Healing Hands: The Story of Two Mokena Doctors, Part I

   One man knew our village as place where coal-fed locomotives puffed through town and people got from place to place in horse-drawn conveyances, while his counterpart knew a community where radios beamed in the latest news from across the globe, movies were projected on Front Street, and medical wonders such as penicillin were freely at hand. Although the Mokenas they lived in were worlds apart, these two men treated our townsfolk with healing hands. Dr. Herman W. Alexander spent the years after the calamitous Civil War in our midst, while Dr. Ernest G. McMahan called himself a Mokenian in the meaty years of the twentieth century. Both men were angels sent to us. 

   Herman W. Alexander made his first appearance in our world on December 1^st, 1837 in St. Joseph County, Michigan, just a touch north of the border with the Hoosier State. As a 15-year-old lad, the Alexanders relocated to Cook County, Illinois, settling down in the Blue Island area, where they lived as farmers. However, higher education called to young Herman Alexander, and he went to engage in a course of studies at Hillsdale College in his old home state, before ultimately coming back to today’s Chicagoland to work as a school teacher. 

   In 1861, the year Alexander reached his 24^th birthday, our nation was rent apart by the outbreak of the Civil War, the defining moment of the young man’s generation. A little more than a year after the start of hostilities, on August 27^th, 1862, Herman Alexander mustered into the 88^th regiment of Illinois volunteers as a corporal. The paperwork of his enlistment recorded him as standing almost five feet ten inches tall, and noted his dark hair and coffee-colored eyes. Corporal Alexander served on the front lines of President Lincoln’s army, and became a combat veteran after the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, in the fall of 1862, which resulted in a strategic Union victory. While he emerged from the scrap in one piece, tragedy befell Herman Alexander three days after the fight ended, when his younger brother, Hiram, a member of the same regiment, died of disease at Nashville, Tennessee. 

 

   Life and limb would be risked yet again, this time in a dramatic reversal of fortune. The Battle of Stones River, Tennessee raged from New Year’s Eve 1862 to January 2^nd, 1863, and not only was this bloodbath a devasting loss for the North, but it proved to have a profound effect on the life of Corporal Alexander. On that last day of 1862, in the chaos of the Union retreat, a wagon or artillery caisson ran over the young man; the whole thing happened so quick, that he couldn’t be sure what it was that hit him. The tongue of the conveyance struck him square in the back, leaving him with a crippling injury. Alas, the rest of his military career was spent in hospitals, first as a patient, then later as a steward, when it was determined he was no longer able to shoulder a rifle. The war ended in 1865, and Herman Alexander returned to civilian life that winter. 

The Battle of Stones River, Tennessee marked a turning point in the life of Herman W. Alexander.

 

   His experiences in the war seem to have stirred an interest in medicine in the young man, and immediately after leaving the Union army he began medical school at Ohio Medical College, before furthering his education with two Chicago doctors, before ultimately graduating from Chicago Medical College. His new career brought him to Mokena in 1873, then a neat and thriving community on the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad. A new, two-story schoolhouse had been built in town the year before, one which was considered a jewel in the Will County school system. The town boasted of several hundred residents, many of them German and Swiss immigrants with their first-generation American children. 

 

   Where Dr. Alexander took up residence in Mokena has proven to be hazy after so many years, but it is known that in his first days he boarded for a time with postmaster Dewitt Paddock. The doctor set up his office and a pharmacy in the Front Street property of James Ducker, where he could be found in the forenoon and evening of each day. A contemporary said that through the Mokenians, Dr. Alexander “earned a reputation of being a most careful, conscientious and successful physician.” Typical of the cases that came before him were the nasty wound that Thomas Sutton accidentally inflicted upon his arm while trimming trees in his orchard, or the mangling that J.C. Allen’s oldest son experienced when his fingers got caught in a feed cutter. (Dr. Alexander had to amputate them) The doctor also treated Rev. Carl Schaub of the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church for “brain congestion”, while later tending to Robert Bechstein, a Mokena farmer who came down with smallpox in 1881. Despite all of his, he ultimately lost his patient, and helped prepare him for burial. 

 

   Dr. Herman Alexander was married in Philadelphia shortly after New Year 1877 to Clotilde Sisson, daughter of a New York general. Despite the success of his career in Mokena and his new wife, the physician continued to be plagued by his war injury. The passage of time had only made it worse, with the trouble resting in his seventh and eighth dorsal vertebrae, which in time would be diagnosed as Pott’s Disease, a malady effecting the spine. The prognosis from Dr. Alexander’s own physicians was grim. One got straight to the point and with a gloomy tone, described him as “incurable”, and his disability as “total”, while another said that he was “gradually growing worse” and glumly writing that “he will last but a few years at best.” Dr. Alexander, while still a relatively young man, made his way around Mokena with a cane, sometimes even while leaning on a crutch. Trips to patients on the farms outside town were covered in a special carriage built to reduce jarring and jolting as much as possible. Despite the very visible evidence of his distress, Dr. Alexander kept it quiet, fearing that being ruled an invalid would hurt his livelihood. One who knew him said that he “uniformly kept his ailments and sufferings to himself.”

 

   In the summer of 1877, a correspondent from the Joliet Weekly News made a grand tour of Mokena, and upon enumerating every business house in town, found Dr. Alexander, and concerning his pharmacy wrote that “he has a neat little store, well filled. Adjoining is a snug, cozy kind of an office where the doctor seems to take much pleasure with his books, and a half dozen diplomas upon the wall.” With the coming of the 1880s, the doctor moved to the county seat in the second year of the decade, whereupon his health degenerated significantly. Dr. Alexander’s wife Clotilde tragically passed in the spring of 1888, at a point in which he required full-time aid in his day-to-day life. In those days his household consisted of his immediate family; his adopted daughter Lizzie, sister Mrs. M.J. Baldwin, and sister-in-law Naomi Sisson. 

The grave of Dr. Alexander in Joliet's Oakwood Cemetery, which bears mute testimony to his Civil War service.

 

   Dr. Herman W. Alexander crossed the great beyond at his Joliet home on May 27^th, 1889 at the age of 51 years. The ultimate cause were the many complications of the ghastly injury suffered on that winter day in Tennessee, 26 years previous. He was interred at Oakwood Cemetery, where a grand monument proudly bearing his combat record marks his last resting place. So it was, that while Dr. Alexander did not die on the battlefield, he was one of the countless men of his generation broken by the Civil War, and the ghosts thereof followed him to the end. 

 

Be sure to check back next Saturday for part two of this piece: the story of Dr. Ernest G. McMahan.

'Tis the Season: The Giving Spirt of Mokena

   It’s the time of year where magical lights cheerily brighten up Front Street, when there’s a hint of pine in the air, and cozy fires warm the hearths of the village. The Christmas season is upon us once again, and while it’s great to be greeted with gifts during the yuletide, the true meaning of the season is to give. This is something that wasn’t lost on those who went before us. Let us turn back the pages of time to reveal not only the kindness of the Mokenians of yore, but also their true Christmas spirit. 

    At the center of this story of long ago is an unassuming lady named Bertha Groth. Born in Germany in 1874, sources are foggy as to when she landed on America’s shore. Be that as it may, she came to call Will County home at the end of the 19^th century and took Charles Groth as her husband. While living in neighboring New Lenox, Bertha lost him to pneumonia brought on by harmful exposure in the spring of 1909. In the summer of the same year, as a young, widowed mother to at least eight children, she re-settled down the road in Mokena, where a relative of her husband’s kept a saloon on the northwest corner of Front and Division Streets. Living not far from the watering hole, Bertha Groth and her immediate family were not strangers in town, having lived here for a spell previously. 

