USA > Illinois > Cook County > Growth of Cook County; a history of the large lake-shore county that includes Chicago, Vol. I > Part 10
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21
On Oct. 25, 1871, the Chicago Evening Mail1 carried the following bitter and apparently unjustified comment:
"If Mr. Norman T. Gassette had been half as zealous in attending to his duties as County Recorder as he was in getting his friends into office, he would have saved the priceless records of the Court House. A moderate amount of energy and sense would have secured the services of a hundred men, at the cost, if necessary, of ten thousand dollars, and had every book con-
1. Copies of the newspaper are in archives of Chicago Historical Society.
139
veyed to a place of safety. But a fire is very different from a ward meeting."
Where could the poor recorder at that time of night have recruited a force sufficient to carry away the tract books, deeds, and other recorded documents? With not only the courthouse but with all adjoining buildings a mass of flames, men were running for their very lives, and even a nearby jeweler, unable to save his stock, purposely gave it away by the handfuls to fleeing persons, some of whom were the released prisoners.
A county commissioner, Daniel Worthington, had come to the courthouse shortly before its destruction and argued up until the last minute not only against removal of any records, but even against the freeing of the prisoners, stanchly pro- claiming the building to be "fireproof."
For a few months immediately following the fire, the func- tions of county and city government were carried on in rented quarters west of the Chicago river. Meanwhile, a temporary building, costing $75,000, was being constructed at Adams and LaSalle streets. It was completed and occupied by certain of the city and county offices in less than a year.
A new courthouse and city hall, meanwhile, was being planned and built on the public square, site of the burned edifice. The county's east half of the new building was completed in 1881 and occupied in 1882. The city's west half, however, was not completed and occupied until 1884.
Shortly after the fire, the county recorder secured a new set of maps and tract books and was ready to start anew the re- cording of deeds and other instruments. But because so many of the property owners had no deeds to record, their documents having been destroyed by fire, the recorder was comparatively helpless.
Emergency legislation was needed. Accordingly, on April 9, 1872, the state legislature enacted a law, known as the "Burnt Record Act," which provided methods for re-establishment of
140
property records.
The act stipulated, among other things, that the owner of a property whose deed had not been destroyed could re-record the document, that copies of court orders of transfer (if any existed) could be accepted by the recorder as valid, and that the county board might purchase from abstract companies any
W.D.KERFOOTSBLOCK
FIRST IN THE
REALESTATEOFFICEWMD.KERFOOT
89Washington Street
S.ASHTON LAW OFFICE
Thực Dat
W. D.KERFOOT SV WASHINGTON ST ALL CV' & BUT WIFE
HE PV
REALESTE
Wni
FOX VOUS -
-+
MI
Photograph of first building erected in burned district after the Chicago fire of 1871.
Courtesy Chicago Historical Society
existing maps, tract books, or other official entries and have them recorded in behalf of the property owner.
The most important provision, however, was the one stipu- lating that in cases of destroyed records, the claimant of a property could go into any court in the county having chancery (court of record) jurisdiction, present whatever evidence he could muster to support his claim, and, if the judge was satis- fied, the judge was to issue whatever order necessary pro- claiming ownership. The court order then could be recorded
141
with the county recorder. (Liens against a property also could be similarly re-established thru the courts.)
The best evidence of this nature proved to be the records kept by private abstract and title guarantee companies, of which three were in operation in Chicago. These records, mostly of tract book nature, had been compiled thruout the years as properties changed hands and new deeds were recorded.
A sworn statement by the abstractor, certifying that a person was shown by the abstractor's books to be the owner of a certain parcel of property, would satisfy the court.
Since the buildings housing the three abstract companies were located in the downtown area and were, themselves, to be consumed by fire, how were the books of these companies preserved?
The answer to that is another interesting part of the fire story. Each of the companies, thru heroic efforts, saved a por- tion of its books, and later, by combining their records, found that they could produce evidence of ownership for every parcel of land thruout the county.
