devotes a section, called the "Clarion-
ette," to college news compiled by students.

4. The SITE OF FORT PAYNE, on the eminence about 150 feet
south of the main entrance to Fort Hill Campus, recalls the days of the
Black Hawk War. A loo-foot-square stockade with two block-houses,
the fort was built in June, 1832, by Naper Settlement pioneers, with the
aid of Capt. Morgan L. Payne of Joliet and his company of volunteers.

143

The spring that supplied it with water still gurgles out of the ground at
the base of the hill's western slope.

Here Lewis Ellsworth built his first house in 1836, his second in
1850, and in the sixties Miss Sophronia Skinner ran a select school for
young ladies. A tablet on Ellsworth's springhouse, restored in 1929 by
Mrs. Marion Batten Wetten of Chicago, commemorates both the fort
and the Ellsworth home.

* The PRE-EMPTION HOUSE (open), northeast corner S. Main St.
and Chicago Ave., may be the oldest tavern in constant operation west of
the Allegheny Mountains, and it ranks next to Fort Payne as Naperville's
most historic spot. George Laird erected this Greek Revival building
in 1834. Upon its completion the following poem was recited from the
ridge-pole:

This place was once a wilderness of savages and, owls,

Where the red man once roamed and the prairie wolf howled,

This house now erected, the place to adorn,

To shelter the living and babes yet unborn:

We'll call it Pre-emption: a law that's complete,

For the use of George Laird, who says he will treat.

Oak was used for the framework, black walnut for the siding, butternut

for the shingles. The north wing is a later addition.

The words of an old settler call up some idea of the regard in which

the tavern was held and something of the spirit of its hospitality:

It was the biggest thing between Chicago and the Mississippi.
My, the dances we used to have there! The landlord would clear
out the dining-room and give us full swing. Everybody danced in
those days. The drivers would come in from their wagons, haul
off their big boots and dance in their stocking feet. Dance all
night!

The Pre-Emption House was also a center for horse-traders and travel-
ing merchants. In faint lettering above one of the doors can still be
seen the words "Sample Room." Within recent years a sign has been put
up on the west wall, informing the populace that Lincoln once spoke
from the balcony above it. Historians have as yet found no evidence
that Lincoln was ever in Naperville. The hotel rooms are now closed,
part of the first floor is occupied by a saloon, and part is used as private
living quarters. Its glory long since past, the once famous hostelry is
quietly crumbling away. Flagrantly anachronistic is the red and white
neon sign, "Jim's Beer on Tap," jutting out from the corner of the
drooping walls. * (See p. 232.)

5. The walls of the OLD NEW YORK HOUSE, northeast corner
Main St. and Jackson Ave., having survived the fire which gutted the in-

144

terior in 1874, have since 1889 contained Reiche's general store. Robert
N. Murray, member of the original Naper Settlement and later county
judge, established the 22-room hotel in 1849.

6. The OLD EGERMANN BREWERY BUILDING, Webster St.
north of Jackson Ave., is now occupied by Enck and Drendel, millers
and coal dealers* The gristmill was started half a century ago by Thomas
Bets and taken over by its present proprietors in the early i goo's. Xavier
Egermann, member of the village's first board of trustees, operated his
brewery in competition with the Stengers.

7. Now standing idle on Naperville's almost-deserted waterfront is
an OLD BREWERY BUILDING OF THE STENGERS, northwest
corner Jackson Ave. and Eagle St., erected shortly after the middle of
the nineteenth century. The finished brew was ripened in kegs kept in
tunnels radiating from the building. In this large limestone structure
was later the cheese factory of Egermann and Bauer, started in 1885. In
more recent times it was used for mushroom growing.

8. On Eagle St. between Jackson and Jefferson Aves. is the NAPER-
VILLE CHEESE COMPANY BUILDING, (not open to visitors), a large
frame structure, erected in 1892. William Sigmund, who was formerly
employed by Egermann and Bauer, started this factory when he left their
employ. Present sales amount to about $60,000 annually. Only one
type of cheese is made. Called hand-cheese, it has an uncommon, strong
flavor and is put out in small disk-shaped units less than an inch thick.
Distribution is handled by wholesale houses and jobbers. Hand-cheese
was introduced into the United States in 1860 by John Kilt, grandfather
of Mr. Sigmund.

9. CENTENNIAL PARK, lying along the south side of Jackson
Ave., west of Eagle St., was developed in 1931, in celebration of Naper-
ville's looth birthday. Through the wooded grounds, covering 45 acres,
winds the west branch of the Du Page River. Two contiguous abandon-
ed quarries have been made into an excellent swimming pool, equipped
with diving boards and rafts. At the west end of the pool is a modern
bathhouse (open 10-10, June-Labor Day; swimming rates incl. locker:
children i$c; adults yjc weekdays, joe Sun. and holidays; residents free).

The ROBERT N. MURRAY HOUSE (private), 215 S. Main
St., a tiny frame building in the Greek Revival style, is particularly ad-
mired by architects for its well designed doorway. The paneled door,
ii/2 inches thick is flanked by glass sidelights. White pine is used
throughout the construction of the house; shingles are of cedar. It was
here that Stephen A. Douglas was entertained in 1856. *(See p. 232.)

145

10. BETHEL CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN, 131 W. Benton
Ave., was established by a group of 15 German Baptist Brethren in 1856.
The present edifice, American Wood Gothic in style, was erected in 1908.
Commonly known as Dunkards (also Bunkers, or Tunkers) the German
Baptist Brethren comprise a sect which grew out of the Pietist movement
in Germany in 1708.

11. The OLD STENGER BREWERY AND MALT HOUSE (not
open to visitors), on Franklin Ave. at the end of Main St., were erected
in 1856 and 1864, respectively. Started in 1849, tne brewery operated
continuously until around the turn of the century. After standing idle
for more than a decade, the buildings were taken over by the Naperville
Mushroom Farming Company. The darkened interiors exude a dank,
earthy odor. On the outside, sparrows flutter in large numbers about
the jagged yellow limestone walls. Men wearing miners' caps, closely
belted rubber smocks, and high rubber boots walk noiselessly between
the cavernous structures, carrying baskets of freshly picked mushrooms.
Adjoining the brewery and malt house buildings on the west is the old
Stenger residence, now used as office and packing house by the mush-
room company. Erected in the same period as the other buildings, it
is also of architectural interest, its fine simplicity and solidity character-
istic of its time.

12. Completion of the WILLARD SCOTT, SR., HOUSE (private),
northwest corner Washington St. and Franklin Ave., was celebrated by
a housewarming attended by more than 100 guests on January 30, 1867.
A red brick building in the colonial tradition, with large glassed-in
cupola, this big square house still bears the earmarks of having been the
"mansion" of one of the town's leading families.

13. The NICHOLS LIBRARY (open weekdays 2-6, 7-9), S. Wash-
ington St., at Van Buren Ave., was dedicated June 29, 1898. The estab-
lishment of the library was made possible by a bequest in the will of
John L. Nichols, alumnus of North-Western (now North Central) Col-
lege, for many years principal of its commercial department, and origin-
ator of the Nichols Business Guide. An appropriation from the city
secured the land in Central Park Square. The library is maintained
by public tax. W T hen the Romanesque building, of native limestone and
yellow pressed brick, opened its doors to the public in September 1898,
it possessed 700 books. Now (1939) it contains 7,000. In 1915 librarian
Mary Egermann started the historical collection, which includes two poll
sheets of 1832; records of the first Naperville library, started in 1846; war

146

relics; artillery company records of 1865; village maps dated 1864, 1869,
and 1871; fire department records of 1874; and old photographs.

14. ST. JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, north side of Jefferson
Ave. near Ellsworth St., is a thoroughly charming example of unpre-
tentious American Wood Gothic. Erected in 1864, this little white frame
house of worship, more than any other church in Naperville, belongs
to that aspect of the town which is so remindful of New England.

* Erection of the OLD BAPTIST CHURCH, 234 S. Washing-
ton St., was begun in 1843, immediately after the organization of the
Baptist society. As Goetsch's Warehouse it now houses farm machinery.
Of Greek Revival architecture, its pediment supported by four flat wood-
en columns attached to the facade, this broad-beamed weathered struc-
ture looks and smells of its age. Marks on the interior walls indicate
that slip pews were used, and an old resident has said that there was
a covered baptismal pool and that the ceiling was "ornamented and
frescoed around." Fated to an existence checkered and finally broken
by dissension, the Baptists were in trouble even before their church
was finished. A dispute arose between the donor of the original site,
who had not yet conveyed the property to the church, and a member of
the congregation. As a result, the landowner not only refused to give
title, but forbade removal of the incompleted structure. All overtures
of the Baptist committee were in vain, but the attitude of the owner
aroused such general resentment that a large number of prominent citi-
zens banded together and carted the framework and building materials
away to another lot, given by Lewis Ellsworth. Early in 1844 the build-
ing was far enough along to enable its use by the Baptists and Congre-
gationalists, the latter meeting here until its own church was ready two
years later. The Rev. Riley B. Ashley was Baptist pastor until January
1846, when the congregation numbered 36. With the enlargement of
the church the following year, a belfry and steeple were added. Another
decade brought the membership to nearly 100, and then disagreement
over the introduction of spiritualism broke up the congregation. Services
were held until 1879, when the church was closed. *(See p. 232.)

* The JOHN NAPER HOUSE (private, but inspection granted),
home of one of the founders of Naper Settlement, is on the east bank
of the Du Page River, about a block down the dirt road that starts at
the northeast corner of Washington St. bridge. Decaying slowly in its
pastoral setting, this is one of the oldest houses in Naperville. The clap-
boards of its tattered walls may have been cut in the spring of 1832, at

147

which time the Naper sawmill was ready for business. Floor supports
and corner uprights are logs. *(See p. 232.)

15. MRS. BAILEY HOBSON'S TOWN HOUSE (open by arrange-
ment) is at 506 S. Washington St. Mrs. Bailey Hobson, wife of Du Page
County's first settler, came to this house sometime after the death of
her husband in 1850, to live until her own death in 1884. It is now
occupied by Mrs. R. Louise Royce Haight, widow of two of Bailey Hob-
son's grandsons and granddaughter of Jonathan Royce, a Will County
pioneer of 1835 and later banking partner of Willard Scott in Naper-
ville. In better days the outer walls of the house were of stucco, and a
garden extended from the north and east elevations all the way to the
river's edge. The walls are covered over with dark red and green siding
now, and the garden is tenanted by a sandwich shop and gasoline station.
Humble as is its general appearance, the rambling old house retains a
vestige of its former dignity in the touches of pseudo Tudor design, prob-
ably added some years after its erection. Inside, a two-story library
is lined with books some of them centuries old in many languages, and
is filled to overflowing, like the rooms adjoining it, with relics of pioneer
and later days. Uncatalogued, the collection includes documents, manu-
scripts, photographs, drawings, paintings, glassware, chinaware, cooking
utensils, candle molds, paper money and scrip, coins, jewelry, and other
objects of historic interest.

16. The NAPERVILLE CEMETERY, S. Washington St. at Maple
Ave., was started in 1843, when George Martin donated two acres of
land and Joseph Naper, Lewis Ellsworth, and John Granger were
elected trustees. As graves in the original pioneer cemetery were trans-
ferred at that time, numerous headstones bear earlier dates.

Capt. Joseph Naper

Willaid Scott. Sr.

The Railroad Comes to Naperville:
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, 1864

WEST CHICAGO

General Information

POPULATION (1930):
3,477 (See p. 234.)

DISTANCE FROM CHICAGO:
32 mi.

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION (from Chicago) :
Chicago & North Western Ry.

ACCOMMODATIONS :
Private tourist homes.

A few restaurants and taverns.

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICE:

Police station, gasoline stations, and city hall.

BUSINESS SECTION:

Main St., between Washington and Chicago Sts. ; Washington St., between
Main and the railroad tracks.

STREET ORDER AND NUMBERING:

Numbering is E. and W. from Fremont, Main, and Joliet Sts., N. and S. from
Washington St. No directional distinction is made between streets and avenues.
Streets in the central and western portions run diagonally.

RECREATION, ENTERTAINMENT. AND SPECIAL EVENTS:

City Park, outside of NW. city limits, at Arbor Ave. and National St. Baseball

diamond and bleachers, tennis courts, playground equipment, barbecue ovens,

picnic tables, shelters, restrooms.

West Du Page Park (county forest preserve No. 2), S. of city limits, bounded

by Neltnor Blvd. (111. 59), Forest Ave., and Du Page River. Facilities include

a shelter.

One motion picture theater, Washington St. W. of Main St.

Annual American Legion carnival, in August.

One or two concerts yearly by the Chicago & North Western Choral Club.

The Pioneer": Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, 1849

WEST CHICAGO

Railroad Town

the 1850*8 West Chicago has been the
home of railroad men. Today, the city has 3,500 inhabitants, a third
of whom are men who make the commutation runs, work in the round-
house and coachyards or are employed at other points along the Chicago
8c North Western suburban line of which it is the terminal. One of the
city's four clubs is a railroad employees' organization. Two of the 13
lodges have their background in railroads.

Through West Chicago runs, in addition to the North Western trunk
line, the Elgin, Joliet 8c Eastern Railroad, Chicago's outer belt line. To it,
from Aurora, runs a branch of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. The
Marshall Brothers Sheep Company maintains sheepyards on 500 of the
1,000' acres of land owned by the North Western; the balance of the
property is occupied by coach- and freightyards. The switchyards of the
E. J. & E. cover 18 acres.

In spite of the preponderance of railroad activity, West Chicago,
away from the tracks, is quiet and small-townish. Diagonal and hilly
streets give variety to the city pattern. Many trees shade the avenues
and obscure some of the neat frame dwellings.

Lacking both Gold Coast and slums, West Chicago is an own-your-
own-home suburb, situated on high land about five miles east of the
Fox River valley and a mile northwest of the Du Page River's west
branch. Its corporate limits embrace one lake, three others lie in the
surrounding area, and an 85-acre park stretches above the northern
boundary.

Aside from the railroads, there are five manufacturing plants, each
employing between 10 and 60 persons. West Chicago is headquarters
for the Lindsay Light and Chemical Company, manufacturers of light-
ing fixtures; the West Chicago Sash and Door Manufacturing Company;
and the Economy Portable Housing Company. A pickle factory of
Reid, Murdoch & Company is located here as well as a branch of the
Bates & Rogers Construction Company. Those who do not work in the

factories and sheepyards or for the railroads about a fourth of the city's
working population commute to Chicago.

Six churches embrace the Methodist, Congregational, Evangelical,
Lutheran, and Catholic denominations, and an independent fundamen-
talist organization. Among the three elementary schools is a Catholic
parochial institution. The community high school serves the northern
part of Winfield Township. The Woman's Club, West Chicago Service
Club, and Garden Club partake actively in community life. Musical
organizations comprise the choruses, band, and orchestra of the high
school.

City government is vested in a mayor and six aldermen. Thirteen
business men comprise the volunteer fire department, organized in 1888.
Although Main Street is shabby, its shabbiness bears the distinction of
age and. respectability. City Collector Rohr says: "Our quarters (built
in 1884) are not much to look at, but the city is solvent; our banks did
not suspend." Although no.t wealthy, West Chicago has the financial
soundness characteristic of a railroad town.

From Junction to City

In 1842 Alonzo Harvey built the first house within the present limits
of West Chicago. Other settlers nearby in the early forties included
Sherman Winslow, a Mr. Stickney, the Wiants, Job Smith, John Barr (e) ,
William Bailey, Thomas Brown, George W. Eastman (or Easton) ,
George McAuley, and James Conley of New York. And sometime be-
tween 1840 and 1850 Asel Gates settled in the locality. Until 1849 all
activity in this portion of the township was agricultural.

Then came the railroad to change the whole face of things. Almost
overnight a little hamlet sprang up. With the railroad station as hub,
other commercial interests took their places about it. Chartered in 1836,
the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad did not start laying tracks until
1848, delayed first by the panic of 1837, then by the inactivity of its
backers. The primary object of the original incorporators had been to
connect Chicago with the Galena lead mines, but due to a combination
of circumstances the plan never materialized.