Matt's Old Mokena wishes you a Merry Christmas!

 

     During the devastating fire at Front Street’s Martin Hall on July 24^th, 1912, Bertha distinguished herself by being the first to raise the alarm, effectively summoning Mokena’s bucket brigade to respond to one of the biggest disasters in village history. While she took in her neighbors’ laundry to help make ends meet, town residents knew that her financial burden was great, especially with having so many mouths to feed. Local folk gently described the Groths on one hand as being a “poor, deserving family” and on the other, simply as “destitute.” At Christmas time 1912, the congregation of what was then called German United Evangelical St. John’s Church turned their thoughts to the Groth family and put on an informal benefit of sorts for them. Hosted at a meeting space in Philippine Bechstein’s Front Street property on December 12^th, Mokena residents generously showered Bertha and her children with money, groceries, and various other gifts. 

 

     This wasn’t the first time that they felt the generosity of their neighbors, as Mokenians came together to look out for the Groths in a similar way three years earlier in 1909. That yule season, village teacher Ernest Tonn and his students surprised Bertha’s children with two boxes “filled with Christmas goodies so dear to the childish heart.” There were at least three other occasions when Bertha Groth was shown Mokena’s benevolence, including the time in the winter of 1910 when a traveling concern called the German Medicine Company put on a performance in their name, which included new-fangled moving pictures and “illustrated songs”.

 

     Bertha Groth continued to live in Mokena for decades, and townsfolk never forgot her. After the Christmas 1912 benefit, Joliet News correspondent and village resident Bill Semmler proudly wrote that “the Good Fellow spirit is manifesting itself in Mokena.”  We can learn from the deeds of our forefathers and should take their example this season. 

 

 

A Fresh New Look: The Rescue of a Historic Landmark

   When the subject comes up of historic landmarks in our fair village, most people immediately conjure up the stars of this category, places like Pioneer Cemetery, the Muehler Building, (nowadays home to Little Al’s Bar and Grill) and even McGovney-Yunker Farm, resplendent on LaPorte Road. However, there are many in Mokena that are just as steeped in historic charisma as the others, locales that are easily passed over. This is the story of one such site, and not only of its rich, character-filled past, but also of its rescue from an ignominious end, a twist of history that is nothing short of miraculous. Gracing Front Street with its Greek Revival eminence, roomy porch and distinctive concrete columns, today’s ReFresh ReNew Salon at 11008 Front Street can boast of a chronicle that goes back well over 160 years. 

Steeped in local lore, the old house at 11008 Front Street has seen over 160 years of history.

   To tell this story, one must first reach back to the earliest days of Mokena’s narrative. On April 22^nd, 1862, just over a year into our nation’s Civil War, a legal transaction took place when Horace Carpenter sold this lot and one the immediately north of it to his brother Chancy for the princely sum of $500. When the indenture was filed in the county seat, it was noted that the transfer included not just the parcels but “all the buildings standing thereon”, indicating that the lot had already been developed, but whether or not this included the structure standing today, is impossible to tell through the thick fog of time. The story of our village’s infancy cannot be writ without the Carpenter family. Natives of Pennsylvania, they were in our midst before the first locomotive of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad puffed over the prairie, and as Mokena was born with the arrival of the iron horse, the brothers Horace and Chancy began to invest in property, buying up lots in the freshly laid out town. 

 

   There were about nine years between the Carpenter brothers, with Horace being the elder. Chancy was a product of his time, being possessed of the rugged optimism that led him to seek fortune in the gold fields of the west. Unlike the countless others who made the trek in the same era that he did, Chancy Carpenter actually struck treasure. In 1851, the year before Mokena was founded, he set out for California; going over land the whole way with a team of horses, reaching the Golden State in a mere 90 days, considered a breeze of a trip in that era. Carpenter was there mining for three years, and over time, found gold valuing thousands of dollars in the money of the day. So proud was he of his finds that he later had one nugget that was estimated to be worth about $11 (close to $350 nowadays) mounted and worn as a scarf pin when he got back to civilization. He came home to Mokena with what one would remember as a “very comfortable fortune.”

 

   Fortune led Chancy Carpenter to try his hand at farming in Iowa in 1872, ultimately becoming the founder of a town there called Sumner. Before he left, his Front Street house was sold to Dr. Andreas Grether and his wife Elisabetha in September 1867 for the magnificent sum of $1,000. That the property was sold for such a higher amount than the last time it changed hands, indicates that it had been significantly improved in this time, which more than likely included the construction of the house extant today. Himself an interesting figure in our community’s history, Dr. Grether was born in early 1807 across the Atlantic, in far off Canton Bern, Switzerland. In 1852 he and his family came to the American shore and settled first in Cook County, and by a point in time six years later was residing in Mokena, when he contributed ten dollars to the parish of faithful worshippers that would later become the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church.

 

   Dr. Andreas Grether tended to Mokena’s sick with healing hands in the earliest days of our community, and his life was not free of hardship, being indicative of the rough, unforgiving way of life that our forefathers led. The doctor lost his first wife as a new arrival to our country in 1854, and during the calamitous Civil War sacrificed his only son, Peter, upon Columbia’s altar, to the dreaded malady of dysentery at Vicksburg, Mississippi, shortly after the fall of that city to Northern forces. Dr. Grether himself was not long for the Front Street house, for he himself passed away to some long-forgotten ailment in September 1869, two years after he and his wife acquired the property. Decades later, his funeral would still be talked about for a particularly bizarre incident. While mourners held vigil over his bier at the Mokena residence, a woman was noticed in the room, clad completely in black, paying her respects. Whispers circulated amongst those in attendance, and no one there could quite pin down who she was. She eventually passed into an adjoining chamber, and someone went after her. However, she was nowhere to be found, and had disappeared as suddenly as she appeared. To those who were there, the only explanation at hand was that she must have been a ghost. 

 

   After the passing of Dr. Grether, the ownership of the property passed to one of his stepchildren, whose family, the Schiffmanns, become long-standing owners of the place. At this date, a century and half after their time, it’s not exactly clear what was happening in those years, if the Schiffmanns actually lived there, or if they rented it out for the next two decades. What is clear, is that Nicholas and Maria Marti, prominent members of Mokena’s Swiss diaspora, purchased the house from Nicholas Schiffmann and his siblings in the spring of 1891. Retired farmers and perennial Mokena residents, Mr. and Mrs. Marti were founding members of the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church, with Nicholas also holding the office of Commissioner of Highways in the 19^th century. 

 

   After the Martis sold the place in January 1901, there were a succession of owners in the early years of the 20^th century who didn’t stay very long. Slowly getting on in years, the house was remodeled in the fall of 1913, at which point a large, new front porch was added, boasting of a concrete floor and distinctive concrete pillars, which still grace Front Street to this day. The following year, one rife with significance for the world at large, held great importance for this property as well. Not only did 1914 witness the start of the dreaded First World War in Europe, but it was also then that the Moriarty family came into the picture, figures which contain great significance in the annals of this fabled house. 

