USA > Illinois > Will County > History of Will County, Illinois, Volume One > Part 13
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The first sermon preached in the town was perhaps by Father Beggs, who, as noticed in other parts of this work, was one of the pioneer preachers of the county. The Rev. Mr. Blackwell, another of the early Methodist itinerants, formed a class at Mr. Doty's about 1836 or 1837, just over the line in New Lenox Township, but at that day was included in this set- tlement, or this was included in that, and all known as the
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Hickory Creek Settlement. Mr. Doty's residence was a regu- lar preaching-place until the era of schoolhouses, as there was no church edifice built until after the village of Frankfort was laid out. There is but one church-building in the town outside of the villages-the German Lutheran Church-which is located about three miles northeast of Frankfort village. It was built in 1877 and was a neat frame building, costing about $1,500, and had quite a flourishing membership. The church history will be again referred to in the history of the villages. The first schools taught in the town were by Mrs. Knight and Mrs. Hiram Wood, but to which belongs the honor of teaching the first, no one can now tell. They both taught in a little log schoolhouse, which stood on Section 19, built for school pur- poses, but afterward converted into a dwelling.
The cheese factory of Messrs. Baumgartner & Co., was an extensive establishment. It was owned by a stock company, consisting of John and Jacob Baumgartner, George Geuther, Francis Maue and E. Higgens. They had an excellent brick factory with stone basement, built at a cost of $6,000. It is about two miles north of Frankfort village, and was built in 1875. The manufacture of butter and cheese was carried on rather largely, but not to the full capacity of the factory, owing to the lack of material. About $10,000 is the amount of busi- ness annually, but much more could have been done if a greater supply of milk could have been obtained. This industry was abandoned in 1895. The building remains today in a good state of preservation.
This township was named by Mr. Cappel, an old German citizen, for Frankfort-on-the-Main, his native place, a name it has always borne. The town is largely Republican, and has always been so. It is remembered by many that at one period of its history there were not half a dozen Democratic votes in the entire town. But the latter party has gained some strength in the last few years, and the National Greenback party at pre-
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sent bids fair to create a revolution in its political record. The war history, like all portions of Will County, is good, and many brave soldiers are accredited to this township.
Mokena is situated on the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad, about ten miles east of Joliet. The original village was laid out in 1852, before the railroad was fully completed, by Allen Denny. An addition was made to it soon after, by John Mc- Govney, which was surveyed by A. J. Matthewson, County Sur- veyor. Knapp & Smith put up the first building, which was used for the double purpose of store and dwelling, and they were the first merchants in the place. The first hotel was built by Charles Gall, in 1853, and was the next building erected af- ter Knapp & Smith's store, which had been put up in the Win- ter of 1851-52, before the village was laid out and before the Railroad was completed. William McCoy built the first black- smith shop, in the winter of 1853-54. Ozias McGovney was the first Justice of the Peace in the village, and was elected in 1850, an office he held for twenty-one years uninterruptedly. He was also a lawyer by profession, but did not practice for a number of years, and later engaged in the mercantile business. A post office was established in the village in the Spring of 1853, and Warren Knapp was the first Postmaster, receiving his commission soon after the inauguration of President Pierce. McGovney bought out Smith, of the firm of Knapp & Smith, and the firm became Knapp & McGovney, and so con- tinued for a number of years. They were the first grain buy- ers, and bought from wagons and loaded into the cars without the aid of elevators. Cross & Jones built a steam mill in 1855, and about 1865, took out the machinery and shipped it to Kan- sas, when the mill building was changed in to the Mokena Ele- vator, and was owned and operated by Charles Hirsch in 1878, the only grain dealer in the village. Noble Jones speculated in grain and had an office there, but did business mostly on the Board of Trade, in Chicago.
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The first schoolhouse was built in 1855, and was a small frame, costing $1,000. James Pierce taught the first school in it, soon after it was completed. The present schoolhouse was built in 1872, is a substantial two-story frame, with stone base- ment, and cost, together with furniture, about $10,000, just ten times the amount of the first schoolhouse. Mrs. Sarah Baldwin was Principal of the school in 1878. Miss Swalm, assistant teacher, and Miss Clara Williams was teacher of the Primary Department. This building is in use now. (1928.)
