Thomas Andrus and his wife, Melissa, were the first to arrive in what would become Darien. They traveled from Vermont by boat through the Great Lakes to Chicago and came here in horse drawn wagons. The Andrus farm was on the west side of present-day Lemont Road and the I55 North Frontage Road. Once an Indian Trail, the North Frontage Road was the route of the Frink & Walker’s General Stage Coach line between Chicago and Ottawa.
The Stagecoach wasn't as glamorous as the movies made them out to be.
The Andrus farm house served as an inn for stagecoach travelers. Thomas also kept horses for the stagecoach line. The families of brothers, William and Elisha Smart, and John Oldfield joined the Andrus family in establishing the community of Cass.
The Andrus Farm.
The Lace community grew north of the Cass community. It was centered at the intersection of present-day Cass Avenue and 75th Street. Among the first families of Lace, were the Andermanns and the Buschmanns who had emigrated from Germany. Joining these families in Lace were the Wehrmeisters and Warkentiens. Bordered by Plainfield Road, Cass Avenue, and 75th Street, “The Point,” was the center of community life in Lace. “The Point” included a general store and blacksmith shop, St. John Lutheran School, and the church parsonage. Directly east of "The Point" stood Conrad Buschmann's creamery where farmers brought their milk to be processed into dairy products. Just north of "The Point" was Lace Hall where dances were held. Both Cass and Lace established churches that served as the anchor of not only religious life, but social life as well. The Cass community established the Cass Methodist Episcopal Church that no longer exits. The Lace community established the St. John Lutheran Church. The Cass cemetery and the St. John Lutheran Church cemetery each contain the graves of the first families and also include the graves of Civil War veterans. Both Cass and Lace established their own schools. The first Lace School was built in 1856. It burned and was replaced with the second Lace School built in 1925. Today, the 1925 building is known as Old Lace Schoolhouse and Museum and is the home of the Darien Historical Society. It stands at its original location, the northwest corner of the intersection of 75th Street and Cass Avenue.
The Old Lace School.
Martin Barnaby Madden's family emigrated to Lemont from England in 1869. A barge accident on the Illinois and Michigan Canal led to him being employed at the Western Stone Company. He rose to become its president. Madden married Josephine Smart, the daughter of Elisha Smart. In 1903, Madden built a summer home on the Smart family property. His home, which he called Castle Eden, was built to be a replica of the White House in Washington, DC. but at 1/10th scale model.Madden had an illustrious political career culminating in his election to the United States House of Representatives where he served from 1905 until his death in 1928. When route 66 was built, there was easy access to Castle Eden.
The White House - It was converted into a restaurant about 1938 until 1942 named Castle Eden on Route 66.
Cass and Lace were close knit farming communities. People living here grew up, married, raised their children, and lived out their days in familiar surroundings, embraced and supported by their extended families. The late 1940s, following the end of World War II, saw an increase in the affordability of automobiles and better roads. Better transportation led to people moving out of Chicago and the establishment of suburbs. Fields of wild asparagus were paved over and orchards were felled as farmers sold their land to developers and subdivisions began to emerge where farmers had once raised crops and livestock. As the population increased, the need for increased services such as police and fire protection became apparent. Deciding that these concerns could best be addressed by becoming a city, four subdivisions, Marion Hills, Hinsbrook, Brookhaven, and Clarefield, formed the “Combined Homeowners Committee for Incorporation.” In order for the issue to be voted on by the residents, the proposed city had to have a name. A member of the committee, Sam Kelley, having recently enjoyed a visit to Darien, Connecticut, suggested the name Darien. The vote on incorporation was held on December 13, 1969. It passed by less than 50 votes. By The Darien Historical Society. Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