Near the northern boundary of Winfield Township, the Galena line
was met by a branch road from St. Charles, opened in December 1849 by
the St. Charles Railroad Company. This company's later plans to con-
struct a roadbed paralleling that of the Galena 8c Chicago Union from
Chicago to this point and then proceeding directly west to the Mississippi
were quashed in 1854, when the Galena line took it over.

152

Another independent company built a branch road connecting Aurora
with the Galena line in Winfield Township. This road was completed
by November, 1850. A contract drawn up in December, 1851, granted
the Chicago & Aurora which by then extended down to La Salle the
privilege of running its trains into Chicago over the Galena 8c Chicago's
tracks. In 1855 the Aurora road became the Chicago, Burlington &
Quincy.

The point at which the Aurora line branched off from the Galena
came, logically, to be called Junction. Land in the vicinity was selling
for about $3 an acre in 1850. James M. Dale was Junction's first station
agent, and at about the same time Michael McDonald opened the first
general store. This was the beginning of the city of West Chicago. More
and more men came out from Chicago or moved to Junction from the
surrounding countryside, to work for the railroad or to set up businesses.
In a few years land here came to be worth between $200 and $300 a lot.
Construction of the Galena line beyond Elgin went forward. In Sep-
tember, 1853, the Galena line was open to Freeport, and in two more
months a branch was running between Belvidere and Beloit, connecting
with Wisconsin's Beloit & Madison Railroad.

Back at Junction, another roadbed had been pushing westward to
Dixon, which it reached in December, 1854. A year later it went as far
as Fulton. Known as the Mississippi & Rock River Junction Railroad,
the line was first leased by the Galena & Chicago Union, then, in January
1855, consolidated with it.

About 1854 the Galena line erected repair shops. There was no
thought of establishing a village at Junction until after the absorption
of the Mississippi & Rock River Railroad. Then, on September 22, 1855,
J. B. Turner, president of the Galena & Chicago Union, platted 22 acres
under the name Turner Junction. The population around the junction
was at this time about 200. Joseph McDonald had taken over his brother
Michael's general store. Paying cash for everything the farmers had to
sell, he traded" in butter, lard, pork, wool, and grain. He had started
buying grain in 1853, taking in 1,200 bushels the first year. The next
year his intake had increased to 3,000 bushels, and in 1855 it had jumped
to 30,000.

In 1856 other subdivisions were added to Turner's plat, and the
Galena line erected a freight house. The railroad was using coal instead
of wood and had set up a telegraph system between Chicago and Free-
port. In a little log schoolhouse Sarah Carter held the first classes.
A Congregational church was organized under the guidance of the Rev.

153

Lot Church. The Methodists worshipped at Gary's Mill, southeast on
the Du Page River, until 1858, when Turner Junction supplanted it on
the circuit.

By 1857 the population had increased to 500 and Turner Junction
buzzed with activity in spite of the nationwide financial panic. All over
the country railroads were forced to stop building, but the Galena 8c
Chicago Union completed its second track out to Turner Junction in
December. Whereas the Junction had previously received its mail from
Gary's Mill, it now had a post office of its own, under C. D. Smith.

About 40 trains passed through daily, and four wells were drilled to
fill their tanks. Rail repairing was done in a brick blacksmith shop.
In a two-story building near the tracks Alfred Harvey, veteran of the war
with Mexico, ran an eating house for railroad employees, achieving
local fame for his prowess in shooting empty bottles, at five paces, from
the head of the German boy who worked for him. Andrew Wheeler,
night watchman and baggageman, went down in local history because
he could lift a hogshead of whisky from the ground single-handed and
put it on the train.

On August 28, 1858, people gathered from all around to hear Stephen
A. Douglas speak in Updike's hickory grove. A grand Republican rally
was held at Turner Junction on October gth following, and the Chicago
Evening Journal reported that more than 3,000 persons attended the
meeting.

In 1864 the Galena line merged with the Chicago & North Western,
dropping its own name. The first roundhouse was built at Turner
Junction at this time. In the same year the C. B. & Q. completed its
own tracks from Aurora to Chicago via Naperville, still, however, main-
taining the branch line between Aurora and Turner Junction.

In 1865 John C. Neltnor opened a drug store at Turner Junction.
Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1841, Neltnor had come west with
his parents in 1850. Adding more and more merchandise to his store,
he came to have one of the most widely known general stores in the
locality, with a stock including furs, gunpowder, and farm machinery.
One night in 1869, while he was at his new house, the store caught fire.
No one dared to go near it because of the gunpowder. Neltnor arrived
on the scene too late, and the inevitable explosion occurred. There
was not a dollar of insurance on this property, but Neltnor used his
credit and started all over. Limiting his new store to drugs, he allowed
his other interests to take concrete shape and within a few years had
established the Grove Place Nurseries. He cultivated many varieties

154

of fruit and ornamental trees, as well as shrubs, vines, hedge plants,
and bulbs, and published quarterly The Fruit and Flower Grower and
Vegetable Gardener.

J. Russell Smith, Wheaton publisher, started the Turner Junction
News in 1871, as an edition of his Wheaton Illinoian. First local news-
paper, it continued until 1884.

In 1873 Turner Junction was incorporated as the Village of Turner.
Capt. L. B. Church prominent Civil War veteran and nephew of the
first Congregational pastor here was elected president, and Emory Wat-
son, clerk. The population was 850, and the corporate area 645 acres.
Turner was one of the principal railroad centers in Illinois.

In the eighties John Neltnor entered the newspaper publishing busi-
ness, putting out the Du Page County Democrat at Turner, the Star
Critic at Wheaton, and the Elmhurst Enterprise. A strong Democrat,
Neltnor was active in village, county, State, and National politics. His
many offices included that of postmaster during both of Cleveland's
terms and that of police magistrate for 52 consecutive years. Neltnor
continued publishing until about 1904. Republican rival of Neltnor's
Democrat was A. L. Hamilton's Journal, which had a Wheaton edition
called the Press.

In 1888 the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railroad, running from Waukegan
to Dyer, Indiana, was completed through the village. From this time
on, Turner entered a more or less prosaic period of civic development,
starting with the founding of the Bank of Newton and Smiley in 1891.
Reorganized in 1908 as the State Trust and Savings Bank, it is still in
existence. C. E. Bolles, local Civil War veteran and wealthy hide and
tallow merchant, erected the Bolles Opera House in 1894. The third
floor was equipped for plays and other entertainments.

In 1896, when the population was 1,500, the name of the village was
changed to West Chicago. Quoting Harry M. Beardsley, ". . . an ineffec-
tual attempt was made to create a boom by bestowing the name 'West
Chicago' on a community that deserved a better fate." Many of the
town's citizens have been chafing under the meaningless name ever
since, but periodic agitation for a return to one of the old names or the
adoption of a new one has so far come to nothing.

Despite its railroads, the village had not been growing. Old residents
attribute Turner's slow development to certain early landholders who,
in spite of the fact that a railroad center was a logical location for fac-
tories, refused to sell their property for industrial use.

By 1900 the population had reached 1,877. About this time E. A.

155

Cummings bought one of the lakes east of the village and spent a fortune
converting it and its environs into a summer resort site. Called High
Lake, the section is today an attractive residential community.

About 1904 Neltnor's Du Page County Democrat was succeeded by the
Northern Illinois Democrat. In 1909 the Republican Journal became
the West Chicago Press, edited and published by S. E. Wright. Since the
demise of the Democrat about 1913, the Press has been without a rival,
except for a brief period in the middle 1920*5 when Perry Hole published
the weekly Xews Digest of Du Page County.

The i goo's brought a number of extensive industries, including the
Union Tool Company, which manufactured mining implements and
well drilling tools. In August 1906 the village voted on the question of
re-incorporation as a city. The proposition carried, and on September 4
the new charter went into effect. In 1909 the electric Chicago, Wheaton
& Western Railway later taken over by the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin-
began operating between Geneva Junction and West Chicago.

West Chicago fared comparatively well through the depression of the
thirties. Federal projects made possible the city's first park, improved
its streets, installed new street signs and sidewalks, constructed new cul-
verts, engaged in arboriculture. There is belief among its residents that
the little city, whose population is still increasing steadily, may yet in
some measure live up to its early promise of importance. To that end
they have adopted as their slogan: "The City of We-Go."

Points of Interest

1. The OLD GATES STORE BUILDING (open) stands on the
northeast corner Main and Galena Sts. In this grey, 2i/ 2 -story stone and
brick building, John ("Bet-a-Million") Gates was set up in the hardware
business by his father, Asel, about 1870. Young Gates sold out in 1877
to Charles Gary, son of the miller and Methodist circuit rider, and
Hezekiah Holt. First entering the grain business, Gates was soon given
a job by Joseph Glidden, inventor of barbed wire fencing. Later he
founded the American Steel and Wire Company, and eventually organ-
ized, with Elbert Gary, the United States Steel Corporation.

2. The WEST CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY (open Mon.-Fri. 3-5
and 7-9; Sat. 2-5 and 7-9), 102 Main St., is notable for its collection of
10,000 bookplates, one of the leading collections in the country, donated
by Frank D. and Cornelia Neltnor Anthony. Although West Chicago's
first library was started in 1880, its second in 1892, and its present one in
1929, it is only since 1935 that the city has had a tax-supported institu-

,56

tion. Neither of the early libraries survived long, but the new one,
started originally by the Woman's Club with 451 books, gives promise
of permanence. The library now (1939) contains about 6,000 bound
volumes, subscribes to 48 periodicals, and serves more than 1,500 regis-
tered borrowers,

3. The SITE OF THE STEPHEN DOUGLAS SPEECH (open; en-
trance through private driveway) is marked by a granite boulder stand-
ing in Grove Place, the old Neltnor estate, near the southwest corner of
Washington St. and Neltnor Blvd. Here, in the old hickory grove,
Stephen A. Douglas spoke on August 28, 1858, the day after the famous
Freeport debate with Lincoln.

According to seven witnesses, whose sworn statements are in a local
bank vault, Lincoln made an impromptu speech at the Douglas gather-
ing, and the marker refers to the event as a Lincoln-Douglas debate.
Lincoln is said to have spent the night of the 27th with Mr. Moran, a
cousin, three miles out of Elburn (then Blackberry) , intending to catch
a train at Turner Junction the next day. The story relates that he was
to ride over to the Junction with the Blackberry Republican society,
called the "Lincoln True Hearts." However, when he arrived in the
village of Blackberry on the morning of the 28th the tale continues
he discovered that the "True Hearts" had gone without him, so he rode
in the Democratic hayrack, in company of the "Ever Readys." Missing
his train at Turner Junction, the legend has him being induced to go
up to the hickory grove, where, invited by Douglas to speak, he delivered
a brief address from the hayrack.

What discredits the story is the silence of the newspapers in regard
to Lincoln's presence at the Douglas meeting. Surely the Aurora Weekly
Republican (now Beacon-News), whose editor commented with such
relish on the shortcomings of Douglas at that rally, would have been
only too happy had it been able to contrast this man, whom it held in
such contempt, with Lincoln, whom it admired. The following excerpts
from its editorial of Friday, September 3, 1858, gives some feeling of the
partisan journalism of those days.

This great political montebank [Douglas] held forth on Satur-
day last at the Junction, to the great mortification of his friends,
and the abundant merriment of his opposers. . . . His friends were
thunderstruck at his imbecility. The great lion of the Party showed
his ears too plain to be mistaken. His roar was simply the howl of
the jackass about to be deprived of his accustomed booty. . . . An
old prophet in Israel once cried out, "Oh that mine enemy would
write a book," our prayer is "Oh that Douglas will make speeches
and fire his cannon."

157

Had an impromptu debate taken place, it is likely that the Chicago
papers would have considered the event worth mentioning. But, save
for a letter in the Press and Tribune of August 31, 1858, dated from
Elgin on the 28th and signed by a "Dr. Jaeger," who places the Douglas
speech at Wayne instead of Turner Junction, the Chicago papers seem
to have ignored the whole affair. No mention is made in the letter of any
speaking at Turner Junction. In fact, the impression is given that Doug-
las did not even leave the train platform there, but simply stood silently
with the "seven admirers" who accompanied him, until the train went on.
It is possible, however, that Douglas spoke both at Wayne and at Turner
Junction.

Another factor which seems to discredit any story of a joint debate
at this time is the specific agreement known to have been made between
Lincoln and Douglas not to meet in debate within their own Congres-
sional districts. Turner Junction in" 1858 was in Douglas' district.

It is quite possible that Lincoln did at some time during the debates
visit Turner Junction and that that occasion gave rise to the local legend,
on the basis of which the Woman's Club erected the marker in Grove
Place on August 28, 1928. Until further evidence comes to light it
seems a fair inference that the local citizens who recalled having heard
Lincoln on August 28, 1858, at Turner Junction were confused in their
dates.

4. The JOHN C. NELTNOR HOUSE (open by arrangement, 250),
southwest corner Washington St. and Neltnor Blvd., stands on the site
of a native hickory grove in which it is said that the Potawatomi held
annual powwows. It is also believed that this eminence, one of the
highest in Du Page County, was an Indian signal station. Completed
in 1869, and designed in the Georgian colonial tradition, the house was
built from hand-sawed, kiln-dried lumber. Its original owner, John C.
Neltnor, was one of West Chicago's leading citizens from Civil War days
until his death in 1938, at the age of 96. The house is notable for its
authentic and historically interesting antiques, collected by Neltnor's
daughter, Mrs. Frank D. Anthony, and her late husband. Many of the
pieces of furniture, acquired in Canada, were possessions of the Duke
of Kent (father of Queen Victoria) and the Duke of Richmond, first
governor-general of Canada, and belong to the Queen Anne, Sheraton,
and Chippendale periods.

5. The REID, MURDOCH 8c COMPANY PICKLE WORKS (open
Tues. and Thurs. 1-3) lie along the Chicago 8c North Western Ry. tracks,
between Neltnor Blvd. (111. 59) and Sycamore.

WEST CHICAGO

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. Old Gates Store Building

2. West Chicago Public Library

3. Site of the Stephen Douglas Speech

4. John C. Neltnor House

5. fleid, Murdoch & Company Pickle Works

WHEATON

General Information

POPULATION (1930):
7,258 (See p. 234.)

DISTANCE FROM CHICAGO:
26 mi.

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION (from Chicago) :
Chicago, Aurora & Elgin R. R. (electric).
Chicago & North Western Ry.

ACCOMMODATIONS :

Schultz Hotel (a rooming house), 120 E. Willow St. Private tourist homes.
Usual restaurants. No taverns.

PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICE:

Chicago Motor Club, 129 N. Hale St. Du Page County Courthouse, E. end
Liberty Dr.

BUSINESS SECTION:

Centered on Front St., extending N. for a block on several side streets, spilling
over S. to Liberty Dr.

STREET ORDER AND NUMBERING:

No directional distinction between streets and avenues. Numbering is N. and S.
from Front St., E. and W. from Main St.

RECREATION, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPECIAL EVENTS:

North Side Park, at north-central citv limits, entered from West St. Swimming,
tennis, ice skating (shelter) , baseball, Boy Scout and Girl Scout cabins.

South Side Park, Roosevelt Rd. (US 330), Indiana and Main Sts. Tennis,

baseball.

Memorial Park, Hale St., Seminary, Wheaton and Union Aves. Tennis.

Herrick Lake (county forest preserve No. 12), about \ l /2 mi. SW. of city limits,
at junction of Weisbrook and Butterfield Rds. Swimming, boating, picnic
facilities, ice skating

Arrowhead Country Club, about i mi. S. of city limits, at junction of Butter-
field and Orchard Rds. Golf: daily fee course; dining room.

Green Valley Country Club, in city limits (see p. 232.).

Scheduled football and baseball games by high school on Grange Field.

Horseback riding, Kammes' Stables, Butterfield Rd. adjacent to Arrowhead

Country Club.

Paramount Theater, Hale St. between Front and Wesley Sts. Motion pictures.

Handel's Messiah presented by Wheaton College Choir the Sun. before Christmas

vacation, Pierce Memorial Chapel.

Weekly outdoor summer band concerts in Central Park

Wheaton College Chapel Choir, the Men's Glee Club, and the Women's Glee

Club each presents an annual concert during spring months.

Spring Concert by Wheaton College Band. Fall and Spring Concerts by Wheaton

College Little Symphony.

