Showing posts with label Religions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religions. Show all posts

Friday, August 11, 2023

The 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois.

The World's First Parliament of Religions was a historic interfaith gathering held in Chicago, Illinois, from September 11 to 27, 1893. It was the first large-scale gathering of representatives from the world's religions, and it helped to promote religious tolerance and understanding.


On the platform of the Parliament of Religions 1893 (left to right), Virchand Gandhi (Jainism), Anagarika Dharmapala (Buddhism), Swami Vivekananda (Hinduism), G. Bonet Maury (Christianity).




The Parliament was organized by the World's Congress Auxiliary to the Columbian Exposition, which was a world's fair held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. The Parliament was held in the Art Institute of Chicago building before the Art Institute moved in, and it featured over 700 delegates from over 20 different religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism.
1893 World's ParliamenWorld'sligions, The Buddhist High Priests of Siam.



The Parliament was a major success attracting over 750,000 visitors. It helped to promote religious tolerance and understanding around the world. It also helped to inspire the development of new interfaith organizations, such as the Parliament of the World's Religions, which still exists today.
1893 World's Parliament of ReliWorld'sDancing Dervishes.


Here are some of the key speakers and events from the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions:
  • Reverend John Henry Barrows: The general chairman of the Parliament, Barrows was a Unitarian minister who was passionate about promoting religious understanding. He gave the opening address to the Parliament, calling for a "world faith" that would unite all people of all religions.
  • Swami Vivekananda: A Hindu monk, Vivekananda was one of the most popular speakers at the Parliament. He gave a passionate speech calling for a "harmony of religions" and a "brotherhood of man" His speech was a significant turning point in how Hinduism was perceived in the West.
  • Mohammed Abduh: An Egyptian scholar and reformer, Abduh was one of the leading voices of Islam in the 19th century. He gave a speech calling for a "reinterpretation" of Islam to make it more relevant to the modern world.
  • Henry Steel Olcott: A co-founder of the Theosophical Society, Olcott was a leading figure in studying comparative religion. He gave a speech in which he argued that all religions are essentially the same and that they all aspire to the same goal.
  • Bishop Charles Henry Brent: An Episcopal bishop, Brent was one of the most vocal advocates for religious tolerance at the Parliament. He gave a speech calling for a "new world faith" that would unite all people of all religions.
The 1893 World's Parl"ament of Religions was a landmark event in the history of interfaith diaWorld'sIt helped promote religious tolerance and understanding worldwide. It inspired the development of new interfaith organizations. The Parliament's legacy continues today, encouraging people to work for peace and understanding betParliament'snt religions.

1993 World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, Illinois.
The 1993 World's Parliament of Religions was a gathering of religWorld'saders and scholars from around the world, held in Chicago, Illinois, from September 4-10, 1993. It was the second World Parliament of Religions, following the first in 1893. The Parliament's theme was "A Global Ethic: Building a Just and Peaceful World."

Over 8,000 people from over 100 countries attended the 1993 Parliament to celebrate, discuss and explore how religious traditions can work together on the critical issues which confront the world. They repreWorld'svarious religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, SikWorld'saoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha'i. Each area had a series of workshops, panels, and lectures. There were also performances by artists and musicians from different religious traditions.

2023 World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, Illinois.
The 2023 Parliament of the World's Religions will be hosted from Monday, August 14 through Friday, August 18, at the McCormick Place Lakeside Center, Chicago, Illinois.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Saturday, August 5, 2023

Religious Expressions In Lincoln's Letters.

Lincoln's religious views have been the subject of much discussion. The following excerpts from letters signed by Lincoln himself are presented chronologically so that any evolution in his religious thinking can be more easily observed.


In his early years, Lincoln was skeptical of religion. He once wrote, "I am not a member of any Christian Church, but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures." However, his views appear to have evolved over time. In later years, he spoke more often about God and his faith in Providence. He also attended church services with his family.



September 27, 1841
Miss Mary Speed:
Tell your mother that I have not got her present, an Oxford Bible, with me but I intend to read it regularly when I return home. I doubt not that it is really, as she says, the best cure for the blues, could one but take it according to the truth.



July 4, 1842
Mr. Joshua Speed:
I was always superstitious; I believe God made me one of the instruments of bringing your Fanny and you together, which union I have no doubt he had fore-ordained. Whatever he designs, he will do for me yet. "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord" is my text just now.



January 12, 1851
John E. Johnston:
If it be his (Thomas Lincoln's) lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous meeting with many loved ones gone before and where the rest of us, through the help of God, hope to join them.



August 15, 1855
Hon. George Robertson:
Our political problem now is "Can we as a nation continue together permanently—forever—half slave and half free?" The problem is too mighty for me—may God, in His mercy, superintend the solution.



May 25, 1861
To the Father and Mother of Col. Elmer E. Elsworth: 
May God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power.



February 4, 1862
Nathaniel Gordon:
In granting this respite, it becomes my painful duty to admonish the prisoner that, relinquishing all expectation of pardon by human authority, he refers himself alone to the mercy of the common God and Father of all men.



May 15, 1862
Revs. T. A. Gere, A. A. Reese, G. E. Chenoweth:
By the help of an all-wise Providence, I shall endeavor to do my duty, and I shall expect the continuance of your prayers for a right solution of our national difficulty.



July 26, 1862
Hon. Reverdy Johnson:
I am a patient man—always willing to forgive on the Christian's terms of repentance and also to give ample time for repentance.



January 6, 1863
Caleb Russell and Sallie A. Finton:
I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply than myself aware that without His favor, our highest wisdom is but as foolishness and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure.

I am conscious of no desire for my country's welfare that is not in consonance with His will and of no plan upon which we may not ask His blessing. It seems to me that if there be one subject on which all good men may unitedly agree, it is imploring the gracious favor of the God of nations upon the struggles our people are making for the preservation of their precious birthright of civil and religious liberty.



February 22, 1863
Rev. Alexander Reeve:
The birthday of Washington and a Christian Sabbath coinciding this year and suggesting together the highest interest of this life and of that to come is most propitious for the meeting proposed. 



April 4, 1864
A. E. Hodges, Esq.:
If God now wills the removal of a great wrong and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay sorely for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the judgment and goodness of God.



April 5, 1864
Mrs. Horace Mann:
While I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has and that, as it seems, He wills to do it.



May 30, 1864
Rev. Dr. Ide, Hon. J.R. Doolittle, Hon A. Hubbell, Committee:
I can only thank you for thus adding to the effective and almost unanimous support which the Christian communities are so zealously giving to the country and to liberty. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how it could be otherwise, with anyone professing Christianity or even having an ordinary conception of right and wrong. We read the Bible, as the word of God, Himself, that "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread," and to preach therefrom that "In the sweat of other men's faces shalt thou eat bread" to my mind can scarcely be reconciled with honest sincerity.