Amelia Louise Klehm was born November 23, 1870 at the height of the Victorian age, fifty years before American women earned the right to vote. Yet never did she expect to be supported by a father or a husband, as was the case with many other Victorian women. Instead, she set ambitious goals for herself, becoming first a nurse and later a country doctor serving the people of her hometown, a little farming community called Niles Centre (Niles Centre, Incorporated 1888; Americanized to Niles Center1910; Renamed to Skokie 1940), just north of Chicago. Klehm entered the University of Illinois Medical School in 1898, just as anti-female hostility reached its peak in the male-dominated medical profession. Determined to succeed, she remained undeterred by such distractions, and had the sweet satisfaction of graduating in 1902. An added pleasure was her father's admiration. Originally dubious about the wisdom of this undertaking, he was so proud of her achievement that he called her "doctor" for the rest of his life. Actually, George Klehm inflamed his daughter's determination to succeed. He was the quintessential self-made man, hard-working and persistent since his arrival in America at age twelve, when he immediately began laying the staircase of his own success with a bricklayer's trowel. Reaching for a higher stair as a young man, he used his trade as a stepping stone to a career in education, but soon realized he would never earn enough to support a family in comfort. Nevertheless, Klehm kept his job until early 1864, when he learned that fellow-immigrant Henry Harms wanted to sell his general store. Then, within a matter of months, he became both a fulltime store owner and a husband to Eliza Harms, Henry Harms' sister. By 1870, when the Klehms welcomed their fourth child, Amelia Louise, George was a prosperous merchant. He was also town treasurer of Niles Center and a pillar of the proud new St. Peter's United Church of Christ, which he had volunteered to help build. Klehm, in short, was living what later generations would call the American Dream. It did not last. Three weeks after the Klehms celebrated their fourteenth wedding anniversary, the dream became a nightmare. A bleak note in George's Bible tells the story: "Luise (Elisa) Harms Klehm, wife of George C. Klehm died of a heart attack on August 26th, 1878, shortly before midnight. She left behind a brokenhearted husband and six children." Brokenhearted or not, George Klehm had six mouths to feed. So it wasn't long before he lifted his chin, found someone to care for his children, and went back to work. Louise Klehm (or A. Louise, as she preferred) was nine years old when her mother died; her sister Alma, the baby of the family, was a toddler of nearly three. Alma needed a constant watchful eye and big sister Louise was there to provide it; such compassionate vigilance could well have been a major factor when it was time for the elder sister to start thinking about earning a living. In the early 1890s Louise set her sights on becoming a nurse. It was a sound decision, considering the expanding medical field. New discoveries in both medicine and surgery, and most especially in the realm of antisepsis, made hospital hygiene impossible to maintain at home. As a consequence, many patients opted for hospital stays, thus sending admission rates soaring. The end result seemed to benefit every-one: patients enjoyed the best health care available, and nurses, ostensibly, enjoyed a seemingly limitless wealth of opportunity. Louise Klehm found these prospects so exciting that she entered the Chicago Baptist Hospital's three-year nursing program in 1893. Alas, disillusionment set in before graduation day, for Klehm was only one of thousands of young women with the same notion. Still, though the market was glutted with newly-qualified nurses, Klehm was a mature and intelligent student, and she graduated in 1896 with two offers of employment in hand - one from with a physician in Minneapolis, the other as assistant head of nursing at the hospital where she had studied. There was just one problem. Neither choice offered enough money to live on. Contemplating both with equally lukewarm enthusiasm, she turned to her usual source of wisdom and strength: her father, back home in Niles Center. George Klehm did not let her down. He gave careful thought to the question of his daughter's career before writing to her on September 18, 1896, at the Chicago Baptist Hospital. "The position of nurse for some eminent physician, would perhaps be all right, but... this doctor is at Minneapolis." A true father of the late Victorian Age, George pounced on this distance on the grounds that she would be away from all her relatives. "It would be rather dangerous," continued George, "to trust your fate to a strange man in a strange city, away from all relatives and before you make a move in that direction, you should have positive evidence as regards the moral character and standing of this physician." Far better, George declared, to accept the assistant head nurse position at the college, even though the salary was small.
Dr. Klehm on a call with her sister, Alma. Pulling the buggy is "Colonel," who carted Dr. Klehm to many a patient's bedside.
Dr. Klehm in a horse drawn buggy on the Klehm driveway. Floral Avenue can be seen in the background with the Busscher home (left) and the Lies home (right). The horse's name was "Colonel."