For that picture, let us turn to one of the few writings describing it. Everett Chamberlin, on pages 208-11 of his book, Chicago And Its Suburbs, published in 1874 by T. A. Hunger- ford & Co., Chicago, said of the three abstract companies:
Chase Brothers. At the time of the fire this was still the leading abstract firm in town, employing a force of 25 men, and having accumulated a collection of 300 volumes of in- dexes, 230,000 pages of letterpress copies of abstracts-in all, some three tons of manuscripts. The fire came, and destroyed a portion of these books, but fortunately the most valuable part was saved, and is now in daily use, supplementing other valuable parts saved from the flames by the other conveyancers mentioned below.
Shortall & Hoard. Mr. Shortall arrived at the place where his precious books were stored at midnight. . . . Obser- vation already told him that the safeguards which had been
142
thrown around his property were not, as had been supposed, sufficient. The only safety lay in removing the books beyond the district likely to be burned over.
What to do for a means of conveyance? For Shortall, tho versed in all manner of legal conveyances, was not equal to this emergency without help from a conveyancer of a more literal or physical type. But the carters were the greatest men in town that night, and in the vicinity of Larmon block none could be got, for love or money, to move those books. The only other resort was in the rear pocket of Shortall's trowsers. (Chamberlin's spelling.) He drew it forth-a re- volver! and requested the nearest carter to come alongside and anchor while his craft could be filled with books from upstairs.
By keeping this instrument carefully trained upon the commander of the unknown craft, Shortall was able to hold him there while the boys of the office brought down most of the books, and while the flames roared and the walls toppled around them. A friend came to the rescue after a while, with a wagon more commodious and a driver more trustworthy than the one whom Shortall had impressed into his service.
The latter was, therefore, honourably discharged and rea- sonably paid. The friend's wagon was driven off in the direc- tion of safety, and the books were saved. A great many loose crannies in our land titles were thereby made snug and tight, and Shortall's fortune was made. The exertions by which the other sets of abstract books were saved were scarcely less brave and praiseworthy.
Jones & Sellers. The books of Messrs. Jones & Sellers, which were also contributed to the joint library of archives from which the most of our land titles are now verified, were started at a later period than either of the two sets referred to above. ... These books, like those of the other firms named, were rescued by dint of great exertion from the consuming element, hardly any portion being lost in any case except those least valuable, viz., copies of abstracts.
Alliance Formed
The fire over, and every scrap of the public records gone up in the fiery whirlwind, the abstract men were not long in
143
perceiving that they held the key to the land title situation. It was found that by combining their books a record could be made up which would afford not only a complete chain of title of every tract in Cook county, but would also furnish very full evidence relative to the effect of all judgments-in fact a thoro inquest could be made by means of these books into all the strong and weak points of possession, claim, or conveyance. The three firms therefore lost no time in forming an alliance, and in making themselves ready to serve the public.
Chamberlin further pointed out that since the new state law made it possible for the county to purchase the records from the abstract companies, the county asked the abstract combine what it would take for their books and was told the price would be $750,000. The county thought this exorbitant, and dropped the matter.
This left the property owners with the responsibility of going to the now combined abstract company to obtain evi- dence of ownership which they could present to the court for the re-establishment of clear titles.
"The result is," Chamberlin wrote, "the public is volun- tarily paying out more than two-thirds as much per year to this single concern for abstracts as the outside price asked by the owners for their entire set of books."
To complete the ownership picture of the private abstract firms, J. Frank Graf, retired vice president of the Chicago Title and Trust Company, in a pamphlet prepared recently for the company, says:
"The combined books of the three firms were leased 'on Dec. 1, 1872, for a term of years to Messrs. Handy, Simmons and Company. ... In 1879 this firm became Handy and Com- pany, and in 1887 was succeeded by the Title Guarantee and Trust Company. This latter company became the owner of all of the ante-fire records of Cook county and in 1901, thru further consolidations, the records passed into the ownership of Chicago Title and Trust Company."
144
Warren E. Thompson, assistant vice president of the Chi- cago Title and Trust Company, early in 1959 told the writer of this history:
"There is a legend that some of the records were buried in the sand on the beach, and there is an unsupported gag going around that grains of sand still are to be found among the pages of the tract books."