September 4, 1864
Eliza P. Gurney: 
I have not forgotten and probably never shall forget the very impressive occasion when yourself and friends visited me on a Sabbath forenoon two years ago, nor has your kind letter, written nearly a year later, ever been forgotten. In all, it has been your purpose to strengthen my reliance on God. I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations and to no one of them more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect and must prevail, though we erring mortals many fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this, but God knows best and has ruled otherwise.



March 15, 1865
Hon. Thurlow Weed:
Everyone likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech and on the recent inaugural address. I expect the latter to wear as well as—perhaps better than—anything I have produced, but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Monday, July 3, 2023

Spring Valley, Illinois & Sha’arei Tzedek Synagogue; A Jewish Connection.

The history of Jewish people in Spring Valley, Illinois, dates back to the late 1800s.

Jews first settled in the Illinois Valley Region, mainly from Lithuania. They came as peddlers, shopkeepers, and skilled tradesmen to serve the mining and farming communities growing in and around Spring Valley.

sidebar
The first known Jewish settler in the Illinois Valley was John Hays, who settled in Cahokia in 1793. Hays was a fur trapper and farmer. John Hays was appointed Sheriff of St. Clair County, 1798-1818.

The first Jewish congregation in Spring Valley was organized in 1890. It was called Congregation B'nai Israel. The congregation built its first Synagogue (Shul [Shoe-el] ─ Yiddish) in 1892 at 112 East First Street, but it was destroyed by fire in 1909.
A Black-and-White photographic postcard of the exterior of Sha'arei Tzedek Synagogue at 231 West Erie Street in Spring Valley, Illinois.


Congregation B'nai Israel built a new Synagogue at 231 West Erie Street in 1909. This Synagogue was more significant than the first one and could accommodate worshipers. The new Synagogue was named Sha'arei Tzedek, which means "Gates of Justice" in Hebrew.

The congregation's membership peaked in the 1920s with more than 100 families.

Sha'arei Tzedek served the Jewish community of Spring Valley for many years. However, as the Jewish population in the town declined in the mid-1960s, the congregation eventually disbanded. The Synagogue building was sold in 1977 and is now used as a furniture store.

The Synagogue closed in 1999 due to declining membership and participation.

Despite the disbandment of the congregation, Sha'arei Tzedek continues to hold High Holiday services in Spring Valley. These services are led by Allan Goodkind, who has been leading services at the Synagogue for over 40 years. 

sidebar
The Jewish High Holidays are a period of ten days that begins with Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and ends with Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). These holidays are a time for personal reflection, contrition, and reaffirmation.

Rabbi Cantor Goodkind retired to the West Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago. Goodkind led High Holiday services at Sha'arei Tzedek every year he could after he retired.

The history of Sha'arei Tzedek Synagogue is a testament to the resilience of the Jewish community in Spring Valley. Despite the challenges of a declining population, the congregation has kept its doors open for over 100 years. The Synagogue is a reminder of the rich Jewish history in the Illinois Valley Region.


The Sha'arei Tzedek Preservation Society was formed in 2006 to save the Synagogue. The society raised $1 million to repair the building and reopen it as a museum and cultural center. The Synagogue reopened in 2010 for community events and programs.





Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Thursday, April 27, 2023

Illinois Governor Thomas Ford (1842-46), Joseph Smith, and Mormon, Nauvoo, Illinois, Murderers.


In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY
When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:
  • The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.
Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:
  • "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
  • "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
  • "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM 
THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.
 


Thomas Ford, Governor of Illinois from 1842 to 1846, saved the credit of the state, fought bravely against financial and civil chaos, wrote "one of the two or three remarkable books written in the state during the formative period," worked through his last illness in a courageous endeavor to leave some kind of estate to his children — and is remembered only as one of the villains in a drama far greater than his own. Ford was perceptive and intelligent; dying, he foresaw his ultimate reputation. Toward the end of his "History of Illinois," he wrote: 

". . . the author of this history feels degraded by the reflection, that the humble governor of an obscure state, who would otherwise be forgotten in a few years, stands a fair chance, like Pilate and Herod, by their official connection with the true religion, of being dragged down to posterity with an immortal name, hitched on to the memory of a miserable impostor."
 Thomas Ford, the Eighth Governor of Illinois, 1842-1846.
Many judgments of Ford's conduct during the struggle in Hancock County in 1844-1845 have been moderately or severely critical. Fawn Brodie  condemns Ford as "weak." John Hay said he was "plagued by the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet (flighty, gossipy)." Though Joseph Smith Jr. relied upon Governor Ford for protection and seemed not unfriendly to a man who, he wrote, "treats us honorably" and "continues his courtesies," the opinion of the Mormons after the Smith murders were strongly condemnatory. The governor was accused of ignoring warnings of the evil intentions of the militia — an accusation undoubtedly correct — and of being party to the murder plot. 
Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844) founded Mormonism and the Latter-Day Saint movement. At the age of 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon, and by the time of his death, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers. 
It is easy to condemn Governor Ford for his conduct at the time of the murders. He was the state's chief executive, he was on the scene, and yet the murders took place. But few people realized the difficulties under which he labored. Any complete study of the murders of the Smiths must consider the society which demanded and condoned those murders and the conditions so different from our own, within which that organization operated in June 1844, Governor Thomas Ford faced really insuperable difficulties. 

In 1842 the state of Illinois was still a frontier territory, facing all the troubles of a changing and expanding society with few settled traditions, financial or social, from which to operate. A series of sanguine speculations and an almost unbelievably rickety economic structure had resulted in a state government that was bankrupt in everything but hope and name. When Ford was elected governor in 1842: 

". . . the state was in debt about $14,000,000 for monies wasted upon internal improvements and in banking; the domestic treasury of the state was in arrears $313,000 for the ordinary expenses of government; auditors' warrants were freely selling at a discount of fifty percent; the people were unable to pay even moderate taxes to replenish the treasury, in which not one cent was contained even to pay the postage to and from the public offices; . . . the banks, upon which the people had relied for a currency, had become insolvent, their paper had fallen so low as to cease to circulate as money, and yet no other money had taken its place, leaving the people wholly destitute of a circulating medium, and universally in debt . . ." 

This lack of a circulating medium of exchange is made more vivid by Ford's testimony that the half-million or so people of Illinois in 1842 possessed only two or three hundred thousand dollars in good money, about 50¢ apiece on the average, "which occasioned a general inability to pay taxes." The Mormons in Nauvoo continually recorded difficulties collecting a couple of dollars, or even 50¢, in good money. Robert Flanders has noted that bonds for deeds and other evidence of land ownership were commonly used as currency in Nauvoo. This simple lack of acceptable cash made complex business transactions of ordinary life encourage counterfeiting and made all kinds of chicanery (trickery) possible.