Louise accepted her father's advice, but she was not in her hospital position for long. In April 1898, President William McKinley declared war on Spain soon after the mysterious explosion of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor. In company with nearly 1,600 other nurses, Louise enlisted in the Army Medical Corps and was sent to Miami to care for wounded soldiers in a new but unfinished hospital. But rigid standards of hospital hygiene not withstanding, the medical corps had reckoned without the patients themselves, who insisted on drinking polluted well water in preference to the boiled water provided especially for them. The result, predictably, was a raging typhoid epidemic. Plans for the hospital were hastily scrapped, and the 154 wounded from Illinois, with Nurse Louise Klehm in attendance, were sent back home to convalesce at Fort Sheridan, about fifty miles north of Chicago. Neither the Illinois nurses nor the soldiers missed much in the way of action. The Cuban battlefronts were silent by summer's end, and the Spanish-American War was over before the year was out. For Klehm, the time was ripe for a new challenge: medical school. She'd asked her father for advice about this some time earlier, but the letter he sent to her at the Baptist Hospital was discouraging. "The study of medicine would consume about four years of your life and the results would give you a chance to bury yourself in some charitable institution for the rest of your lifetime," he wrote, expecting the matter to be closed. But he had not reckoned with his daughter's determination. Louise had made up her mind to go to medical school, and medical school it would be. It was a difficult time for a woman to aim for a medical career. Across the nation the medical profession, a traditionally masculine stronghold, had cautiously welcomed the first 200 women into the fraternity by 1860. By 1880, 2,423 female colleagues had filled the ranks. But by 1900 more than 7,000 female physicians were clamoring for full acceptance. The patriarchy resisted. Women physicians, the besieged men blustered, were too unreliable. Matters such as chemistry and anatomy were subjects too taxing for the feminine brain. As if all this were not enough, cartoons supporting the medical establishment took delight in depicting women doctors daring to chart the profession's future course, and - worst of all - besting their male colleagues for the patient's dollar! Persistent hostility often drains the joy from ambition, but the twenty-eight-year-old Louise was not to go down in defeat. In 1898, with eyes focused firmly on her goal, she entered Chicago based University of Illinois, a coeducational medical school then accepting women for the second year in a row. She made a wise choice. Northwestern University, also Chicago-based, would soon bow to establishment pressure, abruptly closing its Women's Medical School just two months short of graduation. In contrast, students at the University of Illinois were secure in the firm support of their dean, William E. Quine, a man who was impressed by the dedication and hard work of his female students. In this serene atmosphere, Louise and her fourteen female classmates were able to do their best work, graduating together without incident in 1902. Once graduation was over, however, Dean Quine's support could not force hospitals to accept his female graduates as interns, even though a scant two years later an estimated 50 percent of all medical graduates went on to voluntary further training. In Boston, only the New England Hospital accepted women for internships, and only six other American hospitals, the Chicago-based Women's and Children's Hospital among them, regularly accepted women interns. Few of these newly-trained doctors were able to find placement for further training anywhere in the country; most were forced to turn to more liberal hospitals in Europe Klehm was lucky. One of her medical school instructors was Rachelle Yarros, M.D., a passionate supporter of both birth-control and adequate medical care for the poor. At the time of Louise's graduation, Yarros happened to be living and working at Hull House, Jane Addams' settlement house for Chicago's inner-city poor immigrants. Overworked herself, she gladly accepted the newly qualified physician for a three-month internship.
Louise Klehm's nursing class on the steps of Chicago Baptist Hospital. Klehm is seated at the far left in the next-to-last row.
Brief as it was, this internship taught Klehm a great deal. She saw poverty so intense and painful - babies were born into the world without even a rag to wrap them in - that thereafter, she would always set aside food and clothing for the less fortunate. Likewise, Louise learned about the social and medical issues surrounding the prevention of "involuntary motherhood," and she delivered seventy babies, honing her skills so they were equal to any emergency. It was all very exhilarating, but it was also exhausting, and it took her into places of unbelievable filth. Characteristically, she tried to shield her family from the worst of it, but didn't always succeed. "When she would come home at night from delivering a baby or saving a dying man from pneumonia, she would stand in the bathtub and undress to shake the vermin from her clothing," her sister Alma later recalled. But three months of hands-on experience were not enough for Klehm: she decided to hone her surgical skills in Europe, specifically in Berlin and Vienna, where women doctors were more accepted.
Dr. Klehm's first office was in Klehm Bros. General Store building at the southwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Oakton Street.
By the time she went into family practice in her hometown, A. Louise Klehm, M.D., was a highly-educated and poised woman in her mid- thirties. A portrait photograph taken at this time shows a calm, assured face with deeply chiseled bone structure and steady, self-confident gaze. The confidence was fully justified, buttressed as it was by knowledge of the latest techniques, and underlined by her two constant companions: the first, a case full of necessities for any needy families she might encounter; the second, a capacious black doctor's bag stocked with medications such as calomel (useful against for intestinal parasites), quinine, the emetic called ipecac, and aspirin, the latest wonder-drug. Sharing the bag were her instruments: stethoscope, thermometer, opthalmoscope and sphygmograph, plus scissors, needles and catgut for stitching, various scalpels and other cones for surgical use, and, of course, obstetrical forceps in case of difficult deliveries. Her first transportation was a two-wheeled buggy drawn by sleek little pony named "Billy." the little two-wheeler gave way to a more elaborate buggy and "Billy" yielded to "Dan," who in turn was peplaced by "Colonel."
Dr. Klehm's 1912 Ford Model T.
When Dr. Klehm purchased a Ford Model T automobile in 1912, "Colonel" and the buggy were used only in bad weather when roads were impassable. While cranking the car one day, the engine backfired, breaking her right arm at the wrist. Three weeks later, her arm in splints, Dr. Klehm delivered a baby in neighboring Park Ridge.