Plans are completed and contracts have been given for a new building which will have four class-rooms and a gym- nasium. This building will cost, complete in every detail, $45,000.
The village of Frankfort was named for the township, and the township was named for Frankfort-on-the-Main, as al- ready noticed. Frankfort village is situated on the Joliet cut- off of the Michigan Central Railroad, about twelve miles from Joliet, and was laid out in 1855-the same year the cut-off rail- road was built through the township. It was laid out by S. W. Bowen, who owned eighty acres of land embraced in the village. The first store was kept by a man named Higley, a very small affair, and did not continue long. The next store- and the first really deserving the name-was opened by N. A. Carpenter in the Spring of 1855, who also put up the first build- ing designed for a storehouse. The first hotel was built by a man named Doud in the summer of 1855. The post office in the village was kept by Carpenter, as a deputy under Van Horne, who was mentioned in the township history as accepting the Chelsea post office from L. M. Clayes. After its removal to this place, the name of the office was changed to Frankfort. Van Horne remained Postmaster for three years, but the duties of the office were performed by Mr. Carpenter, and after the expiration of the three years, William B. Cleveland be- came Postmaster. Nicholas Fortmiller kept the first black-
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smith shop, in 1855. He soon went to Greengarden Township to take up farming.
The first schoolhouse in the village was built in 1856, and was used as a dwelling-house as late as 1878. Josiah Carpen- ter taught the first school after its erection. The first school in the village, however, was taught by Miss Lizzie Kent before the building of the schoolhouse. A well-designed schoolhouse was built in 1870; it was a two-story frame, and cost about $5,000. The principal of the school was Prof. O. P. Blatchly, with Miss Raver as assistant teacher, and an average attend- ance of about one hundred and fifty pupils.
This building was used for school purposes until 1925, when it was removed and a four-room school of brick was erected. This is modern in every detail and houses an excellent graded school. It cost $35,000.
The Methodist Church was built in 1856, and was the first church edifice in both the village and the township. The soc- iety was originally organized in the "log schoolhouse," one mile east of the village, and grew out of the society formed at Doty's, as elsewhere mentioned. The building is a frame, cost about $2,000 and the present Pastor is Rev. George K. Hoover. A Sunday School is maintained. The Baptist Church was built in 1863, a frame building, costing $1,600. Rev. David Letts was the first Pastor, and lives now in Iowa. Rev. Stephen Bar- terick is the present Pastor, and has a membership of thirty or forty. The society supports a flourishing Sunday School, of which the Pastor is Superintendent. The German Evangeli- cal Lutheran (United) Church was built in 1868. It was a frame building 30x56 feet, cost $2,000 and had a membership of about forty. Rev. T. Walter was Pastor, and Superintendent of the Sunday School. The growth of the town and the in- crease in church attendance, made a new church desirable. A brick edifice was erected in 1918. It is a beautiful building, modern and complete in its equipment. It is prosperous in
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every way. A beautiful parsonage was built in 1925, adjacent to the church.
At this writing, (1928), Frankfort Township is having more improvements than any other township in the county. The Sauk trail of the Indians passed through near the central line of this township. Later, this became the road for Conestoga wagons and later than that, the route for the Oswego and Indiana plank road. This plank road was never realized, and the right of way was sold to the Cut-off Railroad, which be- came the Michigan Central and is now part of the New York Central lines. Later still, about 1898, an electric line was built parallel to the Michigan Central and everyone hailed it as a wonderful success. This prospered for a few years when the rapid development of automobiles made it impracticable. Then came the concrete road, now the Lincoln Highway, following the general line of the old Sauk trail. This development ren- dered the electric line useless, and it was sold for junk. The village of Frankfort is now on the Lincoln Highway. This year a concrete road comes through Green Garden Township one mile from the east edge and after coming into Frankfort, proceeds eastward to the east edge of the village of Frankfort and then goes due north to the city of Orland in Cook County, where it becomes a part of the complicated highway system around Chicago. This will give the village of Frankfort splendid highways and affords opportunity for transportation of every kind.