GOOD MONEY VS. BAD MONEY
In the 1840s, there was no official currency in the United States. People used a variety of forms of money, including gold and silver coins, banknotes, and even barter. The concept of "good money" versus "bad money" referred to the quality and reliability of the currency being used.

"Good money" referred to currency that was widely accepted and had a stable value. This could include gold and silver coins issued by the government, or banknotes from well-established banks that were backed by a reserve of gold or silver. These types of currency were considered reliable and trustworthy, and people were willing to accept them in exchange for goods and services.

In contrast, "bad money" referred to currency that was not widely accepted or had an uncertain value. This could include banknotes from banks that were not well-established or did not have a reserve of gold or silver to back their notes, as well as counterfeit currency. Because these types of currency were considered less reliable and trustworthy, people were less willing to accept them in exchange for goods and services.

Overall, "good money" was considered to be a stable and reliable form of currency, while "bad money" was seen as risky and unreliable.

It wasn't until February 25, 1863, when President Lincoln signed The National Currency Act into law. The Act established the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), charged with responsibility for organizing and administering a system of nationally chartered banks and a uniform national currency.

Another major problem of the state was transportation. The Mississippi was a great high road, but the state's interior was a wilderness of trails and rutted lanes. In 1841, when wheat was one dollar a bushel in Chicago, the price in Peoria was 40¢. Springfield is but one hundred miles from Nauvoo, yet the Sangamo Journal for July 4, 1844, a week after the murders of the Smiths, reported only rumors of troubles in Hancock County. The railroads and the telegraph were only a few years away, but in 1844 the tired horseman and the mired wagon could have stood as symbols of the state. 

The cow-town Westerns of the movies and television have almost obscured that violence was a significant factor on the American frontier long before Dodge City and Tombstone. Illinois' History was typical enough. The nearly legendary bandits of Cave-in-Rock were eliminated early in the century. In 1816 and 1817, regulators had whipped and run out of the state rogues who, according to Ford, had included sheriffs, justices of the peace, and even judges. But as late as 1831, a gang almost controlled Pope and Massac counties and even built a fort that a small army of regulators had to take by storm. The better-known riots at Alton occurred in 1837. A mob threw into the river the press of the Alton Observer, an Abolition newspaper published by Elijah Lovejoy. Lovejoy and a mob member were killed in a subsequent clash, and a second press was destroyed. At about the same time, Ogle, Winnebago, Lee, and De Kalb counties all suffered from "organized bands of rogues, engaged in murders, robberies, horse-stealing, and in making and passing counterfeit money."

In 1841 in Ogle County, a family of criminals named Driscoll shot down Captain Campbell, of the county's respectable, before his family's eyes. Driscoll and one of his sons were convicted of the murder by a kangaroo court. "They were placed in a kneeling position, with bandages over their eyes, and were fired upon by the whole company present, that there might be no legal witnesses of the bloody deed. About one hundred of these men were afterward tried for the murder and acquitted. These terrible measures ended the ascendancy of the rogues in Ogle County." 

One would think that the violence at Carthage Jail in 1844 would have sickened the state's people, but the conflicts that followed in Hancock County were by no means the only disturbances to trouble Governor Ford. Another small civil war took place in Pope and Massac counties in 1846. The militia of Union County called in to keep the peace, refused to protect the suspected bandits and left the counties to the government of regulators, who, as always, began by terrorizing known criminals, moved to threaten the alleged, and ended hated and feared by honest and peaceful men. 

A party of about twenty regulators went to the house of an old man named Mathis. . . . He and his wife resisted the arrest. The old woman being unusually strong and active, knocked down one or two of the party with her fists. A gun was then presented to her breast, accompanied by a threat of blowing her heart out if she continued her resistance. She caught the gun and shoved it downwards when it went off and shot her through the thigh. . . . The party captured old man Mathis and carried him away with them, since which time he has not been heard of but is supposed to have been murdered.

Of Hancock County itself, Ford wrote: "I had a good opportunity to know the early settlers of Hancock County. I attended the circuit courts there as States-attorney from 1830, when the county was first organized, up to 1834. To my certain knowledge, the early settlers, with some honorable exceptions, were, in popular language, hard cases." 

All of these citations, which could be multiplied, clearly show that the murders at Carthage Jail fitted a reasonably common pattern. The people of Hancock County, of many places in Illinois in 1844, were not horrified at taking the law into their own hands. That had been done before by neighbors and friends and would be done again. Thomas Ford was trying to govern a state without money, adequate transportation, and no practical way of rallying public support in areas of the state not directly involved in the Mormon troubles. In a society where violence becomes commonplace, domestic peace must largely depend upon the speed of communication and transportation. Local feuds, riots, and even revolts are best handled by forces, not themselves directly involved and, therefore, relatively objective in their actions. In 1844, in Hancock County, the non-Mormons were bitter partisans, judges, jury — and executioners.

In Illinois, in the 1840s, the conflicts were between groups or groups on one side and individuals on the other. The central government left these problems to the states in the mid-nineteenth century. The state governments were frequently almost powerless or intensely partisan on one side or the other of each conflict. There is no lack of possibilities if we search for causes of these resorts to violence in Illinois. 

Criminals are always with us, quick to take advantage of weakness in government, unstable currency, flimsy jails, or poor communications. And common crime is not only harmful in itself; it begets crime through success and retribution. 

Another cause for violence may well have been simple boredom, with its concomitant yearning for any kind of action. Anyone who reads the letters and records of the mid-nineteenth century is struck by how often a writer dropped whatever he had in hand and set off on some vaguely motivated journey and how easy it always was to attract a crowd.  

William Daniels, who wrote an eyewitness account of the Smith murders, began his story:

"I resided in Augusta, Hancock County, Ill., eighteen miles from Carthage. On June 16, I left my home with the intention of going to St. Louis. . . .The next morning a company of men was going from . . . [Warsaw] to Carthage for the purpose, as they said, of assisting the militia in driving the Mormons out of the country. Out of curiosity, as I had no particular way to spend my time. . . ."

Daniels, setting out from his home on June 16, was a witness of the murders eleven days later and apparently never did arrive in St. Louis. 

Sheriff J. B. Backenstos supplied a list of those he was supposed to have been active in the "massacre at Carthage." Backenstos was not present at the murders and used hearsay in these accusations, which could not have been proved in court. He listed about sixty men as active participants. Of these sixty, six are listed as having "no business," two as "land sharks," one as "loafer," and one Major W. B. Warren as "a damned villain" — apparently his full-time occupation. Out of about sixty men, ten apparently had no trade known to the sheriff, and ten others were farmers at a season of the year when farming might have been expected to take all of a man's time. 