Surgical Kit with medical instruments used by Dr. A. Louise Klehm. Small brown leather surgical case snaps closed and folds open to reveal metal medical instruments and two pockets. The front is monogrammed in gold with "A. Louise Klehm, M.D." Instruments include: 5 blades (scalpels) of varying size and shape, 1 surgical hook, 2 probes (picks) of varying shape and size, 1 with a scoop on one end, 1 hemostat (surgical clamp), and 2 curved urethral sounds with attaching screw-on handle. One scalpel is labeled Betz Company.
Everything came in handy, for she never knew what she might find once she arrived at a patient's bedside. Sometimes there was a well lighted bedroom, clean and conveniently close to St. Francis Hospital in neighboring Evanston, where she was on staff. More often she found herself delivering a baby, or setting a broken bone in a lonely farmhouse lit by guttering oil lamps, with only a trembling member of the patient's family to assist. Despite the hours of travel and the long nights at a patient's bedside, however, the fees suggested by the American Medical Association Bluebook of 1892 do not suggest that Klehm ever became wealthy: Fairly standard fee for a delivery, fifteen dollars; emergency house-call, five to twenty-five dollars; fine dressing of superficial wounds e.g. sprains, five to twenty-five dollars.
By 1918, Niles Center, soon to be renamed Skokie, was becoming more suburban than rural. Peaceful and productive, the little town boasted an auto dealership, a painter, and a photographer, as well as a butchery, a dairy, and even an insurance office run by Dr. Klehm's brother, George. There were also paved roads, so the doctor was able to see her homebound patients far faster than she had ever done before. This stood her in good stead that year, when the worldwide influenza epidemic struck. Dr. Klehm spent many frantic hours making rounds - fifty-one on one record day, according to her faithful sister and sometimes driver, Alma, an indispensable companion at such times. There came a time in the mid 1930s when advancing years caught up with Dr. Klehm. The finale to her working years announced itself with cancer of the eye, which forced her to sell her practice to a female colleague in 1939. A methodical woman to the last, she left explicit instructions on her retirement that all outstanding patients' bills were to be torn up. That way, she said, nobody would owe her anything.... Louise Klehm, M.D., died in St. Francis Hospital from cancer on February 22, 1941, just months before the United States entered World War II. "Doc" known to countless old-timers who recalled her as she dashed madly up Lincoln avenue in her horse and buggy on her way to emergency calls.
Saint Peters United Church of Christ Cemetery, Skokie, Illinois.
The State Street-Van Buren station as it looked when it opened in 1897. The station, built in the Colonial Revival style, was standard for the stations of the Van Buren leg of the elevated Loop. Notice the open "porches" on the corners of the station house. These were enclosed by mid-century. (circa 1899) Also relevant is that State Street is paved with Chicago street paver bricks, not cobblestone, as some suggest. Read about the history of Chicago street paver bricks in my Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal™
The Battle of Shiloh took place on April 6-7, 1862 in southwestern Tennessee. It was also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing to southerners. The Union army was led by Major General Ulysses S. Grant and he faced Confederate forces under Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Albert Sydney Johnston. Civil War soldiers were closely bound to the home front. Letters, packages of food, and visits from friends and loved ones were common. For the first year of the war the front for most Illinois soldiers was located in the neighboring states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Because people back home in Illinois kept in close touch with the troops, shifts in the attitude of the soldiers were followed by shifts in popular perception of the war.
Members of Battery A, First Light Artillery, also known as the Chicago Light Artillery. This photograph was taken at Camp Smith, near Cairo, Illinois. (June 1861)
In the spring of 1862, Illinoisans were naively optimistic about the progress of the war. Ulysses S. Grant's victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson had secured a large portion of Kentucky and Tennessee for the Union. Soldiers and civilians alike looked forward to a large battle as a means to kick out the last props on the rotten Confederacy. They saw battle as a test of valor and thought in terms of wars won and lost in a single Waterloo-like contest. This letter is a window into a common soldier's reaction to the trial of battle and the shock that courage and Christian soldiering were no guarantors of victory. James Milner was a young artilleryman in the Chicago Light Artillery (later Battery A, 1st Illinois Artillery). The letter which was originally a private communication to his father, Robert Milner, was printed in the Chicago Tribune on Friday, April 18, 1862. James Milner enlisted in the army immediately after Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers. The unit was made up of middle class Chicagoans, many of whom were members of the YMCA and the St. James Episcopal Church in Chicago.
There is a memorial altar to the unit's dead in the vestibule of St. James and a beautiful Leonard Volk sculpture in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery on which is inscribed the names of the men Battery A lost at Shiloh.
"The Sabbath dawned upon us clear and warm," Milner wrote. His unit was camped in a meadow as part of Brigadier General William H. L. Wallace's Division. While watering the battery's horses, Milner heard firing in the distance. The unit quickly harnessed the horses and limbered the guns. They were immediately sent forward to the rapidly forming Union battle line.