 

   The Moriartys were old hands in the area, whose estate straddled the border of Frankfort and New Lenox Townships, fronting on today’s Francis Road. George Moriarty, the second of four children in his family, would take as his wife Elizabeth Fulton, or Lizzie as she was known, on her 20^th birthday, March 12^th, 1883. Lizzie was an industrious farm girl who lived in New Lenox Township, and was known to smilingly say “Hard work never killed anyone.” The couple had two boys of their own, Herbert and Walter, born in 1884 and 1888 respectively, both of which would become important figures in their own right in Mokena’s story. In early 1911, patriarch George Moriarty retired from the fields and moved his family to our village. The Moriartys first called the old Stermer place home, and while barely settled into town, George passed away in March 1911 at the age of 61. His demise was deeply felt in Mokena, he on one hand being modestly referred to as a “good citizen”, while another of his contemporaries put it more touchingly, remembering that “the unfortunate always found in him a sympathetic friend, quick to offer aid when needed…to him a man was a man no matter whether he had one dollar or thousands.”

 

   The widowed Lizzie Moriarty found her way to the property in question in July of the fateful year of 1914, having sealed the deal with the property’s last owner, Mokenian Frank Liess, by trading him some lots of hers in Chicago for the Front Street house. Joining her was her sister Sarah Jane Moriarty, or more commonly known as Sadie, was not only was recently widowed, but also the wife of George Moriarty’s brother, Frank. Once again, visions of the heady days of the gold rush re-visited this old place, as Lizzie and Sadie’s father-in-law, Irish born Thomas Moriarty, a figure they never knew, sought his fortune in the untamed west, but unlike his contemporary Chancy Carpenter, he never returned, having disappeared from the mortal plane. 

 

   Sadie Moriarty would later take a second husband and start a separate home and hearth with him, while her sister Lizzie lived on Front Street in harmony and peace. As she got to be more senior in age, she came to be regarded as a local sage of sorts, garnering the affectionate nicknames of “Aunt Lizzie” and “Grandma Moriarty.”. It would also be said that “she maintained a marvelous Christian philosophy of happiness and good will.” She was a fixture on her Front Street porch during summer months, when many passersby, especially local youths,  were known to visit and while away the hours with her. A steadfast member of Mokena’s Methodist church, Aunt Lizzie was “interested in everything in life, in national politics and affairs of her village.”

Seen here in 1951, neighbor Elmer Cooper admires Aunt Lizzie Moriarty's knitting work on the distinctive front porch of the historic Front Street house.

 

   When her sister Sadie’s second husband passed, she came back to Mokena to live with Aunt Lizzie. After Sadie broke her hip after a 1939 fall in Chicago, her sister nursed her back to health at home, but despite Aunt Lizzie’s best efforts, Sadie would be bed ridden for the rest of her days, ultimately breathing her last in April 1944. In a strange twist of fate, Aunt Lizzie broke her own hip after falling in front of Front Street’s Royal Blue Store not long after her sister died. She was the owner of a hearty pioneer’s constitution, and was eventually able to be back on her feet. Aunt Lizzie Moriarty’s 90^th birthday in March 1953 made the front page of Mokena’s News-Bulletin, our erstwhile town newspaper. It was reported that she was doing well for herself, living alone aside from a caregiver that helped her around the house, and was still doing all her own housekeeping, excepting anything that was too heavy. On this occasion, Aunt Lizzie reflected on her life, and mused on the invention of the telephone, the automobile, new farm machinery, and also television, the cutting-edge technology of the day. 

 

   Striking a bittersweet tone, Lizzie Moriarty crossed into the great beyond at her home a little over a year after this milestone birthday, on April 21^st, 1954. She was interred in the family plot of her husband at Marshall Cemetery. 

 

   Any landmark that has weathered the years such as this one will have seen its share of change, and so it was that Dr. J.O. Hitz of Orland Park purchased the property around New Year 1956, at which time the Henneberry family was living there. After they got settled elsewhere, Dr. Hitz had the west side of this historic house remodeled into a dentist office and waiting room, taking his first patients in March of that year. The next change occurred on November 1^st, 1960, when Elmer and Charlotte Tepper, formerly of Chicago, moved their shoe repair shop here from its old stand directly across Front Street. 

 

   While they hadn’t been here since day one, the Teppers became well-established Mokenians in no time and found success in our town. Aside from fixing shoes, they also sold Minnetonka moccasins, which were stacked wall-to-wall in white boxes, while the unmistakable aroma of leather permeated the air. In the early 1970s, their shop became one of the village’s most unique business when they kept their day-to-day trade of cobbling, but also branched out into pet sales, handling fish, turtles, and birds, while at one point, a monkey named Cindy held court in the shoe repair shop. Ever the entrepreneurs, Elmer and Charlotte Tepper also started a cleaning business, where they sent out local garments to a third party. In the same era as the pet shop, the old house’s spacious second floor was made into a boarding house of sorts. 

The domicile pictured around 1980, during the Tepper years. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   Any account of the Tepper family of Mokena would be remiss not to reflect upon Carl Tepper, the only son of Elmer and Charlotte. Only seven years old when his family moved in, in later years Carl would be known by local youth for his huge music collection, providing hours of entertainment to his friends by playing name that tune, not to mention his pool table, pinball machines, and inground pool that the house’s backyard boasted in those years. He was also a star cross country runner in his day, and later would be a familiar figure jogging on the streets of Mokena, with his long hair flowing in the wind behind him. His parents, Elmer and Charlotte Tepper passed away in 1985 and 1996 respectively, and the family shoe repair shop closed its doors for the last time in the mid 1990s, as nearly as anyone in town can remember. 

 

   Enter at this point Laura Thiel of Frankfort, who acquired this historic property in 2001. Before opening her salon here the following year, (which still flourishes to this day) she embarked on a massive project to rejuvenate this old place after years of neglect. On the inside, the historic walls were plagued with legions of silverfish who were feasting on the glue behind layer after layer of old paneling. Underneath years’ worth of décor was plaster and lathe, with a thick stuffing of newspapers between the walls that had long since disintegrated into dust, leaving the domicile with no real insulation to speak of. On the other side of the coin, the place also had no central air-conditioning. Everything was gutted down to the studs, while a small arm of the house which was tacked onto its northern side was removed and rebuilt. In the main structure, the original floors became the subfloors, while everything was done anew: fresh electric work, new plumbing, and fireproof insulation. 

 

   Laura Thiel’s hard work, which took place in stages over the span of years, saved this priceless piece of the village’s history from the tragic end suffered by so many of Mokena’s landmarks. At the end of the day, over a century and a half of life and love have been preserved for the future of our community. When we rightfully marvel at its long history, the miraculous rescue of this storied house must also be remembered. 

Stick 'Em Up: The 1931 Koeller Shooting

    Time moves in such a way as to easily obscure the past. Modern conveniences and construction of more recent vintage abound in our everyday lives, but these also bury stories that illustrate past times with piquant flavor. At 19820 Wolf Road stands what appears to be a normal building, one like many others in town. However, where now a yoga studio and other business exist, was once an auto dealership that was the site of a hair-raising case of self-defense from a brazen criminal act. 

    To set the stage for the scene at hand, we’d have to travel back to the Mokena of 1930, a community in the grip of the Great Depression. In the autumn of that year, construction started on a large automotive garage and dealership on the newly concreted Wolf Road. At the site just south of the vacant Bowman Dairy plant, Chevrolets and Whippets would be sold under the firm of Heusner & Mager from Frankfort. The grand cost of the building came out to $17,000, with village carpenters Arthur Benson and Byron Nelson having charge of the work. Touted as being fireproof, the new dealership opened its doors to Mokena on February 6^th, 1931. 

