Lost Towns of Illinois - Ontarioville, Illinois.

Ontarioville, Illinois, was located just south of U.S. Route 20 (Lake Street) at the intersection of County Farm Road and Ontarioville Road in Hanover Park, Illinois.

In 1846 Ringgold was the first name given to the village of Hanover Park, the town that straddles the Cook and DuPage County lines. The Frink & Walker Stage Coach, carried townspeople along an old Indian trail called "Lake Trail" (later becoming Lake Street) linking Chicago and Galena from 1832 until about the mid-1860s.

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

Wilhelm Heinrich Harmening built a frame two-story house with a coupla sometime between 1865 and 1872 (on today's Lake Street US Rt 20) in Ontarioville. The Harmening House still stands, dilapidated, on the property now owned by the Central Sod Farm in Hanover Park.

The Harming House was razed on May 31, 2021.

The Harmening House

The Harmening House

SEE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE INSIDE OF THE HARMENING HOUSE

In 1872, Colonel Rosell M. Hough (Roselle, Illinois' namesake), founder and president of the Chicago & Pacific Railroad (later the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad) laid tracks on the property of Edwin Bartlett after he donated more than seven acres for the construction of a depot. Luther Bartlett donated a 40-acre "woodlot," the source of the Bartlett family's lumber and firewood. 

People donating land for depots along the right-of-way were allowed to name the villages that were formed. Edwin and Luther Bartlett, brothers, each established stations named "Bartlett" along the Chicago & Pacific Railroad line. Luther's station kept the name Bartlett, but to avoid confusion, Edwin renamed his station "Ontario" in 1873, after a legend that the site was built on an old Indian trail between Lake Ontario and Green Bay, Wisconsin. 

A post office was established in Ontarioville in 1873.

Edwin Bartlett began setting down plans for the village in 1874 and by the 1880s the community was thriving as new homes were built in Bartlett's subdivision between the railroad tracks and Ontarioville Road. The little railroad stop became a connection to the larger world, with service extending to Omaha, Sioux City, and beyond. 

Ontarioville's population was 250 in 1920, but when Lake Street became a major artery in the 1920s, a bypass skirted the town and an underpass went under the railroad tracks. Traffic and development were diverted away from the older section of town, in DuPage County. Slow development began on the Cook County side.

In 1925 many people purchased lots in the new Grant Highway (today: Lake Street / US 20) subdivision, but only a few homes were built before the Great Depression. In 1947 construction stalled again when the developers left town with the down-payment money. 

There were so few commuters in 1955 that Ontarioville was taken off the schedule as a train stop. Nearby Streamwood was expanding rapidly, and the Cook County portion of Ontarioville, afraid of annexation by its neighbor, incorporated as Hanover Park in 1958.

Although the community wished to retain a rustic feel, it also hoped to prevent further encroachment of surrounding land by Streamwood. The village formed its own realty firm, Hanover Builders, to begin Hanover Park First Addition subdivision in 1959. The village also began to annex commercial property along Ontarioville Road in DuPage County. 

North of Irving Park Road industries began to boom. Tradewinds Shopping Center on the northeast corner of Irving Park and Barrington Roads opened in 1968. A large annexation of DuPage County land took place in 1970, and by 1990 Hanover Park encompassed nearly five square miles. From a 1970 population of 11,916, the community nearly tripled by 1990 to 32,895.

The boundary between Cook and DuPage Counties produced an invisible dividing line for Hanover Park; now, the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway physically divides the village.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The History of Keeneyville, a Bedroom Community in unincorporated DuPage County, Illinois.

The area called Keeneyville, which never incorporated, was named after Albert F. Keeney (1872-1950), who was among the first settlers.

Lake Street School, Keeneyville, Illinois. Circa 1950s.

On October 4, 1897, Lake Street School District 20, Bloomingdale, opened the doors of a one-room log cabin schoolhouse with 9 students, ranging in age from five to twelve years old, and Ms. Eunice P. Batten, the only teacher. The first school building was used until approximately 1914. Then sometime in the 1920s, a new building was built. However, there is no information available where classes were held. By 1930, Lake Street School had two classrooms and 18 students.

A Word about Albert Keeney.

