The DuPage County that we have today was created and largely shaped by a small group of less than twenty-six early settlers. They were brilliant and aggressive individuals with wide capabilities. These are the leaders who took a stretch of open prairie, broken up by streams and wooded areas, and in fifteen years turned it into an Illinois county destined from the first to have citizens who played an important role in the affairs of the state and the nation
The county that they created, not large compared with many Illinois counties, has been the home of more leaders in more kinds of positive endeavor than any other county of its size in the nation. These pacesetter men and women of DuPage have distinguished themselves in a wide range of activities ... industry, religion, science, politics, writing, sports, publishing, energy, education, agriculture and many others.
These early DuPage leaders and the settlers they represented were unusual in several respects. They were Americans rather than immigrants (only two were foreign born). They came largely from the New England area and had the same language and traditions. They were educated, deeply religious and with common goals. They came, not as land speculators, but seeking permanent homes in which their families could provide better opportunities for their children.
From the beginning these settlers adopted the practice of donating land and labor for permanent improvements. In pioneer DuPage County there were public schools more than twenty years before public education was mandated throughout the entire state by the General Assembly.
After three years of fact-finding and research, the DuPage Heritage Gallery pinpoints the activities and contributions of these early DuPage leaders who created the county, laid out the first roads, many of which are still in use, brought the railroads, established most of today’s towns, built the first schools and churches and organized the first colleges. Their biographies follow:
WHEATON
John Quincy Adams, 1824-1899. Born in Hopkinsville, Massachusetts. He held seat No. Nine on the Chicago Board of Trade. Owned many business lands and buildings in City of Chicago. Moved to Wheaton in 1876, built his home. Made several donations to his adopted community including the ninety-year-old building which originally housed the Adams Memorial Library and now the DuPage County Historical Museum. On his daughter’s death, she willed to the city the property on which the Adams home had stood, now known as Adams Park and owned and operated by the city.
ELMHURST (Cottage Hill)
Gerry Bates, 1800-1878. Born in Massachusetts, he arrived in DuPage County with his in-laws, the Hoveys, in 1842 and claimed eighty acres of land in what is today Elmhurst.
His brother-in-law, Darius Hovey, built Bates a house. Named Hill Cottage, it served as an inn for the farmers traveling to and from the Fox River and beyond with their produce for the markets in Chicago. Bates was also postmaster forty years in the Cottage Hill-Elmhurst community. The name was changed in 1869. He donated land for the Galena and Chicago Union Railway with the understanding they would build the station across from his home and store. His son, Frederick, born in Elmhurst was one of the city’s first doctors. Today, two of his great grandsons, Peter and Henry, are prominent county bankers.
WHEATON
Jonathan Blanchard, 1811-1892. Born in Rockingham, Vermont. Pastor, educator, publisher and staunch abolitionist. Founder and first president of Wheaton College (1860). Close friend of Harriett Beecher Stowe and her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, both staunch abolitionists.
DOWNERS GROVE
Israel Blodgett, 1779-1861. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Had a long career as a blacksmith in the United States Army before coming to this area. He settled first in a portion of what today is Will County. Prominent community leader in the Downers Grove area. An abolitionist who knew both Elijah and Owen Lovejoy, his home was one of the stops on the Underground Railway. One of his sons, Wells, became president of the Wabash Railroad headquartered in St. Louis. He earned the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Civil War. A second son, Henry, became a prominent United States judge.
ELMHURST (Cottage Hill)
Thomas B. Bryan, 1828-1906. Born in Virginia. Was a prominent Chicago businessman who made his home in Elmhurst. During the Civil War, one of the units was named Bryan’s Blues in the Union Army. He was first vice-president of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair of which today only the building now housing the Museum of Science and Industry survives. He entertained many prominent political figures in his Elmhurst home and was responsible for the name being changed from Cottage Hill to Elmhurst, so named because of the many elm trees in that city.