All other main highways of the township are built with water-bound macadam. These stone roads connect the con- crete highways so that farmers have splendid outlet in every way.
The village of Mokena does not have any concrete road, but it is connected with the concrete roads in the south and the east by good stone roads which are always kept in good condition.
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In this way it enjoys the same advantages that the village of Frankfort does. Mokena is developing rapidly, and seems about to become a suburban town for Chicago. During the past year the Rock Island Railroad has installed elaborate sig- nal service which looks forward to the electrification of the railroads. This will give Mokena splendid service to and from Chicago. Practically all of the land between Mokena and Chi- cago adjacent to this line of road is now held for real estate purposes. The next 10 years should see a remarkable develop- ment of this neighborhood.
The agricultural interests in the township develop in a splendid way. All of the land is under cultivation and drained thoroughly so that all of it may be farmed. Dairying is the most important part of the farming industry. Much grain is raised but much of it never goes to market as grain. The farmers find it more profitable to feed it to the live stock and get their returns in that way. Trucks are used to gather up the milk from many stations in the township, and farmers have very little difficulty in traveling over difficult roads which were so common twenty years ago.
Both Mokena and Frankfort are important business cen- ters. Mokena maintains a State Bank which serves its com- munity and the surrounding farmers. It is a prosperous in- stitution. Frankfort maintains two State Banks both of which are doing a good business and they are managed efficiently, and serve both the village and the surrounding farming com- munity. Both villages contain general stores. These have quite a struggle to make ends meet because people travel quick- ly and easily over the good roads to the larger centers. Both of the villages are prosperous.
The accounts of the various leaders in this township were given in the biographical part of this history and need not be recounted here.
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Green Garden Township .- The land in Greengarden will not suffer in comparison with any other township in the coun- ty. Scarcely an acre, except what is taken up by the beds of Prairie and Forked Creeks, is untillable. The surface is gent- ly undulating, none being either too rolling or too flat for suc- cessful cultivation. The soil is all that the agriculturist or the "Gardener" could desire, being deep and rich, and capable of producing enormous crops of corn, oats, hay and vegetables of every kind. The two creeks named both rise near the cen- ter, and afford stockwater to the adjacent farms, except in the dryest seasons, when they are sometimes dried up. The township is entirely devoid of a natural growth of timber, and this accounts for the tardiness of its settlement. When the township of Crete, in the eastern part of the county, and all of the western portion of the county had been well settled, this vicinity was just beginning to receive a few apparently unwill- ing squatters. They came from the heavily wooded States of Vermont and New York, or the equally densely timbered coun- tries of the old world, and, finding the land adjacent to the lit- tle belts of timber already occupied, were loath to venture out upon the prairie, as the landsman is reluctant to venture upon the untried waves of the great ocean. The absence of timber for fuel, fencing and building purposes was certainly a great drawback. Not until 1865 was it known that within a few miles was a condensed forest of fuel that would supply all this country for ages to come. Then, too, the prairie, as a field for farming operations, was only an experiment. It looked much to them as if an absence of timber might indicate a dearth in those qualities of soil necesary to produce good crops. The subjugating of the prairie, though, in comparison with the clearing of the eastern farms, a trifle, was, in their eyes, no small matter. The little barshare plow, with the wooden mold- board, in common use in the East, was not to be thought of to
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turn over the thick prairie sod, matted with grass-roots, as hard almost as hickory withes. But soon the inventive genius of the Yankee supplied an article, though somewhat rude and unwieldy, with which most of these prairies have been brought to cultivation. The original "sod-plow" is now seen no more forever, as it has long since outlived its usefulness. It consisted of a large share, cutting a furrow two feet in width, with iron bars for a mold-board. The beam of the machine was fifteen feet in length. No handles were needed, though sometimes they were attached, but were used only for the purpose of start- ing or throwing it out of the ground. To this immense machine were hitched from five to eight yoke of oxen. The breaking was usually done late in the spring; and, with the turning- over of the sod was deposited seed, which produced an inferior crop of corn the first year, growing and ripening without fur- ther attention. From this crop has come the brand of a fa- vorite drink in the Western country. Hay was cut with scythes and gathered with hand-rakes. Wheat was cut with cradles and threshed by causing horses to tread upon it. These ancient landmarks have all passed away, and but few who wielded them remain to tell us the story of these and the many other peculiar institutions of the olden time. The first to venture out on the almost unknown waste of the prairies of Green- garden Township was M. F. Sanders, from Vermont. The date of his advent was 1847, and he has consequently been a resi- dent thirty-one years. The "Squire," as he is familiarly called, is well off in this world's goods, having not only survived the hard times incident to pioneer life, but had something "laid by for a rainy day." He was the first justice of the peace, and, in that capacity, performed the first marriage ceremony in the township.
