Soon after DuPage County was established in 1839, there began an immigration into the county of German families from Northern Europe. A trickle at first, the influx of German immigrants reached massive proportions in the decade before the Civil War (1850 to 1860) but continued for another thirty years until the early 1890s.
The hard core of today’s longtime residents of DuPage County are largely a blend of the Americans from New England who came first with the Germans from Europe. There was also a sprinkling of Irish immigrants.
Most important was the blending of the different religious and cultural heritages. The New Englanders were Protestant and generally opposed religious celebrations even on such special days as Christmas. The Germans were largely Catholic and celebrated many days of special religious significance with colorful festivals and other observances.
There were two vital areas on which the groups agreed. Both believed in democratic government and held that local government, that which is the closest to the people, should be strong. Both the Americans and the Germans assigned education a place of the highest importance.
Three problems in their Northern European homeland accounted for the waves of German families who came to the DuPage County area during the last century. The problems were (1) military conscription of men that was becoming universal, (2) political oppression under which the role of local government was minimized and (3) food shortages.
The opening of the Erie Canal provided a direct access by water for European immigrants to reach the prairie lands of northern Illinois. Many of these families found their way west from Chicago along the old Indian trails, several of which crossed DuPage County.
These German families, often several traveling together, moved westward across DuPage County along the old trails that are today Lake Street (U.S. Highway 20), Ogden Avenue (Highway 34), Roosevelt Road (Highway 38) and Butterfield Road (Highway 56). These families in search of new land on which to farm and build homes traveled until they found open land space that they liked. Then they staked their claims, and when the land became available for purchase, they bought it from the federal government.
Even early in the decade of the 1840s, a large number of German families had settled in Addison and York Townships. Many also settled in and around the new towns developing in southwestern DuPage, particularly in the Naperville and Warrenville communities.
Another intensive area of German settlement developed somewhat later in northern Milton Township and southern Bloomingdale Township. There also was another smaller settlement area south of the Roosevelt Road trail in what today is Glen Ellyn.
Like their New England neighbors, these German families found it difficult to believe there could be so much open prairie without rocks. They were also attracted by the large groves of trees which provided adequate lumber for their houses, barns and furniture.
Typical of the German families who settled in DuPage County during the mid-1800s is that of Amelia Kramer Kuhn, widow of the late Joseph Kuhn of Wheaton. Her family has lived in the North Milton-Bloomingdale Township area for more than one hundred twenty-five years. She was born on the farm where her daughter and son-in-law still reside. The house was built in 1855. The original house is now an integral part of the modem farm home in which Betty and Richard Kammes live today.
Amelia Kramer’s childhood was typical for the children of the many German farm families who lived here in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. Most of the families were related either by blood relationship or through marriage. The majority of them were German Catholics willing to travel great distances to exercise their religious beliefs.
As residents of the North Prairie Area, the Kramer family attended services at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church. Today only the tiny churchyard cemetery remains with burials dating from 1852 to 1911. This historic burial site is preserved for its natural prairie grasses by the DuPage County Audubon Society. St. Stephen’s was the second Catholic Church to be established in DuPage County. Sts. Peter and Paul Church of Naperville was the first.
The first school which Mrs. Kuhn attended was a small public school at the comer of Lies and Kuhn Roads, now a part of Carol Stream. Later, when St. Michael’s Catholic Church opened its school in Wheaton, Mrs. Kuhn and her cousins attended.
Mrs. Kuhn remembers how she and friends, Ronica Kramer, Agnes Dieter, Lucy Mittmann and Annie Fortman made the trip to school in Wheaton. They rode in a two-seated buggy pulled by a white horse. During the day, the horse and buggy were left at Frank Moss’ barn on Childs Street in Wheaton. At the end of the day, the girls would return to the barn and drive to their rural homes.
Mrs. Kuhn remembers that the Rev. William DeLaPorte, first pastor of St. Michael’s Church in Wheaton, taught catechism classes every day. On Friday afternoons, the girls were permitted to crochet or do fancy work, examples of which some of them still have. One nun was assigned to the school and she taught the girls such womanly arts as needlecraft work and social graces.
The little girls, most of them cousins, were all about the same age. Their pleasure in being together was evident at both work and play. They worked as a team to complete their tasks so they could enjoy their favorite pastimes. They helped in numerous ways, including picking dandelions and elderberries for wine as well as horseradish for a condiment for meats. Grapes, cherries and rhubarb also were used to make wines for the household.