 

    By the spring of 1932, George Koeller was running things here, and was experiencing some problems with petty crime, as the place had been broken into a handful of times over the course of the past year. As the small, rural village slept in the early morning of Saturday, April 2^nd, Koeller’s 23-year-old son, also named George, was overnighting in a room next to the garage’s office. Around 3:30am he was jarred from his sleep by his trusty dog, who had been agitated by some weird activity in the office. After calming down the hound by wrapping him in a blanket, the young Koeller, sensing trouble, grabbed his revolver and went to investigate. 

 

    Upon quietly inching open the office door, he was confronted by a stranger, a tall, thin man who would later be described as having a “prominent nose.” Leveling the gun at the presumed bandit, Koeller ordered the man to put up his hands, but instead, the intruder dashed out of the building, slamming an exterior door behind him. The young man went after him, and hastily fired several rounds through the door before throwing it back open. To his shock, the would-be burglar was untouched by the gunfire, and standing by the doorway, aimed his own gun point blank at Koeller, and fired a shot that inflicted a flesh wound on him. The marauder then took off on foot southward down Wolf Road, and into the inky dark morning.

Not an illustration of the events on Wolf Road, but rather an image from a late 1920s automotive magazine. Nevertheless, it helps paint a picture of the 1931 shooting. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   Fueled by adrenaline and momentarily hampered by the jamming of his revolver, Koeller was able to fire four more rounds into the dark after the intruder. In a flash, a car flew past the business northbound on Wolf Road, while seconds later another barreled down the road in the opposite direction with lightning speed. Smarting from the wound, George Koeller made his way into town to the home and office of Dr. Ernest McMahan, who tended to his wound, which after all was said and done proved not to be serious. Authorities from Joliet came to the scene, but no trace of the burglar or of any accomplices would ever be found. 

 

     The elder George Koeller sold his interest in the auto business at the end of 1936, while his son moved down the road to New Lenox. Over the course of the years, the old dealership and garage on Wolf Road changed hands and came to house a foundry, which operated here for many years. Things are quiet within those four walls today, playing silent witness to an intense morning decades ago, when a Mokenian faced down an armed burglar. 

Man of the Cloth: The Story of Rev. James R. Woodcock and the Mokena Methodist Congregation

   As time marches onward, we are swept up in a never-ending news cycle, and are bombarded with momentous events, so many that the average citizen is hard pressed to keep track of them all. We live in history-making days. Even the home front is not immune, as Mokena’s United Methodist Church is winking out, and merging its ranks with our neighbors in the New Lenox congregation. The Mokena Methodists have been part of our community for 155 years, no small feat of longevity, having provided a spiritual stronghold to the hearts of countless faithful villagers since 1867. Many men and women of the cloth have tended to our local assembly over the years, and for the flock’s centennial in 1967 a tally was made that counted 49 ministers up to that point. On this long list of spiritual leaders, Rev. James R. Woodcock’s name appears, who manned the pulpit in the years 1883 to 1887. Even when his tenure was up, his association with Mokena didn’t end. 

   Even before Rev. Woodcock came to Mokena, the Methodist Episcopal church, as it was fashioned in his time, was possessed of an interesting history. As early as 1855, a mere three years after Mokena was laid out and the iron horse of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad first puffed across the prairie, Methodist religious services were being held at the new schoolhouse. This group of the faithful weathered the trauma of the Civil War, and under the leadership of Rev. Lucius Hawkins on the blessed winter day of December 15^th, 1867, finally dedicated a church of their own on Mokena’s public square. All in all, the new church, described as “very neat and commodious” cost the young congregation $1,500, which was paid for by the members of the flock. Years later, they would recall that the sale of a stray horse also helped chip in to the building fund. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of Mokena, as seen circa 1915. This historic structure stood at today's 11099 Second Street.

 

   It is important to note that during the church’s halcyon days, their sanctuary was shared on alternate Sundays with the village’s Baptists; a Union Sunday School was even conducted under the wing of the Baptist deacon Rollin Marshall, who was a Mokena pioneer in his own right. Several decades later this accord would play out in a dramatic way, when a particularly bitter lawsuit erupted between the two congregations as to who the rightful owner of the church was. When the dust settled in 1899, the Methodists were ruled the legal owners of the property, which led to the extinction of the local Baptist assemblage for decades. 

 

   While an early historian wrote that the Methodist flock was “rather small”, they were prosperous enough in the fall of 1874 to dedicate a parsonage for the use of their pastor and his family, the house still standing today on the southeast corner of Mokena and Second Streets. The edifice cost a hefty $1,000, and the ribbon cutting was rung in with an oyster dinner. 

 

   Only two years after Mokena was incorporated, Rev. James R. Woodcock received the call to helm our Methodist Episcopal church in the fall of 1882, and for his work earned a salary of $500 a year, which was upped in his second year in the village to $550. His arrival made him tenth pastor to man the pulpit since the church’s founding sixteen years before. 

 

   Rev. Woodcock was a freshly minted 30-year-old pastor, and our community was to be his first charge. He acclimated well with the village, with our local correspondent to the Will County Advertiser noting in the October of his first year that he “is meeting remarkable success as a minister.” A year after his arrival, Rev. Woodcock’s Sunday school boasted of a robust 81 pupils, and while the Methodist sanctuary didn’t have a choir or an organ when he got to it, before his tenure was over, he had provided for both. The reverend and his wife Annie, along with their 2-year-old daughter Grace, lived in the parsonage on Mokena Street, which was the scene of a soiree given in honor of Mrs. Woodcock the following March. The same correspondent described the night as “one of those pleasant social episodes… that helps to dispel the drudging of the every-day routine of life”, the guests all arriving for tea in costumes. The hostess herself was clad as “Lady Washington”, teenage Mokenian Belle Jones was Queen Elizabeth, and 16-year-old neighbor Jennie Hatch as “Miss Fry, a Quaker.” “Games and other social amusements” were had, and at the end of the night, all who were there “declared it was the most pleasant affair of the season.” Mrs. Woodcock quickly found her place in Mokena, and also began giving painting lessons to neighborhood students. 

 

   While the seat of Rev. Woodcock’s ministry was Mokena, he was also responsible for the Methodist congregations at Goodings Grove in Homer Township and what in his era was informally called the English Settlement, which corresponded to an area in today’s Orland Township. He traversed his circuit by horse and buggy, nothing to sneeze at in the days when road conditions in our neck of the woods were often less than ideal. He was adored by his flock, as was abundantly shown on October 26^th, 1883, when the Woodcocks were surprised at the parsonage by about 25 Orlanders. A bountiful dinner was had, and our friend at the Will County Advertiser said that “best of all, English settlement folks never come empty handed”, for they showered Rev. Woodcock with butter, eggs, flour, cheese, corn, oats and “a little pile of Uncle Sam’s script and coins.”

