Lost Towns of Illinois - Babcock's Grove, DuPage Center, Stacy's Corners, Newton's Station, Danby, and Prospect Park, Illinois.

The first landowner, Ralph and Morgan Babcock were in Babcock's Grove, Illinois. The area came to be known as Babcock’s Grove by 1834. Other newcomers to the area built town necessities such as a tavern and school.

Moses Stacy, a soldier in the War of 1812, arrived here in 1835. DuPage County, Illinois was founded in 1839. Moses' inn, "Stacy's Tavern," was built in 1846 and his second home, was a halfway stop between Chicago and the Fox River Valley and a probable stop for Galena-Chicago Frink & Walker’s General Stage Coach line on their way to Rockford, Illinois. [Stacy's Tavern historical monument stands at what is now the intersection of Geneva Road and Main Street.]

The Stagecoach wasn't as glamorous as the movies made them out to be.

In 1849, construction of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad through Stacy's Corners, Illinois was finished. The area around the railroad became the center of the town. At first, trains running through the town on the railway did not stop there. A local man named Lewey Q. Newton made an offer to the railroad company; Newton would build a depot and water tank out of his own pocket if the railroad would require trains to stop there. The depot that Newton built became known as Newton's Station, Illinois.

1855 Railway Guide Showing Danby, Illinois, in Red.

The growing settlement went through several names, including Babcock's Grove (named for three brothers that settled there), DuPage Center, Stacy's Corners (after the Stacy family), Newton's Station, Danby (after Danby, Vermont, a local landowner's birthplace) and Prospect Park.

The first church, a Congregational church, was built in 1862. Many Protestant churches were built in the village in the years to come. It wasn't until 60 years later that the first Catholic church was built.

The name Glen Ellyn had been adopted by 1889, when village president Hill and businessman Philo Stacy spearheaded a project to create a new lake, called Lake Glen Ellyn (today’s Lake Ellyn), by having a dam built in a nearby stream. The current Glen Ellyn is based on the Welsh version of the name of the then–village president Thomas E. Hill's wife Ellen, preceded by glen, referring to the local geography.

The Great Western Railroad built a freight station in 1888 on the south side of the track just west of Main Street in Glen Ellyn.

In 1890, residents discovered mineral springs near the village. Glen Ellyn's Five Mineral Springs was a popular destination for guests throughout the area, who also enjoyed mud baths. It was believed that the mud around the springs had medicinal qualities. This contributed to Glen Ellyn advertising itself as Chicago's newest suburb and health resort, soon followed by the Village of Glen Ellyn being officially incorporated on May 10, 1892.

The Glen Ellyn Hotel opened in 1893 for the summer season, with prices ranging from $2.00 to $3.00 per day. After the hotel changed hands several times, in the summer of 1905 it was occupied as a free hospital supported by the Chicago Tribune Company. The next summer the building remained unoccupied and on May 1, 1906 was struck by lightening and completely destroyed by fire.

The springs flowed into a creek and drained into a marsh which later became Lake Ellyn. The large Lake Glen Ellyn Hotel opened in 1892, the same year much of the business district was destroyed by fire. Fourteen years later, the hotel was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.

The village's all-volunteer fire department was created in 1907. By the end of the 20th century, it was the last all-volunteer fire department in DuPage County. By World War I, Glen Oak Country Club served the Oak Park and Glen Ellyn communities.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Towns of Illinois - Rand, Illinois.

Des Plaines, Illinois originally started as a settlement in 1835 an became the ”Town of Rand," the name being given in honor of landowner Socrates Rand.[1]

Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwe (Chippewa) Indian tribes inhabited the Des Plaines River Valley prior to Europeans' arrival. When French explorers and missionaries arrived in the 1670s in what was then the Illinois Country of New France (Canada), they named the waterway La Rivière des Plaines ("River of the Plane Tree") as they felt that trees on the river resembled the European plane trees.

The Des Plaines River.

The first white settlers came from the eastern United States after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, followed by many German immigrants during the 1840s and '50s. In the 1850s, the land in this area was purchased by the Illinois and Wisconsin Land Company along a railroad line planned between Chicago and Janesville, Wisconsin. In 1852, the developers built a steam-powered mill next to the river to cut local trees into railroad ties. Socrates Rand then bought the mill and converted it into a grist mill, which attracted local farmers. The Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad made its first stop in the area in the fall of 1854.

Excerpt from a map of the Counties of Cook and DuPage, the east part of Kane and Kendall, the north part of Will, the state of Illinois, published in 1851.

The Town of Rand in Maine Township, Cook County, Illinois was platted in 1857 and contained the subdivision of the south half of the southwest quarter of Section 16, part of the east half of the southeast quarter of Section 17, the northeast quarter of Section 20, and the northwest quarter and part of the northeast quarter of Section 21, and subdivided into streets, alleys and lots, numbered from one to sixty-nine and from seventy-two to one hundred and seventy-nine inclusive. Rand was comprised of four square miles of land.

This plat was acknowledged on September 5, 1857, by Henry Smith, trustee of the Illinois & Wisconsin Land Company, proprietors of said lands, also as an attorney in fact for said company, and also by John Irel ton and Reuben E. Demmon, trustees of said company. It was recorded on September 7, 1857.

The name of the town was changed to Des Plaines by an act of the Legislature, approved April 15, 1869.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Socrates Rand was a pioneer who arrived from Massachusetts in 1835, was one of the first to settle along the river north of what is now Dempster Street. Quite a string of "firsts" are associated with Rand. As the area's first justice of the peace, he performed the first wedding in 1836. He hosted many early Episcopalian and Methodist services in his home, and his cheese room became the first school room--for 15 pupils--in 1838. Rand helped organize Maine Township and was chairman of the first meeting in 1850.