Garden Study Club sponsors annual exhibit in June at Episcopal Guild Hall,

in conjunction with which the iris growers hold an exhibit in private gardens.

Wheaton Drama Club gives several plays during the season.

160

WHEATON

County Seat

HEATON, city of 12 churches and a funda-
mentalist college, lies in the geographical center of Du Page County,
sharing with Glen Ellyn and part of Lombard about half of the territory
of Milton Township. Since 1867-68 Wheaton has been the county seat
a fact that still occasionally nettles nearby Naperville. First settled in
1839, and once dubbed "Wheaton's Mud-Hole," it has left behind both
its farming stage and its manufacturing period. Its present phase is that
of a quiet suburban town, a moderately wealthy community of homes
and commuters.

In the barrenness of winter, Wheaton, like most other small towns in
a northern region with scant snowfall, looks gray and forlorn in spots.
But summertime brings heavy foliage to the many trees and patches of
bright color to the gardens. It is then that the large elms and maples,
many with branches interlocking above the streets, most strongly belie
the fact that this was once unwooded land. About the only native trees
when the settlers arrived were some hickories and red and white oaks
that grew in the place now called Jewel Grove, northwest of town, and
in scattered clumps within the present corporate limits. In the low spots
are peat beds, some of which are subject to annual fires in the dry season;
others have burned for years at a time. The occasional sand and gravel
deposits are not worked commercially.

From the top of a wooded hill Wheaton College looks down upon
the compact little city at its feet. Like an old feudal manor it seems to
be watching over and guiding the life around and beneath it. Only, one
other factor has had so great an influence on the development of the
community the railroad. But it is from the college that Wheaton takes
much of its personality.

Although the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin Railroad maintains shops and
yards in Wheaton, the only business concern of more than local scope is
the Medical Protective Company. This firm, which underwrites liability
insurance for the medical profession on a national scale, erected head-

161

quarters here in 1933. Formerly a more or less self-sustaining community,
Wheaton now depends upon Chicago for the employment of about 60
per cent of its business and professional people. Within an area of only
four blocks centering upon Front Street, are most of the public buildings
and local commercial establishments, including two $1,500,000 banks.
A reminder of the days before Wheaton grew up are the high sidewalks
of Front Street, which still retain the grade established by an enter-
prising publisher to prevent pedestrians from being spattered with mud
by passing vehicles.

On Wheaton's outskirts are nurseries, greenhouses, truck gardens,
farms, and country estates, the last owned by wealthy Chicagoans who
operate farms or maintain nurseries. Once a railroad shipping point for
farm produce and livestock, Wheaton sees little such business now that
motor trucks have come to be used so extensively.

Less than 10 per cent of Wheaton's population is foreign-born, and
only i per cent, Negro. Surnames made familiar by local history books
persist on every side. Having increased from 4,137 in 1920 to 7,258 in
1930 or 75 per cent Wheaton's population today is estimated at 7,500.
It seems both evidential and prophetic that there are ten real estate
offices in this city of four and a half square miles. Housed in a long
building of grey stone, remodeled from a cheese factory about 1900, is
the town's only hotel, more accurately described as a rooming house.
There are so few apartments or duplex houses that many young couples
of today move to other communities, where small accommodations are
more plentiful. One of the largest home-building projects in the Chicago
area is being carried on in a 55-acre subdivision south of Roosevelt Road.

The city as a whole presents the usual conglomeration of architectural
styles. These range from the simple Greek Revival, prevalent in the
Middle West from 1830 to 1860, to the severe contemporary. Between
these two extremes are the Victorian battlemented stone type of the
college, Richardson Romanesque, American Wood Gothic, colonial, and
some fine examples of modern classic, Tudor, and English Gothic. The
oldest house was erected in 1847-48 by Warren Wheaton, for whom the
town is named.

In some of the private homes are still to be found desks and tables
made by hand from lumber that was probably cut at Gary's Mill in the
1840*5 or '50*8, huge wooden Hour bins, brass-topped copper warming
pans brought from the East in pioneer days, and other reminders of
earlier civilization. Among all the bells that ring on Sunday morning
the one which calls to worship the German Lutherans stands out from the

162

rest by reason of its sweet, tinkly tone. More than a century old, it rang
in the past, first for the Congregationalists in Babcock's Grove (Lom-
bard), later for the Wheaton Methodists.

In addition to preserving some of their heritage in the way of houses
and furnishings, the people of Wheaton have retained to a marked
degree the religious and moral principles of their forefathers. Since the
founding of the first local religious society by a group of Wesleyans in
184$, public worship has held a position of importance in the life of the
community. In addition to churches of the Baptist, Catholic, Christian
Science, Congregational, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presby-
terian denominations, there are two independent fundamentalist organ-
izations. One of the two Baptist churches belongs to the county's only
Negro congregation. The influence of the college, as well as that of the
church, has no doubt been largely responsible for the continuance of
strict standards of conduct in a town so close to a metropolitan center.
Local prohibition has been in force since 1886, and in many of the
homes ash trays are conspicuously absent.

Since the opening of the first school in 1847, education has kept pace
with religion. Wheaton's public school system has had the advantage
of being kept out of politics. Although no distinctive innovations in
educational- methods have been introduced, a special feature is the
Opportunity Room, a class for backward children taken mostly from the
sixth grade. One board of education controls four elementary schools
and a junior high school. Another board directs the community high
school, which includes within its district Wheaton, Warrenville, and the
intervening territory. In addition to the public schools are an elementary
and junior high school in charge of the Sisters of St. Francis, of Mil-
waukee, and a preparatory school run in conjunction with Wheaton
College.

Community life focuses around cultural, social, fraternal, and patriotic
organizations, the lectures and concerts presented by the college, and
the weekly summer concerts given by the municipal band. One of the
most interesting of the cultural groups is the Wheaton Drama Club,
whose membership of about 150 men and women is actively engaged in
the study and production of plays. The Masonic lodge, founded in 1858,
is the city's oldest organization. Altogether there are more than 30 clubs
and organizations in Wheaton. In scanning the list, which reflects so
many diverse interests, it is hard to realize that more than one resident
remembers the time when social life was centered around homely tasks;
apple-paring, soap-making, sheep-washing, quilting, and the like.

163

Two big parks and a little one offer to Wheatonians more than 75
acres of recreation grounds. The park district, organized in 1921 and
governed by a board of elected officers entirely independent of the city
administration, is carrying out an effective program of landscaping and
development of play facilities. Tennis is one of the most popular sports,
and any resident of the city is eligible for membership in the Wheaton
Tennis Club. Surrounded by country clubs, Wheaton has one, the Green
Valley, within its corporate limits. (See p. 232.)

Three sanitariums, all privately owned, are in or near the city: the
Wheaton Nursing Home Sanitarium; the Howe Home for Women,
specifically for the aged and feeble-minded; and the Mary E. Pogue
School and Sanitarium, an institution for retarded children which also
cares for a few adults.

The Wheaton Illinoian, founded in 1861, is perhaps the oldest paper
in the county. Published weekly, it is devoted entirely to local news.
Younger by 49 years is the Wheaton Daily Journal, which publishes
national and foreign news, as well as local. Both the Illinoian and the
Journal have always been Republican papers, with the exception of the
period when the latter was a Progressive sheet, backing Theodore
Roosevelt. The Journal is the county's only daily paper.

Wheaton has had a number of nationally recognized citizens. Among
former residents of the city were: Benjamin Franklin Taylor, journalist,
poet, and novelist; J. Wesley Powell, geologist and explorer of the Grand
Canyon; Jonathan Blanchard, noted abolitionist, president of two col-
leges, and author; Elbert H. Gary, for 24 years chairman of the board
of the United States Steel Corporation; Edwin Hubble, later connected
with Mount Wilson Observatory; Clifford Gregory, former editor of the
Prairie Farmer; Frank H. Spearman, novelist; and "Red" Grange, foot-
ball idol of the 1920*5. Four well known writers reside here today:
Josephine and Harry M. Beardsley, historians and journalists; Roy Snell,
author of more than 60 children's books; and Lyman Anson, magazine
writer. John Jameson, listed in Barnett's Armorial Book Plates as one
of the three greatest contemporary bookplate etchers, has been a
Wheatonian since 1920.

Since its incorporation as a city in 1890, Wheaton has been under the
commission form of government, consisting of a mayor and four com-
missioners. The small police department, having little to do in the way
of crime suppression; devotes most of its time to accident prevention, in
which service it has set an excellent record. The volunteer fire depart-
ment, comprised of 25 business men, is out on the road with the first of

164

its four trucks one minute after the warning whistle blows. In a recent
survey of municipal indebtedness conducted by the International City
Managers Association it was revealed that Wheaton had no debts. The
city clerk attributes this distinction to Wheaton's money-saving schemes,
such as getting small electric light bulbs to give as much light as large
ones.

Seeds (1832-1842)

In April, 1832, Erastus Gary staked a claim near present Warrenville.
As soon as he had marked off his land he went back to Pomfret, Con-
necticut, for other members of his family. Warren Lyon Wheaton, then
a young schoolmaster of 20 who spent his summers working on a farm,
listened to Erastus' tales of the West. Gary soon returned to Illinois,
with his sister and brother, but for Wheaton there were five more years
of teaching, of saving, and of dreaming about following their footsteps.

About the first of May, 1837, Warren Wheaton left Pomfret. Ac-
companying him were Charles Gary and Mrs. Laura Gary Rickard,
another brother and sister of Erastus, and their families. Traveling by
stage, boat, and train, the party at length reached Buffalo. There they
were obliged to wait two weeks before the new steamboat Madison could
make her way through the ice and into the harbor. When she finally
pulled in, 1,500 people boarded her for the voyage to Chicago. In seven
more days she anchored near the mouth of the Chicago River.

Since the fourth of March, Chicago had been chartered as a city, but
it was still unprepossessing enough to elicit the remark in Wheaton's
diary that it was "a village claiming 3,000 population, but no honest
inhabitant believed it." As a matter of fact, Chicago's population in
1837 was 4,179.

Proceeding to the place where Erastus, Jude, and Orinda Gary had
been living for five years in a double log cabin, Wheaton and the new-
comers of the Gary family moved in and set about making themselves
useful. Wheaton recorded his first job. in the diary: "Erastus Gary and
myself each swung a cradle for 30 working days, cutting nearly 160 acres
of small grain, lodged level with the ground." The early crop in, he
helped the Garys erect a sawmill a few miles north of their cabin and
assisted in the establishment of a Methodist class at the mill site. When
the summer \vprk was over, he went adventuring through the region,
visiting St. Louis, Quincy, Burlington, Dubuque, Galena, and Dixon.
Sometimes he picked up a ride by stage, but most of the time he walked.

The late-nineteenth century historian, Rufus Blanchard, suggests that

perhaps it was fatigue which accounted for Warren Wheaton's decision,
upon returning from his walking tour, to settle down in the vicinity of
the Garys. "But yet," he adds, "the distant hope that Chicago would
rise out of the mud and become at least a good market for produce was
then in the minds of everyone, and had its influence with Mr. Wheaton."
While Wheaton was at Big Woods that winter, he was very ill, probably
from the exposure suffered on his journey. It is said that while he was
recuperating, the Gary cabin caught fire and he had to be taken out
through a window and carted on a sled to a neighboring house.

Warren's brother Jesse, a carpenter by trade, joined the group at
Big Woods that fall. In June, 1838, two years prior to the Government
survey, the Wheatons took up land several miles east of Gary's Mill.
Warren noted in his diary that he staked his claim "by plowing a furrow
around some six or seven hundred acres of prairie land and calling it
my own. At that time," he continued, "there were only two smokes in
sight, Lyman Butterfield's, two and a half miles southwest and William
Woodward, two and a half miles northwest." When the Wheatons' land
came up for sale, they paid the Government $1.25 an acre and received
deeds dated in 1844, 1845, and 1846, signed by Presidents John Tyler
and James K. Polk.

Later in 1838 the Vallette family of Stockbridge, Massachusetts,
settled near the Wheatons. As the years passed, the Vallettes became
prominent in more than one community in the area. One of the oldest
graves in the recently restored Pleasant Hill Cemetery, northwest of the
city, is that of Jeremiah Vallette, who died in 184(5 at the age of 84.

Not yet ready to settle down, Warren Wheaton went back to Pomfret
in the fall of 1838. Missing the last boat out of Chicago that season, he
had to walk most of the way, getting an occasional lift in some farmer's
wagon. One of the diary entries at this time reads, "To riding with a
Dutchman, 25 cents." The journey took less than three weeks.

Wheaton returned to his claim early in 1839, just about the time
when Du Page County was organized. In March, Jesse Wheaton married
Orinda Gary and built on his claim what the family still refers to as
the "house-by-the-spring." For nine years Jesse and Orinda shared their
home with Warren. Although the Government had officially removed
the Potawatomies from the region in 1835, small scattered groups re-
mained into the 1840*5. They were friendly and mingled freely with the
white settlers. Often they would walk into Jesse Wheaton's house at
night doors were never locked in those days to be discovered asleep on
the floor when the family came downstairs in the morning. There are no

166

remains of that small frame house which stood a little west of the foot
of present Main Street, a block south of Roosevelt Road, but part of the
foundation of the stock-watering tank marks its site.

The Wheaton house and those erected by Jonathan Vallette; Hezekiah
Holt and Alvin Seamans, who drove out with an ox team in 1839; and
Peter Crosby, who settled here around 1842, constituted the nucleus of
the future village.

Green Shoots (1843-1849)

It was only natural that religion should be the first blade to push
through the newly-broken sod, since most of the immigrants to the
Wheaton settlement came from pious New England. While the Wheatons
themselves continued to attend the Methodist class at Gary's Mill, 14
of their immediate neighbors organized a Wesleyan society in 1843. The
primary principles of the Wesleyans were opposition to slavery, secret
societies, and arbitrary church government.

The St. Charles Road, laid out in 1836, was platted in 1843. While
it did not run through the Wheaton settlement, passing about a mile
north of the city's present boundary, this former Indian trail became
an important avenue of travel for new settlers in the community and
for farmers hauling their produce to Chicago.

By 1847 there were so many children "hop-skipping and jumping
about," as Rufus Blanchard phrased it, that their fathers built a school-
house and hired a teacher. The diminutive frame building served as
both school and church for seven years and then became a private
residence.

\Varren Wheaton began to build his own house in 1847, about a year
before Erastus Gary moved his family into the settlement. When it was
finished, he married Harriet Rickard. It was Harriet whom, as the 12-
year-old daughter of Laura Gary Rickard, he had often played with
during the boat trip from Buffalo to Chicago ten years before. Wheaton
was elected about this time, on the Democratic ticket, to serve a term in
the legislature. In later years, after the formation of the Republican
Party, he became a staunch Republican.

In the fall of 1849 things began to change quickly. It was 13 years
since the incorporators of the Galena 8c Chicago Union Railroad had
received a charter by special act of legislature for the operation of a line
west of Chicago. Now, at last, the great day was at hand, and amid
much excitement the "Pioneer" or one of the company's two other
locomotives chugged into Wheaton.

167

To Warren Wheaton goes the credit for the laying of the tracks
through his community. When William B. Ogden, president of the
railroad, and J. B. Turner, acting director, had traveled through the
region the year before, prospecting for a right-of-way, Wheaton had
proved that he was smarter than some other landholders in the county
by offering to them free what others had dickered over for a good price,
or even refused outright. The railroad built a station merely a few
poles set into the ground to sustain a roof and sides of battened boards
and called the stop Wheaton.

Prairie Flower (1850-1869)

In 1850 the first business buildings were erected by Patrick Lynch,
Horace H. Fuller, and Jonathan G. Vallette. The first store was a
grocery, run by Lynch. Like many of the groceries of its day, it sold
Kentucky Twist chewing tobacco, Kentucky Bourbon and other liquors,
and probably offered a bed and cornbread to the weary traveler. Fuller
opened the next store, which, according to Rufus Blanchard, "was not
a grocery store, that is, Kentucky Bourbon was not kept in it, although
it kept tea, coffee, and' sugar, and everything that sober people wanted
from a penny whistle to a bass drum." Mr. Fuller's store was south of the
railroad station, of which he was in charge, and from which he ran a
stage to Naperville. One of the victims of the trip to Naperville ex-
claimed in 1851, "Oh, what roads! It seemed about as far up and down
as straight ahead!" A Mr. Wormworth opened the first blacksmith shop
in 1850, and the Wheatons and Garys constructed a grain warehouse.