DOWNERS GROVE
J. James Cole, 1833-1901. Born in Putnam County, New York. His father and brothers founded the first circus unit in the United States near his home in New York. Settled first near Big Woods in DuPage County, moved later to Downers Grove where he farmed until entering the Union Army in 1861. Began a general merchandise store with E. Thatcher at Downers Grove in 1865. Was elected supervisor of Downers Grove Township in 1866, later being elected county clerk for DuPage County. Moved to Wheaton when the new courthouse was completed in that city in 1868.
DOWNERS GROVE
Pierce Downer, 1782-1863. Born in Plainfield, Vermont. In 1833, he left Rutland, New York, to join his eldest son, Stephen E., in Chicago where the son was a mason on the first lighthouse to be constructed in Chicago. His son told him of the rich farmlands that lay to the west of Chicago and which were attracting many New Englanders. Pierce Downer, then 51 years of age, selected a site in Section Six of Downers Grove Township, a geographic location named for him as was the community of Downers Grove a few years later. His daughter, Adeline, joined him in the fall of 1834 and kept house for him until his wife, Lucy Ann, and his youngest son, Elon, arrived. A farmer all his life, Downer was often called as a mediator over land disputes in the formative years of the county. He and his wife died one day apart and were buried together.
WHEATON
Thomas J. Drummond, 1809-1890. Born in Bristol Mills, Maine, a state legislator from Galena, he represented that community’s interests on the board of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (now the Chicago and North Western Railway). A federal district and appeals court judge for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, he was a resident of both Winfield and Wheaton during his long judicial career. He was one of the founders of Trinity Episcopal Church, Wheaton.
WAYNE
Daniel Dunham, 1821-1910. Born in Cattaraugus County, New York. Was a large landholder in Wayne Township. His farms supplied large quantities of milk for Chicago residents. He was an importer and breeder of Percheron horses, being one of the top three breeders in the United States. Came westward with his father, Solomon.
HINSDALE (Fullersburg)
Benjamin Fuller, 1812-1868. Born in Broome County, New York. He taught the Potawatomi Indians on Salt Creek to shoe their horses and built a grist mill on his farm. He platted the town of Fullersburg which later became a part of the Village of Hinsdale and operated an inn on the road which today is Ogden Avenue. Abraham Lincoln was reportedly a guest of the hotel.
WINFIELD
Charles Wesley Gary (Rev.), 1801-1871. Born in Putnam, Connecticut, came west soon after his two brothers, Jude and Erastus, and sister, Orinda, had located in Winfield Township in 1831. He traveled on the boat commanded by Capt. Joseph Naper, founder of Naperville. Gary’s Mill at what is now West Chicago was founded by the Gary family. In addition to operating a mill and farming, he was one of the earliest Methodist circuit riders in Northern Illinois and founded the Warrenville Methodist Church in 1857 (a building with National Landmark registry). The entire Gary family moved to DuPage County.
WHEATON
Erastus Gary, 1806-1888. Born in Pomfret, Connecticut. Along with his sister, Orinda, and brother, Jude, staked the first claim for land in Winfield Township in 1831 (much of it a part of St. James Farm today). He was the first settler to cross the Central DuPage area. Was one of the founders of Gary’s Mill and later moved to Wheaton. Active in civic life, he played an important role in bringing the railroad through the Wheaton area, helped establish Wheaton College and served both community and township as an elected official.
WAYNE
John Glos, Jr., 1812-1882. Born in Rhenish Bavaria, Germany. He first lived in Boston, Massachusetts where he taught private lessons in German. In 1837, he brought his own family, his father and two brothers-in-law to the high ground west of Chicago to the community of Cottage Hill (today’s Elmhurst). After the families were established in the York Township farming area, John Jr. moved west to St. Charles on the Fox River where he became engaged in the manufacture of household furniture. Later, he acquired farmland in Wayne Township. He was elected clerk of the circuit court in 1856 and moved to Naperville. Returning to his Wayne home, he was reelected circuit clerk in 1868 and 1872.