Albert Keeney, a native-born Iowan, and a real estate developer decided to subdivide his farmland along Lake Street into individual plots for homes. The Keeneyville subdivision was created when Albert and Virginia Keeney signed and recorded the land plat in 1932.

The original subdivision, East of Gary Road, and South of Lake Street (US 20), contained approximately 115, one-acre lots.

People knew Albert as a very colorful man. His hair was white and he always wore a red Marshall Field necktie which he bought by the gross (twelve dozen).

Mr. Keeney became a leader in the community. He donated land to the Keeneyville Bible Church in addition to making other major contributions to the church. The Lake Street School also benefited from Albert's generosity, as he even donated the sign that hung over the school's entrance.

A Keeneyville Old-Timer Recalls.
Mrs. Mary "Mae" (Durkin) Miller, who lived to be 100 years old, and her husband Francis, were one of the first homeowners in Keeneyville. The lake in Keeneyville was considered by the local Indians to be a great fishing spot. According to Mrs. Miller, the lake was reduced to a swamp when drainage ditches were cut, and fill material was dumped in the lake during the original construction of Gary Road back in the 1930s.

The small hidden lake in Keeneyville is still there.

Keeneyville's Hidden Lake

Maps show Virginia Road going south from Lake Street (U.S. 20) two blocks to where Virginia ends at Lawrence Avenue but that's incorrect. Virginia actually dead-ends at Foster Avenue which is one block south of Lake Street due to a tiny lake that interrupts the street further south. You'd never realize that there is a body of water there because it's hidden by surrounding trees, bushes, and scrubs. South of the lake Virginia picks-up again and continues a block and a half south to Lawrence.

Vernon Drury Case & Case Foundation Company.
In 1952 Vernon Drury Case and his wife Henrietta Ellis bought ten acres of farmland on Lake Street (US 20) with a seriously dilapidated Victorian-style house and several, barely standing, out-buildings in Keeneyville, Illinois.

The Case house on Lake Street in Keeneyville. Year unknown.

The Case House in 1960, Keeneyville. Photo by Margaret Glorso Tynan.

This is where the Case Foundation Company began by raising capital for their new company, which would become the world headquarters of "Case Foundation Company." The company laid foundations for many of Chicago's great buildings, including Marina City, Sears "Willis" Tower, Standard Oil Building, and John Hancock Center. Vern Case is considered one of Keeneyville's most successful businessmen.

Keeneyville about 1949. Photo emailed to me by Vernon Case Gauntt.

Keeneyville - Case Foundation Company. (1952)
Photo emailed to me by Vernon Case Gauntt.

The Case house now. Note the front door had been moved.

A beautifully written Biography of Vernon Drury Case, written by his grandson, Vernon Case Gauntt.

Big Trouble in Little Keeneyville.
Because Keeneyville is such a small subdivision, not too much excitement occurs there. But on October 30, 1955, the Chicago Daily Tribune reports:

18 TEEN-AGERS FINED $375 FOR BATTLE PLANS

Eighteen young men arrested October 22 as they were about to begin a gang fight in Keeneyville, DuPage county, were fined a total of $375, including $108 court cost, by Kennith H. Winters, Bloomingdale township justice of the peace, in Roselle, Illinois yesterday [October 29, 1955].

The fines [per offender], including costs, ranged from $16 to $31 ($160 to $310 today). In addition each of the teen-agers was orderd to observe a 9 p.m. curfew for 90 days, and to be home by 8 p.m. thru tomorrow night. Each was charged with disorderly conduct. An adult overheard discussion of the battle plans and notified the Dupage county sheriff's office, which sent several squads to the scene. They arrived at the intended battleground, a school yard at Lake Street and Gary Avenue, just as fists were about to fly.

Another article says the gang fight was between Keeneyville boys, which called themselves “The Keeneyville Swamp Rats,” vs. a group of Roselle boys.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Biography of Overachiever, Colonel Rosell M. Hough (1819-1892).

In 1836 Elijah Hough (pronounced Huff) and his wife Electa, his daughter Cornelia, and two sons, Oramel and sixteen-year-old Rosell (spelled without an "e" on the end), moved into the Roselle and Bloomingdale area from Massachusetts.