All interest in this opening year of the expanding fifties was not
centered in business. The first town meeting of Milton Township was
held at Jesse Wheaton's house and the first board of supervisors elected.
Warren Wheaton was on this board.

In 1850, too, Alvin Seamans established a Sunday school. Another
Connecticut Yankee, Seamans modeled his venture on the pattern orig-
inated in New England.

The congregation of the Baptist church at Stacy's Corners, a settle-
ment fringing on the northern limit of present Glen Ellyn, was composed
mainly of people living in the community a mile south, at that time
called Danby. When the railroad laid tracks through Danby, leaving
the church up at the Corners somewhat stranded, the Baptists decided
to reorganize, so they sold their church and transferred their activities
to Wheaton, believing it held more promise of growth than their own
community. For about 18 years they held their meetings in the Wheaton

168

schoolhouse, until they could build another church. In the meantime,
a number of Wheatonians joined their congregation.

In 1852 a post office was established at Wheaton, and Mr. Fuller, the
stationmaster, became also the postmaster. For some unexplained reason,
he did not long retain the post, and it fell to Warren Wheaton in
September, 1853. At about the same time the office was moved from the
railroad station to a one-story frame building on Front Street.

The Methodists of the area who belonged to the Naperville (formerly
part of the Du Page) Circuit, at a quarterly conference in 1852 voted
that "an appointment be taken ,in at Wheaton's depot in connection
with Gary's, giving the two places together one sermon each Sabbath, in
case they raise $150 ..." Warren Wheaton and the Rev. Charles Gary
were delegates to this conference, which resulted in the transfer of part
of the Methodist class from Gary's Mill to Wheaton in 1853. The class
met at the railroad station and at private homes for more than four
years. In 1857, after the division of the circuit into separate Wheaton and
Naperville units, the cornerstone of a church was laid on ground donated
by Jesse C. Wheaton.

On June 20, 1853, Erastus Gary, in his capacity as justice of the peace
a position he held for 2 1 years certified the plat by which about a dozen
blocks were laid out in lots and streets. Warren and Jesse Wheaton,
Jonathan G. Vallette, and John Cross, owners of the land, signed the
document,

At the end of the year, the Illinois Institute was opened, the upper
part of its building still unfinished. The movement toward its estab-
lishment had been inaugurated by a little band of reformers at the
Illinois Annual Conference of the Wesleyan Methodists in 1850. The
anti-slavery struggle, then at its height, was the issue on which the Wes-
leyans expended most of their energy, but they were also interested in
laboring for the moral and religious principles which held an important
place in their lives. Their aim in establishing the institute was to provide
a place of higher education where their children would not run the
risk of contact with teachers of doubtful religious or moral zeal. After
searching some time for financial sponsorship and a suitable locality,
their committee inspired the generosity of Warren Wheaton, who gave
them a large tract of land for a campus and pledged $300 toward the
college fund. Jesse Wheaton and Erastus Gary each pledged the same
amount of money. On a sultry summer day in 1852 a little band of
devout people knelt down in the tall prairie grass, on a hill just east of
the Wheaton subdivision, and dedicated it and all who should find

169

themselves on it to God. Soon afterward, construction of the institute
was begun on the crown of that hill.

The Rev. John Cross, pastor of the Wesleyan Church in Wheaton,
was the institute's sole instructor until April, 1854. Several others then
came, and in the fall of that year the Rev. J. A. Martling became first
principal. Although the Wesleyans' purpose had been to found a college,
the institute as yet was only comparable to a high school.

Its openly expressed attitude toward slavery would seem to give cre-
dence to the story that the school became a station on the underground
railway. It is said that President Lucius Matlack, who took office in
1856, becoming pastor of the Wesleyan Church at the same time, used
to secrete the runaways in the attic. However, the few remaining people
who knew the school in its early years deny this tale, saying that the
institution helped the cause in many ways but was never a station of
the underground.

In 1856 Leonard E. De Wolf and J. A. J. Birdsall, with a hand press
and printing materials purchased from a Chicago firm, gave Wheaton
its first newspaper. Though short-lived, the Du Page County Gazette
broke the journalistic ice.

Wheaton's brief career as a manufacturing town also began in 1856.
Peter Northrup, pioneer of Addison Township, built a steam-propelled
flour mill, with a planing mill in conjunction. The gristmill produced
a superior grade of flour until it burned down two years later. Avery
Chadwick opened a carriage factory, also using steam power. The plant
turned out about 50 carriages annually and employed 15 men. Rufus
Blanchard called its products "locomotive vehicles for children and
babies, for which there was quite a good home market in such a fruitful
country as Wheaton and its surroundings." Two lightning rod factories
were in operation either in or near Wheaton in 1857.

Under the motto "Inalienable Are the Rights of Freemen," Nathaniel
H. Lewis of Chicago followed the demise of the Gazette with his Wheaton
Flag in 1857.

Wheaton by now considered itself not only grown up but because it
was in the center of Du Page and had the railroad worthy to supplant
Naperville as county seat. Its insistance produced an election on the
question in May, 1857, but not a favorable vote. It did not give up the
fight, however.

In line with a Statewide movement, the Du Page County Agricultural
and Mechanical Society had been organized in 1853. The first and second
county fairs under the auspices of this society were held at Naperville,

170

the third at Wheaton. At a meeting of the association held at Danby
on June 25, 1857, the fair grounds were permanently located at Wheaton
on land donated by Jesse Wheaton. For many years thereafter these
grounds, which included a race track, were the scene of the annual
September fairs.

No more did the inhabitants of the prairie hamlet have to depend
on home remedies for the treatment of their ills. From Indiana in 1858
came Luther L. Hiatt, and A. H. Hiatt, M.D., the former dealing in
drugs and real estate, the latter in artificial limbs.

By 1859 Wheaton's population had grown to nearly 800. Gone were
the pioneer days when it was possible to laugh off the epithet "Wheaton's
Mud-Hole," a nickname not unmerited during wet weather. Sometimes,
after a heavy rain, the people had to stay at home because the streets
were impassable. They were becoming too well established, too dignified,
to stand for this sort of thing much longer. They had progressed from
house-raisings, apple-parings, and candle-dippings to debates, musicales,
amateur theatricals, strawberry festivals, and oyster suppers, from covered
wagon to horse-and-buggy. They wore their hoop skirts and ruffled taffeta,
their swallowtails and embroidered vests, and attended elegant balls at
the Mansion House in Danby, the Pre-Emption House in Naperville, or
Colonel Warren's place in Warrenville.

In order to enforce a system of public improvements, the leading
citizens drew up a charter fur the incorporation of Wheaton as a village.
The Naperville charter served as a model, with two modifications, one
of which was that the council board should have the power to license or
suppress the sale of fermented or distilled liquors of all kinds. A month
after the approval of the charter Warren Wheaton became first village
president, in an election presided over by Erastus Gary, Jesse Wheaton,
L. j. Bliss, and Seth Daniels. The Gary-Wheaton regime was becoming
more firmly entrenched.

The first civic improvements were the draining of the sloughs by
tiling, the building of stone culverts, and the piking up of the roads
with dirt dug from drainage ditches on either side. The condition of
the streets and walks in rainy weather was still not much better than
before, however, and it remained for further repairs about 20 years later
to do away with the mud.

Serious financial difficulties having arisen at Illinois Institute, two
sources were appealed to in an effort to save the school. The State
Congregational Association was approached with the proposal that it
adopt the institution. Jonathan Blanchard (no relation to Rufus) noted

171

anti-slavery leader, was asked to assume the presidency of the institute.
He had recently left the presidency of Knox College, where he had
performed something of a miracle in raising it out of financial mire, and
it was hoped that he could work a similar miracle at Wheaton. The
Congregational ists decided against adopting the institute, but many of
them promised their financial help, if Blanchard would accept the
presidency.

Mr. Blanchard accepted the offer of the institute, which was to be
reorganized as a college, and came to see Warren Wheaton before taking
office. In a letter written shortly after this visit, Blanchard suggested
that Wheaton give every other lot of his town property to the college,
the understanding being that the institution would raise money from
its sale. He also proposed that Mr. Wheaton "call the college Wheaton
College and that will at least save your heirs the expense of a good
monument." Wheaton gave the land, Blanchard took office in December,
1859, the new name was adopted under the charter amended by the
1860 session of the legislature, and the institution at last started on its
road to success. Hereafter it was to be under the patronage and control
of the Congregationalists, with the co-operation of its founders, the
Wesleyans.

The college motto, "For Christ and His Kingdom," now carved in
the cornerstone of the east wing of Blanchard Hall, and the following
excerpt from the paper adopted by the trustees at the reorganization
show clearly the religious attitude that was to permeate the institution
down to the present day:

The intention of the Trustees is, that the instructions and in-
fluence of the institution shall bear decidedly against all forms o'f
error and sin. The testimony of God's Word against slave-holding,
secret societies, and their spurious worships, human inventions in
church government, war, and whatever else shall clearly appear to
contravene the kingdom and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, is
to be kept good.

From this it is apparent that the slavery problem was not the only one
that evoked the moral indignation of the college group. From the
beginning, the college forbade its students to join secret societies.
Jonathan Blanchard published a number of books attacking the Masonic
Order and for several years edited the Christian Cynosure, a Chicago
publication of anti-secret-society policy.

Not long after the reorganization of the college, the master of the
Masonic lodge, established in Wheaton in 1858, stated that he intended
to break down the rule against secret societies. A lecturer was imported

172

to form a Good Templars lodge. This man publicly announced that if
the faculty objected to the students' joining, the Masons would publicize
the affair all over the world and force the college to close. Three students
were known to have joined. One became secretary of the lodge and
posted notices of its meetings in the college hall. The students were
suspended until they should conform to the rules. A writ of mandamus
was sued for to compel their reinstatement, but the court refused to issue
it. On appeal, for which the Master of the Masonic lodge signed the
bonds for costs, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the
lower court. The issue finally died down, but years later there was
another upheaval, and again the college won out. It still does not
countenance secret societies.

Connected as they were with the college, the Wesleyan Methodists
of Wheaton came under Jonathan Blanchard's pastorate in 1860 and
were organized, together with a group of Congregationalists, as the First
Church of Christ. This church belonged at first to both the Illinois
Wesleyan Conference and the Illinois Congregational Association. Two
years later an amicable division of the congregation resulted in the
withdrawal of the Wesleyan members to form the Wesleyan Methodist
Church.

When news came of the fall of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861, the
strong anti-slavery sentiments of Wheaton's citizens provided a fertile
field for the gathering of recruits. Many Wheaton men responded to the
call, while most of the women joined the local branch of the Soldiers'
Aid Societies that were formed in every community. Wheaton's railroad
station served as the point of leave-taking for the Wheaton and Naper-
ville members of the io5th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers.

H. C. Childs started Wheaton's third newspaper, the Northern
Illinoian, during the first year of the Civil War. Republican in policy,
it filled the gap left by the discontinuance of the Flag when its office and
plant burned down the previous year. For a time Benjamin Franklin
Taylor, literary and dramatic critic and war correspondent on the Chicago
Evening Journal, was literary editor of the Wheaton paper. Although
not particularly successful from a financial point of view, the Northern
Illinoian was so well conducted that it did much toward bringing both
Wheaton and the county into the public eye. Later the paper was pub-
lished in several outside editions: Elmhurst, Downers Grove, 'and Turner
Junction (West Chicago) . John Whitlock, J. Russell Smith (who
changed the name of the paper to the Wheaton Illinoian) , Dunkelberg
and Fischer, H. C. Paddock, N. E. Matter, and C. Plummer followed in

173

succession as owners and editors until 1915, when the present editor, H.
L. Durant, bought it. Member of the corporation that published the
Chicago Republican, started in May, 1856 one of that city's most re-
markable, though unsuccessful, papers of the period H. C. Childs was a
journalist of more than local importance.

Two years before starting his newspaper, Mr. Childs had purchased
the Chadwick carriage factory. The plant burned down in 1861. He
rebuilt it, and, according to the historian Blanchard, "the same business
went on till the supply of baby carts was ahead of the demand, for there
is a limit to the rate of animated production."

In deference to a mud-bespattered populace, Mr. Childs, in 1862,
raised the sidewalk in front of his newspaper office three feet above the
roadbed. Other Front Street business men followed suit. The marked
difference in grade thus established has never been entirely reconciled,
so that today one must go up and down steps on Front Street corners.

A group of men organized a liberal religious society, which they
called the Universalist Church, in 1862. They had no church ordinances
or unity of faith, but that they were treated with tolerance by their more
conventionally pious neighbors is attested in the fact that several other
denominations held services in their building prior to the construction
of their own churches.

In 1862 a third schoolhouse was built near the second and used for
the primary children. The next year its predecessor burned down, and
the older children attended classes in the basement of the Methodist
Episcopal Church until the building of a larger, graded schoolhouse in
1874.

The unrest left smoldering since the 1857 county seat election burst
into flames again in 1867, fanned by the editorials of H. C. Childs, and
the following year Wheaton became county seat. In 1869 the village was
re-incorporated as a town, with Warren Wheaton again first president of
his community's new governmental set-up. Developments from then on
were more or less routine.

Garden Variety (i8jo-Present)

Wheaton passed a prohibition ordinance in 1871 and repealed it the
following year. In 1878 a modified ordinance gave the town liquor
intermittently until the passage of a new prohibition law in 1886.
Wheaton has been dry ever since.

Its manufacturing era was over, but two more industrial ventures of

174

more than local scope were to spring up and die out before Wheaton
settled down completely to suburban domesticity. The first of these
was the map-making plant founded by Rufus Blanchard in the fall of
1871. Opened in the Bedel Block on Front Street, which burned down
soon afterward, the plant was later transferred to the rear of Blanchard's
house lot, present site of the Journal office. How long Blanchard con-
tinued to print maps in Wheaton is unknown, but his Chicago map and
publishing firm was well known until the turn of the century.

All this time Wheaton had existed without a bank. In 1874 Erastus
Gary, his son Elbert, and Jesse Wheaton established the Banking House
of Gary and Wheaton. Chartered as a State bank in 1897, it has since
been called the Gary-Wheaton Bank.

In 1877 Wheaton began in earnest to dig herself out of the mud. A
street surfacing and grading program included the graveling of some of
the roadbeds and the cindering of sidewalks.

In January, 1878, the First Church of Christ split into two bodies.
Like the Wesleyan society out of which it had sprung, this Congregational
organization had a rule excluding from its congregation members of
secret societies. In 1867 the State Congregational Association had adopted
a resolution written by Professor Bartlett of Dartmouth College, declaring
Freemasonry "hostile to good government and the true religion." At
the same session a report by Dr. Edward Beecher asserted, ". . . by it
[Freemasonry] Christ is dethroned and Satan is exalted." Several at-
tempts had been made during the decade and a half since the withdrawal
of the church's Wesleyan members to disregard or revoke the anti-secret-
society ruling, and it was difficulty over this matter that now caused the
break. About 30 members withdrew and organized themselves into the
First* Congregational Church, omitting from their manual the disputed
ruling. At the same time the remaining group renamed their church
the College Church of Christ.

In 1881 Wheaton acquired another newspaper, the Star Critic, an
edition of John C. Neltnor's Du Page County Democrat, published in
West Chicago. It ran until about 1904.

An ordinance creating a police department and defining its duties
was passed on April 15, 1882. Prior to that time the work of protecting
Wheatonians and their property had been done by constables. With
the passage of the new ordinance, a night watchman was appointed at
a salary of $30 a month.

Wheaton's last large industry was the Wheaton Creamery, established
in 1882, with James Peirronet, president, Elbert H. Gary, vice president,

'75

WHEATON

POINTS OF INTEREST

L Wheaton College Campus

2. "Poet's Corner"

3. Gary Memorial Methodist Church

4. Wheaton Public Library

5. Public Square

6. Cap/am Jones Homestead

7. Warren Wheaton House

8. Jesse Wheaton House

9. Wheaton Cemetery

, 7 6

H. H. Fuller, secretary, and J. J. Cole, treasurer. An interior planned
by J. J. Cole introduced the most modern improvements of the day and
set the plant apart from all others in the State. The capacity of the
creamery at the time of its organization was 16,000 pounds of milk a
day. For about 35 years the company flourished, and then it, too, went
out of existence.

