USA > Illinois > Cook County > History of Cook County, Illinois : being a general survey of Cook County history, including a condensed history of Chicago and special account of districts outside the city limits : from the earliest settlement to the present time, volume II > Part 32
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lowing were the officers elected : L. H. Scott, supervisor ; Robert As- ton, clerk; Henry Mynard, assessor; Jacob Vocht, collector ; David Wadhams, overseer of the poor; John F. Cague, Henry Stetter and Henry Versner, commissioners of highways; Leonard H. Scott and William Carley, justices of peace; William Carley and Carl Kott, constables, and Alphonso Carley and William Kott, overseers of highways. The village of Bremen continued to grow and became one of the substantial suburban communities of Cook county.
The township of Rich lies in the extreme southern portion of the county. It was settled at an early day, mostly by German immi- grants from Holland. The village of Matteson was surveyed in 1855 by N. D. Ellwood and Jacob Rich. The first residence was built about that time by Charles Ohlender, who opened a store. The next year John Fox erected a residence and at the same time con- structed a small wagon shop. John Steichelman opened the first tavern in the village. In January, 1852, the first train passed through this village. A school was established in 1865 and two or three years later a religious society was organized by the Ger- mans. Among the first residents in Matteson were F. P. Weishaar, A. Kludenning, M. Emerich, C. Stuenke, S. Lux, H. Mahler, H. Merker, J. Blattener, C. H. Greenhager, F. Duensing and F. Kliene. The population of the village increased slowly as the township grew and as business and farming warranted. The hamlet of Richton was located one mile south of Matteson. Among the first who set- tled in that vicinity were the Miller, Merker and Reihl families. Nearly all the early residents were Germans. George D. Lewis was the first station agent at this point. The village was surveyed in 1853 by J. Calhoun. As early as 1841 the German Lutheran church was organized in this village and a building was erected. Rev. Mr. Kuegele was the first pastor. The German Union church was organized in 1868 and two years later a building was erected. Revs. Nirhms and Phein were the first pastors. Peter Pfiefer set- tled in Rich about the same year 1849. Gradually the little village grew, but has never become large nor very influential.
In 1850 the town was organized under the new law. The first officers were as follows: Eli Taylor, supervisor; Jacob Rheil, clerk ; Walter Goodenow, assessor ; L. L. Butterfield, collector ; Eli Taylor and J. H. Batchelor, justices of the peace.
Bloom township, the southeast corner township of Cook county, includes all of congressional township 35 north, range 14 east, and a strip six miles long and two miles wide, constituting twelve sec- tions of congressional township 35 north, range 15 east, its area embracing one and one-third congressional townships. It is bounded north by Thornton township, east by Lake county, Indiana, south by Will county, west by Rich township. Its surface is ele- vated and rolling and its loamy soil renders it fine for agricultural purposes. It is watered and drained by several tributaries of the Vol. II-20.
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Calumet. Originally about one-fourth of this township was well timbered, the remaining one-fourth being rolling prairie land. The timber has long since given place to cultivated fields and a city, villages and fine farms have come into being within the borders of the township. The Chicago & Grand Trunk and Pittsburg, Cin- cinnati, Chicago & St. Louis railroads cross its northeastern cor- ner, the Illinois Central railroad crosses its northwestern corner, the Chicago & Eastern Illinois railroad traverses its central section north and south, the Chicago Terminal Transfer railroad has sta- tions at Glenwood and Chicago Heights, and the Joliet division of the Michigan Central line stretches across the township east and west about two miles from the southern border. The electric line of the Chicago & Southern Traction company traverses it north and south, via Glenwood, Chicago Heights and Steger.
Bloom was organized as a township, with the area and boun- daries above described, April, 1850. Until that time it was long a part of old Thornton precinct, which for a time comprised this, Rich and Thornton townships. The first election of township officers was held at a schoolhouse in the Samuel Sloam neighbor- hood, April 2, and the following named citizens were elected to the offices mentioned :
Joseph Holbrook, supervisor; John C. Wilson, clerk; Floris B. Young, assessor; Charles Sauter and Job Campbell, justices of the peace; Benjamin Butterfield, overseer of the poor; Samuel Sloam, I. S. Finn and David Millar, highway commissioners.