The best pictures of boredom, the deep inner need for excitement, for some kind of action, are in the writings of Mark Twain. Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a river town near Warsaw and Nauvoo. One of the most famous passages of American writing, and one of the best, could have been a description of Warsaw, though it was Hannibal that Mark Twain wrote of: 

After all these years I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then; the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores, with their splintbottomed chairs tilted back against the walls, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep — with shingle shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles scattered about the "levee"; a pile of "skids" on the slope of the stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them . . . . Presently a film of dark smoke appears . . . instantly a Negro drayman, famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, "S-t-e-a-mboat a-comin' " and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of rays follows, every housand store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. . . . Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten more minutes the town is dead again and the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more.

In the novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Mark Twain shows us a town in Arkansas. The description, and particularly the bored cruelty at the conclusion, fit into the picture of possibilities for violence in any Mississippi river town:

There were empty drygoods boxes under the awnings and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives and chawing tobacco and gaping and yawning and stretching — a mighty ornery lot. . . . You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs . . . and pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "Hi! so boy! sick him, Tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear and three or four dozen more a-coming, and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then they'd settle back again till there was a dogfight. There couldn't anything wake them up all over and make them happy all over, like a dog-fight — unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death. (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 21 Page 3.)

From September 1845 until well into the spring of 1846, a substantial part of the population of Hancock County seems to have done little except harass the Mormons. If only the loafers and poor farmers had been bitter against the people of Nauvoo, the Mormons could have lived in Hancock County without any substantive problems. The respectable of Warsaw and Carthage made common cause with the "butcher boys." The new religion was feared and condemned, of course, since any new religion was built upon a belief in the inadequacy of established tenets. Nauvoo also threatened Warsaw's trade and Carthage's position as a county seat. When it became apparent that Nauvoo's voters were a bloc to be directed as he chose by Joseph Smith, and when the Prophet declared himself a candidate for the Presidency, the old settlers united against the new. The Mormons, strangers and isolates, had to face a county, a population accustomed to the idea of violence, contemptuous of government, filled with hate, and armed.

It was deeply ironic that the beginning of the end came with the destruction of the press of the Nauvoo Expositor. In Alton, a few years before, the mob had twice destroyed presses belonging to the Abolitionist Lovejoy. They rioted against the freedom of the press. In Nauvoo, the Mormons did the destroying, and the mob rioted for freedom of the press. In truth, of course, the mob cared nothing for the abstract space of the Bill of Rights; it hated Abolitionists and Mormons and did them both to death. 

Governor Ford became closely involved with the Mormon troubles on June 17, 1844, when a committee of men from Carthage waited on him in Springfield and asked that the state militia be called out to keep the peace in Hancock County. There was reason for their fear. The Mormons had destroyed the press of the Expositor on June 10; the very next day, a mass meeting at Carthage adopted the following resolutions:  

Resolved . . . that we hold ourselves at all times in readiness to cooperate with our fellow citizens in this state, Missouri, and Iowa, to exterminate - UTTERLY EXTERMINATE, the wicked and abominable Mormon leaders, the authors of our troubles.

Resolved . . . that the time, in our opinion, has arrived when the adherents of Smith as a body, shall be driven from the surrounding settlements into Nauvoo; that the Prophet and his miscreant adherents should then be demanded at their hands, and if not surrendered, A WAR OF EXTERMINATION SHOULD BE WAGED, to the entire destruction if necessary for our protection, of his adherents.

Ford, listening to the delegation from Carthage, made the first of three fateful decisions; he would go to Carthage and see himself what the situation was. This was a perfectly sensible thing to do, but it made possible the murders of the Smiths. If the governor had stayed in Springfield, the Smiths would not have surrendered; only Ford's personal protection guarantee persuaded Joseph Smith to ride to Carthage and give himself into custody.

Ford had to find out what the situation was, but Joseph Smith was under no illusions as to the attitude and plans of the mob. When Ford, after hearing the Mormon side of the Expositor affair, demanded that the Smiths surrender to the magistrate at Carthage, Joseph Smith stated the situation very accurately and appealingly in a letter dated June 22, 1844: 

. . . we would not hesitate to stand another trial according- to your Excellency's wish, were it not that we are confident our lives would be in danger. We dare not come. Writs, we are assured, are issued against us in various parts of the country. For what? To drag us from place to place, from court to court, across the creeks and prairies, till some bloodthirsty villain could find his opportunity to shoot us down. We dare not come, though your Excellency promises protection. Yet, at the same time, you have expressed fears that you could not control the mob, in which case we are left to the mercy of the merciless. Sir, we dare not come, for our lives would be in danger, and we are guilty of no crime.

You say, "It will be against orders to be accompanied by others if we come to trial." This we have been obliged to act upon in Missouri; and when our witnesses were sent for by the court (as your honor promises to do) they were thrust into prison, and we left without witnesses. Sir, you must not blame us, for "a burnt child dreads the fire." And although your Excellency might be well-disposed in the matter, the appearance of the mob forbids our coming. We dare not do it.

Joseph Smith's plan to leave for the far West, his crossing the river to Montrose, and his final decision to return and give himself up to the law were crucial for his life but were unknown to Governor Ford, who would probably have been best pleased had that plan been followed.

The Smiths arrived in Carthage at about midnight, June 24-25. They were exhibited to the militia the next day, were charged with a riot — the Expositor case — and were released on bail. Joseph and Hyrum Smith were immediately rearrested on a trumped-up charge of treason and were not released on bail; they were committed to the county jail "for greater security." 

At this point, Ford made his second crucial decision: he did not interfere in the jailing of the Smiths. In his History, Ford gives a detailed explanation that is persuasive as to the technical legality of the charges and of his position but which has little to do with the facts of the matter and the murderous intention of the mob. The magistrate in Carthage refused to accept bail on the charge of treason and, without the kind of hearing required by law, committed the Smiths to jail amid their enemies. A different type of governor might have overborne the magistrate and freed the Smiths, but Ford had been a lawyer and a judge. He felt that, as governor, he was only another state citizen, with peculiar responsibilities, of course, but with those responsibilities sharply delimited. "In all this matter," wrote Ford: 

The justice of the peace and constable, though humble in office, were acting in a high and independent capacity, far beyond any legal power in me to control. I considered that the executive power could only be called in to assist, and not to dictate or control their action; that in the humble sphere of their duties they were as independent, and clothed with as high authority by the law, as the executive department; and that my province was simply to aid them with the force of the State. 