NAPERVILLE
Bailey Hobson, 1798-1850. Born in Lost Creek, Tennessee; grew up in Indiana. Traveling northeast toward the vast prairies near Fort Dearborn, he and his family are recognized as the first settlers in what is now DuPage County. His grist mill was one of the first in northern Illinois and drew farmers from miles around. Both he and his wife, Clarissa, were educated people. They brought appreciation for education, music and the arts into the newly organized area which became DuPage County. The Hobson home was the site for one of the first schools in this area. Hobson served as an appointed official for the formal organization of our first county government.
ELMHURST (Cottage Hill)
Francis A. Hoffman, 1822-1903. Born in Herford, Prussia. He came to America and began his business career as a bootblack in Chicago as well as a printer’s devil, a trade he learned from his father. He moved into Addison Township in this county serving as a teacher and preacher. The church was located near the present site of the Evangelical Lutheran Church on Route 83. In 1847, he severed connections with the church when it split into two groups. He studied law and perfected his English language skills becoming a banker, land agent, financier, agricultural expert and editor. He helped found the Republican Party in Illinois and was first elected to the post of lieutenant governor in 1856. However, he had not allowed sufficient time to lapse since he had filed his citizenship papers. He sought the post in 1860 and was elected on the ticket with President Abraham Lincoln, a friend, and Governor Richard Yates as Illinois’ top leaders in the Civil War. His home was in the Addison Township sector of Elmhurst.
ROSELLE
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| Roselle A. Hough |
Roselle A. Hough 1820-1892. Although Roselle Hough lived most of the time in Chicago, he always listed his official address as "Bloomingdale Township." In the twenty-five years between 1843 and 1868, Hough became one of Chicago’s outstanding businessmen. During the same time he became an important landholder in northern Bloomingdale Township. With his younger brother, Oramel, he built a packing house on the Chicago River. The Hough brothers introduced the concept of using the by-products of the slaughtering business and began marketing oils and tallows and later soaps and candles. In 1863 Hough was elected the first president of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce. When President Lincoln’s body was brought to Chicago, Hough was grand marshal of the funeral parade. In 1865 he headed the firm that built the Union Stock Yards with the officials of nineteen packing houses and a number of railroads on the board of directors. The large hotel serving the new stockyards was named the Hough House in his honor. When the hotel burned in 1912, it was replaced by the famed Stockyards Inn. Earlier Hough had three hundred acres of his Bloomingdale Township land surveyed and platted as the "Roselle Addition," the village of Roselle acquiring its name in this manner. In 1868 Hough built a large factory in Roselle to process flax into linen and rope. Hough built a hotel, The Beehive, where he lived for some time along with workers in the factory. He built Roselle’s first post office. In 1873 Hough was able to get the Chicago and Pacific Railroad (now the Milwaukee Railroad) to change its route from Chicago to Elgin so that the rail line passed through Roselle rather than the Village of Bloomingdale in order that it might serve his linen factory.
WEST CHICAGO (Junction, Turner and Turner Junction)
Dr. Joseph McConnell, birthdate not known-1877. Born in New York State, he was one of the original developers in the community which is known today as West Chicago. John B. Turner and his partner, John Van Nortwick, platted and recorded forty acres. C. W. Winslow platted an additional twenty acres for the community of Junction. McConnell platted seventy acres of land for a separate community of Turner. Eventually the two communities were merged in 1896. Meanwhile the name of the community had been changed to West Chicago. From the day the first train for the Galena and Chicago Union Railway went through the town, Junction, Turner, Turner Junction and now West Chicago has served as a major railway center with railroading its chief industry. The original name for the community in 1855 has been Relay, signifying the importance of the town as a railroad supply point.