 

   The reverend and his family were transferred to a new charge in Nebraska in September 1884, and thus their time in our quiet railroad town came to a conclusion. The years marched forward and life went on, and the Methodist Episcopal church stood like a rock in Mokena, weathering every change that came its way. Along the way, pastor Woodcock picked up the additional title of doctor, and after the passage of many years, in the fall of 1926, he made his triumphant return to Mokena. He found many changes in our fair burg, the village was now lit by electricity, autos plied the streets, and the rugged farm lane just west of town now carried a proper name, that of Wolf Road. One of the first things he did after arriving in Mokena was to visit his old church, and in doing so, re-discovered a veritable Rosetta Stone of the congregation’s history. He found a marble-topped communion table in the sanctuary, and after knowingly removing the marble top, he brought to light an inscription on its bottom from the church’s earliest days, it having read:

 

“This church was dedicated on the 15^th day of December, 1867. The dedicatory sermon was preached by Rev. Dr. Kidder of Evanston, Ill. The pastor of the church was Rev. Lucius Hawkins. P.E. (Presiding Elder) of the District – Rev. W.F. Stewart.”

 

   It was said the words were just as legible then as the day they were inscribed. This tablet, a priceless piece of local history, has since been lost to the winds of time. 

 

   A little over a year later, in December 1927, the Methodist congregation marked a big anniversary, namely 60 years since their sanctuary was dedicated. At this time, Mokenian Ella Cooper, a dedicated member of the church, reached out to Rev. Woodcock at his home in southern California to see what he might remember of his days in the village. Dr. Rev. Woodcock and Mrs. Cooper began exchanging letters and renewing their acquaintance.

 

   The newfound correspondence between the two piqued the interest of William Semmler, the editor of our erstwhile newspaper, The News-Bulletin, who in a very prescient move, preserved their letters for posterity by printing them in his publication. In a note dated April 11^th, 1927, Dr. Rev. Woodcock remembered how “a commodious barn belonged to the parsonage property”, and further reminisced on his first wedding in Mokena: 

 

“We had not tacked down our carpets, when some friends from Joliet, where we had been living drove up and insisted that I should marry them, and after some hesitation on my part, I did. We had no cake to pass out, but did have a merry-making time.”

 

   He also reflected on his preaching beat, and the roughness of travel in that era: “How piercing cold those winters were. I froze myself on one trip around the circuit, and many times the snow was so deep that I drove over the top of stake-and-rider fences.” Aside from dealing with grueling weather, ministering was also physically demanding, as Dr. Rev. Woodcock recalled that in the beginning “I had to lead all the singing, do the preaching, and then follow up with strenuous exhorting.” Reflecting the mostly Germanic makeup of Mokena in his day, he went on to note “I was the only English-speaking minister for miles around, the Germans abounded; and so it was that I married a good many people, conducted numerous funerals, and baptized a lot of children and adults.” As Dr. Rev. Woodcock reflected upon his flock, he remembered one couple in particular: 

 

“How wonderfully the Lord saved them! He was the most profane man in the neighborhood; he swore so loud he could be heard a half mile, and some people wouldn’t have him work for them on their buildings, he was a carpenter, but when God saved him, He did a complete work, and he became one of the most humble and sweet-spirited men I ever knew, and his wife was just as devoted. It was he whom I secured to build the Goodings Grove church.”

 

   Dr. Rev. Woodcock kept up his holy work until he passed away in the spring of 1942 in Missouri. His story is but one of the many over the decades to be closely associated with this local group of the faithful. As the sun sets upon the Mokena United Methodist Church, may we remember those who built the congregation, and those who labored with all of their hearts over the past century and a half to keep it afloat. 

School Days: The Story of Elizabeth Cappel

   “School days, school days/Dear old Golden Rule days/’Reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic/Taught to the tune of the hick’ry stick.” Mokena’s schools have a rich tradition that stretches back to 1855, a mere three years after the arrival of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad and the subsequent laying out of the village. The school has come a long way since that first, simple structure on the public square, and students and faculty have been many over these last 167 years, and compiling a complete history of this establishment would be a gargantuan undertaking. Nevertheless, it would be impossible to understand this all-encompassing subject without first knowing Mrs. Elizabeth Cappel, one of the most honored women in Mokena’s story. Not only did she serve as a teacher in the venerated public school on Carpenter Street, but she also became the institution’s principal and superintendent. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Cappel of Mokena, circa 1955. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

   Born Elizabeth M. Krusemark on November 30^th, 1898, her story begins far from Mokena, on the southern border of Minnesota, where she grew up in the young community of Truman. Even teachers have to go to school, and our heroine went to hers in her hometown. Elizabeth broke the mold, and climbed the ladder of education in a time when more than a few of her contemporaries wouldn’t finish elementary school, she attending not only high school, but also graduating from teachers’ college in Mankato, Minnesota in 1925, being the proud owner of a BE degree. A newly-minted educator, she began teaching in rural Minnesota schools, while also spending a year working on an Indian reservation. 

 

   In 1929, the year of the stock market crash, the twists of chance led Elizabeth Krusemark to Mokena. While sojourning with kin in our neck of the woods, she learned that a teaching spot in the village was open, and promptly applied for it. The Mokena of 1929 was a vastly different place from today’s community, counting a little over 500 residents in a rural railroad town. Miss Krusemark was interviewed by school board members Elmer Cooper and Ona McGovney, respectfully the owner of the successful Cooper & Hostert Ford agency on Front Street and a village insurance agent. She made a good impression and ultimately got the job, although years later Mr. Cooper would remember “The only thing against her was that (I) was afraid she would only stay one year.”

 

   Miss Krusemark went to work in the brand-new, $29,000 school on Carpenter Street, District 159 having just that year vacated the elegant yet aging older building on the corner of Front Street and Schoolhouse Road. Her workplace was state of the art, a fireproof building consisting of a gymnasium (the village’s first) and four classrooms that were used by the school’s 125 pupils, some of which belonged to Mokena’s two-year high school. Two of Miss Krusemark’s earliest students were young Hans Mueller and Eddie Yunker, both of whom continued their work with her when they later served on the district’s board of education. 

The former main entrance of the Mokena Public School, today the Village Hall. 

 

   As she made her new home in Mokena, in 1930 Elizabeth Krusemark boarded with the Frederick and Violette Whitlark family on Second Street, then shortly thereafter with the Harold and Myrtle Coopers on Third Street. Alas, it wasn’t long after being welcomed within the gates of our community that wedding bells rung; a few days after New Year’s 1936, Elizabeth eloped to Iowa with Albert Cappel. A familiar face around town, Albert Cappel ran a local feed and coal business of long standing on Mokena Street with his brother Fred. Eleven years previously, Albert had become a widower when his wife Clara passed, and upon his second marriage, Elizabeth Cappel became stepmother to Wesley, Harold, and Marvin. 

 

   Having a position of authority in the Mokena school, it was inevitable that many cases requiring discipline came before Mrs. Cappel. Decades after her time in our midst, stories of reverence would still be told about her wooden paddle fashioned from part of an orange crate. In the classroom, she had to maintain an assertive stance, and didn’t tolerate fooling around, but nevertheless kept a special place in her heart for her students, and upon graduation, would let them affectionately call her Kruzi. Elizabeth wore more than a few hats in the village, having led Mokena’s first girl scout troop, and would also coach boys’ and girls’ basketball, a perennial favorite sport in town. 

 

   As the world was in the grip of the Second World War, 1944 proved to be a significant year for Mrs. Cappel’s career in more ways than one. Sunlight shone by making her principal then, but storm clouds gathered when, in the grind of war, various hardships such as lack of available teachers caused District 159’s two-year high school to go defunct. Things turned up in 1951 when, under her watch, a $52,000 addition to the school was built, consisting of two new classrooms, a kitchen and shower rooms. Three years later, in 1954, there were 225 grade schoolers in her care, at which time a contemporary said “Mrs. Cappel is both loved by her pupils and highly respected by their parents and community as a whole.” The feeling was mutual, as she would say that “the people have been so grand” in Mokena. 