There were New Year’s Eve parties, Christmas celebrations, barn dances, threshing bees and barn raisings. For any of these events, the neighbors pooled their energies as well as sandwiches, coffee, desserts and other goodies.
Often the get-togethers centered on some farming activity in which neighbors gathered and went from farm to farm working on some difficult farming operation together as during threshing at grain harvest, putting up hay, plowing or corn husking ... all difficult farming tasks before today’s power farm machinery became available.
Other times, the gatherings were ones of mercy, for farm families always pitched in to help neighbors who may have been ill or injured. At other times, the social events were simply enjoyable gatherings where everyone could sing, dance the Kramer, Kuhn, Dieter, Hahn and Stark families in north Milton and south Bloomingdale Townships. In the Glen Ellyn area were the Lambert, Wagner and Hoffman families.
The differences between the New Englanders and the Germans were most easily seen in the observances of holidays. The German families marked their religious holidays with festive occasions, a sharp contrast to their New England neighbors for whom religious holidays were very solemn occasions and with merriment being frowned upon. A major point of friction for the Europeans and their New England neighbors were the festive airs which accompanied the Christmas holidays and the birth of Christ. The Germans decorated trees to mark their holiday and brought the custom of the visits of St. Nicholas bearing gifts to the children of the community.
The New Englanders did not believe in observing Christmas as a holiday. Jonathan Blanchard, founder and first president of Wheaton College, for years did not permit students to have even Christmas Day off from classes.
For the New Englanders in DuPage County, the most festive holiday of the year was Thanksgiving, a day observed since the Pilgrims arrived on the New England coast in 1620. This was the time of celebration for the harvest season, usually a bountiful one on the farmlands of DuPage County. This was the time of family gatherings.
Fortunately, there were a number of forces that tended to draw the Germans and New Englanders together in DuPage County. Both had a deep respect for religion. Both placed high value on education. Both were deeply interested in local government. Especially important before the Civil War, both groups vigorously opposed slavery. The resulting blend of interests gave to DuPage County a citizen interest not found to the same degree in other Illinois counties.
There were spectacular results from the blending of the two groups. The fusion of the Germans and the New Englanders was instrumental in the rapid development of the Republican Party in DuPage County and Illinois in 1854. Two years later, the German-born Francis A. Hoffman, a minister and teacher in Elmhurst, was elected lieutenant governor of Illinois, the first state official to be elected from DuPage County. He was unable to serve because his citizenship papers had not been long enough on file. However, he was reelected to the same office in 1860 on the ticket that made Abraham Lincoln our nation’s sixteenth president. He served as Illinois’ Civil War lieutenant governor.
Two other families who have become prominent in the business, political, educational and cultural lives of DuPage County were the Goltermanns who settled in the York Center area near Lombard and their neighbors, the Deickes. Originally, the Deickes settled in the Schaumburg area. Later they came do DuPage County. Among the children born to the Deicke-Goltermann marriage was Edwin F. Deicke whose name is well-known throughout all of DuPage County for his generous donations to worthy medical, educational and cultural as well as recreational projects.
Young Deicke grew up in his parents’ home and general store at the southwest comer of Meyers and Roosevelt Roads. His grandparents, the Golternanns, lived on a nearby farm. Later Deicke entered the insurance business after serving in World War I. He operated his insurance business from his father’s former store until moving it into modem buildings in other parts of the county. He still serves on the board of directors for the Addison Farmers Mutual Insurance Company Group. the oldest fire insurance company in Illinois, being established in Addison in 1852.
The impact of the German families who had settled in DuPage County has been felt in many fields and professions. Concordia Teachers College, now of River Forest, traces its roots back to the Evangelical Training Institute founded in Addison in the 1860s. The Lutheran Church orphanage still serves the community today with Lutherbrook and the Lutheran Welfare Services in Addison.
The camaraderie within German family units is still recognizable today in areas where many of the old-time families still reside. Brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and four generation families provide a strong bulwark for many communities in DuPage County.
For many of them, this is no problem since their ancestors helped carve the prime lands of our area from the open prairie. They combined their beliefs and talents with those of the New England and Eastern settlers who like themselves wanted nothing more than a chance to improve their lives and those of future generations.