Capture of Union forces at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, by Confederates, Sunday, April 6, 1862.
Although the men had seen action at Fort Donelson, they were by no means veteran troops. As they came under fire, they laughed at each other for involuntarily flinching. The laughter stopped when Sergeant Jerry Powell had his arm ripped off by a Rebel shell. Throughout the morning, the battery was engaged - hurrying from one crisis to another - trying with little success to break the Confederate advance.
Repulsing the combined Confederate attack at the Peach Orchard, Shiloh, Tennessee, Sunday, April 6, 1862.
The fighting took a heavy toll on the battery. Out of ninety of the men who went into action thirty-two were killed or wounded. "Ed Russell, a young man whom you have seen behind the counter of Smith's bank, as gentlemanly a man as we had in the battery, had his bowels torn out by a solid shot. He lived but a half an hour. His last words were as he lay on his face, 'I die like a man.' And good man Farnham, a Christian man, my tent-mate for six months...was shot through above the heart... Flanigan a merry hearted Irishman and the intimate friend of Ed Russell, was shot through the mouth." At this point, the infantry fighting in front of the battery broke and ran. Their fighting took them across the battery's field of fire. "We yelled at them to keep away from our fire, but they didn't hear. I ran forward and waved my hat, but to no purpose, and I went back to my post and fired through them." The battery's own retreat nearly cost them their howitzer. Under the direct fire of the enemy, the men struggled to sort out the tracers amid dead and panicked horses. "We saved the howitzer, having eight men wounded in the performance." After trying one final try to help stem the rebel tide, the battery again limbered their guns and joined the retreat to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River.
Reccapture of Union artillery by the First Ohio Regiment at Shiloh Church, Monday, April 7, 1862.
"I now knew we were beaten and in full retreat. I stopped, and with the aid of some infantry, helped one of our guns out of a mud-hole, and walked on till we came to a road jammed with wagons: I felt then I had never witnessed so painful a sight as a disorganized army. Here I found Billy Williams...riding in a baggage wagon. He said to me in a pitiable tone, 'Jimmy, won't you come take care of me, I am shot through?' I had to refuse. This was truly painful. I helped him down and put him into an ambulance." In the wagon, Milner discovered another wounded comrade, Jerry Paddock. "I got into the ambulance and examined Paddock's wound, I found that he was shot through the liver, and that there was no blood coming through the wound, I made my mind he was bleeding internally, he was very frail, and I thought he must die. I put his handkerchief over his wound and went back to my gun." Under the shelter of the high bank of the Tennessee River, Milner saw hundreds of panicked men, "neither eloquence of speech nor cursing could induce them to go to the front." Battery A was placed into the center of Grant's last-ditch battle line. As darkness fell, the Union soldiers at one end of the line, although they had fought and lost all day, signaled their determination to resist what they thought would be a final rebel onslaught by issuing a "tremendous cheer." At that moment, there was a lull in the firing "and the cheer was taken up and echoed along the whole line and among the straggling squads of disorganized troops." During the long, wet nightmare night that followed, the men of Battery A talked about "the boys" who had died. "My heart was rilled with hatred and revenge against the enemy... I could not restrain my tears and felt that I would hazard my life in any position to mow down their ranks with canister. After this I had a feeling of utmost indifference as to my fate." "With the light of day the battle was renewed. We had recovered nearly all the ground lost the day before. The fire opened fierce from the start, and we did not wait long for orders to the front. Our position was near the center, and we commenced shelling with the four guns we were still able to man." At one point, General William Tecumseh Sherman personally directed the battery forward to stem a Confederate counterattack. No sooner had that action ended when: "General Sherman again rode up and ordered us to a new front 'Come on,' he said, 'I'll lead you,' and he did. We limbered up, mounted our seats...and we galloped forward through a fierce storm of shell and bullets. 