BLOOMINGDALE (Meacham’s Grove)
Meacham Brothers (Silas, Lyman and Harvey), birthdates and date of deaths are not known. Born in Bloomingdale, Vermont, the three brothers acquired twelve hundred acres of land in northeastern Bloomingdale Township calling it Meacham’s Grove, a name it used until the 1920s when the Shrine organization purchased a large segment of the land and constructed their well-known Medinah Country Club near Lake Street and Medinah Road. Today, the Meacham’s Grove homes are in Medinah, an unincorporated community. Except for the Galena settlement and the nearby towns, Meacham’s Grove was, in 1835, the farthest north of any settlement in Illinois. Lyman was elected a justice of the peace when the township was still a part of Cook County in 1834. The settlement was approximately a mile and a half north of the old Indian and army trail roads which connected Fort Dearborn on Lake Michigan with the settlement at Green Bay, Wisconsin, a main camp for the Indians. Today, Army Trail Road bisects the township from east to west.
NAPERVILLE
Joseph Naper, 1798-1862. Born in Vermont, he traveled with his parents to Ashtabula, Ohio in his youth where he helped Ws father who was a ship builder. The Naper ships plied the Great Lakes with Fort Dearborn on Lake Michigan being one of the ports. On an early trip, Naper acquired lots near the fort as did many of the first settlers to reach the Chicago River port. On a later trip on the Telegraph, a ship Joseph Naper built, he was joined by his brother, John. Both families and five other families settled in the area which became a part of DuPage County. Joseph platted the town of Naperville, surveying the property and was elected to the Illinois legislature for the first time in 1836. Here he laid the groundwork and supervised passage of the bill which broke DuPage County away from Cook County in 1839. Also serving on the committee was Abraham Lincoln, a new legislator from the Springfield area and our nation’s sixteenth President. Joseph Naper returned to the Illinois legislature in 1852. His actions again provided a means for establishing new communities in the State of Illinois. He served as a captain in the Blackhawk War and was one of the DuPage County men who served in the Mexican War of 1846. He became the first village president of Naperville in 1857.
He was one of the stockholders in the Old Plank Road which connected Aurora with Chicago. Another major stockholder was Colonel Julius M. Warren of nearby Warrenville. As with many of the early pioneers, Naper engaged in a number of businesses and trades as he helped in the development of the new county.
LOMBARD
Sheldon Peck, 1797-1868. Born in Cornwall, Vermont. Family lived in a covered wagon for two years while the home which still stands at the southwest comer of Grace Street and Parkside Drive was built (the oldest home remaining in Lombard). He was a portrait painter with an art studio in Chicago shared by his son, Charles (a founder of the forerunner of the Art Institute of Chicago). He also maintained a studio in St. Louis, Missouri and was an artist for the medical groups performing surgery. With ten children, the Pecks early established a school in the community on their eighty-acre farm.
WHEATON
John Wesley Powell, 1834-1902. Born in Mount Morris, New York. He came to Wheaton with his parents and several brothers and sisters when his father became one of the first instructors at Illinois Institute in the mid-1850s. Later after losing an arm in service during the Civil War, he became a science instructor at Illinois Wesleyan University. Adding travels as part of his scientific and geological expeditions into the west, he shipped specimens to his family’s Wheaton home. He explored the Grand Canyon and was the first man to ride the dread rapids of the Colorado River through the canyon. He became director of the Bureau of American Ethnology and the United States Geological Survey.
WEST CHICAGO (Turner Junction)
John B. Turner, 1799-1871. Born in Colchester, New York. In 1843, he came to Chicago and was acting director of the Galena and Chicago Union Railway, which had been chartered in 1836 just prior to the 1837 financial depression. By the end of 1848, the new railroad line had been extended to the Des Plaines River west of Chicago. In that summer, Turner and the chief engineer for the railroad, John Van Nortwick, purchased one hundred acres of land from a man who supposedly opposed the coming of the railroad. They also received a large donation of land from Edward S. Winslow and provided for the route to Turner Junction by November 12, 1849. Turner platted and recorded the area for the town (West Chicago) that would surround his railroad. He was president of the Galena and Chicago Union Railway 1851-58 helping merge it with the North Western Railroad in western Illinois.