When this author was leafing thru the title company's tract book that contains Patrick O'Leary's record of ownership of the DeKoven street property (see accompanying picture ), we, too, looked for imbedded grains of sand and were a bit disap- pointed at finding none.
BLOCK
38.
LOT
11
BLOCK
38
--
--
GRANTOR
GRANTEN
--
--
Than !
2
* ***
---- >
Jung 2.2. 1.3 Ach 24 H63 X
-
-
Tract book saved from Chicago fire, possibly having been buried in lake shore sands. Opened to page that has historical significance, here is shown (enlarged inset) that Patrick "Leary," meaning O'Leary, on March 24, 1864, purchased improved property at 558 DeKoven street where, in 1871, Mrs. O'Leary's cow allegedly kicked over lantern that started fire. Not having full purchase price of $500, Pat borrowed $100 from W. D. Kerfoot, mortgaging property. The O'Learys sold property Dec. 9, 1879. This land-record book and others like it are proud possessions of Chicago Title and Trust Company.
145
.
M ..
-
REMARKS
Thus it was that little by little and piece by piece, as prop- erty owners re-established their titles thru court orders, the county recorder gradually rebuilt his books.
Living Witness Helped With Records
Because there were some discrepancies and missing portions, however, the county board in 1903 appropriated funds for rewriting the recorder's books.
One of the persons who helped rewrite the books that year is still living and active today. He is Gustav C. Buchholz, a former employe of the Chicago Title and Trust Company and now an employe in the office of County Assessor P. J. Cullerton.
"The county," recalls Buchholz, "contracted with A. R. Mar- riott, then a vice president of the Chicago Title and Trust Company, to bring a staff of workers into the recorder's office and rewrite the tract books.
"In performing this work, Mr. Marriott was acting as an individual and not as an agent of the title company. I was a teen-age kid at the time and was a member of the Marriott staff that did the work. I now cannot recall if we rewrote all of the recorder's books, or just a portion of them."
Records of the other county offices were less vital than those showing property ownership and no attempt was made to re- establish most of them following their loss. That is one of the difficulties that has confronted this researcher in compiling the portion of Cook county's history that preceded the fire.
Love ·Finds A Way
Yes, all of the county's records, worth untold sums of money, were destroyed in the fire, but someone in the county clerk's office apparently grabbed a sheaf of marriage application blanks and license forms before fleeing the burning building, evidence again that love supersedes all else.
Today there is to be found in the vital statistics department of County Clerk Edward J. Barrett's office the first marriage
146
license issued after the fire.1 Slightly dog-eared, but still intact, it shows that one John G. Blain on Oct. 10, 1871, even while the city's ashes still were smoldering, secured a license to marry Miss Alice R. Miller, and that the marriage was performed the same day by the Rev. Edward P. Goodwin, pastor of the First Congregational church. The license was issued by John G. Gindele, clerk of the County court, which then was the official title of the county clerk.
Thus did Mr. Blain and Miss Miller lead to the Cook county altar a procession that, since the fire, has numbered some 2,520,000 couples.
Records of births and deaths also are kept by the county clerk, but the state law making mandatory that he keep them was not enacted until July 1, 1916. Only about five per cent of the births and deaths that occurred between the time of the fire and 1916 were recorded with the clerk, and then on a voluntary basis. Now, of course, the registrars for the 30 so-called "country" townships within Cook county and for the city of Chicago not only file these vital statistics with the county clerk, but also with the state department of public health in Springfield.
County Guarantees Titles
(Before getting away too far from the subject of the county recorder's office, let us here mention briefly that Cook county, like private title guarantee companies, has its own system of issuing fully guaranteed property titles, at low charge.
(This is known as the Torrens system, named after Irish- born Sir Robert Richard Torrens, who went to Australia and became that country's first premier. Sir Torrens devised the system whereby all other real estate property owners within a given district-in our case, Cook county-guarantee the title of any property owner who secures his title thru the Torrens
1. On Sept. 18, 1959, shortly before this volume went to press, Mr. Barrett gave this original license to a New Jersey descendant of the Blains.
147
department. The Torrens department is a division of the Cook county recorder's office.
