With the transfer of the county seat to Wheaton, the work of Warren Wheaton and the other early settlers in the central part of DuPage County was complete.
Although a number of other settlers, especially Erastus Gary and Warren’s brother, Jesse, were also responsible for the great progress, it was Warren Wheaton who was the major force behind the final routing of the county’s first railroad through central DuPage, the establishment of Wheaton College and the transfer of the county seat to Wheaton. DuPage County’s basic shape today still reflects these momentous developments during the first three decades.
By 1870 the stage was set for new major developments in DuPage County, improvements that would be brought about by the sons and daughters of the pioneer settlers who had made possible the creation of the county and the great progress of its first three decades.
By 1870 the DuPage County population stood at sixteen thousand six hundred and eighty five. The rapid influx of new settlers for the first time had slowed in the decade between 1860 and 1870 due to the preoccupation with the Civil War and the opening up of new farming areas in states and territories west of Illinois.
Now there were new railroads to be built and new towns to be established along their routes.
Another factor in the new expansion in DuPage County that began in the 1870s was the development of a new Illinois constitution. Eighty-five men met in Springfield in 1870 to write a new constitution that gave local governments more authority to make decisions, created the stable court system with a seven-member state supreme court at the top and generally opened the way for the residents of the state to meet and take advantage of the new conditions and changes largely resulting from the settling of the Civil War and the slavery issue.
The 1870 constitution was responsible for the court system that exists in Illinois today. The new document broke the legal logjams developing in many counties, including DuPage, as a result of increasing populations. After 1874 the number of circuit and county judges was increased to expedite heavier court case loads.
Under the new constitution at least one judge had to be elected, by the people, from each county. Probate courts were created, an indication that the citizens of the state were prospering and that a system for handling the taxation of estates after death was necessary.
Provision was made for the state’s attorney’s office in DuPage and counties throughout the state. Justices of the peace and magistrate judges were to be elected by the people rather than appointed as they had been under the 1848 constitution.
The 1870 constitution provided for establishing fifty-one legislative districts with reapportionment every ten years as required by the federal census. Provision was made by which a two-thirds majority of each branch of the Illinois legislature could override a governor’s veto, still the case today.
DuPage County was represented in the 1870 constitutional convention by Hiram Cody of Naperville and Charles Wheaton of Aurora. Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune whose summer home was soon to be located west of Wheaton (now Cantigny) was also a delegate to the 1870 convention.
Soon another major event occurred that forever changed the face of DuPage County and those surrounding it. The summer of 1871 had been a busy one for residents of the county. It also was a very hot and dry summer. As the last days of summer turned to hot autumn days, men and women throughout the Chicago region kept their eyes alert for the possibility of fire.
A fire of major consequence in Wheaton wiped out the entire block of Front Street from Hale east to Main and occurred a few weeks before the Chicago fire in October, 1871. The Wheaton community, like most of its neighbors, relied on people leaving their places of business and their homes to help extinguish any fires. Today, we know these departments as volunteer fire departments.
Among the persons who lost business property in the 1871 Wheaton fire was a man well-known in the fields of mapmaking and writing histories, Rufus Blanchard. He was no relation to another famous Wheaton resident with the same last name, Jonathan Blanchard, who was president of Wheaton College.
Rufus Blanchard, like many of the other residents in DuPage County, had come from New England where he was born in 1821. He had begun his career as a hunter and trapper in the wilderness of Ohio.
Blanchard listened to the tales of adventure and danger which his fellow hunters and trappers told and made notes. His first experiences with publishing did not come as a writer but rather as a salesman for Harper Brothers publishing house in New York. Later, he operated book stores in Lowell, Massachusetts; Cincinnati, Ohio and New Orleans, Louisiana.
In 1849, Blanchard returned to New York and entered the map publication business with C. Morse, son of Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph. The process they used had been designed by young Morse’s uncle who was editor of the New York Observer. The technique was called cerography.
Blanchard moved to the Chicago area in 1854 and continued mapmaking. He moved his family and his mapmaking process to Wheaton in the 1860s. In 1867, he joined George F. Cram Company as a partner. He and Cram made maps from the surveys which had been completed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
While engaged in the art of mapmaking, Blanchard became interested in publishing the tales and adventures of the people whom he interviewed and whose properties he and Cram mapped. Today, Cram Company continues to make globes of the world.
After the Wheaton fire, Blanchard gathered up his instruments which could be salvaged from the ashes and began his operation in a small building at the rear of his home at Wesley and Main Streets in Wheaton. There, his precious and valuable library, his literary reproductions, his historical notes, maps, plates and tools would be safe until another bad fire in the business district in 1885 wiped out his map house and threatened his home. The only items which were saved were a few books which Mrs. Blanchard had been able to remove before the fire became too severe. With the help of neighbors, the Blanchard home was saved.
The work of a lifetime had been wiped out in the fire. However, by the year of 1885, Blanchard had written a history of Cook and DuPage Counties, a history of the City of Chicago and the history of the Northwest Territory.
By 1871, many DuPage County residents were commuting on the two major rail fines, Chicago and North Western and the Chicago Burlington and Quincy to jobs and places of business in Chicago. The Chicago and North Western route went through Elmhurst, Lombard, Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, West Chicago and unincorporated areas west to Geneva and beyond. The Chicago Burlington and Quincy went through the southern sector of the county stopping at such communities as Hinsdale, Clarendon Hills, Downers Grove, Lisle, Naperville and west to Aurora and points beyond.
Judge Elbert Gary, whose father had been one of the earliest settlers in DuPage County and one of the founders of Wheaton, had his law offices located in downtown Chicago, as well as downtown Wheaton. His brother, Noah, also had offices in Chicago, as did Hiram Cody of Naperville. Thomas Bryan of Elmhurst had his business in downtown Chicago as did Sheldon and Charles Peck of Lombard.
In the night sky, the red glow of the fire could be seen even in western DuPage County. The grandparents of some of today’s residents recalled in later years that they had seen the bright glow in the eastern sky as the city burned. While residents from the city were fleeing from the conflagration, with little more than the clothes they were wearing, some DuPage County residents were traveling to the city for a variety of reasons. Some of them wanted to sightsee for this was the worst of fires in Chicago. Others went to the city to offer whatever aid they could to help the survivors of the fire. Some offered their own homes as a place where distant relatives or friends might stay until they recovered from the shock of such a great loss.
Many Chicagoans who had lost their homes made a decision to move farther away from the city where they might enjoy the countryside and feel a little more certain that a major fire would not wipe out the blocks and blocks of homes as it had done in the city.