'Well up to the front,' said Lt. Wood, and we took up position in advance of the infantry and poured in a rapid fire of shell. General Sherman who (as Gen. Wallace says is perfectly crazy on the subject of artillery) told a Louisiana officer in the presence of one of our men, it was the grandest thing he ever saw done by artillery... It was the liveliest engagement of all, for the time it lasted, and I really enjoyed it." With the help of reinforcements from General Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio, Grant was gradually able to push back the Confederate Army. At 3:30 p.m., General Pierre G. T. Beauregard was forced to order a general retreat, but the Rebels were not the only soldiers who had reached the end of their tethers. Just before the moment of victory, Milner wrote that: "We were tired out. The rain was falling, and I for one felt more dispirited here than at any other time." No sooner did they retrieve a few crackers from their haversacks than the men noticed cavalry rushing to the front "and we knew that the enemy were in retreat." Battery A was again ordered to the front as part of a general effort to pursue the enemy. Two days after the battle, Milner wrote to tell his father he had survived. "I have gone into these tedious details to show you exactly what war is. I have since rode over the whole battlefield, but will spare you the horrid and disgusting details of the thousands of suffering wounded, and mangled corpses I saw." Shiloh altered the young Chicagoan's view of war: "We have at last had our wish for a hard battle gratified and never again do I expect to hear the same wish from the lips of our men. We are just as ready now to do our duty as we were, but to desire another hard battle, with the same chances of loss to our company, is quite a different thing." The account of James Milner provides insight into the reaction of Illinoisans to the shocking reality of the battle of Shiloh. The battle was a turning point in Midwesterners' attitudes toward the Civil War. Shiloh took the lives of more Americans than had died in all the previous wars fought by the United States. Before the battle, Grant had believed the rebellion was on the brink of defeat. After the bloody two-day contest, he realized that the Confederacy would yield only after a long, difficult war of conquest. Shiloh steeled Midwesterners to the painful truth that the Civil War would be a long, drawn-out conflict. After Shiloh, many Chicagoans assumed a much harsher posture toward the South. The editors of the Chicago Tribune likely printed Milner's letter to his father (against the young soldier's expressed wishes) in order to give readers a clear sense of the trial of battle and to stir in them the same reaction the death of his comrades aroused in Milner "revenge." Letters from other soldiers also began to make their way into the press with rumors of rebel atrocities. Confederate guerrillas were reported to have cut the nose and ears off a captured Union soldier. Other stories recounted poisoned wells, the refusal to bury Union dead, and the "making of tools and utensils of their bones." As the enemy became demonized, more and more voices on the home front and in the army began to call for harsh measures against all Rebels. "I begin to think the better way would be to utterly desolate wherever we went," an officer from Elgin, Illinois, wrote home. "If I had control when this army had marched through the Gulf States no landmarks would be left to show the boundaries of the towns, counties, or states." Shiloh began the evolution of the Civil War toward total war.
By Theodore J. Karamanski Editing by Neil Gale, Ph.D. [1] Note: Milner's account of the Battle of Shiloh appeared in the April 18, 1862, edition of the Chicago Tribune under the headline: "The Pittsburg Battle."
Marshall Field & Company, State and Washington Streets, Chicago, showing the one and only Field clock at that time. (c.1891)
Marshall Field & Company, State Street Store, Chicago, looking northeast from State and Washington Streets. Note the original clock. (1904)
1st clock on the corner of State and Washington Sts.
Marshall Field & Company, State Street Store, Chicago, Illinois - The 13-story granite building (the North portion) was constructed in stages between 1891-1892 and 1914 on a partitioned block with sections that were added to the building in 1902, 1906, 1907, and 1914. The south building was razed and replaced in 1907. The first Marshall Field clock was installed in 1897 on the building's corner of State and Washington streets (the old south building). A second, fancier clock was added at the corner of State and Randolph streets in 1902. For five years the designs of the clocks didn’t match, but in 1909 the original clock at State and Washington was replaced with one that was identical to the second clock on State and Randolph streets when the south building was built to match the north building.
Marshall Field & Company, State Street Store, Chicago, looking northeast from State and Washington Streets. Note the New Clock (1912)
State and Washington Streets looking North. July 9, 1916.
NOTE: Time on two faces is a little off.
NOTE: The two faces show different times.
Marshall Field’s 1960s.
The Boston Store and its clock are on the corner of State and Madison Streets, which is one block SOUTH of Marshall Field's.
Looking west on Madison Street from State Street, Chicago. 1928
Above is a picture of the BOSTON STORE CLOCK at the corner of State and Madison Streets. Boston Store's clock,often misidentified as the Marshall Field clock, is one block south of Marshall Field. The Field's clock at State and Washington streets can be seen in the distance in many pictures and postcards looking north from the Boston Store.