Sometime during the seventies or eighties Wheaton also had small
manufactories of saddles and gloves.

In his history of Du Page County, published in 1882, Rufus Blan-
chard remarked: "It is well known that . . . [Wheaton's] fame is due
to the tenacious religious connections, not only of its leading men, but
of its everyday sort of people." According to Blanchard, there were at
this time eight churches and "four more kinds of religious beliefs."

Dr. Charles Albert Blanchard, who succeeded his father, Jonathan,
to the presidency of Wheaton College in 1882, managed to complete the
erasure of the institution's debts. When increased enrollment brought
increased financial need, Dr. Blanchard resorted to increased prayer.
In his book How I Learned to Pray, he wrote:

When I began to speak for the college needs I had little faith;
results were correspondingly small. As days went on, I learned to
ask and expect larger things from God for His work. About the
time I was 55 I placed 3 petitions before our Father in respect to
the financial needs ... I asked first that He would incline friends
who were regular helpers to appropriate ... a larger sum than
heretofore. Not to wrong other interests, but to forward the col-
lege which lies at the foundation of so many great institutions.
Second, that He would give me a man who might help me in
raising money. My collection book shows that almost immediately
the first prayer was answered. Without request, God's people were
moved to increase the amount of their annual contributions to
the college. . . .

His second request, he said, was answered with a full-time field worker's
assistance. His third prayer asked God to incline unknown and K un-
solicited persons to send gifts to the school. The result of this petition
Blanchard said, was the receipt of large amounts of money, sometimes
as much as $10,000 at a time, from persons entirely unknown to the staff.

Slowly growing recognition of the need for fire protection had been
heightened in 1880 when several buildings in the business district, in-
cluding the post office, went up in flames. At last, on April 9, 1883, a
volunteer fire department was formed. The equipment of its. 16 members
consisted of a hand-drawn wagon, 30 leather buckets, and a few axes.
Two years later, privately owned horse-drawn rigs supplanted the wagon

177

that went by man-power. Pay was $2 per team and $1 per man, for each
call. The first rig at the fire station after the ringing of the bell won
a prize of $5; the second $3. Great was the excitement when no rig
showed up for a long time. As soon as the firemen arrived at the burning
building, one of them went all around it, breaking windows. Later, when
electricity came, the custom, for a time, was to .cut the electrical connec-
tions. In spite of obvious inconveniences, the horse-drawn rigs gave such
good service, generally, that it took much argument to reach, in 1917,
a decision in favor of replacing them with motor trucks.

On March 31, 1890, Wheaton, with 1,600 inhabitants, was reincor-
porated as a city. Judge Elbert H. Gary, who derived his title from the
two terms he served as county judge, took office as first mayor. Eight
years later Gary was to organize, under the Morgan auspices, the Federal
Steel Company, a stepping stone to his organization, in 1901, of the
United States Steel Corporation. It was the latter connection that
brought Wheaton's first mayor fame, not only as a millionaire, but as a
champion of the 1 2-hour day, 7-day week.

A Mrs. Fiske opened a private telephone exchange in the early
nineties. In 1894 the Chicago Telephone Company (now the Illinois
Bell) , which later bought out Mrs. Fiske, established toll service to
Chicago.

Another West Chicago newspaper, A. L. Hamilton's Journal, was
published in a Wheaton edition, called the Press, from the 1890*5 to 1908.

Wooden sidewalks were installed about 1900. They might have come
sooner had Wheaton not been so strongly set on temperance. Not all
of Wheaton's citizens had been in favor of the prohibition ordinance
of 1886. Some of those who opposed it had wanted to license liquo'r in
order to use the money for building sidewalks. But Warren Wheaton
and other leading citizens had held out. Wheaton's reply to the question
involved was the laconic, "I've wallowed in mud before, and I can do
it again." It was only six or seven years after 1900, however, that
Wheaton had cement walks, paved roads, and temperance.

As early as the 1870*8 Wheatonians had begun to commute to Chicago.
Completion of the Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Railroad (now the C. A. & E.)
to Aurora in 1902 gave Wheaton electric as well as steam service. As
Wheaton was the junction point of the Elgin and Aurora branches, the
yards of the electric line were located here.

In the Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for tlie
Year 1904 appears the following notice: "In the very early hours of
the $d day of January, 1904, at Wheaton, Du Page County, 111., a

178

member of this society sent for his lawyer in order that he might make
his will . . . He was nearly 83 years of age. In about four hours he died.
His name was Rufus Blanchard."

In 1907 the Du Page County News was published by John Norman.
It changed hands several times and ran for only a few years. Another
weekly newspaper, the Du Page County Tribune, was established in 1910
by John L. Brown. At the time of its purchase in 1913 by George M.
Smith and his son, George H. Smith, the paper was called the Wheaton
Progressive, a name derived from the Progressive movement then at the
fore in national politics. In 1933 the paper became a six-day daily, and
its name was changed to the Wheaton Daily Journal. A monthly maga-
zine, the Young American Golfer, was published at Wheaton for a short
time around 1914.

During the World War Wheaton gave 445 men, 13 of whom died in
service. From spring 1917 until fall 1918 the little suburb, like the rest
of the country, lived on fear, excitement, elation, despair, patriotism,
propaganda, and food rations. Women worked for the Red Cross, and
everyone sold Liberty Bonds arid War Savings Stamps.

At last it was all over, and, while life jeturned somewhat to normal,
a depression settled down upon industry and big-city business. With so
many of her citizens involved in outside commercial interests, Wheaton
felt the let-down more acutely than other more self-contained small
towns. The upturn that followed, in the 1 920*5, made of Wheaton a
fairly wealthy, rapidly expanding city. Instead of one bank, three found
ample business by 1926. In addition to the Gary-Wheaton Bank there
were now the First National and the Wheaton Trust and Savings, the
latter established in 1926. Under the leadership of Dr. James Oliver
Buswell, Jr., who in 1926 succeeded Dr. Charles Blanchard as president,
Wheaton College also came in for the phenomenal expansion that every-
where typified the big-money twenties.

Down through the years Wheaton had been acquiring more churches:
in 1875, Trinity Episcopal; in 1881, St. Michael's Roman Catholic; in
1905, the Christian Science. In i902^-the Wesleyan Methodist congrega-
tion having previously disbanded the German Lutherans took over the
old Wesleyan building, which they still occupy. By 1910 the membership
of the First Congregational Church had dwindled .down to only a few,
and the organization was much in debt. Since most of those who still
attended the services were actually Presbyterians, the charter was trans-

ferred to that denomination. In 1927 St. Paul's English Lutheran Church
and the United Gospel Tabernacle were founded. The 12 churches of
today average more than two and a half per square mile of territory.

Around 1928, fifty years after the split over the Masonic issue, the
College Church of Christ divided on the question of liberalizing its
traditional strict policies and relentless fundamentalist principles. When
the true fundamentalists could no longer live peaceably with those they
called "modernists," they asked the trustees for a separate place of
worship. Given the auditorium of Blanchard Hall, on the college campus,
they took the name of Wheaton College Interdenominational Church.
The "modernists". continued to meet in the college chapel. This arrange-
ment did not, however, settle the issue, which became more and more
bitter. It was impossible to have two official college churches because
Jonathan Blanchard had stipulated in the reorganization proceedings
of 1860 that only the College Church of Christ was ever to be on the
campus. The chapel belonged jointly to the church and the college,
but a clause in the papers gave the latter the privilege of taking it over,
if the extra space were ever needed. It was this clause that came to the
rescue and resolved the discord. The college paid the official church
for its .share in the building, and both churches moved off the campus.
The College Church of Christ now faces the main campus on Washington
Street, while the uncompromising fundamentalist group has its own
building on the northwest corner of Center and Cross Streets, under the
name Wheaton Bible Church.

For Wheaton, things went well until the stock market crash in 1929.
Then the First National Bank failed; money became tight; and business
slackened. Contributive to the death of William E. Gary, nephew of
Erastus, was the failure of the Gary- Wheaton Bank to reopen immediately
after the bank holiday of 1933. The bank was re-established, however,
within a short time. Only the college seemed to be unaffected by the
times, tripling its enrollment between 1927 and 1937. Construction
work, which had come to a standstill, was resumed in 1938 with a large
home-building project in a south-end subdivision. Like most suburban
communities, Wheaton has been the recipient of Federal aid during
recent years. A Works Progress Administration recreation project and a
year's program of park improvement, the latter financed by a $90,000
grant, are in operation. The city expects to build a new police station
with a Public Works Administration grant, and with other communities
in the county, has voted to enlarge its schools in cooperation with PWA.

180

Points of Interest

i. The central portion of WHEATON COLLEGE CAMPUS (cam-
pus always open; college and academies open schooldays; guides by ap-
pointment Sat. and holidays) is bounded by Seminary Ave., Washington,
Franklin, and Adams Sts. The original college building, erected on the
crest of the hill in 1853, no longer exists, but the foundation of the
center section of Blanchard Hall, standing on approximately the same
site, dates from 1854. Construction of this large, four-story, Victorian
battlemented structure went on intermittently over a period of 73 years,
the tower being added in 1-871, the east wing in 1927. In it are the
administrative offices, the two libraries, the classrooms and laboratories
of all departments except music, art, speech, and physical education.
Behind and to the left of this building is Pierce Memorial Chapel, a
modern brick structure of modified colonial design, erected in 1925,
which houses the conservatory of music and two auditoriums. Morning
prayer meetings (open; 7:30-7:55 a. in. weekdays, 8-9 Sun., 7 p. m. Tues.)
and chapel services (open; 10-10:25 schooldays) are held here. The de-
partments of art and speech are in Plumb Studios, a two-story frame
house adjoining the main campus on Franklin St. at Irving Ave. In a
colonial-style brick building opposite the studios on Irving Ave. are
Wheaton College Academy and Junior Academy. East of this building,
on the northwest corner of Franklin and Adams Sts., is the new women's
dormitory of modified Georgian colonial design. Nineteen other college
buildings, three athletic fields, and a tennis court lie within a radius
of several blocks, the campus comprising 33 acres. (See pp. 232, 233.)

An enrollment of more than 1,100 ranks Wheaton as the largest
liberal arts college in Illinois. Students come from all over the United
States and 17 foreign countries. The college is on the approved list of
the Association of American Universities, a member of North Central
Association and the National Association of Schools of Music. Bachelor
degrees are awarded in science, philosophy, music, and liberal arts; the
only master's degree is in Christian education. The college offers a pre-
medical course approved by the A. M. A., a fully accredited teachers'
training course, and a course in business administration. The two college
libraries contain 38,000 bound volumes, receive 375 periodicals and 10
daily papers in addition to Government publications. Total resources
of the college are estimated at nearly $2,500,000.

Based on fundamentalism, Wheaton College stands for an orthodox
gospel, conservative political and economic views. Non-sectarian and
independent of any one church, it is supported by individuals and

181

churches of various evangelical denominations throughout the country.
Many graduates of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago work toward degrees
at Wheaton, which is closely, but unofficially, related to Moody.

The college requires a high scholastic standard, a strict code of
religious, moral, and personal habits. Only candidates who have ranked
in the upper two-thirds of their high school class and maintained an
average of 80 are accepted. Each applicant must sign an agreement to
abstain from tobacco, spirits, card playing, dancing, secret society meet-
ings, theatre or movie attendance.

In the absence of secret fraternities, numerous student clubs provide
social aixd cultural activities. Alpha Delta,' the national journalistic
fraternity, and four national honor societies maintain chapters at
Wheaton. Widely recognized by music critics are the men's and women's
glee clubs, which make annual mid-winter and spring tours through
several states. Other musical organizations include an orchestra, band
and chorus. Student publications are the weekly Wheaton Record estab-
lished in 1875, and the annual Tower. Every summer, under the direction
of the League of Evangelical Students, undergraduates supply pulpits,
engage in gospel team work and other religious activities throughout the
country. Member of the Illinois Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and
the Northern Illinois College Baseball League, the college stresses physical
education.

Summer school, organized in 1915, consists of two four-week terms of
study in the college, music conservatory, academy, and junior academy
divisions. Dating from 1853, as the forerunner of the college, Wheaton
College Academy is fully accredited as a college preparatory high school.
Limited to the seventh and eighth grades during the regular school year,
the junior academy, started in 1916 as a practice school of the education
department, includes grades five through eight in the summer term.

The college sends summer expeditions of botany and geology stu-
dents to the Black Hills of South Dakota, where it maintains men's and
women's dormitories and a laboratory at the base of Mount Tamaha.
Research is done at various points en route.

2. "POET'S CORNER" (private), 203 E. Seminary St., was the home
of Benjamin Franklin Taylor, journalist, lecturer, and poet, from March
until August, 1867. Originally frame, the house has been bricked over
and shorn of its porch. It is said that Mr. Taylor did his writing in a
summerhouse which, surrounded by tamaracks and pines, crowned a
high knoll in the backyard. The last of the knoll has recently been
removed.

182

Born in Lowville, N. Y., in 1819, Taylor came to Chicago in 1840,
joining the staff of the Evening Journal as literary and dramatic critic.
Sent to the battlefront to cover the Civil War, his letters from the field
gained wide recognition and translation into several languages. His
principal works in prose and poetry appeared after the war. For two
years during the i86o's he was literary editor of Wheaton's Northern
Illinoian. The London Times called him the "Oliver Goldsmith of
America." Taylor's most popular poems were Rhymes of the River, The
Old Village Choir, The Beautiful Isle of Long Ago, and The River Time.
The novel Openings was one of his best works.

3. The GARY MEMORIAL METHODIST CHURCH, southwest
corner Main St. and Seminary Ave., developed from the Methodist Class
started at Gary's Mill in 1837. In 1853 an appointment on the circuit
was given to Wheaton in connection with the one at the mill, so that
the members who lived at Wheaton would no longer have to go to Gary's
Mill several miles west, on the Du Page River for services. In 1857 the
Naperville Circuit, to which Wheaton belonged, was divided and a
separate Wheaton Circuit formed. In that year the first Methodist church
was erected at Wheaton on a Front Street plot donated by Jesse C.
Wheaton. The financial panic held up construction, and for some time
services were held in the basement. Four years elapsed before the com-
pletion of the building. Like many other churches of the period, this
one had no organ, not because the congregation lacked money, but be-
cause it was considered sacrilegious to employ a musical instrument in
connection with religious services. A singing leader pitched with a
tuning fork the 15- or 2o-stanza hymns. Placing the fork between his
teeth, he would withdraw it suddenly, hold it up to his ear, then hum
the tone to the congregation. At church committee meetings there were
many arguments over the organ question. Amos Wheeler got up in
one discussion and shouted: "Brethren, if we let 'em get an organ in
this church, the next thing they'll want is a fiddle, the devil's own
instrument!"

As a memorial to his parents, Elbert Gary gave the money for a new
church, erected in 1900. When fire destroyed it in 1929, the present
edifice was started. A fine example of American Gothic, the chu.rch was
completed in 1930, honorary mention being given to Childs & Smith of
Chicago, architects, and Edward F. Jansson, consultant, by the Bureau
of Architecture of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in its publication.

4. The WHEATON PUBLIC LIBRARY (open weekdays 1-2-9, closed
holidays), southeast corner Wesley and Main Sts., is housed in a stone

.83

building of Richardson Romanesque style. Built and endowed in 1891
by John Quincy Adams (no relation to the former President) as a
memorial to his wife, it was formerly known as the Adams Memorial
Library. Catalogued by Katherine Sharp, secretary to Melvil Dewey, the
library was the first in Illinois x to adopt the Dewey Decimel Classification.
In 1923 ihe city took it over. The library contains 15,710 bound volumes,
subscribes to 52 magazines, and 5 newspapers. Indian murals in the
juvenile room were painted in 1932 by Chicago artist Otto E. Hake. The
scene on. the east wall depicts life in the Hopi Tribe of Pueblo Indians;
that on the west represents the Blackfeet Tribe in Glacier National Park.
Flanking these are panels containing reproductions of Blackfeet picto-
graphs.