G. M. Green, or "the Deacon," as he was familiarly called, was also a native of Vermont, and came to the place about the
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same time. He was a man of good qualities and well worthy to bear the cognomen universally bestowed upon him. He re- moved from this place to Joliet, where he died some years ago.
Following these two families, and mainly through their in- fluence, were a number of families from the same state. Within three or four years, Rev. James Hudson, Daniel Haradon, Da- vid McClay and Hiram Twining arrived from Vermont and settled in the same neighborhood-the northwest part of the township. These people, it seems, were mostly of one religious faith-being that denominated Christians-not the branch sometimes called Disciples or Campbellites, but the branch founded by Smith and others some seventy-five years ago, and who would under no circumstances acknowledge any other name but that of Christian. In Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and some of the Eastern States are many of this persuasion; but in this section a church of this faith is rare. Horace Mann, one of the greatest acknowledged educators of this country, did his last work as president of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, the college then being one of the educational institutions of the denomination. Elder Hudson, soon after his arrival, organized the little community into a church; and as such it was very prosperous for a few years, and drew around it a large number of enlightened and substantial peo- ple. But the good man's labors were not of long duration. His body was laid away beneath the prairie sod soon after his work in this wild field had been successfully inaugurated.
Hiram Twining still resided on the old place. His house, built before roads or partition lines were definitely known, proclaims itself to be one of the ancient landmarks, by not "being placed due east and west," but varying from that usually accepted rule several degrees. In this house many of the early religious and other meetings were held. The first township and school elections took place here, it being nearer the center of population than others of sufficient size for the purpose.
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About the same time, the Baileys and the Bemiss family arrived-the former from New York, and the latter from Mich- igan. Morrison and Martin Bailey were brothers. They were men of intelligence, and were counted as leaders in society and politics. Morrison Bailey was the first teacher that ever pre- sided over a school in the township. At the first township election, held in 1853, Martin was elected Moderator, one of the four overseers of highways, justice of the peace and super- visor. Morrison Bailey was the first township clerk. The Bai- leys removed a few years later.
The Bemiss family consisted of Simeon and three grown sons-Ephraim, James and Edwin. In the first election, this family was also honored with six offices. Simeon was elected commissioner of highways; James, clerk pro tem, and justice of the peace; and Edwin, road overseer, collector and constable. This family also removed from the township after a short resi- dence.
Augustine Hauser, John Young, A. A. Angell, D. G. Jaynes and William Hutchinson were also early settlers. Hauser was a native of Switzerland, and came here with a little fortune, which he proposed to double in a short time in the manufacture of cheese. But it seems he was a little ahead of the time; for the business, which to those embarking in a few years later was the means of realizing to them fortunes, was the means of his complete failure, and he left the township several thousand dollars poorer than when he came. The article manufactured by him was, it is said, of superior quality; but the reputation of western cheese was not yet made, and, on account of the prejudice of dealers and consumers for the eastern product, Hauser's scheme proved a failure.