A more forceful and less legalistic chief executive could almost certainly have freed the Smiths; indeed, Ford wrote of the planned trip to Nauvoo on June 27. "I had determined to prevail on the justice to bring out his prisoners and take them along." If he could have persuaded the magistrate to release the prisoners on the twenty-seventh, he could have done the same thing on the twenty-fifth. But this begs the question. A more forceful and less legalistic chief executive would have been likely, in those times, to have been more violently anti-Mormon than Ford. Governor Boggs of Missouri would probably not have hesitated to override a magistrate, but neither would he have hesitated to authorize the killing of the Smiths. 

Once the prisoners were in Carthage Jail, events rushed to a tragic ending. Visitors came and went; a pair of pistols was left with the prisoners; there was a feeling of a siege. Ford told Joseph Smith that he could not interfere with the law's slow — and, in this case, partial — process. Ford had planned to take the Smiths to Nauvoo if he went there on the twenty-seventh, but on that morning, the governor changed his mind — which was his third crucial decision. He wrote, "I had determined to prevail on the justice to bring out his prisoners and take them along. A council of officers, however, determined that this would be highly inexpedient and dangerous and offered such substantial reasons for their opinions as induced me to change my resolution." 

It is exciting and significant that in his History, Ford passed over this decision as rapidly as possible, did not give the "substantial reasons" of the officers, and moved immediately to the story of the expedition. Had the Smiths been taken to Nauvoo, they might have been shot on the road, or they might have been killed in a trumped-up attack in Nauvoo if the original plan to take the whole militia to that city had been followed. That would have meant war. If the Smiths had been taken along with the small company that finally made the journey, they might have been kidnapped by the Nauvoo Legion. It is hard to believe that had the Smiths returned to Nauvoo, they would have been willing to return to Carthage and the jail; they had seen and heard the mob and knew what justice to expect from everyone but the governor. 

The rest of the story is familiar to anyone who has studied Mormon history. Having decided to leave the Smiths in jail, the governor ordered almost all the militia to be disbanded. He left with a small force for Nauvoo, where he made a hurried speech to the assembled citizens and exacted a pledge against violence. In the meantime, the militia from Warsaw had marched north toward Golden's Point and had been met "at the shanties" with the governor's order to disband and the news that the governor had left Carthage for Nauvoo and that the Smiths were still in Carthage Jail. John Hay's retelling of the story is probably accurate; his father was with the troops and knew all the men, and the account must have been told and retold in Warsaw: 

Colonel Williams read the Governor's order . . . Captain Grover soon found himself without a company. Captain Aldrich essayed a speech calling for volunteers for Carthage. "He did not make a fair start," says the chronicle [it would be interesting to know what chronicle Hay referred to] "and Sharp came up and took it off his hands. Sharp, being a spirited and impressive talker, soon had a respectable squad about him. . . ." The speeches of Grover and Sharp were rather vague; the purpose of murder does not seem to have been hinted. They protested against "being made the tools and puppets of Tommy Ford." They were going to Carthage to see the boys and talk things over. . . .

While they were waiting at the shanties, a courier came in from the Carthage Grays. It is impossible at this day to declare exactly the purport of his message. It is usually reported and believed that he brought an assurance from the officer of this company that they would be found on guard at the jail where the Smiths were confined; that they would make no real resistance — merely enough to save appearances.

And so the men from Warsaw, led by Sharp, Grover, and Davis, and welcomed by the Carthage Grays under Frank Worrell, rushed the jail, disarmed the guard, and murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Governor Ford heard the news when he met messengers two miles outside of Nauvoo; for safety's sake, he took the two messengers with him back to Carthage so that the knowledge of the murders would be kept from the people of Nauvoo as long as possible. 

Everyone expected a war. The anti-Mormons had been violent enough, and the Mormons had been accused by their enemies so often of being bloodthirsty outlaws that the accusers had come to believe their own lies. In this case, the Mormons quite typically followed the advice of John Taylor and kept the peace. But Ford, expecting the worst, felt that he could trust neither the Mormons nor the murdering Gentiles and retreated to Quincy in a panic. His feelings about the murders he put into a letter to Nauvoo on July 22, 1844:

The naked truth then is, that most well informed persons condemn in the most unqualified manner the mode in which the Smiths were put to death, but nine out of every ten of such accompany the expression of their disapprobation by a manifestation of their pleasure that they are dead.

The disapproval is most unusually cold and without feeling . . . called for by decency, by a respect for the laws and a horror of mobs, but does not flow warm from the heart.

The unfortunate victims . . . were generally and thoroughly hated throughout the country, and it is not reasonable to suppose that their deaths has produced any reaction in the public mind resulting in active sympathy; if you think so, you are mistaken.

Ford foresaw the continuing persecution, which resulted in the Mormon War of 1845 and the evacuation of Nauvoo.

How far, then, can Governor Ford be held responsible for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith?

Ford arrived at Carthage on the morning of June 21. He discovered that Hancock County was already at the point of civil war, with approximately 1,700 men of the combined militia threatening to attack Nauvoo, which was defended by the Nauvoo Legion, 2,000 strong. His first act was to place the men of the militia under their regular officers and get pledges of support from them. He then demanded the surrender of the Smiths for their part in the Expositor affair, which was the immediate cause of the threatened struggle. He then asked for and received the state arms from the Nauvoo Legion. After the Smiths were committed to jail, Ford met with the militia officers to consult on the following steps. He disbanded the militia, rode to Nauvoo with a small party, and pleaded with the Mormons to keep the peace. Then he was faced with the fact of the murders. 

Ford's primary concern was not to save the Smiths but to avoid civil war. He felt that he had to push for the surrender of the Smiths partly because of the legal requirement and because their immunity from punishment after the Expositor affair made the old settlers of Hancock County furious. He first put the militia under their regular officers in an attempt to enforce discipline, and then, finding the officers as bad as the men, discharged almost the whole militia, feeling that they would be less dangerous as individuals and that many would return to their homes. He took the state arms from the Nauvoo Legion to relieve the fears of the old settlers and then discovered that those fears were mainly pretended and that the old settlers themselves were the real danger. Ford felt a responsibility for the Smiths — he had guaranteed their safety — but when he had to choose between leaving the Smiths and making another effort for peace, he decided to meet what he thought was his first responsibility.  

No one can tell what might have happened, but there seems every reason to believe that if Ford had stayed in Springfield and the Smiths had remained at Nauvoo, civil war would have occurred; that if Ford had arranged for the Smiths to escape to Nauvoo, civil war would have happened; that if Ford had taken the Smiths with him to Nauvoo, civil war would have occurred. He did none of these things, and civil war ensued. The old settlers of Hancock County did not want peace and would not have peace. Hay reports of the Warsaw militia on the last grim march to Carthage, "These trudged . . . towards the town where the cause of all the trouble and confusion of the last few years awaited them. . . . The farther they walked, the more the idea impressed them that now was the time to finish the matter. The avowed design of the leaders communicated itself magnetically to the men until the whole company became fused into one mass of bloodthirsty energy." 