5. The PUBLIC SQUARE, bounded by Willow Ave., Naperville
and Reber Sts., contains the county courthouse of 1896, part of the new
courthouse, started in 1938, the sheriff's house, and the jail. Strongly
contrasting with the Richardson Romanesque bulwark of the nineties
is the new, less pretentious, Georgian colonial building, designed by
Chicago architect R. Harold Zook. Exterior walls are Wisconsin Lannon
stone with Indiana limestone trim. Upon completion of all three sections
of the new courthouse the old building will be razed and the grounds
landscaped back to the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin right-of-way.

When the county was formed in 1839, Naperville was selected as
county seat and a courthouse was erected there.' In 1857, upon Wheaton's
insistance, an election was held to determine whether Naperville or
Wheaton should be county seat. Naperville won the election, but
Wheaton would not drop the issue, and tension between the towns
mounted. In 1867 the legislature acceded to Wheaton's demands' for
another election and authorized one to be held in June. Although
Wheaton won this election, Naperville said she had cheated, and
refused to hand over the county records and other official papers. Months
of wrangling left the issue at a standstill. At length the circuit court
confirmed the validity of the election, and the county board of super-
visors started negotiations for a new courthouse site. Warren Wheaton
gave a block of land, conveyed to the county through a warranty deed
dated June 20, 1868 and he and Jesse donated $2,000 apiece toward a
two-story brick building which was erected immediately.

Still Naperville held the documents. Injunctions were served and
counter proceedings instituted. No one knows the exact day, but it was
about four o'clock one morning in July, 1868, that a group of men from
Wheaton and Glen Ellyn descended upon a sleeping Naperville. Gaining

184

access to the courthouse through an open window, they carried out the
records and piled them in their wagon. Although Naperville awakened
and put up a stiff battle, the invaders won out and returned to Whcatou
about six a. m.

The affray was not without loss in both property and blood. A man
named Mott had been killed in the street fighting. One section of deed
records (volumes 15 through 21, for the years 1854-57) was overlooked
by the Wheaton forces, and court and county papers were either over-
looked or dropped in the road. The deed records were hidden tor a
short time in an outbuilding in Naperville, then transferred to either a
bank or the courthouse in Chicago, pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
The hands of justice moved too slowly for the hands of fate, however,
and the seven books went up in smoke along with most of Chicago three
years later. The court and estate papers met the same end at Naperville
on the morning of the raid; the man who had charge of them feared
another raid so much that he set fire to them.

The villain in the case was a courthouse employee, who, a Wheaton
sympathizer, had left a window open on the appointed night. The story
goes that his fiancee "declared she would never marry a traitor and
turned her life to better things."

So bitter was the feeling between the two towns that the newspapers
in both places ignored the incident, Wheaton's in a spirit of self-righteous-
ness, Naperville's out of fear. Thus many versions of the story have been
handed down in memoirs and by word of mouth, the most plausible of
which is the one given above. Seventy-one years have not sufficed to
gain official recognition in Wheaton of the fact that the raid took place
at all.

6. The CAPTAIN JONES HOMESTEAD (private), 504 Naperville
St., was occupied by Marcellus Jones, formerly of Glen Ellyn, shortly after
the Civil War. A captain in the Union Army, Jones is reputed to have
fired the first shot at Gettysburg. The large house, of modified colonial
design with a tall-pillared portico, was remodeled around 1900 by F.
Blount.

7. The WARREN WHEATON HOUSE (private), northeast corner
Naperville St. and Roosevelt Rd. (Alt. US 30) , is considered the oldest
building in the city. Built in 1847-48 by Warren Lyon Wheaton, it is now

(1939) occupied by his daughter, Lucy Wheaton Darling, and her hus-
band. Made from hand-hewn oak timbers fastened by wooden pegs, the

house in its original state was typical of the Greek Revival style. Mr.
Wheaton recorded the cost of construction in his ledger as follows:

Cost of material $189.29

For Labor _ $232.26

Total _ _ $421.55

appending, laconically, "except my labor." The house formerly faced
Roosevelt Road, but in 1910 it was remodeled by Mr. Darling and turned
to front on Naperville Street. The remodeling included raising the roof
3i/ feet. According to Mrs. Darling, her father built the house low
because "everyone told him that if he built on this hill he'd blow away,
but he liked it, you know in Connecticut they lived on a high hill."
Not even the tornado that took the cupola off the barn in 1911 managed
to dislodge the sturdy house. Other friends once scoffed at the scrawny
young maples set out by Mr. Wheaton in 1847, but they, too, are still
proving their tenacity.

8. The JESSE WHEATON HOUSE (private), 310 W. Evergreen St.,
is a gracious, white frame, modified colonial building. This was Jesse
Wheaton's second house, erected in 1858, and contains some of his fine
old furniture. It is now occupied by his granddaughter, Mrs. William
Kuntze.

9. Jesse Wheaton gave the first acre of land for the WHEATON
CEMETERY, lying just outside the city limits on Warrenville Rd. More
land was added from time to time, including 1 1 acres donated by Elbert
H. Gary, steel magnate and son of Erastus Gary, pioneer of Winfield
Township. Buried in the cemetery are Henry T. Wilson, Erastus Gary,
Warren and Jesse Wheaton, and many other early settlers of Wheaton
and the surrounding countryside. The body of the famous Elbert Gary
lies in a mausoleum.

Erastus Gory

Ill

MOTOR TOURS

TOUR I

St. Charles Rd. crosses the Du Page County Line from Cook County,
o m., entering YORK TOWNSHIP (25,396 pop.) , first settled in 1834.
and named by pioneers for their home State of New York. Immediately
encountered is ELMHURST (681 alt., 14,055 pop.) (see Cities and
Villages).

At / m. is a junction with York St.

Left on York St. 2.f m. the second house beyond the junction
of York Rd. and Roosevelt Rd. (US 33o)-is (L) .the NICHOLAS
TORODE HOUSE (private). One of the. earliest stone houses in
the county, it was built in 1841. The modern-looking two-story
dwelling was constructed of limestone from the Torode quarry
about a mile west, operated by the family until 1909. As no
mortar was available, the stone blocks were mortised with clay
and straw. The same mixture was spread over the outside of the
two-foot-thick walls.

Torode was born in Normandy, France, in 1774, moving to
St. Peter's Port, a French settlement on the Isle of Guernsey, be-
fore his immigration to America. On the day of his arrival here
in 1835, he startled the matter-of-fact settlers by producing a
testament of character from the "Chief Inhabitants" of the Isle/
of Guernsey. The document, dated May 20, 1818, bore witness
that "it is not by immorality, or ill conduct, neither by obligation,
but of his own free will that he goeth from said Island, and to the
contrary we give him all the approbation of having conducted
himself as an honest man. Wherefore we recommend him to the
Divine Protection and to the favor of that persons with whom
he may meet." Shortly after Torode settled here, he started a
sawmill on Salt Creek, predecessor of the old Graue gristmill. Part
of the grove in which he settled, and which came to be known as
the Frenchman's Woods, is today a county forest preserve.

Beyond the house, at 2.6 m., is a junction with Harger Rd.
Right on Harger Rd., at ?./ m., is (L) a dirt road leading to the-
OLD TORODE CEMETERY, at 3.5 m., now known by the name
of York. The burial grounds were established by Nicholas Torode
shortly before his death in 1845. They contain the graves of the
Torode family, Elisha Fish traditionally the first settler of York
Township Jacob Fuller, Jesse Atwater, Edward Eldridgc, the

188

Grants, the Talmadges, and Filers, and numerous other pioneers

of the Elmhurst-Hinsdale vicinity.

At 2.5 m. on St. Charles Rd. is a junction with Villa Ave., center of
VILLA PARK (690 alt., 6,220 pop.) , youngest of Du Page County's
municipalities. Before its development by real estate operators between
1908 and 1910, the land which comprises the village was considered as
a cemetery site. The east end was subdivided into Park Farms, the west
into Ardmore. The two subdivisions grew up separately until 1914,
when they united and incorporated under the name of Ardmore. Three
years later the village took its present name, and above its center rose
the grey storage bins and the tall brick walls of the American plant of the
Wander Company, international manufacturers of Ovaltine and other
malt products. That part of Villa Park dominated by the factory struc-
ture has an industrial appearance, but for every one of the 100 Villa
Parkers employed in the plant, there are 20 who commute to Chicago.
Villa Park's foreign-born and first-generation native-born population,
amounting to 13 per cent and 32 per cent respectively of the total, are
relatively high for the county. Predominant nationalities are German
and Swedish.

Along shaded streets are strung a variety of homes, including both
standardized subdivision cottages and substantial residences more nearly
akin to the pretentious houses in the surrounding older communities.
The corporate limits sprawl over four square miles. Across the street
from the village hall, in front of the old Myers farmhouse, the Woman's
Club has made a children's playground, the community's first recreational
development. Within the village hall is the small public library (open
Mon. and Thurs. 3-9, Tues.-Sat. 1-6; closed Sun. and holidays), also spon-
sored by the Woman's Club and dating from 1928. Villa Parkers have
their own bank; their own newspaper, the Argus, published by the
Elmhurst Press; and their own movie theater.

At 5.2 m. on St, Charles Rd. is a junction with Main St., center of
LOMBARD (700 alt., 6,197 PP-) ( see Cities and Villages).

At 5.7 m. is a junction with Crescent Blvd.

Left on Crescent Blvd. 0.7 m. is the OLD FILER FARM-
HOUSE (private), once an underground railroad station. Thomas
Filer, an ardent abolitionist, erected the ii/-story house about
1838. The foot-thick concrete walls are insulated with leaves and
grass.

At 6.1 m. on St. Charles Rd. the highway enters MILTON TOWN-
SHIP (17,113 pop.), whose original settlers, Lyman Butterfield and
Henry T. Wilson, came from Ohio on Captain Naper's vessel in 1831,

189

lived first at Naper Settlement, and staked claims in the south end of
Milton in 1832.

Along the tortuous course of the Du Page River's east branch is (L)
the i35-acre CHURCHILL FOREST PRESERVE, once the site of a
large Potawatomi village. When pioneers arrived, the Indians were
still camping here. Deacon Winslow Churchill and his son Seth, first
to settle in the vicinity, staked claims in June, 1834. Latest of the county's
forest preserves, the Churchill grove has been developed within recent
years by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Ad-
ministration. The administration building of the forest preserve district
is located here, the entire west wing of which is available for public
recreational use. A Girl Scout cabin has been built near the west end
of the woods.

At 64 m. are (R) the SETH CHURCHILL CABIN REMAINS, now
an uncared-for heap of logs in a farmer's field. Built in 1834 by the son of
Deacon Winslow Churchill, with the help of Indian neighbors, the cabin
served variously as home, schoolhouse, Sunday school, and church.

At 7 m. is (R) a boulder marking the SITE OF DEACON WINS-
LOW CHURCHILL'S CABIN. Built in 1834, it was the first cabin
erected in this vicinity.

At 7.7 m. is a junction with Geneva Rd. and Main St., the north-
central section of GLEN ELLYN (766 alt., 7,680 pop.) (see Cities and
Villages).

Wedged between Geneva and St. Charles Rds..is STACY PARK,
given to the village in 1891 by Philo and Betsy Stacy, son and daughter-
in-law of Moses Stacy, pioneer settler. A boulder memorializes ' the
pioneers of the vicinity.

At 10.1 m. on St. Charles Rd. is a junction with another Main St.
The surrounding farming community is called GRETNA (773 alt.) .

Left on Main St., at 10.9 m., is a junction with Geneva Rd. Here
(R) are the AMERICAN HEADQUARTERS OF THE THEOSOPHI-
CAL SOCIETY (open weekdays 9-5; public lecture, tea, and musicale
fourth Sun. of each month at 4, free; public class Wed. at 8 p.m., free).
Set back from the main road in the 26-acre tract is the long three-story
building of cloister brick and Bedford stone, erected in 1927. The lines
of this structure, designed by Irving K. Pond, are full of esoteric meaning
for the initiates. The stressed hori/ontality suggests both the various
planes of life and repose. Through the contrast of vertical ity, the
touches of collegiate Gothic intimate emotion, while representing the

190

educational activities of the society. The pylons flanking the entrance
hint at Egyptian pyramids, linking the present with the past and sym-
bolizing permanence. Murals on the walls of the first-floor reception
room, painted by Richard B. Farley, depict the evolutionary process as
interpreted by Theosophy. The library (open on a circulating basis) of
more than 15,200 volumes, primarily on occult subjects, is one of the
largest of its kind in the United States. The Theosophical Society in
America was founded in New York in 1875 by Col. H. S. Olcott and
Mme. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. International headquarters are in India.

On the east side of Main St. (L) are the white buildings and wide
lawns of the MARY E. POGUE SCHOOL AND SANITARIUM. Primar-
ily for retarded children, the institution also cares for a few older people.

At 12.4 m. on Main St. is a junction with Front St., center of
WHEATON (753 alt., 7,258 pop.) (see Cities and Villages).

Right on Front St. which becomes Manchester Rd. when it crosses
the railroad bridge at /./.^ m., is a junction with County Farm Rd.

Right on County Farm Rd. 0.3 m. is the DU PAGE COUNTY
HOME AND FARM (visitors welcome). Extending over 176
acres, the farm harbors about 35 old people and a few temporary
families. The first parcel of land was bought in 1888.

Left on County Farm Rd., at 7^.7 m., is a junction with Roosevelt
Rd. (Alt. US 30) . Right on Roosevelt Rd., at 14.9 m., is a junction
with a graveled road.

Left on the graveled road / m. is the CHICAGO TRIBUNE
EXPERIMENTAL FARM (open 7-6 May i - Dec. i, 8-$ other
months; guides free). Of the farm's 1,000 acres about 600 are
timber land, comprised largely of oaks and hickories. As implied
in its name, the purpose of the farm is to experiment in the
raising of new varieties of corn, oats, and other field crops, as well
as other economic plants not commonly grown in this region. For
example, in 1938 several varieties of vegetable soy beans were
raised successfully. Current experiments include the growing of
peanuts, sweet potatoes, and many varieties of small fruits, and
the using of molasses with green alfalfa in one of the silos. A
new type of combined granary and corn crib is in use. Particular
attention is paid to the raising of cattle and sheep. The farm
attracts thousands of visitors each year, including many groups
of school children. Its daily progress is reported in the Chicago
Tribune.

From the junction with the graveled road, Roosevelt Rd. (Alt. US 30)
enters WINFIELD TOWNSHIP (6,077 PP) > named for the Black
Hawk War general, Winfield Scott. It is said the county's first thresh-

ing machine was brought into Winfield Township by the Fairbanks
brothers in 1848.

At 75.2 m. on Roosevelt Rd. (Alt. US 30) is (L) CANTIGNY (private),
country estate of Col. Robert R. McCormick, editor of the Chicago
Tribune. Formerly called Red Oak, this was the farm of Joseph Medill,
founder of the Tribune and grandfather of McCormick. McCormick re-
named it for a World War battle in which he served and in 1934 converted
the land into the Chicago Tribune Experimental Farm -(see p. 191) .

At 75.5 m. is a junction with Winfield Rd. Right on Winfield Rd.,
at 76.5 m., is a junction with Jewel Rd., which becomes High Lake Rd.
west of this point. This is the center of WINFIELD (726 alt., 445 pop.) ,
which grew up around a station on the old Galena & Chicago Union
Railroad. John Hodges, the first station agent, erected the first building
here in 1849. A large freight business soon developed at Winfield station
because it was one of the nearest shipping points to Naperville and Gary's
Mill, neither of which had a railroad in those days. The development of
shipping brought more settlers. In January, 1853, the village was platted
under the name of Fredericksburg. The following year John Collins
added a big lumber yard to the town's several small factories, stores, and
brewery. In the eighties the Winfield Creamery daily consumed 6,000
pounds of milk and made 120 pounds of butter and 425 pounds of cheese.

Winfield was incorporated as a village in 1921. Still a small country
town, Winfield today contains only a minuscule business section, a
number of frame houses, two churches, and a grammar school. Even
sidewalks are scarce.