Members of the Wells family came to what is now Bloom town- ship in the spring of 1833 and settled on the northeast quarter of section 20, range 14, congressional township 35, and built a small house on the creek not far from the northwest corner of the present town of Chicago Heights. They were doubtless the first white men who located in what is now Bloom. They would seem to have got on well with their Indian neighbors, for when the Indians were removed by the United States government to the Far West the Wellses went with them. That was about three years after their coming to this locality. It should be noted that Chicago Heights includes the old village of Bloom, originally named Thorn Grove. Benjamin Butterfield, who came from New York to Lockport in 1831, removed to the Bloom neighborhood in 1834. In 1835 Samuel Sloam located about two miles and a half southeast of Bloom. Morris Murphy came that year and was the pioneer mer- chant there. In 1836 came John Hume, from Michigan; Timothy Smith, from Indiana; James Bell, from Kentucky; and Caleb Sweet, John Wallace, John McCoy and John Call. About that time came John McEldowney, Jr., who took up land in sections 20 and 28, also John McEldowney, Sr., his sons James and Thomas and his six daughters.
Not long after the original settlement by the Wellses, Adam
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Brown came and erected a primitive log dwelling at the intersec- tion of the Sac trail and Vincennes road. When he settled there, in 1833, his nearest neighbor was a Mr. Osborn, six miles south. There were then but three families living anywhere within a radius of twenty-five miles from his cabin. In 1840 Mr. Brown planted an orchard and built the first frame barn in this part of the country. His daughter Lovina was the first white child born in the vicinity. In 1837 settlements were made on the Brown farm by Benjamin Ross, on Thorn brook by John Lyons, and at Thorn Grove by John Wilson and John Caldwell; in 1838 Joseph Caldwell, C. Cul- ver and Jacob Bowder and his family came; in 1839 Vincent Sauter- and Frederick Richards came, and later they located at New Stras- burg. In 1842 Christian Miller and H. Beckley came. They were, respectively, Bloom's first blacksmith and first carpenter. James Miller accompanied his parents to the township. He will be re- membered as having written what was known as the Centennial History of Bloom. Among the settlers in 1843 were Jeremiah Maroney and William Orr. In 1844 there was a considerable accession of settlers, among them James Pickens Farnum, Stewart B. Aiken, James Rice, Joseph Gloss, John Little and the Dixon, Cushing and Prestage families. John Campbell settled northwest of Bloom in 1848. In 1855 William Caskey, from Green county, Alabama, settled half a mile west of Bloom. In 1858 his mother, five sisters and three brothers came on from Alabama and found a home with him. John Holmes and Captain Finn located near Caskey later in 1855.
As late as 1840 land around Bloom (Chicago Heights), now ad- vanced to remarkable value, was sold by patentees at $5 to $6 an acre. By 1860 it was worth $60 an acre.
One of the earliest land purchases in the Glenwood neighbor- hood was that of a large tract on Hickory creek by Job and John D. Campbell in 1838. It was not until eight years later, however, that the former actually settled in what is now Bloom township. Prominent among other early land owners at and near Glenwood were Thomas Dyer, Julius Wadsworth, the Pecks-Samuel, James and Sheldon-and John Finn, all of whom bought ground in the vicinity in 1854 or earlier.
The primitive name of Glenwood was Hickory Bend. The first white settlers in that vicinity were O. P. Axtell and Job Campbell, who made homes on lands near the village in 1846. Floris Young, Benjamin Baker, Jacob Dull and Lott Chapman came in 1847, George R. James in 1848, and James and Orson Pickens, father and son, in 1849, on a farm about three miles south of the village. The Holbrook family settled about the same time west of the vil- lage. In 1854 Thomas Barrows came. Joseph Kinsey came that year also, but left in 1855. Caleb Sweet, William D. Wilkie, Claus Jorgensen, Chris and Henry Krolin, George Nutting, Robert Bal-
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ford, Robert Kaiser, John Wagner, Clark Holbrook, Fremont Holbrook and James and Richard Hemmingway all settled around Glenwood before the village was platted.
The once village of New Strasburg was settled in 1839, near the old village of Bloom. There was a store there as early as 1836. James Morrison was the merchant. There, too, was the pioneer postoffice of Bloom township. Charles Sauter was the first post- master. This was long the mail center for the southeast part of the township. There is strong evidence to support a claim, many times advanced, that the first religious services in the township were held here by Father Fischer, of the Catholic church. The Church of St. James was built in 1847. It was destroyed by light- ning in 1870 and rebuilt thirteen years later. The causes that made other towns in the vicinity destroyed New Strasburg. It was a survival of the fittest.