In the mean time, while the settlement in the northwestern part of the township was well under way, another settlement was being formed a little further east and south. The first settlement was, in every respect, a Yankee enterprise, while
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the other was as positively German; and, while the former had for its central point its church organization, so also had the latter.
The Dierks family and the Strassens, though not the earliest German settlers, came about 1851, bringing with them a preacher of their own faith, and immediately set about the organization of a society, and subsequently of erecting a house of worship. Probably, the very first German in the township was John T. Luehrs, later of Monee, who had come to this vicin- ity three years before. Following him, in 1849, was his brother, F. Luehrs. The Dierkses were cousins to Luehrs, and came over at the instance of their relatives who had preceded them. The Dierks family consisted of Simon, Fred and G. A. Dierks, who have since all removed to Nebraska. On the recommenda- tion of Luehrs, amongst numerous other families scattered all over this part of the state, came to the township in 1850, O. H. Remmers, B. B. Henry, A. and G. G. Beiken. Peter and William Young, from the same country, but who had been living in Ohio, also came in 1850. The Youngs were not satisfied here, and sold out, William returning to Ohio and Peter moving further south. Fred Hassenjager and Peter Bowlander, the latter later a resident of Monee, were also among the earliest Germans. Hassenjager is an example of what industry and economy may accomplish in the face of deprivations and hard- ships incident to a pioneer life. When he came here, he was as poor as the poorest, now he is among the wealthiest citizens of this part of the county.
One of the most important public acts of the township oc- curred about the close of the period of the two settlements named, and was the separation of the two portions of Trenton Township, now designated as Manhattan and Greengarden. It seems to have been the understanding from the first that, when both sections should have attained to a population suffi- ciently strong for separate organization, such division should
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take place, though it was hardly expected that it would take place so soon. However, owing to the rapid filling-up of each, it was found not only feasible, in 1853, but there were many reasons adduced for separate organization, and thus a "peace- able secession" was accomplished.
Petitions were, therefore, presented to the proper authori- ties, and, by them, a division was made, accompanied with an order to hold elections. The election was accordingly held in this township, the first meeting taking place at Hiram Twin- ing's house, on the 5th day of April, 1855. Martin Bailey was chosen moderator and J. N. Bemiss, clerk, pro tem. The re- sult of the ballot was the election of Martin Bailey, as super- visor; Morrison Bailey, clerk; Edwin Bemiss, collector; George M. Green, assessor; A. A. Angell, overseer of the poor; Martin Bailey and J. N. Bemis, justices of the peace; Edwin P. Bemiss and A. A. Angell, constables, and John Young, Simeon Bemiss and D. G. Jaynes, commissioners of highways. Of these, Mar- tin Bailey had been justice before, during the union of the two townships, and administered the oath to the judges and clerk on this occasion.
At the first election, there were twenty-seven voters pres- ent. It will be noticed that the present officers are German, while the first corps of officers were as decidedly Yankee. Dur- ing the first few years, the settlement was marked by a pre- ponderance of Americans; but of later years, the German ele- ment not only increased more rapidly, but, in reality, most of the Yankee population has disappeared, having sold out their farms to the Germans.
In 1851, a post office was established in the Yankee settle- ment in Green Garden Township with Rev. James Hudson as postmaster. The office was called Greengarden, and has been in existence ever since, though for the last two or three years its location has been within the bounds of Manhattan Town- ship. These country postoffices, like some orphan children, have
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a kind of vagrant existence, with no certain home, but travel from place to place at the pleasure or forbearance of their keepers. Greengarden Postoffice has been no exception, as it had many homes. Sometimes it was sought, and at other times it did not know where to take up even a temporary abode.
Green Garden Township is strictly rural as it was half a century ago. It is one of the best agriculture sections of Will County. All of the land has been drained so that it may be cultivated. Farmers are prosperous giving most of their time to the raising of grain for which they now have con- venient markets along the Illinois Central Railroad, the Mich- igan Central Railroad, and the Chicago, Milwaukee and Gary Railroad which is a new road built about twenty years ago.
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