At the head of Winfield Rd. is the entrance to the WINFIELD
SANATORIUM (open for inspection daily 9-5), affiliated with the Jewish
Charities of Chicago. Opened to 6 patients on February 11, 1909, the
institution has since treated more than 4,000 tubercular cases. The
sanatorium was started through a campaign instituted by Dr. Theodore
Sachs* the Jewish Consumption Relief Society, and the Baron Hirsch
Woman's Club. Its 54 acres of farmland were donated by Charles A.
Stonehill. Soon after the opening of the sanatorium, the Jewish Charities
undertook its support. Donations were made, more cottages were built,
an occupational therapy shop was established, and the Jewish Tubercu-
losis Service an extension of the sanatorium's work into Chicago was
started. In 1912 Dr. Sachs resigned as medical director, and Dr. Max
Biesenthal, his former assistant, took his place. Under him, complete
X-ray and dental departments were installed. In addition to occupational
therapy, instruction in reading and writing is given to illiterate patients

192

With a capacity of 112, the institution at present has only about 75
adult patients. Social service and out-patient departments are main-
tained at Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago.

Left on High Lake Rd., at i8.j m., is a sharp left turn and a junc-
tion with Prince Crossing Rd. (graveled). Straight ahead on Prince Cross-
ing Rd., at 20.7 m., is a junction with Town Line Rd. (North Ave.) .
Here (L) , on the southwest corner, is the i65-acre COUNTRY HOME
FARM, owned by the University of Chicago Clinic and run for the pur-
pose of supplying the Country Home for Convalescent Crippled Children
(see below) with dairy products and vegetables. (See pp. 232-33.)

Straight ahead, north, at 0.7 m., is (L) the COUNTRY HOME
FOR CONVALESCENT CRIPPLED CHILDREN (open for in-
spection weekdays <)-i2, 7:50-5; adults over 18 only), a non-sectarian
institution for children between the ages of 4 and 14. Founded in
1911 by Mr. and Mrs. William Chalmers of Chicago, it has since
1938 been owned by the University of Chicago Clinic. Financial
support comes largely from endowments and contributions. A
resident physician "is always on duty, and the University supplies
orthopedic surgeons, pediatricians, and eye-ear-nose-and-throat
specialists. Directed play and individualized educational work are
based on mental tests compiled by the University. (See p. 233.)

The Home is in the rural community of PRINCE CROSSING
(730 alt.) , so named from the crossing here of the tracks of the
Chicago, Aurora 8c Elgin and the Chicago Great Western railroads.

Left on Town Line Rd., at 20.6 m., is a junction with 111. 59. Left on
111. 59, at 22.7 m., the highway crosses a railroad bridge in the center of
WEST CHICAGO (784 alt., 3,477 pop.) (see Cities and Villages).

At 22.6m., is (R) the OLD GATES HOMESTEAD (private). In
this rambling old frame house John "Bet-a-Million" Gates spent his
childhood, before the family moved into West Chicago.

At 23.6 m., just beyond the junction with the underpass of Roosevelt
Rd. (Alt US 30) , is (L) the GARY'S MILL MARKER. Here, on the west
branch of the Du Page River, Erastus, Jude, and Charles Gary erected
a sawmill in 1837. The mill stood in the northern reaches of Big Woods,
a forest eight miles long and four miles wide which extended in a
northeasterly direction from present Aurora. (See p. 233.)

Charles Gary and his sister, Mrs. Laura Gary Rickard, moved up to
the mill site with their families from the original Gary cabin at present
Warrenville, he to run the mill and farm, she to start a school. A Metho-
dist society was formed soon after the school, as a station on the Aux
Plaines, or Du Page, Circuit. Starting with seven members who gathered
at the Gary home, the society was the nucleus of Methodism in the

193

locality. The Rev. Washington Wilcox, a circuit rider, preached here
until 1839. Sometimes the services were led by Charles Gary, who him-
self took up circuit riding and later became a licensed preacher.

A little settlement grew up around the mill and schoolhouse, giving
promise of becoming the most important one in the county, next to
Naperville. A post office was established, with Charles Gary as post-
master. For a number of years both the Wheaton and West Chicago
settlements received their mail through Gary's Mill. At the organization
of Winfield Township in 1850, the first town meeting was held in
Charles Gary's house, and the miller-preacher-postmaster was elected
overseer of the poor, later serving as town supervisor and justice of the
peace. His son William held numerous township offices before moving
into Wheaton. The Gary's Mill settlement, passed up by the railroad in
1849, did not live up to its early promise.

At 25.7 m. is a junction with Batavia Rd. Left on Batavia Rd., at
26.8 m., is (L) the CONVENT OF OUR LADY OF THE CENACLE
(visitors welcome daily 2-5), opened in February, 1939, by Cenacle Con-
vent, Chicago. \Veek-end retreats are held here for women and girls.
Erected in 1916, the two-story building is a rambling colonial-style house.
Covering 42 acres, the grounds include flower and vegetable gardens,
an orchard, and a swimming pool.

At 27.3 m. Batavia Rd. turns south (becoming, locally, Third St.;
into the heart of the old section of WARRENVILLE (695 ah.),
an unincorporated village with a population of about 1,200. Warren-
ville is comfortably set in a background of wooded knolls on the west
branch of the meandering Du Page River, a small country town where
the surfaced avenues are outwardly nameless and no one knows his street
address. The people farm or commute to Chicago. Near to the big-city
markets, they yet feel semi-isolated among their venerable trees and
historic houses. Warrenville is experiencing a burst of expansion, evi-
denced by 50 houses- constructed within the last year. The more modern
of the two tiny business centers hugs the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin station.
The older clusters around the junction of the two highways which tra-
verse the town, dominated by a typical old country store building of
frame and yellow limestone, with an old-fashioned wooden awning. The
new two-story brick community house in the northwest section, controlled
by the public school, will house the public library started a decade ago
by the Woman's Club, a gymnasium, a stage, and kitchen. East of the
river, along Winfield Road, are a number of large country estates.

Warrenville's first settler was Erastus Gary, of Pomfret, Connecticut.

In April, 1832, having spent the previous winter at St. Joseph, Michigan,
Gary landed on the shore of Chicago in a canoe. Soon afterwards he
staked a claim on the eastern fringe of Big Woods. Then he went back
East for other pioneer-minded members of his family. He soon returned
with his brother Jude and his sister Orinda, and built a double log cabin
on his land. During the Black Hawk War that summer he served in the
State militia. Until the 1 840*8, when he moved into Wheaton, Erastus
farmed around his cabin site, and here his famous son Elbert was born.
In 1833 Col. Julius Warren staked out a claim not far from the Garys,
and then he, too, went back East. Returning the following year, he
immediately built a. dam and sawmill, a frame dwelling, and a bunk-
house to accommodate farmers and teamsters. Other settlers came in
1834, among them Alvah Fowler, A. Churchill, and Ira Herrick. With
the instinct of a founder, the Colonel provided space in the upper story
of his mill for a schoolroom, where his cousin, Mrs. S. W. Holmes, taught.
In 1836 the settlers organized a Baptist church. Two years later a post
office was established in the Colonel's house, with himself as postmaster.

So many customers came to the sawmill that Colonel Warren's bunk-
house was soon inadequate, and he erected a fine hotel, which for many
years made the name of Warrenville synonymous with merriment. The
spacious ballroom was patronized by settlers from all the surrounding
communities, as well as by citizens of Chicago. Tradition has it that
"Long John" Wentworth learned to dance here. Describing the parties
of the city folk at the country inns, Wentworth said: "The custom . . .
was to leave Chicago at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, take supper on
the way out and engage breakfast for the morning, and after dancing
all night, get back to the city about 9 or 10 o'clock." William A. Kenyon,
perhaps the earliest published poet of the Chicago area, wrote a poem
dedicated to the winter of 1842-43 at Warrenville, to which he appended
the footnote: "Warrenville will not soon experience another season of
similar gaiety and animation among the gallant."

In 1844 Colonel Warren, then a member of the State legislature,
platted some of his property into town lots. During the forties Dorus
Stafford opened a harness shop, where he made high-top riding boots
and fancy leather goods. Members of the Smith and Fowler families
started the Warrenville Grist and Merchant Mill, operated by water
power. "Brick" McKinney soon built a three-story fanning mill factory
nearby.

In 1844 representatives of all the Baptist churches in Illinois met at
Warrenville to protest slavery. The Baptists were also influential in

195

founding the Warrenville Academy at the beginning of the next decade.
Aided by friends in Chicago who were looking for some "healthy country
place" where they could send their children for higher education, the
people of Warrenville raised money for a school building. The institu-
tion was incorporated, a board of directors appointed, and Mrs. Holmes
chosen principal. In September, 1851, the academy was opened. Mrs.
Holmes converted her home into a boarding house for students, of
whom some one or two hundred enrolled during the next few years.
After that the school's. popularity waned. At the start of the Civil War
many students left to serve in the Union army. Eventually the institution
was removed to Rockford, where it evolved into Rockford College.

When the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad sought a route out of
Chicago in the late forties, it tried to get a right-of-way through Warren-
ville. A roadbed was even graded along the east side of the river, but
something happened some say the Warrens would not grant the right-
of-way and the tracks were laid several miles north, through Winfield.
That spelled the commercial doom of Warrenville.

Shortly before the Civil War, Warrenville had a population of 250.
During the seventies a tannery drew more trade to the hamlet. The
gristmill, bought by Lambe &: Company in 1857, burned down in 1879.
Rebuilt a year later, and equipped with steam power; its consumption
was increased to 500 bushels of wheat a day. R. R. Barnard opened a
dairy products plant in the eighties which manufactured 200 pounds of
butter and 500 pounds of cheese daily. In '1897 the gristmill again
burned down. Warrenville's activity was stimulated with the coming of
the electric line after 1900.

On the northwest corner of the first cross-street (Main) after Batavia
Rd. (Third St.) turns south is (R) the COLONEL WARREN HOUSE
(private), built in 1834 a Greek Revival white frame building with
green shutters. Supporting timbers and interior trim are of oak; the
shingles are butternut, the siding walnut, and the floors pine. The
foundation is of native stone. The rear section sags somewhat because
it had no foundation except logs, but otherwise the house is substantial
and in good condition. Virtually unchanged from pioneer days, the

house is today (1939) occupied by Miss Carrie Lambe, daughter of the
old miller.

Diagonally across the street, on the southeast corner, is the FANNING
MILL FACTORY BUILDING (private), which long ago became a resi-
dence and has recently been remodeled by the Churchill family.

196

A block west of the Warren house, on the southwest corner of Main
and Fourth Sts., is the OLD ACADEMY BUILDING (private), a white
colonial-style house with blue shutters, now in use as a dwelling.

The third residence south of the old fanning mill factory, on Batavia
Rd., is the FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE (private), a small one-story frame
building with a side entrance and long sloping roof, dating from 1836.

About o.i m. farther south on Batavia Rd., at 27.5 m. } is a junction
with an east-west road which east of the junction is called Warrenville
Rd., west, Aurora, or Big Woods Rd. Here is Warrenville's old cross-
roads business section. A short distance east on Warrenville Rd. is a
bridge over the West Branch of the Du Page River.

On the first side-street (Second St.) east of the bridge, a block north
of Warrenville Rd., is (L) the ALBRIGHT GALLERY (open Sun. after-
noons), formerly the Warrenville Methodist Church, erected in the iSso's.
Public school was held for many years in the stone basement of this Greek
Revival building. The church congregation, made up largely of people
from Naperville, gradually dropped off, and in 1907 the building was
sold to ten Warrenville men, who, calling themselves the Live Wire
Club, used it for social gatherings. In 1919 a candy manufacturer ac-
quired the building, using the basement and renting out the auditorium.
For some time thereafter the old walls heard the plottings of the Ku
Klux Klan. In 1924 the property was bought by Adam Emory Albright,
well-known painter of barefoot children in countryside settings. His
famous twin sons Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, painter, and Marvin Marr
Albright, sculptor, who paints under the name ot Zsissly occupy the
little studios to the left of the church building. The younger Albrights
do not agree with their father's academic viewpoint. In a recent inter-
view printed in the Chicago Daily News, the elder Albright commented:
"If I like something they've done, they paint it out. When they bring
visitors here, I find all my paintings have been turned to the wall."

On the northwest corner of Warrenville Rd. and the second side-
street east of the bridge (First St., or Winfield Rd.) is the OLD WAR-
REN HOTEL (private), long since converted into a private home.

On Winfield Rd. (First St.),o./ m. north of Warrenville Rd. is LUND'S
GREENHOUSE (open weekdays 2-5), notable for its geraniums. About
35 varieties are grown, including an unusual white-leaved specimen. A
wide assortment of scents ranges from lemon and mint to cocoanut.

North on Winfield Rd. / m. farther is a junction with But-
terfield Rd. Right on Butterfield Rd. 0.3 m. is (L) the ST.

'97

JAMES STOCK FARM (private; open by arrangement) , owned
by Chauncey McCormick of Chicago. The farm lies on the old
Erastus Gary claim. The stock consists of about 96 head of
Guernseys and a number of fine horses, including some thorough-
breds. Phil, the bull, sire of two national champions (1936 and
1937) is (1939) worth more than $ 10,000. Calves are valued at
about $500 apiece. Some of the cows give more than 800 pounds
of butter fat in a year. The horse stable is an unusually attractive
red-brick colonial-style building with a cupola.

Left from the junction of Batavia and Warrenville Rds. 1.2 m.
is the YEAST FOAM EXPERIMENTAL FARM (open daily 9-4),
established in 1938 by the Northwestern Yeast Company of Chi-
cago. Engaged in the manufacture of baking-yeast since the iSyo's,
the firm in 1923 introduced Animal-Poultry Yeast Foam to improve
feeding formulas. At the entrance to the farm are the superin-
tendent's residence and the colonial-style office and battery build-
ing. (See p. 233.)

Right on Big Woods (or Aurora) Rd. from the junction with Batavia
Rd., at 30.6 m., is a junction with Eola Rd.

Right on Eola Rd. 1.4 m. is the (L) DANIEL WARNE HOUSE
(private), a stone dwelling probably dating from the 1840*8. The
left side of the house is a later brick addition.

Daniel was the son of John Warne, pioneer from New Jersey,
who settled in Michigan in 1831 and came here in 1834. The
original Warne claim comprised a half section of prairie land
flanked by the eastern fringe of Big Woods. Itinerant ministers
found hospitality with the Warnes, and every day at morning and
evening the family knelt to pray. A stanza from a poem written by
Abbie Warne Bartholomew, granddaughter of John and Sarah
Warne, throws a sidelight on the activities of this farming family:
Sarah's apiary was renowned,

She kept on hand a store of honey,
While "Squire" Warne's "Sugar-Bush"
Brought sweets as well as money.

John Warne devoted a good deal of time to surveying in the early
years and was elected secretary of the Big Woods Claim Protecting
Society. Both John and Sarah are buried in the Big We ds Ceme-
tery. One of their daughters married another pioneer farmer of
Winfield Township and became the mother of John Gates, the
steel king.

Becoming one of the wealthiest farmers in the locality, Daniel
Warne built a mansion in the early French Provincial style, after a
visit to the Paris exposition in 1876. Standing a short distance
south of the little stone house, it was a landmark until destroyed
by fire in March, 1939. The old stone house is the property of
John Warne, son of Daniel and last of the line.

.98

Left on Eola Rd., at 30.7 m., is the BIG WOODS CONGREGA-
TIONAL CHURCH AND CEMETERY. The church, erected in 1849,
is grey frame with a gabled belfry, distinctive because of its unusual
decorative motifs. The religious society was organized in 1835 in the
cabin of Thompson Paxton. In the cemetery are the graves of many
pioneers of the Big Woods region. At least one stone dates from the
1 830*5, and many are from the 40*8 and 50*5. Most notable is that of
David McKee, a native of Virginia and one of the outstanding pioneers
of the Chicago area. Hired by the United States Government, he came
to Fort Dearborn in 1822 to do blacksmithing for the Potawatomies,
according to treaty stipulations. In 1834 he settled in Big Woods. He
died in 1881, but his farmhouse still stands on North Aurora Road, a
short distance west of Eola Road.

At 30.9 m. is (R) the JAMES BROWN FARMHOUSE (private),
erected in the 1840*8 by the man who gave the land for the Big Woods
Congregational Church. The brick construction of this grey Greek Re-
vival building is unusual for its period.