Rosell worked as a butcher and supervisor in the Chicago meatpacking business until 1850, when he and his brother, Oramel, opened their own meatpacking plant on Halsted Street and Orange Avenue (79th Avenue). At the London Exposition of 1852, their beef won first prize for quality of "imported meat products," thus receiving a large contract for supplying beef to the English troops fighting in the Crimean War (1853-1856).

He was later a partner in the firm of Hough, Hills and Co., soap and candle manufacturers which, believe it or not, used the by-products from their meat packing company.

Rosell was elected and served as a Chicago alderman for the 2nd district from 1855 thru 1856. 

Rosell joined the Union Army on Septem­ber 10, 1861, with the rank of major. He served in Missouri, where he was wounded. He reenlisted June 13, 1862, with the rank of colonel. In 1864 Colonel Hough was active in recruiting volunteers for the army. With his help 6,000 men were recruited. 

Colonel Rosell M. Hough is seated in the middle.

After the Civil War, Colonel Hough was elected the first president of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce in 1864, and serving as a founder of the Chicago Union Stockyards and supervised its construction until opened in June of 1865. Rosell retired from the meat packing business.

When President Lincoln's funeral train arrived in Chicago on the way to Springfield, Rosell led the funeral procession on May 1, 1865, marching on Michigan Boulevard. It was estimated that 37,000 people marched and 150,000 lined route.

President Lincoln’s Funeral Procession in Chicago on May 1, 1865.
Harper’s Weekly Magazine.

Rosell was founder and president of the "Chicago and Pacific Railroad Company" which was organize in 1865 by a special act of the Legislature of Illinois.  

In 1868 when Rosell returned to the Roselle and Bloomingdale area, he found things changing. Cotton production in the South had all but stopped as an aftermath of the Civil War. There was a demand for cloth that could be produced from flax. Roselle began growing this crop on land he had bought from his father, Elijah, before his death in 1851.

Photograph claimed to be the Hough house in on Prospect Street in Roselle/Bloomingdale. Year unknown.

Rosell established the "Illinois Linen Company" which manufactured linen and rope. The factory was located in Bloomingdale on the northwest corner of Chicago and Elgin Road (in 1891 the name changed to Elgin Avenue, then later to Irving Park Road) and Roselle Road, across the road from Henry Holstein's Grist Mill.

Vacant Illinois Linen Factory. Circa 1908.

Vacant Illinois Linen Factory. Circa 1908.

As President of the Chicago and Pacific Railroad, Col. Hough was able to influence the route. He saw future growth for his linen factory if the train would come through Wood Dale, Itasca, Medinah, and Roselle instead of Addison and Bloomingdale. It is rumored that he paid $10,000 to have the survey changed so the train line would go through Roselle, Illinois.

Rosell hired ex-convicts and ruffians from Chicago as laborers and built boarding houses near the factory to accommodate the factory workers. Their notorious drinking and fighting earned the town the nickname “Raise Hell.” One boarding house was nicknamed "The Beehive” because of the number of people living there and the amount of in-and-out foot traffic.

"The Beehive” so named due to the number of people who lived there. Inside was kitchen, a parlor, and bedrooms with two and three-tiered bunk beds in them. The residence, located at about 25 South Roselle Road was built in the 1870's by Rosell Hough as an Inn/Boarding House for workers in his flax factory. The house was razed in 1973.

The village was first platted and offically named Roselle in 1875 and incorporated on October 7, 1922.

Colonel Hough stayed in Roselle until 1880, at which time he sold his business interests in this area Hough then settled in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he had a cattle company and land holdings. In declining health, the Colonel returned to Chicago in 1890, where he died March 8, 1892. Rosell had no children.

In 1895 the flax factory was shut down. Cotton was once again king in the South; moreover the Roselle soil had become exhausted after its many years of growing flax. These two reasons rendered the flax factory useless.

The building was converted to a tile and brick company by Chicago businessmen who had purchased the property. By 1900 the clay that had been found in the area also gave out, and the brick and tile company was closed. The building sat vacant until it was razed sometime in the 1920's.

Vacant Brickyard Company Factory. Photograph Circa 1908.

Rosell M. Hough and Wife are entombed at the Old Union Cemetery in Lincoln, Illinois.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.