BIG WOODS (Naperville Township)
John Warne, 1796-1888. Born in New Jersey. He was a farmer, surveyor, and school teacher near Ann Arbor, Michigan, before bringing his family to DuPage County in 1834 and claiming three hundred twenty acres of land. The family lived in a covered wagon until their first log cabin was built. !,le helped survey the earliest roads in the county and was one of the leaders of the Big Woods Claim Protecting Society, one of the forerunners of DuPage County government which was to come in 1839. He was the grandfather of John "Bet-a-Million" Gates who was reared on a farm at Gary’s Mill. He also served Naperville Township as overseer of the poor and served Big Woods as a postmaster.
WARRENVILLE
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| Colonel Julius Morton Warren |
Colonel Julius Morton Warren, 1810-1893. Born in Fredonia, New York. The only son of Daniel and Nancy Morton Warren, he came to DuPage County with his sister, Louisa Bird, and her three children to join her husband, Frederick, and their father, Daniel, in July, 1833. He soon began development of the second community in what is today DuPage County. The Colonel constructed a hotel with a ballroom on the second floor as well as acquiring large land holdings and built the family home. Both the home and hotel can still be seen in Warrenville. His hotel became popular with many prominent residents who were to shape and mold the destinies of northeastern Illinois. Colonel Warren was elected to two terms in the lower House following Joseph Naper’s first two terms and preceding Naper’s last term. Warren was the first postmaster in Warrenville in 1838, as well as builder of the Plank Road which ultimately connected Aurora and Chicago. His family was prominent in the development of the Baptist Church in northern Illinois. A cousin, Mrs. Seraph Holmes, was in charge of one of the area’s earliest schools, the Warrenville Seminary. He and his family had great impact on the social, cultural, educational and religious patterns which helped mold DuPage County. He was a first cousin to the grandfather of Joy and Mark Morton, prominent residents in the early years of this century.
WHEATON
Jesse Wheaton, 1813-1895. Born in Pomfret, Connecticut. A carpenter by trade as well as a farmer, he was Wheaton’s first outstanding builder. With his brother, Warren, and brother-in-law, Erastus Gary, he donated lands which brought the Galena and Chicago Union Railway through the farmlands which the three would plat for a community within four years. He was one of the founders of the Illinois Institute (now Wheaton College) and with other family members helped organize the first Methodist Episcopal Church in Wheaton. With his nephew, Elbert H. Gary, he founded, in 1874, the Gary-Wheaton Bank, the oldest county bank in continuous operation today.
WHEATON
Warren Lyon Wheaton, 1812-1903. Born in Pomfret, Connecticut. After teaching school in Pomfret, he came to Illinois at the urging of his former Pomfret neighbors, the Garys (Erastus, Jude, Charles Wesley and Orinda). He spent his first year in this area with the Garys, and then while trying to decide if this would be his permanent home, he traveled westward to Galena, then the largest community in Illinois and as far south as St. Louis. He returned to his Pomfret home and then returned to Milton Township where his younger brother, Jesse, a carpenter, soon joined him. They carved out farms which lay on both sides of present-day Roosevelt Road extending from east of Naperville Road to a point west of Wheaton-Warrenville Roads. The farms were divided by present day Main Street in Wheaton. The brothers donated land, along with Erastus Gary who was Jesse’s brother-in-law, for the Galena and Chicago Union Railway. The new railroad station was named in honor of the Wheaton brothers. They gave generously to improve the educational, religious, cultural and civic life of their community matching land donations, work and money with those of other pioneer developers to insure Wheaton became a "New England on the Illinois Prairie." He was a member of the board of trustees of Wheaton College to which he had donated land as well as donating land for the courthouse site in downtown Wheaton in 1868. He served one term (1848-50) in the Illinois General Assembly and was the first township supervisor of Milton Township in 1850 as well as the first village president of Wheaton when it was incorporated in 1859.