At 31.2 m. Eola Rd. enters NAPERVILLE TOWNSHIP (3,603 pop.),
first settled in 1831, in its eastern section, by the Naper brothers and
other pioneers who came with them from Ohio.

At 37.5 m. is BAT A VIA JUNCTION (730 alt.) , where the Chicago,
Aurora & Elgin branches northwest to Batavia, southwest to Aurora.

At 33.4 m. is (R) the CHARLES STOLP HOUSE (private], a brown-
ish red brick building in the Greek Revival farmhouse style, erected in
the 1840*8 by a son of Frederick Stolp.

At 35.6 m., at a junction with a graveled road, is (L) the GEORGE
STOLP HOUSE (private], a red-painted brick farmhouse in the Greek
Revival style, built in the 1840*8 by another son of Frederick Stolp.

Right on the graveled road 0.9 m. is (R) the FREDERICK
STOLP HOUSE (private], a square red brick building with dormer
windows and white trim. Dating from the 1840*5, the house has
i4-inch walls, composed of three layers of brick. The son of a
German immigrant, Frederick Stolp was born in 1781. He is
reputed to have served in the War of 1812. In 1833 he walked from
his home in Pultneyville, New York, to Illinois, prospecting for
land. Proceeding first to Ottawa, he then came to what is now
Eola, where he claimed enough land, warily chosen for its clay bed,
for his entire family. After walking back East for his wife and
nine children, Stolp returned to his claim in 1834. Employing one
Simeon Leach as brickmaker, Stolp worked his clay pit. This, the
first brick house of the Stolps, was formerly surrounded with neat
box hedges, fruit trees, and a fine garden. In 1842 Stolp bought,

199

for $12.72, the island which is the center of present Aurora, in

which city he was buried in 1873.

At 33.8 m. on Eola Rd., where it crosses the tracks of the Chicago.
Burlington & Quincy Railroad, is the center of EOLA (740 alt.), a tiny,
unincorporated rural community dating from the settlement of the Stolp
family in 1834. Eola's original name, when the railroad came through
in the sixties, was Lund's Crossing.

A block west of the railroad station is the REBER PRESERVING
COMPANY, packers of canned goods. Employing between 25 and 40
persons, the company packs sauerkraut, pork and beans, asparagus, and
other vegetables.

At 35 m. is a junction with 111. 65 (Ogden Ave.). Left on 111. 65, at
3p../ m., is (L) OAKHURST (private), former home of the Hon. James
G. Wright, prominent in Naperville's history. An Englishman, Wright
was one of the founders of Naperville's Producers' Bank in 1857, and
served in the State legislature and as Indian agent. Probably dating
from the 1850% the buff-painted brick house is a graceful, colonial-style
structure with two-story pillars, set back from the highway on land-
scaped grounds. (See p. 233.)

At 357.5 m. is (R) a white gate, back entrance to the VON OVEN
HOUSE (private). The large, square structure of light reddish brown
brick has interesting decorative detail. Built by Ernst von Oven, founder
of the Naperville Nurseries, in 1886, it belongs to, but is not typical of,
the Victorian era. It is now (1939) occupied by Miss Emma von Oven,
his daughter and present manager of the nurseries.

Adjacent to the grounds of the Von Oven house is the OFFICE OF
THE NAPERVILLE NURSERIES (open). Started in 1866, the nur-
series originally covered 20 acres. Today they extend over 375 acres. The
property is divided into two tracts, one to the north of the office, the
other within Naperville, along the east bank of the Du Page River.

At ) 9 .srm. is (U the EARLY GEORGE MARTIN HOUSE (private),
a small white trame building with i2-paned, shuttered windows and a
tiny two-pillar portico. An excellent example of Greek Revival farmhouse
architecture, it is doubtful that this was the first frame building in the
county, as claimed, since the Naper sawmill presumably was running in

1832, \\/2 years before the building's erection. Writing on November 2,

1833, to Messrs. R. and G. Martin, his associates in the grain business in
Fifeshire, Scotland, George Martin described his new farm:

We have been rather disappointed with our house the one
man got a fever the other man had twenty acres of Indian corn

200

to cut and get in and my house barely more than half done. We
had a log house put up for a stable 24 by 15 feet built in a fire
place and windows put in and doors and stairs intended for both
up and down stairs of my new house, put about us had made us
surely very comfortable.

I must have another good Oak tree pulled to the Saw Mill,
which is only about three hundred yards from us ... after all I
can assure you it is nothing yet the appearance of a FIFE Farmer's
House. . . .

Across the road (R), on land to be developed as Naperville's newest
park, is the LATER GEORGE MARTIN HOUSE (open), a red brick
mansion with steeply pitched roof, its Victorian architecture of French
influence. Dating from 1883, the house reflects Mr. Martin's success in
farming, quarrying, and as a Naperville banker. Naperville recently
acquired the f house and land the former for historical museum pur-
posesthrough the bequest of the late Carrie Martin Mitchell.

At 40.4 in., at a junction with Washington St., is the south-central
section of NAPERVILLE (693 alt., 5,118 pop.) (see Cities and Villages).

Right on Washington St. 0.6 m. is the EDWARD SANA-
TORIUM (open for inspection 9-11 and 3-5 daily), established in
1907. Affiliated with the Tuberculosis Institute of Chicago and
Cook County, the sanatorium accepts adult patients admitted by
the Chicago office. The plant includes 14 buildings and 40 acres of
land. The total capacity is 97 patients.

A short distance beyond the sanatorium the road turns into
LISLE TOWNSHIP (6,103 pop.), of which Bailey Hobson was
the first settler, in 1831. As many of its early settlements were made
along the east branch of the Du Page River, part of Lisle Township
was originally known as East Branch Settlement. After the Govern-
ment survey the entire area of 36 square miles took the name Du
Page Township. With the establishment of civil townships
throughout the county in 1850, a new name was sought, as there
was another Town of Du Page across the border in Will County.
The name Lisle was decided upon, in honor of Samuel Lisle Smith,
brilliant Chicago lawyer and orator.

At 7.7 m., in Pioneer Park (L), a monument marks the SITE
OF BAILEY HOBSON'S GRISTMILL, built by Du Page County's
first settler in 1834. Two of the old grinding stones form the
marker. The millstones were imported from the East. Made from
millstone grit, found under the coal measures in the Appalachian
region, the stones are of excellent quality even harder than granite
and specimens such as these are rare today in the Middle West.

The ground behind the marker bears traces of the mill race.
Hobson's was the first water-power flour mill erected on the Du
Page River, and perhaps the first gristmill in northern Illinois.
Cash receipts during the mill's best years totaled more than 14,000

201

annually. The mill was operated for some years after Hobson's
death in 1850 by a Mr. Kimball, who also ran a sawmill served
by the same mill race.

Across the road from the park, in use as a barn, stands the
three-s^ory OLD MILL BUILDING (inspection granted by owner),
inconspicuous among the surrounding farm structures. Inside are
huge hand-hewn beams, fastened with wooden pegs. Embedded in
the stone foundation are the fragments of another set of millstones.

At the Hobson mill monument is a junction with Goodrich
Rd. Left on Goodrich Rd., at 2 m., is the BAILEY HOBSON
HOUSE (private), built about 1834.

In the spring of 1830 Bailey Hobson, native of South Carolina,
came to Kendall County, Illinois, where he chose a parcel of land
lying six miles from Holderman's Grove (Newark) and three
miles from the big Potawatomi village on the Fox River. Desig-
nating his claim by cutting logs for a squatter's hut, he went back
to Ohio for his family. In September, Bailey, his wife Clarissa,
and Lewis Stewart, Clarissa's brother, piled the three Hobson
babies and all of their possessions into a Conestoga wagon and,
followed by their livestock, started out.

Reaching Holderman's Grove 21 days later, the immigrants
lived with Vetal Vermet, while the men sowed winter wheat and
started a cabin. In a few weeks the family moved to their claim,
camping there until the cabin was finished around the first of
November. Then Hobson made another exploratory trip. First
he went west, then east again to the west branch of the Du Page
River. Staking a new claim a few miles north of the forks, where
Stephen J. Scott and his family had lately settled (in present Will
County) , Hobson returned to his cabin.

The snowstorms were so severe that winter that when Hobson
went to a nearby settlement for food supplies, he was unable to
get back to his cabin for many days. When he did return, it was
without the food because of the impossibility of bringing the
wagon over the drifts. Hobson set out again, this time with Stewart
and a sled. When they finally succeeded in getting home with the
provisions, they found Clarissa without food and tearing down
the animal shelter for fuel. On their attempts to erect a cabin on
the new claim, Hobson and Stewart were almost buried by snow,
and had to seek shelter with the Scotts. At last, in March, 1831, the
new cabin was finished, and Du Page County's first settlers moved
in. Three years later they built a frame house.

The two-story structure is in poor condition, but it still retains
the good, simple lines of its Greek Revival architecture. A porch
formerly extended across the front of both stories, with pillars on
the first floor and a balustrade on the second. The foundation is
rubble stone; the siding, walnut and pine on walnut studs; the
shingles, pine: the interior trim and floors, black walnut. In the
original section brick was laid up between the studs.

202

It is known that Hobson kept a tavern for the accommodation
of his mill customers. The stone wall, of which traces may be seen
extending from the west side of the house, may have been the
tavern foundation. (See p. 233.)

Left on Washington St., at 40.6 m., is a junction with Chicago Ave.
Right on Chicago Ave., through Lisle Township, at 43.4 m., is (L) ST.
JOSEPH BOHEMIAN ORPHANAGE (open daily 9-4), embracing the
Lisle Manual Training School for Boys and Industrial School for Girls.
The institution is under the direct jurisdiction of the Archbishop of the
Diocese of Chicago, with Cardinal Mundelein as ex officio director. On
March 14, tSgp, the first ten orphans were transferred from Chicago to
a small frame farmhouse owned by St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle Town-
ship. In 1910 the present property was purchased and a new building
erected. An adjoining building was erected in 1920, and the institution
now cares for about 300 children. The position of superintendent has
always been held by a Benedictine Father from St. Procopius Abbey.

At 43.6 m. is a junction with a side road (R).

Right on the side road 0.5 m. is ST. PROCOPIUS ABBEY,
COLLEGE, AND ACADEMY (visitors welcome; tours by arrange-
ment), whose grounds, divided among campus, groves, and farm-
land, spread over 600 acres. The college was established through
the efforts of several Bohemian Fathers of the Order of St. Bene-
dict, i,40o-year-old religious fraternity. Founded in Chicago in
1890 by the Rt. Rev. Nepomucene Jaeger, O. S. B., Abbot of St.
Procopius Abbey, and incorporated the same year, the college
remained a day school until September, 1901, when it moved to
the country. The abbey moved out to the campus in 1914.

The fireproof library contains about 25,000 bound volumes,
many of them rare, subscribes to about 150 periodicals, and is
a repository for Government publications.

Accredited by the University of Illinois, the college confers
bachelor degrees in liberal arts and science. Courses in Czech and
Slovak languages and literatures are included in the curriculum.

Having taken the vow of poverty, the 25 Benedictine Fathers
who comprise the faculties of college and academy receive no sal-
ary. College enrollment is about 145, academy, 30.

Among the oldest of the nine student organizations are the
Apostleship of Prayer the League of the Sacred Heart, introduced
in 1904, and St. Wenceslas Servers' Society. Highest in popular
regard, Holy Name Society was founded in 1921. The choir ap-
pears in its entirety at annual and sacred concert performances; on
special occasions, in its glee club or quartet components. A social
fraternity, Sigma Alpha publishes weekly the Sigma Alpha Courier.
Other publications are the fortnightly Procopian News and the
annual Procopian.

203

At ^5.7 m. are SACRED HEART CONVENT AND ACADEMY

(open iveekdays Jo-j; Sun. and holidays 1-4), sharing a modified English
Georgian building and 200 acres of campus and farmland. Started in
Chicago in 1895 by Mother Mary Nepomucene Jaeger, O. S. B., the
Bohemian Benedictine convent moved to Lisle. Township in 1912. At
present it comprises 176 Sisters, 3 novices, and 2 postulants. The aca-
demy was opened as a four-year high school for girls- in 1927. The
present enrollment includes 120 boarding and 10 day students. Com-
prising the faculty are 12 Benedictine Sisters, a Benedictine priest, and
lay instructors in dramatics and physical education.
At ^.5 m. is a junction with 111. 53.

Left on 111. 53, 0.2 m., is a fork. Rear right on Joliet Rd. At
0.7 m. is LISLE (680 alt.), a sprawling unincorporated agricul-
tural community with a population of about 500. Lisle's first plat
was laid out in 1893 by Simon Engelschall. Although more area
has been subdivided since then, the hamlet has changed little in
appearance. Its largest business is the lumber concern of Riedy
Engelschall, which firm ran a gristmill here from 1888 to the
1930*5.

The original settlers of Lisle were Luther and James C. Hatch,
who came here in 1832. They were later joined by two other
brothers, Jeduthan and Leonard. Natives of New Hampshire, the
Hatches had settled in Michigan before coming to Illinois. The
brothers held many offices in county and township government
and were prominent in the county agricultural, temperance, and
educational societies. Jeduthan was a- member of the State legis-
lature in 1842 and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in
1857.

Lisle's first school was built in 1837. In the same year the East
Du Page Religious Society was organized in the locality, an out-
growth of a Congregational society founded in 1833. In spite of
enterprising citizens, Lisle did not grow much. One Xavier
Schroedi, who ran a gristmill, bought from Luther Hatch land on
both sides of the railroad tracks and, because he wanted no compe-
tition for his general sto/e, refused to subdivide. By 1913, accord-
ing to Bateman and Selby, more milk was being shipped from
Lisle station than from any other on the Burlington line between
Chicago and Aurora. Today most of the milk is trucked from the
milk plant.

More than 1,000 acres in the vicinity of Lisle are rented out
in small farms by the Lisle Farms Company, owned by the Joy
Morton estate.

The LUTHER HATCH HOUSE (private), southwest corner
Ogden Ave. (US 34) and Joliet Rd., was built soon after the year
1833. A frame structure in the Greek Revival style, it has hand-
hewn timbers of oak. Behind the house stands an immense elm.

204

The JEDUTHAN HATCH HOUSE (private), southwest cor-
ner 111. 53 and Warrenville Rd., its architecture of the Greek
Revival farmhouse type, dates from about 1834.

At /.; m. on 111. 53 is the entrance to the MORTON ARBOR-
ETUM (open daily sunrise to sunset; free; Administration Bldg.,
housing information bureau, library, herbarium, and offices open
weekdays 9-5, Sun 10-12 and 2-5; picnic grounds available by
special permission to botany classes and garden clubs). Founded
December 14, 1922, development of the Morton Arboretum was
begun in the fall of 1921. Its establishment realized a life-long
ambition of Joy Morton, son of J. Sterling Morton, originator of
Arbor Day and Secretary of Agriculture under President Cleveland.
The arboretum's 775 acres of partly wooded, rolling land are
devoted to practical scientific research in the fields of horticulture
and arboriculture, with emphasis on the growing and cultivation
of all the known types of trees and shrubs able to thrive in the
climate of northern Illinois. The living plant collection comprises
about 4,500 species, varieties, and hybrids. All plants are labeled
with their botanical names and accession, as well as numbers re-
ferring to the card catalog in the general office, in which their
location, origin, and history are given. Plantings are arranged
according to four classifications: (i) systematic groups, defined
by botanical relationships; (2) geographical groups, according to
native habitats; (3) ornamental plantings to create landscape
effects; (4) economic plots, where trees are tested for timber
value. Some 250,000 trees and shrubs include specimens from
Siberia, Japan, China, and India, as well as from almost every
country in Europe. Birds and wild fowl are attracted to the
arboretum in large numbers. The east branch of the Du Page
River meanders through the grounds, and several small lakes
have been developed. A well-marked system of driveways and
footpaths gives access to all parts of the plant collection.

At the main entrance to the arboretum stands the attractive
Administration Building, erected in 1935 in memory of Joy Morton
by his daughter, Mrs. Joseph Cudahy. Of steel, stone, and con-
crete construction, its exterior is Wisconsin limestone. The
copper-roofed canopy