Those writers who have called Ford weak and pointed out, quite correctly, that he changed his mind during those last days of Carthage have never suggested just what Ford should have done to save the Smiths and prevent the war. The governor tried almost everything to keep the peace; it was not his fault that nothing worked. 

The mob wanted Joseph Smith dead and the Mormons out of Illinois. Even after the Smiths were killed and the Mormons leaderless, civil war broke out the following year, and the Mormons were finally expelled. The lesson that Thomas Ford learned is given in his History:

In framing our governments, it seemed to be the great object of our ancestors to secure the public liberty by depriving government of power. Attacks upon liberty were not anticipated from any considerable portion of the people themselves. It was not expected that one portion of the people would attempt to play the tyrant over another. And if such a thing had been thought of, the only mode of putting it down was to call out the militia, who are, nine times out of ten, partisans on one side or the other in the contest. The militia may be relied upon to do battle in a popular service, but if mobs are raised to drive out horse thieves, to put down claim-jumpers, to destroy an abolition press, or to expel an odious sect, the militia cannot be brought to act against them efficiently. The people cannot be used to put down the people. 

Ford failed to save the lives of the Smiths, and he failed to prevent a future civil war. It is doubtful whether anyone, given that time, that place, those people, could have succeeded.

THE KILLING OF JOSEPH SMITH JR & HYRUM SMITH
Joseph Smith, the founder and leader of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother, Hyrum Smith, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, United States, on June 27, 1844, while awaiting trial in the town jail.

As mayor of the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, Joseph Smith had ordered the destruction of the facilities used to print the Nauvoo Expositor, a newly established newspaper created by a group of non-Mormons and others who had seceded from the church. The newspaper's first (and only) issue was highly critical of Smith and other church leaders, reporting that Smith was practicing polygamy and claiming he intended to set himself up as a theocratic king. In response, a motion to declare the newspaper a public nuisance was passed by the Nauvoo City Council, and Smith consequently ordered its press destroyed.

The destruction of the press led to public outrage, and the Smith brothers and other members of the Nauvoo City Council were charged with inciting a riot. Warrants for Smith's arrest were dismissed by Nauvoo courts. Smith declared martial law in Nauvoo and called on the Nauvoo Legion to protect the city. After briefly fleeing Illinois, Smith returned and the brothers then voluntarily traveled to the county seat at Carthage to face the charges. After surrendering to authorities, the brothers were also charged with treason against Illinois for declaring martial law.

The brothers were in the Carthage Jail awaiting trial when an armed mob of about 200 men stormed the building, their faces painted black with wet gunpowder. Hyrum was killed almost immediately when he was shot in the face, shouting as he fell, "I am a dead man!" After emptying his pistol towards the attackers, Joseph tried to escape from a second-story window, but was shot several times and fell to the ground, where he was shot further by a makeshift firing squad.

Five men were indicted for the killings but were acquitted at a jury trial. At the time of his death, Smith was also running for president of the United States, making him the first U.S. presidential candidate to be assassinated. His death marked a turning point for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and since then, members of the Latter Day Saint movement have generally viewed him and his brother as religious martyrs who were "murdered in cold blood."

By Keith Huntress
Contributor and Editor, Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Friday, April 14, 2023

Lost Towns of Illinois - Sag Bridge, Illinois.

Sag Bridge was a village that is now part of the Village of Lemont. It had a hotel and its own post office, a number of businesses, a railroad station, a stop on the electric line between Chicago and Joliet, and a port on the I&M canal.
Photo of farmland where the Cal-Sag Channel now is. The town of Sag Bridge is behind the buildings in the background on the left. On the right, the land rises to St. James Church on the bluff. 1910


Joshua Bell, who came to Sag Bridge in the 1830s, was the postmaster and owner of the saloon/hotel. Although the town soon found it too expensive to continue as a village, it had a school district composed of one of the last one-room schoolhouses in the state, which did not close until 1961.

When the glaciers retreated from Northern Illinois, Prehistoric Lake Chicago remained, which eventually receded, leaving Lake Michigan. As it receded, it left two valleys, the Des Plaines River Valley and the Sag Valley, on either side of an elevated triangle of land called Mount Forest Island.

Sag Bridge was located on the south side of the Sag Valley. The historic St. James at Sag Bridge, the oldest continuously operating Catholic Church in Cook County, was built on the north bluff in the forests at the western edge of Mount Forest Island. The cornerstone of the church was laid in 1853. It took six years to haul the quarried rock up the bluff to complete the building.

Before permanent settlement, Mount Forest Island had been inhabited by Indians who valued the land for its vantage point and strategic location.
St. James Catholic Church and Cemetery, aka Monk's Castle and St. James at Sag Bridge Church, is a historic church and cemetery in the Sag Bridge area of the village of Lemont, Illinois. It is claimed to have been built on the site of an Indian village, possibly over an Indian mound, and later a French fortification building. Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet stopped there during their exploration.

Many immigrants to Sag Bridge came from Ireland to find jobs digging the I&M canal in the 1840s, and when the canal was finished they stayed to farm or work in the local quarries. In the 1890s, the sanitary canal, the waterway that reversed the flow of the Chicago River, brought more Irish to Sag Bridge and Lemont, as well as the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago.

What does “Sag” mean, and what was the bridge? The answers are speculative. The term Sag probably derived from a Potawatomi Indian word, Saginaw, which may have meant “swamp.” The Sag Valley was a low-lying swampy area, and it is presumed that a bridge may have provided transport across it. The name could also refer to the geographic coming together of the two valleys. When one considers that recorded history relates that the first white settlers to arrive in the area came in 1833 and that the oldest grave at St. James Cemetery is that of Michael Dillon, buried in 1816, further fuel is added to doubts about the accuracy of the history.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Ghosts of Sag Bridge, Illinois.
The late 1890s seems to be when ghost activity peaked in the area of Sag Bridge, Illinois, now the northeast corner of Lemont. Many ghostly tales, some well documented, began here.

In late December of 1897, a rash of new sightings and hauntings was stirred up. Some said it was due to the discovery of the skeletons of nine Indians, well documented by scientists from Chicago. Professor Dosey determined the skeletons were several hundred years old, one being over seven feet tall. This was not the first time: skeletons had been turning up in and near Sag Bridge for years. But now villagers began reporting phantom Indians on horseback riding through the town at night and other visions of roaming spirits. Some felt this was due to the fact that the skeletons had been disturbed and demanded they be reburied. Some were reburied, but some were sent to the Field Museum in Chicago.

Not only Indians haunted the area. There were tales of a horse-drawn hearse traveling along Archer Avenue, pulling an infant’s casket, which was seen to glow through the viewing window. A county policeman reported chasing several figures in monk-like robes until they vanished before his eyes. A priest is rumored to have seen the ground rise and fall as if it were breathing.