(The system was brought to Cook county [its first introduc- tion into the United States] by an act of the 1897 state legis- lature. It is not used elsewhere in the state because private title guarantee companies, realizing the competitiveness of its nature, up to 1960 had blocked legislation that would make easy its acquirement.
(Nearly 25 per cent of the one and one-quarter million parcels of real estate within Cook county is registered under the Torrens system, and the gross intake to the county now is $700,000 per year, of which one-fourth, or $175,000, is net profit to the taxpayers.
(The head of the Torrens department, of course, is the county recorder. But its officer in direct charge of operations is the chief title examiner, a position now held by Thomas J. Matousek.
(Matousek, an attorney, has been with the Torrens depart- ment since 1922, serving successively under Recorders Joseph F. Haas, Mrs. Salomea Jaranowski, Clayton F. Smith [now a county commissioner ], Edward J. Kaindl, Victor L. Schlaeger, Joseph T. Baran, Joseph F. Ropa, and the incumbent, Edmund J. Kucharski.)
But now, back to the fire aftermath again. As we stated earlier, the matter of destroyed property records was to plague the courts and legal circles for years. As late as 1959, Dennis J. Normoyle, who retired on June 15, 1957 as Circuit court judge after 30 years on the bench, recalled that about 1950 a case came before his court involving disposition of a lot that had been purchased by the last known owner on Sat., Oct. 7, 1871, the day before the fire. The owner had disappeared, never to be heard from again-whether he perished in the fire or just ran away from the scene of disaster never was established.
148
And even as we go to press with this volume, nearly 89 years after the fire, a Chicago attorney is trying to find evidence to support a contention that the city of Chicago, shortly after the fire, took illegal possession, due to the fire, of a piece of property now worth $500,000. We do not know the merits of his case, if any, but mention it here merely to indicate the long-lasting reverberations that can be caused by such a disaster.
Could It Happen Again?
In the concluding portion of this fire aftermath discussion, let us ask: Could such a devastating and destructive fire ever happen again?
Yes, it could.
But there are qualifications to that answer. Chances are possibly a million to one that no such fire of similar origin and nature could sweep the city again.
The wooden houses that kindled and fed the great conflagra- tion of 1871 have been replaced, for the most part, with fire- resisting structures of brick, steel, aluminum and concrete.
Modern fire-fighting equipment and techniques of today are so much superior to those of nearly a hundred years ago that there is no comparison. Major fires of today ordinarily are con- fined to a single building or area.
But on the other hand we now are living in an atomic age, and altho it is quite improbable, there still is a distinct possi- bility that an enemy, God forbid, might drop a bomb that could flatten Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, or any other great metropolitan area.
If such a remote disaster ever should happen, could Chicago rise again? Yes. Because of the natural reasons that make this a logical site for a great city, survivors and outsiders would reconstruct a new, bigger, and even better Chicago and Cook county.
But in event of such a disaster, would the records of local
149
government be preserved, or would they again go up in flames, or possibly be blown to bits?
We know now that the records could not possibly be de- stroyed to the extent that they were in 1871 because the Cook county government and other major taxing bodies now are in the process of duplicating vital records and court orders by the modern method of microfilming, and are storing the films in security vaults at different places within the city.
In this filming process, pictures of documents are taken on small rolls of film that occupy but a handful of space as com- pared with voluminous storage space required for the original records. Microfilming also has been refined to the point where within minutes, or even seconds, copies of an individual docu- ment can be reproduced from the roll of film itself.
This microfilming now is in process in 25 offices and depart- ments of the county, including County hospital, but the enormous task still was far from being complete when this was written. With the exception of one office, which is doing its own microfilming, the work is being carried out under the able direction of Edmund J. Brennan, director of the county's department of central services.
Because of the magnitude of work involved in the recorder's office, County Recorder Kucharski is supervising the micro- filming of documents under his jurisdiction. There the filming of recorded deeds is given priority, but Kucharski said his office in time would film even the tract books which provide a run- ning history of vital facts pertaining to individual parcels of property.
Altho many of the films of vital county records are being stored in various places of security, as we have mentioned, such storage of films does not meet fully the county's needs and requirements. This is because many of the films are needed for everyday use in reproducing copies of individual records. In other words, the need is not so great for the safe storage of
150
the films as it is for the safe storage of the bulky, original records, themselves.