Steger is a village on the southern township line, largely in Will county. It is a station on the Chicago & Eastern Illinois railroad and on the electric line of the Chicago & Southern Traction com- pany. It had a population of 357 in 1900.
Hickory Bend was surveyed for Job Campbell and Floris Young in 1871, and at the suggestion of O. P. Axtell was given the more euphonious name of Glenwood. At that time the postoffice was established. H. K. Axtell was postmaster; George H. Paine was his assistant. It was in 1871, too, that Job Campbell built the Glen- wood house. It was leased and conducted for a time by O. P. Axtell and James Dull, then sold to Theodore Weiderhold, who remodeled it and utilized it as a general store. "This, with the postoffice store, of which George H. Paine, who is also the station agent, is proprietor, a saloon and a blacksmith and wagon shop," wrote Andreas in 1884, "constitute the present business houses of the place."
The Rev. Mr. Ball, a Baptist, who preached at Glenwood in 1848, was the first preacher who held forth there. In 1859 the Rev. Mr. Gilbert, a Presbyterian, and the Rev. Mr. Bartlett, a Con- gregationalist, held occasional services in farmers' houses round about. The Catholics began the erection of a church early in 1884, and the Presbyterians were then meeting in the schoolhouse, where they were ministered to by the Rev. William Morrow, of Bloom. The Catholics have no local pastor, but are ably ministered to by the Rev. Father Welch, of Chicago Heights, and by other visiting priests. There is a local organization of Methodists, without a regular house of worship, who hold services in one of the two vil- lage schoolhouses.
An infant daughter of Thomas Barrows, born in 1855, died before the end of that year. Her birth and demise were the first at Glenwood.
The first schoolhouse in the Glenwood district was built a mile
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and a quarter east of the site of the village in 1850 and was moved to Glenwood in 1882. The local public school is conducted in two small schoolhouses by Prof. F. Harms, principal, and Miss Helen Ward, assistant. Grammar and primary grades are taught.
There is within the corporate limits of Glenwood a population of about 380. The only noteworthy business place is the general store of Fred Kobel. J. F. Miller is the local agent of the Chicago & Eastern Illinois railroad. The Chicago Terminal Transfer rail- road and the electric line of the Chicago & Southern Traction com- pany afford additional railway facilities. The president of the vil- lage board in March, 1909, was Andrew Mergenthaler. The Coun- cil was constituted thus: H. Krause, William Krause, M. J. Scan- lan, Edward Kennedy, W. J. Wheeler.
The Illinois Manual Training school, originally known as the Illinois Industrial Training School for Boys, was chartered Febru- ary, 1887. In 1890 it was moved from Norwood Park to near Glenwood, to a farm of more than 300 acres donated by Milton George-a beautiful body of land, with a rolling surface dotted with clusters of trees, a sparkling stream cutting through its cen- ter. The school derived some revenue from the county and was in a measure self-supporting. Any deficiency was made up by charitable people connected with its management or otherwise inter- ested in it. The property has been improved by the erection of domiciles and industrial buildings and otherwise. The scope of the institution has been broadened and its efficiency has been increased. The boys who have a home here at this time number about 700. About fifty teachers, matrons and attendants are employed. Myron E. Loller is its superintendent.
The training school law reaches and protects a class of boys more deserving than almost any others of being rescued from the depths of indigence and being placed in institutions equipped to safely guide them in the path of self-reliant manliness. As a rule, boys entitled to claim assistance under this act are guilty of no serious breach of the law. Their greatest misfortune arises from the fact that they are deprived of proper guardianship and left to the charity of a world too busy and too careless to take note of their needs. If left to their own devices, such boys must either starve or live by their wits, and to live by their wits means for many of them membership of that criminal class which menaces the welfare of the State.
Mrs. Ursula L. Harrison, formerly superintendent of this school, testified that she "found the children sent there to be like marble in the rough, requiring only to be chiseled with patience and pol- ished with love to fashion many pure and lovely characters that may become bright and shining lights in the world. The hardest task is to inspire confidence in the child and inculcate in him the idea of self-support and independence. The boys are frequently
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received in the home in a state of abject misery. If reclaimed at an early age, there is enough physical and mental vitality remaining to them in which morals may be planted and take root and grow. It is hard for them to submit to discipline and to grasp the ideas of moral training, but patience and kindness have brought many an unruly boy to a halt before he plunged over the precipice from which so few ever return. The boys brought here are trained for lives of industry and usefulness and many of them are sent to good homes in the country."