Charles "Carl" Frederick Günther (1837–1920), known as "The Candy Man" and "The P. T. Barnum of Chicago," Gunther was a German-American politician, caramel confectioner, chocolatier, numismatist, and art, antiquities, and curiosities collector, who purchased many of the coins and artifacts now in the Chicago History Museum. Born in Wildberg, Württemberg, Germany, on March 6, 1837. He emigrated with his parents to Pennsylvania when he was five years old in 1842. They moved from Pennsylvania to Peru, Illinois, in 1850. At the age of 14, he was employed as a clerk in a country store and later went to work in a drug store "where he gained quite an insight into the art of pharmacy." Gunther became a manager of the post office in Peru, Illinois. He spent five years employed by a banking house. Then moved to Memphis, Tennesee, and was employed by a local ice dealer in 1860. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he was employed as purchasing agent and purser of the steamer "Rose Douglas" in the Confederate Service. Being captured when blockaded in the Arkansas River by Federal gunboats in Van Buren, Arkansas, "he was released in a prisoner exchanged and made his way north until he finally reached Peru." "His life while acting in this capacity was anything but peaceful, and his adventures were many." Gunther returned to Peoria, where he was employed by a banking house. Then Gunther joined C. W. Sanford, a Chicago confectioner, as a traveling salesman visiting the principal cities of the South and those in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia." In the Fall of 1863, he next entered the employ of a wholesale grocery house. The line was not to his taste, and he entered the employment of a New York confectionery house, which he represented in the New England, Middle, and Western states. In the meantime, Gunther had traveled extensively in Europe and Asia. He knew how these people prepared confections and, combined with what he learned of the business while representing manufacturers of confectionery on the road, made him finally decide to enter business on his account.
Gunther opened his own candy factory and store at 125 Clark Street in Chicago in the Fall of 1868. He originated and introduced caramels, a staple product of all factories ever since. Among his confectionery treats were candy chocolate cigars he called 'La Flor de Gunther Cigars' de chocolate.'
Captain William Barker of Hook and Ladder Company № 9, Chicago Fire Department, was born in Chicago on October 13, 1863, and joined the Fire Department on April 14, 1887. Due to the "Saturday Night Fire" on October 7, 1871, there was an empty water reservoir. At the disastrous fire in the Gunther confectionery establishment on October 8th the building was razed by the Great Chicago Fire. Gunther did not have insurance on his inventory.
But great feats of heroism were performed during the fire. About 250 panic-stricken girls who were at work making bonbon's for the autumn festival, were rescued uninjured. Baker and his men were badly burned about the face and hands. They said that hey would never forget this experience because the spectators were yelling at the firefighters begging them; "for God's sake, come down the ladder!"
—Encyclopedia of Illinois, Cook County Edition, Vol.2, Published 1905.
The factory and retail store at 125 South Clark Street was utterly destroyed, leaving Gunther with almost no resources. Besides the building and inventory lost in the fire, his newly formed collection of rare artifacts, including a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, was also destroyed.
Interior of Gunther's Confectionery, 125 South Clark Street, Chicago, c. 1870.
The Exterior of Gunther's Confectionery, 125 South Clark Street, Chicago, c. 1870.
Gunther reopened a temporary kitchen and store at 78 Madison under the McVicker Theater in 1871-72. His business began to take off and boom by 1875. He renamed his business "Gunther's Candies Company" and built a factory with a store at 212 State Street, "a model example of a retail store and factory."
"By 1886, his name as a manufacturer of candies was known from one end of the country to the other."
Excerpt from "Chicago by Day and Night. The Pleasure Seekers Guide" Published in 1892.
Coming to the consideration of candy, confectionery, and fine fruits, the name of Charles Gunther first challenges attention. The Gunther store, 212 State street, is without doubt one of the sights of the city, containing, as it does, in addition to the regular stock-in-trade, the Gunther museum, which the proprietor has spent the best years of his life in collecting. The museum embraces curios of all sorts and some of them are of great value. The entire collection is worth a fabulous amount and there is a well-defined impression abroad that the owner intends to give it to the city some day. The furnishings of the Gunther store are magnificent. Tall mirrors reflect the customer's shape at every step. The rear part of two floors is dotted with tables, at which iced drinks, ice cream, and light luncheons are served. Whether with a view of purchase or not, the store will well repay a visit. Gunther's candy is advertised the country over, and the concern enjoys an enormous out-of-town trade.
Gunther's Candies Company on the northwest corner of South Wabash Avenue and Harmon Court, Chicago, Illinois.
Gunther added another factory with a retail store on the ground floor at 1018 South Wabash Avenue in Chicago.
Gunther Confections Box Lid.
By the early 1900s, Chicago was called the world's Candy Capital, and Chicago was home to over one thousand candy purveyors, associations, and publications supporting confections.
At that time, he began decorating his candy store with antiques, artifacts, coins, and curiosities. In 1877, he purchased the deathbed of Abraham Lincoln, which he set up in his store.
Gunther Confections Tin Box.
Gunther introduced his caramel-coated popcorn with peanuts in the late 1860s, which became the rage at the 1893 World's Fair. It was later named "Cracker-Jack," and Gunther was given yet another nickname, the "Cracker-Jacks King." Frederick "Fritz" William Rueckheim and his brother Louis claim to have sold Molasses and sugar-coated popcorn mixed with peanuts at 113 Fourth Avenue (today's Federal Street) in Chicago beginning in 1871. The issue is that type of product was already known by the 1860s.