 

   Mrs. Cappel retired in 1962, at that time having the superintendent’s chair. After the completion of Willowcrest five years previously, she continued to work in the old halls on Carpenter Street as well as in the new school. In her 33 years as an educator in Mokena, she taught many town youngsters whose parents had also been her students, and in early 1963 was honored by our Chamber of Commerce as one of the village’s most distinguished citizens. On August 16^th of that year, Elizabeth Cappel passed into eternal memory, and the sun set upon the life and career of a Mokenian that hasn’t been equaled since. In 1975, the old school on Carpenter Street was christened the Elizabeth Cappel School, in honor of the woman who labored tirelessly there for so many years. Nowadays our city hall, it’s impossible to behold this edifice and not feel her resolute influence. 

Decorated in Flames: The Martin Hall Fire of 1912

     A community draws strength in the gathering of its citizens. They come together in settings where ideas are shared, grand plans hatched, and friendships are sealed. Groups of neighbors need a spot where they are comfortable, yet one that is in the heart of the place they call home. The untimely loss of such an important landmark can leave a neighborhood reeling, such as the one Mokena experienced 110 years ago in the great fire that destroyed Martin Hall on Front Street. 

    In the spirit of American entrepreneurship, Mokenian Frank Liess opened a general store on Front Street in May 1901. His brother Charles later joined him in partnership, and while they weren’t the only shopkeepers in town, they served a Mokena where around 300 souls lived and joined a smattering of enterprises such as a blacksmith and a butcher, along with a drugstore and some saloons. Three years after the store opened, the building was spruced up with an addition, and the second floor of the structure was remade into a large multi-purpose space, which quickly came to be known throughout the region as Liess Hall. 

 

     Sporting a roomy dance floor, the space also had a ticket office, cloakroom, and its own entrance from Front Street. It was a popular gathering spot for Mokena’s fraternal orders; everyone from the Modern Woodmen of America to the Royal Neighbors called Liess Hall home. Not only did the village board convene in the hall for a period, it was also a focal point of social activity in the community. Any given week in early 20^thcentury Mokena might find a masquerade ball, play, church bazaar or even a magic lantern show taking place – the latter being the forerunner to today’s movies. 

Today's 11018 Front Street, formerly the site of Liess Hall.

 

     The hall, along with the store on its street level, passed into the hands of the unfortunately named Lemuel Cramp in 1911, and the following year became the property of John A. Martin, a recent Mokena arrival by way of downstate Jefferson County. The countless hours of joy that took place within these walls were overshadowed by disaster, when a catastrophic fire struck the hall on July 24^th, 1912. 

 

     From a standpoint at her residence across the street and a few yards to the southeast, widowed mother Bertha Groth was jarred from her slumbers by the acrid smell of smoke, and when she looked out her bedroom window at about 2:30am, she spotted Martin Hall aflame, likely being the first Mokenian to see it, saying that she saw “flames breaking through the walls and roof of the Martin building.” She hurried across to the street to the saloon of her brother-in-law, John Groth, to notify him of the impending calamity. Word traveled over electric wire in the dark night to 20-year-old village switchboard operator Mary Rinke, who became a pioneer when she used her telephone to alert her fellow townspeople of the emergency unfolding on Front Street. Later that day, it was said that Mary managed to call everyone in town.

 

   Around the same time as Bertha Groth made her dreadful discovery, a tinsmith neighbor of hers named Henry Carsten caught sight of a flame through a first floor window of the building. He told a local newspaper that the light was “not larger than a lantern”, before it suddenly exploded before his eyes. 

 

       As townspeople and the volunteer fire department rushed to the scene, it became abundantly clear that it was too late to save Martin Hall. As the inferno wrapped itself around the building, the threat of half the town burning with it became very real. Flaming pieces of debris landed on the general store of Catharine Sippel next door to the west, on Charles Moriarty’s feed shed across Front Street, and on the home of Ernest Lehnert, a few doors down the road. Blistering flames also licked 30-year-old Ed Stellwagen, who armed with buckets of water, fought to protect his property on the east side of the blaze. His roof having caught on fire a few times, the day proved to be exceedingly unlucky for him. While he ultimately saved his buildings, they did take damage not only from the flames but also from water, and he carried no insurance. To add insult to injury, he complained that someone took $50 from his vest that was tossed aside while fighting the fire.  

 

    Despite the efforts of Mokena’s citizens, Martin Hall couldn’t be saved, and was consigned to a heap of charred wood. John Martin estimated the total loss came out to about $15,000. The members of local organizations who met in the hall discovered that their charters were lost in the blaze, and while a safe was fished out of the wreckage that managed to keep some of their valuable papers intact, some time had to pass before it was cool enough to open. Within a few days, State Deputy Fire Marshal L.C. McMurtry made the trek to town to investigate the scene, where he turned up nothing useful. If anyone ever found a definite answer as to what caused the conflagration, it was never recorded for posterity. Conflicting stories on the fire’s origin made their rounds in Mokena, some of which were tinged with raised eyebrows and suspicion. Local sage Clinton Kraus later cryptically reflected that “none could be proven…best to forget!” 

 

    Within days of the fire, the Joliet Herald reported that a collection was being taken up in town to help repair Ed Stellwagen’s property. Meanwhile, Mr. Martin claimed that he would rebuild his hall once odds and ends with his insurance were settled, and that this time, the place would be fireproof. Alas, it never happened, and he left town. The old focal point of the village, where so many memories were made, stood at the site of today’s Avalanche Jewelry at 11018 Front Street. Perhaps not coincidentally, a new and improved hall was built on the site around a year after the blaze, a building which itself was taken by another disastrous fire in 1993. As it seems, irony plays no favorites. 

Ach So Giftig: The Story of the 1889 Dall Murders

   Mokena has the proud reputation of being a peaceable place, a name built on the relationships built by longstanding neighbors and friends who care for their community. Nevertheless, readers of this page have seen that the chronicle of our village’s history is dotted with islands of miscontent. Various things have happened over the years that are looked back upon with unsavoriness, be they theft of property, targeted arson, and various other distasteful deeds. Once in a lifetime, however, comes along an act so heinous that it sticks out prominently on the annals of time like a sore thumb. Parting the cobwebs and brushing away the dust, we find a case so salacious, so ghastly, that one has to read it to believe it. On that note, the author would like to introduce the 1889 Dall murders. 

   The story begins across a storm-tossed sea, in what is now western Germany. It was almost halfway through the first half of the 19^th century, and Jonathan Dall and Amalia Hartkopf were a married couple, making their way in the world as best they could. Like so many of their generation, the Dall family had been compelled to seek a better life on America’s shores at a time when their German home was rife with instability and revolution. The Dalls were natives of the area around Solingen, long renown for the high-quality knives produced in the region. There the elder Dall worked as a cutler, before picking up stakes with his family in 1848 as unrest reared its head and sailing across the choppy Atlantic for seven weeks. Eight children would be born to Jonathan and Amalia’s union, among whom were young Bertha, Ida, Eduard, Emma, and Jonathan. The names of the others, who don’t appear to have reached adulthood, are lost to time. The new Americans made their way to the Prairie State by way of New Orleans, where Jonathan Dall Sr. came into possession of a sizeable tract of land in Kendall County, before trying his hand at blacksmithing for a spell. All roads led to farming, however, and after tilling the soil again in Kendall County, the Dall family made their way to Will County at the end of the 1850s, before ultimately settling outside Mokena, then a neat little hamlet on the new Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. 