Morris Murphy, who was merchandising a mile and a half north of Bloom as early as 1835, bought his stock in Chicago and brought it to his place of business on the back of a little Indian pony, which he sometimes burdened so heavily that three or four days' time was used up in making the journey to and fro. He was the only local merchant before 1846, when Hunter & Aikens opened a general store in the village. The first postoffice in the township was estab- lished at New Strasburg, in charge of Charles Sauter. Later it was removed to Thorn Grove (later Bloom, now Chicago Heights), where Robert Wallace was the first postmaster. Ainong his earlier successors were Stewart Aiken and L. Oswald.
The primitive school in the township was taught in a school- house completed in 1836. It stood west of the site of Bloom, south of where the railroad bridge now is. Miss Cooper was the teacher, and she had but seven pupils. A cemetery, the first within the lim- its of the present township, was platted at Bloom in 1842. The burials there of Rosanna McEldowney and a daughter of a Mrs. Noble were the first two of which any record is extant.
The name of the Thorn Grove settlement was changed to Bloom in 1849, as a memorial to Robert Bluhm, a patriot who died at Vienna, at the hands of the public executioner, the year before. The word Bloom is Bluhm Anglicised, and the change was made at the request of a number of prominent Germans then living in the vicinity. ' Bloom was not platted until 1863, when a survey was made embracing fifteen acres, including the crossing at Main street of the Michigan Central railroad. Dolton's addition of forty acres was platted in 1871. In Andreas' History of Cook County (1884) appears the following prophetic forecast of the future of Bloom: "When the spirit of enterprise now growing so rapidly reaches further out, Bloom, which is now a happy rural village, contented, peaceful and industrious, will realize its relations to the great city and win hundreds, perhaps thousands, of busy Chicagoans to share the bliss of country life. The advantages which the railroads offer, and its own undoubted claims to a healthy and beautiful location, pure water, rich soil, woodlands, hill and dale, tell that such ad- vantages will not long be left to the sole enjoyment of its present limited population."
Chicago Heights, as founded in 1891 by the Chicago Heights
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Land association, had an area of 1,260 acres. The Hon. F. Scales, judge of the Cook County court, ordered the holding of an election September 2, 1892, to decide as to the advisability of incorporating under the general law as a village. Eighty-two votes were cast for village organization, none against that measure. The first village election was held September 24, 1892. John C. Becker was elected president; George M. Ewing, W. B. Ewing, A. Kasdorf, J. C. McColly, J. H. McEldowney and Theodore Weiderhold, trustees ; Theodore H. Weiderhold, clerk.
John C.Becker, Dr. J. C. Ross, George C. Flanner, A. J. J. Miller and Frank Fellows filled the office of president, one after the other in the order named, until the village of Chicago Heights gave place to the city of Chicago Heights. The successive mayors have been J. W. Thomas, J. C. Mote and Lee H. Hook. The latter was serv- ing in his second term in March, 1909, when the board of alder- men was thus constituted: First ward, Nels Widing, August Kas- dorf; Second ward, Fred Riebling, W. H. Johnston . Third ward, Mike Costabello, Sam Zone; Fourth ward, Joe Cercone, Tony Reinwald; Fifth ward, Thomas Fogg, Henry Badennius. John Gravelot was city clerk; Joseph Gibson, city treasurer; Craig A. Hood, city attorney ; J. W. Hill, police magistrate; Sam Brooke, superintendent of streets; W. W. Sterling, water and building in- spector ; C. S. Kirgis, chief of fire department; John Crowe, chief of police. Charles A. McColly, David Mckinney and George L. Johnston are justices of the peace.
Following is a copy of an ordinance passed by the Village Board of Chicago Heights in 1897, annexing the contiguous land of the Chicago Heights Land association to the village named :
"WHEREAS, The petition of the Chicago Title and Trust com- pany, trustees for the Chicago Heights Land association, Frank Fellows, George H. Fuller, A. J. Miller, W. H. Donovan, H. C. Meyer, E. F. Hoke, William McGrew and H. E. Skeele, to the president and Board of Trustees of the village of Chicago Heights, was on the 18th day of January, 1897, presented, praying that the hereinafter described territory contiguous to said village be an- nexed and become a part of the incorporation of the village of Chicago Heights, under the act of the General Assembly of the State of Illinois approved April 10, 1892, entitled 'An Act to Pro- vide for the Annexing and Excluding of Territory' and the amend- ments thereto.