An original package for Cracker Jack.
Both claims involve introducing this product at the 1893 World's Fair. Whomever it was, Cracker Jack is still popular today! As a frequent business traveler, he used his trips to the East and South to scour for items to add to his collection. As his reputation grew, many people, including Civil War veterans, anxious to turn what they had in storage into cash, would contact him in Chicago. With wealthy customers like socialite Bertha Honoré Palmer, Gunther amassed a fortune and began purchasing historical artifacts to display in his factory. Many artifacts were from the Civil War, but his collection also had more unusual items, such as shrunken heads. Gunther was extraordinarily naive and was easily bilked by flimflam artists who sold him fake relics and antiquities like the West Point Chain, the mummified remains of Moses' foster mother Bithiah, and the "Skin of the Serpent that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden."
Garden of Eden Serpent Skin
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Gunther's collection continued to grow, and he eventually turned his sights to the Libby Prison, a former Confederate prison in Richmond, Virginia. Gunther purchased the structure and had it dismantled and shipped to Chicago, where it was reassembled and converted into a museum to house Gunther's artifacts.
The Libby Prison War Museum was on Wabash Avenue between 14th and 16th Streets, opened to the public in 1889, and hosted thousands of visitors within its first few months. The prison's infirmary was converted into the Lincoln Room, in which Gunther displayed Lincoln's deathbed and other artifacts associated with Lincoln's assassination. Although the Museum was in Chicago during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, it had no connection with the World's Fair and was never considered a Fair attraction. Gunther later tried to purchase an Egyptian pyramid and Philadelphia's Independence Hall to bring them to Chicago, but he was unsuccessful. During the 1890s, Gunther became involved with Chicago's growing convention industry. When the original Chicago Coliseum burned down in 1897, Gunther decided to build a new Coliseum on the site of the Libby Prison War Museum since attendance at the museum was beginning to wane. He was the organizer of the Coliseum Company and its first president. He gave many paintings to the Y.M.C.A. hotel, and some of his finest works adorned the walls of the South Shore Country club, to which they had been loaned. The prison building was disassembled, and parts of it were donated to the Chicago Historical Society, of which he was a director for twenty years. Gunther offered the rest of his collection to the City of Chicago, hoping that the city would build a museum for it in Garfield Park. Illinois law prevented such a building from being constructed on public parkland. Gunther served two terms (1896–1900) as a Chicago alderman and one term (1901–1903) as city treasurer. He was briefly a Gold Democrat and supported John McAuley Palmer for president in 1896. In 1908, Gunther sought the (regular) Democratic Party's nomination as an Illinois gubernatorial candidate but lost to Adlai E. Stevenson I.
He offered his entire art and historical collection to the city of Chicago, providing a fire-proof building was erected for it. The city made no appropriation, and he left it to his widow and son in his will. Gunther was a thirty-third-degree Mason, a member of the Medinah Temple shrine. Other affiliations were the Academy of Sciences and the Art Institute, of which he was a trustee. Geographical association, Chicago Association of Commerce, and Illinois Manufacturers Association. The Iroquois, Union League, Illinois Athletic, Aero, Germania, and Press Club were his clubs. Mr. Gunther was also a member of the Illinois State Historical Society. He died of pneumonia on February 10, 1920, at 83, at his home, 3601 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
3601 SOUTH MICHIGAN AVENUE, C.H.I.C.A.G.O. 2019 Estimated Market Value = $1,186,710 Three Story, Single Family, Masonry, 4 full bath Full and Unfinished Basement and Attic - No Garage Built-in 1889 Building Square Footage = 6,360
His funeral was at his home. He was buried in the family mausoleum at Rose Hill Cemetery in Chicago, where his son Whitman (1872-1907) had been interred thirteen years earlier.
The Gunther family mausoleum at Rose Hill Cemetery in Chicago.
After Gunther's death, the Chicago Historical Society purchased Gunther's vast collection, paying $21,321.20, far less than the originally agreed-on price from the estate of $150,000. By that point, Gunther's collection included Lincoln's deathbed, Lincoln's piano, Lincoln's carriage, Lincoln's dispatch to Gen. U.S. Grant saying, "Let the thing be pressed," a towel used to soak up Lincoln's blood, a shoe from John Wilkes Booth's horse, and other Lincoln memorabilia. Also in his vast collection was the table on which Gen. Robert E. Lee accepted Civil War surrender terms at Appomattox Court House. Shortly afterward, the Chicago Historical Society began building a $1 million museum to display its expanded collection. The building opened in 1932 at Clark Street and North Avenue and is currently known as the Chicago History Museum. Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.