Much of this activity seems to have been near St. James at Sag Bridge, a church in the middle of the forest, surrounded by a cemetery dating back to the early 1800s, years before the church was built. It is said that the site was originally an Indian village and an ancient Indian burial ground. Even in the daytime, the property gives off an eerie atmosphere.

A story told about St. James at Sag Bridge also happened in 1897. Two musicians, Professor William Looney and John Kelly, had provided entertainment for a parish event, which went on until 1 am. Not wanting to return to their homes at this late hour, they slept overnight in a small building on the property. Looney was awakened during the night by the sound of galloping hoofs on the gravel road and looked out the window. He could see nothing to account for the sound, and gradually it faded.

Looney woke Kelly to tell him what had happened, and as they spoke, the sound returned. Both men looked out, and as the sounds again faded, the form of a young woman appeared in the road. The sounds again approached, and this time horses and a carriage were seen coming partway up the drive. The woman danced in the road until she entered the shadow, and the horses and carriage disappeared, only to start again a short time later. Each time they appeared, something new was added to the scene, and the woman began to call, “Come on!” as she disappeared.

The men reported the incident to local police the next morning, and it was verified that NO drinking had taken place to account for the tale. Since that time, similar sightings have continued to be reported by respectable residents. It is said the ghosts were the spirits of a young parish helper and housekeeper from the church, who fell in love and decided to elope. The man told his young lover to wait partway down the hill while he hitched the horses, but they were startled and bolted as he was coming for her. The wagon was overturned, and both were killed.

By Pat Camalliere, "The Mystery at Sag Bridge."

Thursday, April 6, 2023

The Miracle House, 2001 North Nordica Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. (1954)

Frank Lloyd Wright meets The Jetsons.
Scale Model. Locals called it the "Spider House," "Grasshopper House," or "Glass House."

The bold, mid-century modern "Miracle House" stands at 2001 N. Nordica Avenue in the Galewood neighborhood within the larger Austin Community Area. The genesis of the house is perhaps unlike any other in Chicago, for it was built as a grand prize for a raffle sponsored by the nearby St. William Catholic parish. The name Miracle House first appeared on the raffle tickets, and it has stuck with the property. 

In 1953, Fr. Frank Cieselski of the expanding parish conceived a house raffle to raise funds for a new church, school, convent and rectory. Edo Belli, a 36-year-old Chicago modernist architect and a Catholic who had attracted the backing of Archbishop Samuel A. Stritch for other diocesan commissions, offered to design the house free of charge and was given complete freedom of design. Indeed, Fr. Cieselski urged the architects to produce a boldly futuristic design that would capture attention and boost ticket sales.


Today, the house is a unique work of modern residential architecture in Chicago with a structural system based on two giant steel arms acting as a suspension bridge rather than load-bearing walls and columns. The Miracle House is unique for its almost all-glass exterior, making it innovative in its openness and connection with its exterior surroundings.
The primary elevation of the house faces south onto Armitage Avenue. The second-floor kitchen with a glazed curtain wall is suspended over the driveway, creating a carport, reflecting the centrality of the automobile in residential architecture in America in the postwar era. The first floor is clad in coursed Lannon stone, a widely used material in the mid-twentieth century.


The Miracle House resulted from a campaign to raise capital funds for the expansion of a Catholic parish complex that resulted in not just the construction of the house itself but also St. William parish a mile away. Thus, it reflects the important contributions religious communities made to Chicago neighborhoods. The futuristic design of the house also reveals the cultural optimism for novelty and the future that captivated America in the 1950s, even as the Cold War menaced on. 
Detail the pair of 36-ton steel trusses from which the house is suspended. They were fabricated by the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, which donated its services to the project like many suppliers.


The house is also significant as the work of Belli & Belli Architects and Engineers, Inc., a small, family-run architecture firm founded in 1946 in Chicago, which by 1953 was a booming office with 45 employees. Belli & Belli played an outsize role during the modern era in Chicago and throughout the nation. The firm's designs were marked by structural innovation and an expressive modern aesthetic that was arguably more popular than the austerities of the International Style.
Chicago's Hugh Hefner with his wife, Mildred, and daughter Christine in his new 1955 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible in front of the "Miracle House." 1955



sidebar
The house was built entirely with donated labor and materials, including the stainless steel arms from which the house is suspended. General Electric donated appliances, retailer Sol Polk (Polk Brothers) donated furnishings and the General Bridge and Steel Company provided the steel arms. The raffle raised enough money to not only pay for a new church but a new parish rectory, a convent and a school. 
In addition to the prominence of the automobile in residential architecture, outdoor living also became a new priority in the postwar era. At the west elevation of the Miracle House, sliding glass doors lead to a patio, and a canopy over the terrace was added later.


The Galewood Neighborhood in the Austin Community.
Galewood first developed as a 320-acre frontier farm settled by New York transplant Abram Gale in 1838. In 1899, a portion of the farm was leased to the Western Ho Golf Club, which remained there until the late 1920s. In 1927, the golf club and what remained of the farm were subdivided for residential development by G. Whittier Gale, grandson of the original settler. Many of the homes in the neighborhood are bungalows and various revival styles of architecture, including Tudor, Georgian, and French eclectic from before World War II and Cape Cod and Ranch-style homes from the postwar era. Galewood has a distinctly suburban feel, with the houses deeply set back on large, manicured lots.

Building Design and Construction
The Miracle House is essential to the Galewood neighborhood of Chicago and the local St. William Catholic parish. The idea of selling $1 tickets for a raffle with a chance to win a futuristic house was motivated by St. William's need to expand its campus, an expansion that the raffle succeeded in funding.

The raffle drawing was held at the old Lion's Club in Chicago in December 1955. 
A raffle ticket from which the house derived its name. Purchasers were entitled to a house tour in the months leading up to the drawing.
A $1.00 Raffle Ticket Equals $11.00 Today.

To that extent, the raffle not only added the Miracle House to the neighborhood in 1954 but eventually, by 1961, also a new church, convent, school, and rectory at the four corners of the intersection of Sayre and Wrightwood Avenues. Belli & Belli designed all these buildings in the modern style, and for the church, Edo Belli employed a thin-shell concrete wall and roof structure, a new technology of which Belli & Belli was an early adopter. Coincidentally, Belli & Belli's offices were located in the neighborhood.

When Edo Belli agreed to volunteer to design the Miracle House, Belli & Belli had already designed the first of what would become many churches, institutions, and hospitals for the Catholic church in general and the Archdiocese of Chicago in particular. In addition, the firm took on commercial work, but Edo Belli had yet to design a single-family dwelling other than for himself and his family. The Miracle House was a project that Edo Belli had to discuss with Cardinal Stritch, as the residential design was different from a standard part of his firm's practice.