 

   Having already established itself as a center for Germanic settlement, the Dalls’ presence in the newly-formed Frankfort Township was something of an anomaly with their status as Rhinelanders, as most of their Teutonic brethren in our midst were Bavarians, Hessians and Mecklenburgers. They found a place with the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church in Mokena, and had a great deal of success after establishing a 160-acre farm on the eastern side of today’s LaPorte Road and Route 45. In 1860, it was estimated to be worth $5,500, and was quite a bustling operation – with three horses, eight cows, and four swine. Things were humming along that year, as Jonathan Dall Sr. estimated that the farm has produced 500 bushels of Indian corn, 300 pounds of butter, and 40 tons of hay. While living on this farm, he also served as path master and road commissioner, two prominent positions in township government, while one contemporary simply stated that the Dalls “were people of the highest character.” 

 

   Sometime around the end of the Civil War, the Dalls sold the farm and moved to a new one just a short carriage ride west of Mokena in New Lenox Township. It was down a country lane that bisected the estate of old settlers, the Marshall family, that also ran along the edge of that clan’s family cemetery, of which just to the northwest the Dalls lived. Bigger than their last farm, the new home property measured in at a stately 196 acres, and would later be cleaved by the new Wabash Railroad. It was here that Jonathan Dall Sr passed away on June 30^th, 1885 after a battle with pneumonia. The 72-year-old’s earthly remains were borne to St. John’s Cemetery, where they were laid to rest. So it was that Eduard and Jonathan Jr then became the men of the farm. It bears repeating to the modern reader that nineteenth century life was far from easy, and fate once again struck the Dall family when Eduard too succumbed on October 15^th, 1887 on the family farm at the young age of 34 years. He was a casualty of the dreaded malady of typhoid fever, and thus his younger brother, 31-year-old Jonathan Jr, described as “quiet, unostentatious, and hard-working” became the sole head of the farm. 

The old farmhouse on the Dall place, as it appears on modern-day Regan Road.

 

   By 1889, “peace, prosperity and plenty” abounded at the Dall homestead, and as that year was wrapping up, the household consisted of Jonathan, his 71-year-old mother Amalia, and a 17-year-old housekeeper named Sabina Schenkel who was there on and off, whose parents and siblings lived close to Mokena. Also present on the estate was a farmhand named John Scheffler, who remains a shadowy figure on the historical narrative, the only details having survived are that he was about 24 years old and a recent German immigrant. As such things happen when a man and a woman are in each other’s circles for an extended length of time, Jonathan and Fena, as Sabina Schenkel was called, became an item. Some would later say that they were actually engaged. As fate would have it, however, there was more to the situation than would meet the eye. There was a third person in the mix. Enter at this point the hired man John Scheffler, who also vied for Fena’s eye, and was consumed with a burning jealousy for Jonathan Dall. He maliciously plotted his boss’s undoing. 

 

   Christmas had come and passed, and Monday, December 30^th, 1889 had bloomed uneventfully at the Dall domicile. That morning, Amalia got to work making breakfast for the house, part of which was made up of bounteous helpings of hot coffee and fresh beef. As the first cups were poured, the Dalls and hired man Scheffler noticed right away that something wasn’t quite right with it. This batch was hastily gotten rid of, and a second pot brewed. Something was still off with it though, it being described as “bitter and bad”, but all were resigned to the matter by this point, and mother and son Dall and Scheffler nevertheless drank it down. 

 

   At this juncture in the story, there is an abrupt change in the day’s events, when, with alarming rapidity, all three became ill, John and Amalia Dall violently so. The two took to their beds, and grasping at straws, John Scheffler put forth the idea that the copper kettle that the meat was stored in must have caused it to go bad. Sinking rapidly, Amalia Dall suggested to him to have some sweet milk, at which point he felt better. Being able to be up and about, his employers sent him into Mokena to bring Dr. Edmund Lynch to the farm. Upon his arrival, the medicine man was flummoxed as to the cause of their sudden illness, and did the best he could for them, which after all was said and done, still provided precious little comfort to the suffering man and elderly woman. While tending to his quickly failing patients, the Dalls made a riveting revelation to the Civil War veteran: both of them separately told him that this was no case of tainted meat, that they believed Scheffler had poisoned them.

 

   That afternoon, young Fena Schenkel came to the Dall house from Mokena and helped nurse her fiancé and future mother-in-law. Jonathan confided to her in the same way he had to Dr. Lynch, but this time went into a little more detail, adding that the first pot of coffee that had been drank from had a strange white powder in it. Someone in the house examined the used coffee grounds, and it would be remembered that they were “of an unusual appearance.” The coffee pot was given a good cleaning, and yet a third serving made, of which this time Fena took a cup. She immediately became ill. Luckily, Dr. Lynch was able to quickly give her an antidote, and she was soon back on her feet. 

 

   Neighboring farmer Chester Marshall was also helping in any way he could, while Dr. Frank Searles of New Lenox was also called in, but try as the two physicians may, Amalia Dall expired at eight o’clock that night. Jonathan Dall strongly kept fighting even though his body was wracked with intolerable pain, but lost his battle the next morning, the frosty last day of 1889. With their dying words, until the very end, Jonathan and Amalia Dall pointed the finger at John Scheffler. 

 

   As the new year dawned over Will County, newspaper readers were greeted with ghastly headlines. “A Horrible Crime” shouted the Joliet Republic and Sun, while the Chicago Daily Tribune’s masthead read “Love, Poison and Revenge.” The dreadful events received widespread media coverage, having made not only the papers in those two nearby places, but were carried in publications from as far away as Kansas and Massachusetts. Headlines were also garnered in the Abendpost and the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, two of the state’s foremost German papers.

 

   On New Year’s morning, an inquest was held by Coroner Andrew J. Mills at the Dall house. The jury was made up of a veritable who’s who of Mokenians: cattleman Christian Bechstein, farmer John Huwiler, retired gentleman Nicholas Marti, attorney Arthur W. McGovney, and constable Charles Schiek, with former mayor Ozias McGovney serving as foreman. The testimonies of the doctors present, Chester Marshall, Fena Schenkel and even John Scheffler were taken, through an interpreter in the case of the latter. Scheffler, who the Chicago Daily Tribune described as “a dull, stupid-looking fellow (who) has nothing to say” stayed by his story, that the deaths were caused by tainted meat from the copper kettle. Dr. Searles had a chance previously to examine the kettle, and testified that there was nothing about it that could have caused such ferocious illnesses. Scheffler’s claims were not given much credence, and at the end of their deliberations, the coroner’s jury recorded that the Dalls “came to their death through the effect of some poisonous substance supposed to be administered by one John Scheffler and would recommend that he be held to the grand jury.” With that, Coroner Mills issued a warrant for his arrest, and the farmhand was whisked off to the county jail. 