"WHEREAS, It appears that the petitioners are three-fourths of the legal voters and owners of three-fourths in valuc of the prop- erty in said contiguous territory and that said territory is contigu- ous and not within the corporate limits of said village, nor a part of any city, village or municipal corporation.
"Therefore, Be it ordained by the president and Board of Trustees of the village of Chicago Heights:
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"1. That the prayer of the said petitioners is hereby granted. It is hereby ordered that the territory described by the following metes and bounds be and is hereby annexed to the village of Chi- cago Heights, Cook county, Ill., with its privileges and benefits, subject to its ordinances and contracts, to-wit :
"§Beginning at a point on the west line of the northeast quarter of section 29, T. 35 N., R. 14 east of the 3d prime meridian, Cook county, Illinois, the same being the intersection of said sec- tion line and the prolongation of the south line of blocks 219 and 218 for a distance of 1,001.9 feet, to the intersection of the south line of the right of way of the Michigan Central railroad, thence east along the south line of the right of way of the Michigan Cen- tral railroad for a distance of 505 feet, thence south along the west line of the northeast quarter of section 29-35-14 for a distance of 1,131.2 feet to the point of beginning; the territory described above by metes and bounds being included within blocks 218 and 219 and a part of Euclid avenue and Main street, in Chicago Heights, Il1.
"§2. That the territory annexed shall be known and legally described as blocks 218 and 219 in the first annexation to the vil- lage of Chicago Heights, which is a subdivision in T. 35 N., R. 14 E. of the 3d prime meridian, Cook county, Illinois.
"§3. This annexation is without restriction or reservation."
At that time George C. Flanner was president of the village; P. F. Jirtle, clerk; David Wallace, George H. Fuller, O. G. David, P. T. Large, John Becker, Charles Miller, trustees. It will be of interest to note also that O. A. Oswald was village treasurer ; George A. Brinkman, attorney; John Mackler, collector; Charles A. McColly, constable; Dr. H. Raby Bidgood, physician.
The "founders and owners of Chicago Heights," as the stock- holders in the Chicago Heights Land association, most of whom were Chicagoans, have been termed, were A. E. Hamill, president of the Corn Exchange National bank; Charles L. Hutchinson, vice- president of the Corn Exchange National bank; Michael Cudahy, meat packer; D. V. Purington, manufacturer of brick; Charles H. Wacker, president of the Wacker & Birk Brewing company ; Joseph Theurer, president of the Schoenhofen Brewing company; Rudolph Brand, president of the United States Brewing company ; E. G. Uihlein, president of the Schlitz Brewing company; George Bartholomae, brewer; Alfred Kohn, wholesale grocer; John Bueh- ler, capitalist; Lackner & Butz, lawyers; Leo Fox, capitalist; Wil- liam Vocke, lawyer; H. W. Austin, president of the Oak Park State Bank; H. C. Hansen, vice-president of the Oak Park State bank; D. B. Lyman, president of the Chicago Title and Trust com- pany; H. W. Leman, second vice-president of the Chicago Title and Trust company; Juergens & Anderson, wholesale diamond merchants; Joseph Austrian, of the Leopold & Austrian Transfer
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company; Thomas B. Marston, lawyer; H. M. Kilgallen, real estate; George Burry, lawyer.
The city now has an area of about 1,350 square acres. Hannah & Keeney's addition, the Edgewood avenue addition, Schilling's addition, the Sunnyside addition and Holbrook's first addition, all yet outside the city limits, have been platted and put on the market, and some of them may be annexed in the near future.
The Chicago Heights Land association was formed May 23, 1891, for the industrial development of approximately 4,000 acres of land in Bloom township, about twenty-eight miles south of the central part of Chicago. From the day of its organization Charles H. Wacker has been its president and treasurer, and during most of the time Rudolf Brand has been its vice-president and Francis Lackner its secretary. These gentlemen and Leo Fox and George Burry constitute its board of directors. Since 1892 M. H. Kil- gallen has been its general manager. With weekly meetings of the board of directors the work originally mapped out has been carried on tenaciously and aggressively, yet always conservatively, in the face of many inevitable obstacles and disappointments. As a result, Chicago Heights is a thriving manufacturing center with fifty-eight diversified industrial establishments, many of them man- ufactures, supporting a population of nearly 15,000, where, eighteen years ago, there was a quiet farming community of per- haps 150 people. It is the fixed policy of the association not to make the growth and prosperity of the city dependent upon any one line of industry.
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