The house would be built on a large lot (100' x 200') at the northeast corner of Nordica and Armitage Avenues. Precisely how this property was identified, or the decision-making that led to its purchase, is still being determined. Its proximity one mile south of St. William parish was undoubtedly a factor.

Construction began as soon as Belli's design was completed in late 1953. As word of the planned raffle to win a futuristic house got out, donated labor and material started pouring in to assist with the construction for a good cause and publicity. The Chicago Bridge & Iron Company contributed the massive steel arches, and General Electric donated all the necessary appliances, making this an all-electric house. Sol Polk of Polk Brothers, a famed Chicago appliance and electronics retailer, provided all the furnishings free of charge. Sol Polk also led the promotion of the raffle. Trade unions offered their services pro bono. Jim Belli, Edo's son, believes the only thing that should have been donated was the windows.

When construction of the Miracle House finished in late 1954, purchasers of a $1 raffle ticket were entitled to a house tour in the months leading up to the drawing in December of that year. The raffle was also promoted with custom-made glass ashtrays depicting the house. 
This 6"x 2½" ashtray/candy dish was given to purchasers of multiple raffle tickets.
Movie star and former neighborhood resident Kim Novak announced the winning ticket. She attended St. Williams, and her parents lived on Sayre Avenue, a half block from the Miracle House site.

The house winner was Joseph Novelle, who lived a half block away on Nordica. 

He owned the house briefly, selling it in 1957 to the Marano family, who put on a compatible addition in 1965 as their family grew. The Maranos remained in the house until 1989, when they sold it at auction to Alexander Fletcher, a Chicago fireman, who lived there for 10 years. 

In 1999, Dr. David Scheiner, M.D. bought the house and lived there as only its fourth owner in Novelle's 65-year history. (Dr. Scheiner had a long-established medical practice in Hyde Park, Chicago, where one of his patients was Barack Obama in the years before he became President.)

When it was completed in 1954, the house measured 20' x 56', with the primary elevation facing south onto Armitage Avenue. The house is suspended from two 36-ton steel arms spanning 100' in an east-west direction. The bridge-like structural system eliminated the need for load-bearing walls, allowing ample glazing and an open interior free of columns. The exterior on the second floor consists of a glazed curtain wall, while on the first floor, the exterior is rendered in Lannon stone, which is also used on the interior of the first-floor living room.
Lannon stone walls on the exterior carry into the interior of the first-floor living room. The floors are polished travertine. The short terrazzo stairway leads up to a split-level recreation room.


The first floor is a split level with the ground-level layout occupied by a living room and a recreation room (originally bedrooms) on the lower level. The kitchen and dining rooms are located on the second floor, and a main bedroom fills the third floor. The large expanses of glass create a light-filled and spacious interior with terrazzo and travertine floors. The most incredible room is above the south-facing carport - the kitchen, a beautiful projecting room with three glass walls emitting light on the south, west, and east.
Another view of the living room shows a flitch-matched wood wall panel and clerestory windows. Unlike more austere forms of modern architecture, the Miracle House is a "Contemporary" style with more broad appeal.
To accommodate a growing family of eight children, the Marano family added a bedroom addition to the house in 1965. Belli & Belli was offered the commission but declined due to the substantial number of hospital and commercial commissions on the boards at the time. A neighborhood architect, Ray Basso, took the job and generally respected Belli's original design, containing his work to the north side of the house, where the unique, original design stands on its own as approached from the south.
The suspended structure allowed for large areas of glazing, as shown in this view of the second-floor kitchen with terrazzo floors. Such opening up of exterior views of large manicured lawns was another characteristic of mid-century modern residential architecture.
For years, the Miracle House was a drive-by destination for locals in the Galewood community and fans of modern architecture. Postcards were printed, and celebrities visited, including Hugh Hefner, who grew up in the neighborhood. The Miracle House is still recognized as a local landmark in the Galewood community.

The Contemporary Style of Mid-Century Modern Residential Architecture
The Miracle House is a clear example of mid-century modern residential architecture. This catch-all includes a range of fluid styles and where commonly agreed-upon definitions remain elusive. Virginia McAlester's Field Guide to American Houses, revised in 2013, is regarded as the most definitive guide to American domestic architecture. It defines the "Contemporary Style" as best representing the Miracle House design.

While different styles fall under the mid-century modern umbrella, they all responded to social and technological changes and new ways of living in postwar America. These transformations are well described in a 1960 issue of House & Garden:

Few periods in history can match the past decade in the number of spectacular changes it has witnessed in our daily lives. From a nation well supplied with automobiles, we have turned to a nation living on wheels with the not-too-surprising result that the garage has become the actual entrance of today's house. In a matter of months, TV grew from a rather expensive toy into standard household equipment and, in the process, added to the house a new room—the family room. Insulating glass walls of the southern California house have become equally comfortable for the climate of northern Illinois. The whole country has succumbed to a passion for cooking, eating and lounging outdoors, but at the same time, land on which to build, cook, and lounge has become progressively scarcer.

Despite their stylistic differences, mid-century modern houses typically have attached garages incorporated into the building. Open floor plans and large living rooms for TV are commonplace. Large windows take full advantage of views of large, landscaped lawns. All these characteristics are visible in the design of the Miracle House.

The Contemporary Style rejected historical styles of architecture. However, the style allowed for more materials, textures, and forms, making it more popular than the austere forms of mid-century modern house design.

The design of contemporary-style houses is clearly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Houses, built with natural materials, free-flowing interiors, and a blending of interior and exterior spaces. Contemporary-style houses were popular from 1945 to 1965 when architects designed them for individual clients or were built in large numbers by developers, most notably by Joseph Eichler, who made thousands of contemporary-style homes in the San Francisco Bay area.

The Contemporary House style emphasized the convenience of open floor plans and blending indoor and outdoor spaces. The houses are typically two stories in height with flat or shallow-pitched and exposed roof structures. Exterior walls are clad in various materials, including brick, wood, and stone, often combined. Entrances are often recessed or off-center. All these character-defining features are visible in the design of the Miracle House.

sidebar
Dr. David Scheiner bought the house in 1999 on the advice of his late wife, who had known about the home while growing up on the Northwest Side. “I walked in, and my jaw dropped,” Scheiner said, noting that he purchased the whole thing for around $375,000 at the time. The home, he said, is 70 percent glass, the floors are marble, and the Jetson's-style stainless-steel arms (they do not support the house) imitate the flying buttresses that hold up European cathedrals. Dr. Scheiner was Barack Obama’s personal doctor for nearly two decades, right up until Obama won the presidency in 2008.

On April 21, 2021, the Chicago City Council unanimously approved the landmark status of the Miracle House.

sidebar
A 2023 Real Estate Appraisal: $563,000.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.