Some abstract companies, banks, and other private Chicago firms in recent years have built for themselves underground places for storage of films, principally in the neighboring state of Wisconsin. There these Chicago interests have dug down, beneath layers of limestone, to construct vaults that are be- lieved to be as secure as mortal man can devise.
President Ryan Announces Plan
With Cook county's need, however, for a place in which to store bulky original records, and at the same time have the records available for ready reference, the location of security vaults at far-away places appears impractical.
"I have a proposal that may solve our problem," announced President Daniel Ryan of the Cook county board in an inter- view shortly before this volume went to press.
"I soon shall start board action and seek the approval of the other commissioners and the general public for the con- struction of adequate and handy security vaults within our own Cook county forest preserves," Ryan said.
"Engineers, of course, will have to tell us the nature of the construction necessary, such as to size, depth, and whether to locate the vaults beneath strata of rocks, or under concrete and leaden slabs and layers of soil," he further explained.
As we said, we would include some fine descriptive para- graphs of the Chicago fire that were written by the late R. Richard Wohl, associate professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago.
Prof. Wohl's account was read dramatically by him and illustrated with pictures and other visual aids in a televised program over Station WTTW Channel 11, on the evening of Feb. 28, 1957. It was one of the Everybody's America series, all written by Prof. Wohl, and sponsored by the University of
151
Chicago's Office of Radio and Television. Prof. Wohl died Nov. 15, 1957 at the age of 36.
We are extremely grateful to the widow, Mrs. Rhoda L. Wohl, for her kind permission to reproduce any or all of the speech. And we are equally grateful for similar permission granted by the producer of the series, Edward Rosenheim, Jr., associate professor of humanities at the University of Chicago, and to James Robertson, program manager for WTTW.
The portion of Prof. Wohl's speech that we herewith repro- duce reflects, for the most part, the mood and thinking of the mass of Chicago citizenry that was fleeing from the onrushing holocaust. It contains a minimum of repetition with what we have written in the earlier part of this chapter.
A Professor's Description
Prof. Wohl speaking:
Did the fire begin because the Chicago firemen were ex- hausted from an enormous $700,000 fire that they had been fighting the night before? Did it begin because there had been 30 fires that had worn out Chicago's firemen and fire com- panies between Sept. 30 and Oct. 5? Did it begin because there was a serious drought that had parched the entire West and left Chicago a tinder-box, the kind of drought that made the leaves fall from the trees in July? Did it begin because a fresh load of hay had just been put down in the O'Leary barn?
The whole answer, of course, will never be given. No one really knows where a disaster like this fire had its ultimate beginnings.
What happens to people in a disaster ?
No one ever knows, because no one is prepared for a disaster, and it is difficult to speak generally about such calamities, because it is difficult to distinguish between disasters.
FRED A. FULLE County Commissioner
152
In some of them people respond to danger fairly quickly and adjust rapidly. One would imagine that bombing a city would not only destroy it quite thoroughly and could demoralize its population as well. Yet, when the scientists on the strategic bombing survey went back to Europe, at the end of the last war, they were astonished to find that even cities that had been regularly plastered with high explosives managed, some- how to recover themselves quickly; to improvise ways to live and ways to work; and that after a while the recurrence of bombings had produced a kind of saving "habitual response" so that people managed to live on even under these devastat- ing conditions.
There are other kinds of disasters.
There is the kind of disaster which comes when a volcano explodes suddenly or the sea runs mad in a tidal wave. But these, dreadful tho they may be, allow for no preparation and are over relatively quickly. These are natural phenomena run beserk, and people face the unexpected as best they can.
A great fire is perhaps the most devastating of all disasters, little as there is to choose between them. It consumes every- thing in its path. It leaves nothing behind. It demoralizes and destroys completely ; and in an important sense, a fire in a large city, toward the end of the nineteenth century, must be considered at least partially a man-made calamity. A great urban fire out of control points to a lapse of human control ; a lapse of social authority in a fundamental matter of protecting life and property.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.