 

   Many questions remained unanswered after the deaths, such as what exactly the poisonous substance was that caused the Dalls’ demise. In an effort to get to the bottom of this matter, a postmortem examination was held on them by Dr. Lynch and his colleague, Dr. William Becker, also of Mokena. Dr. Becker removed their stomachs and brought them to a laboratory at Rush Medical College in Chicago, in hopes that the chemist there could shed light on the issue. If any new leaves were overturned, the results have disappeared like sand into the winds of time. Mother and son were buried at St. John’s Cemetery, just south of Mokena, on January 2^nd, 1890. In the entries for the Dalls in the church’s German language Totenregister, or Registry of the Dead, long-standing pastor Carl Schaub wrote “Math: 24,42” in the margin next to Jonathan’s name, likely a reference to Matthew 24:42, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”

The Dall family plot in St. John's Cemetery. Amalia and Jonathan Dall Jr. are buried under the monument at left. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

 

   In the aftermath of the Dalls’ untimely passing, there remained the not-so-small issue of settling their estate. There were a few open accounts from area merchants that hadn’t been cleared up, such as that of John Zahn & Son of Mokena, Front Street hardware merchants who had sold Jonathan Dall a soup ladle, skimmer and tin pan earlier in December. Especially prominent in the proceedings of the probate court was the aforementioned Dr. Becker of Mokena, who billed the estate $10 each for the transportation of the Dalls’ stomachs to the Garden City, 85 cents for his train fare, and a further $4.25 for his hack and hotel bills. 

 

   Before long, a fateful day came, and what should have been a moment of reckoning, instead turned out to be what may have been one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Will County history. The grand jury convened in Joliet and closed their work on Saturday morning, February 1^st, 1890. Most of their time had been taken up with the Dall case, and the jurors had heard an abundance of testimony from many different witnesses, including the Chicago chemist who examined the victims’ stomachs. In a wild, unexpected turn, the grand jury ruled that all the evidence was circumstantial, and John Scheffler, who had been in custody since the inquest, was ordered released. 

 

   Then, as is the historian’s lament, all impressions, jottings and reports of this dreadful case disappear from the pages of the historical record. As intensely as it had captivated journalists of the day, their interests were drawn elsewhere as quickly as their gazes had focused on the farm west of Mokena. In retelling any story of this age, certain details fall victim to the ages and are gone forever, and countless bits and pieces have fallen between the cracks, where they’ll stay forever. As such, it’s unknown how Fena Schenkel, the woman in the middle, moved on with the rest of her life. Five years after that awful end of 1889, she married an out-of-towner and went on to have at least four children. She moved to Chicago, where she spent the rest of her days before passing on in 1948. Incidentally, her older brother Conrad Schenkel would wear a star as Mokena’s constable for a long span in the early 20^th century. Most frustrating, however, is determining the fate of John Scheffler. After February 1890, his name is wiped clean from recorded history. Did he stay in Will County, or decamp to a far-off place? Did the dreadful stigma of this case and the accusations leveled against him follow him for the rest of his days? There is no one living who can say. 

 

   The monuments in the Dall family plot are easily findable in St. John’s Cemetery, being among the tallest on the grounds. The German words spelled in gothic lettering, chiseled by hand into the stone, have been nearly obliterated by the decades of extreme Midwestern weather, but can still read in just the right amount of sunlight with the help of patient fingertips. The old Dall house still stands on today’s Regan Road, bearing silent witness to the horrors of 130 years ago, its current inhabitants likely unaware of the cruelty that played out within its walls.

Halls of Decision: Mokena's First Village Hall

    In the heart of Mokena there stands a small, nondescript building. Simple in its construction, it’s not likely to ever win any architectural praise. With its weathered red bricks, and stone inscription standing sentinel over the front entrance, the structure has a place in our village’s history that’s nigh impossible to overstate. Nowadays bearing the address 10940 Front Street, and home to Mokena’s Emergency Services and Disaster Agency, in years past it housed our first village hall. For well over a century, mayors, trustees, and simple townspeople have passed through its portal.

     To fully understand the beginning of this place, one should first step back to 1880. In the spring of that year, rural Mokena officially incorporated as a village, leaving behind a failed try from a few years previous. After preliminary odds and ends like the licensing of saloons and laying drainage tile along the streets were carried out, the village solons saw through the purchase of a newly vacated lot on Front Street, one door east of Division Street. The deal was made official on May 8^th, 1884, and over time, this patch of property hosted all the trappings of a municipality, such as a tiny wooden jailhouse, an enclosure that held the fire brigade’s hoses and cart, and starting in 1898, Mokena’s first water tower. 

 

    Even after several decades of improvements in town, the community still lacked a proper village hall. First mayor Ozias McGovney and his board of trustees convened in a harness shop on Front Street, while future meetings were held in places as varied as the dank basement of Charles Schiek’s saloon or the waiting room of the Rock Island railroad depot. By 1916, mayor George Hacker and trustees Charles Liess, Emil Krapp, John Groth, Albert Braun, John Nielsen, and Edward Schenkel were coming together at the Mokena Hall, a rambling multi-purpose building that stood at the current site of Avalanche Jewelry.

 

    At this time, the village hosted around 400 residents, and town leaders were in the market for a permanent home. When Mayor Hacker and his trustees assembled on February 2^nd, 1916, the subject came up of building a permanent structure to house a council chamber, a sturdier jail than the one already in existence, and a better space for the firefighting accoutrements. After word got out among Mokenians that the board was looking to build, there was concern by some that taxes would go up, but this notion was quashed by village clerk Bill Semmler, who was also the local correspondent to the Joliet Herald-News.

     

    To get the ball rolling, the village had to raise a bond of $4,600 to build the new town hall and simultaneously carry out a water main extension to some homes in town. The question went to referendum on April 18^th, 1916, when the construction question passed 109 to 21 votes. The poll was unique, in that Mokena women were able to cast their votes, having been granted limited suffrage three years previously by the state government. 

 

    Mayor Hacker, a contractor by trade, donned the hat of his day job and drew up some plans for the town hall, one that the Herald-News announced with restrained excitement would be “equipped with electric lights”. The village board accepted bids for construction of the new building, but all were rejected in June as being too expensive. At the end of July, concrete mason and Front Street resident Julius G. Oswald started work on the structure’s foundation, but before proper construction could begin, a slight problem had to be taken care of, namely the removal of the old jail which still stood on the village property.  The wooden shack was unloaded to local farmer Dick McGovney for $20, who then put rollers under it, and had it dragged south by horsepower. He placed it on the south side of LaPorte Road, where it became his rustic home. 

 

    The summer led to another hitch, when the high temperature caused several cases of heatstroke in town that August, leading labor on the town hall to be temporarily suspended. Work under Contractor Oswald and his crew continued into the fall of 1916, with three jail cells being shipped from Detroit at the end of October. They were a snug five feet wide, and six feet, six inches high. The first village board meeting was to be held in the new council chamber in November 1916, but despite rushing by Julius Oswald and his crew, it was delayed until the very end of the year. Hiccups continued until the last second; when the building’s electric juice was first switched on, a light in the firehose’s cart room blew out, and a 100-watt nitrogen bulb in the council chamber was a dud. 

Used today by the Emergency Services and Disaster Agency, this quaint building housed Mokena's village hall and jail along with storing firefighting equipment when it opened in 1916. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

     The historic record is foggy, but the last village board meeting of 1916, held on December 27^th, was probably the first to be held in the new town hall. Mayor Hacker and every trustee were present, with rather mundane business being transacted, namely insuring the building and paying off those who had constructed it. After decades of use at this site, the village hall relocated to Carpenter Street in 1976, and ESDA moved into to the historic Front Street building in 1993, where it still resides. The small, unpretentious edifice has been witness to a multitude of Mokena’s history over the last 100 years, and in the hands of a caring community, it may behold another century of usefulness.