(What follows is the continuation to last week's entry)
The Dead and Wounded
As the smoke and dust settled, both in a literal sense for Mokena, and psychologically for those who instigated the riot, a dour assessment of the casualties began. As far as history can tell, no Mokenians were fatally hurt in the affray; the brunt of the casualties were borne by the Chicagoans. Due to the chaos of the event itself, and the urgency with which the injured were whisked to their city homes, any definite number of the casualties inflicted in Mokena could never be established. Media accounts range from vague descriptions of chest and side wounds suffered by unnamed victims, to the graphically detailed narratives of those whose injuries read like a battlefield report.
One Farnham S. White, a barkeep at a hostelry called the House of David on Dearborn Street, was named as having been shot in the right side of the head; the projectile having fractured his skull just above the ear. He was not expected to survive the grievous wound. Interestingly, White was noted as having been seated in a passenger coach that had been stalled on the siding when he was wounded by a stray ball. Injured in the same manner was one Nicholas Geary, who was severely wounded in the right arm while sitting with a young lady, as well as a Billy Pinkerton, who was hit in the hand by possibly the same ball that struck Geary.
A man known only by the name of Kelly was said to have taken a ball in the shoulder. An unknown gentleman was shot either in the leg or groin; surgery was performed on him at the same night at his home at Michigan and Market Streets. Perhaps the case of Michael Casey was the most unique of the whole affair, namely in that it is rich with detail. A 24-year-old single man, Casey was mortally shot through the side in Mokena, the lead pistol ball having punctured his liver. Listed by at least one newspaper as part of the gang that left the train to fight, Casey lingered in agony for two days before eventually dying between 7:00 and 8:00 on the morning of August 16. Employed by the Illinois Central Railroad as a machinist, Michael Casey lived in the boarding house he died in at 162 Van Buren Street. He left behind two sisters. After his death, the Cook County Coroner held an inquest over his remains, but in the words of a contemporary journalist, “very little evidence concerning the affray (in Mokena) was elicited.”
What was certain, is that in most circles, no sympathy was felt for any of the hurt. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune, who was careful to precede his statement with “if the information we received was correct”, wrote that the “assailants were properly punished.”
Upon Printed Pages
As far as can be told, the rich historical narrative of the events in Mokena that summer night is completely true, and no fiction or embellishing has been added to this telling of the riot and its aftermath. It was reconstructed as coherently as possible amidst a confused tangle of contemporary reports, accounts that at times were vastly contradicting.
The majority of current knowledge of this calamitous event comes from media contemporary to the incident, and this is perhaps the most interesting aspect of all. Attesting to the brutality of the fight, the riot was covered in at least five different newspapers, those being namely the Joliet Signal, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Evening Journal, the Chicago Times, and a German-language publication called the Illinois Staats-Zeitung.Each of their reports, in some cases carried over the space of two days, are in disagreement with those of their fellow journalists. Everything from the exact number of rioters, whether or not they came armed, even the approximate number of casualties is extremely clouded. What is clear however, is that each newspaper, in the style of the day, made no effort to hide which party had won their respective sympathies.
The Chicago Tribune distinguished itself with providing the most detailed and (relatively) objective reporting on the entire affray. Although he perhaps overestimated the total number of pleasure seekers that left Chicago the morning of August 15th with 4,000, their reporter did reckon with eight to twenty casualties that night, perhaps three of which had been mortally wounded. He was of the opinion that the attack on Schiek’s inn (referred to incorrectly as the “Northwestern House”) was surely premeditated, as large stones were allegedly bought from New Lenox for the direct purpose of causing mayhem in Mokena. The writer mentioned a grim rumor that had reached the city stating that John Schiek had been lynched by the mob, but staying true to the facts, gave it no credence in his columns. The Tribune included a slight anti-Irish slant to their coverage, not only highlighting the drunkenness of the crowd, but also adding that the destruction of Schiek’s property was “in the matter of the countrymen” of those who began the ruin of the Western Hotel.
While the Chicago Evening Journal carried much of the same information that the Tribune did, its reporting placed special emphasis on the difficulty of attaining reliable witness accounts. Their source placed the number of wounded at anywhere from 10 to 30, but lead the reader to believe that this number exclusively referred to those wounded by stray rounds landing amongst the train coaches. The writer at the Evening Journal stated that “many persons say there were five or six killed” in the melee, while “others insist there were none”. A rumor was acknowledged that two or three of the attackers were killed outright, and hastily left on the ground in Mokena, where they fell. Their columnist noted that “the whole affair was brutal and reprehensible on both sides.” As of a day after the riot, no one in Chicago had been arrested for the clash, and those at the Evening Journal hoped that none of the guilty would escape without being punished.
In the pages of the Joliet Signal, one of Will County’s premier newspapers, a staunch defense of Schiek and his actions was to be found. The identity of the Signal’s correspondent has been lost to time, but he presented a very pro-Mokena stance to his readers. Without question, he stated that the episode was the “most fearful riot that has ever occurred in this county, and resulted from the excessive use of ardent spirits”, and insisted that the Chicagoans were already gregariously drunk and inclined to violence upon their arrival in Mokena. The last paragraph of the Signal’s reportage is a defensive editorial, coming to the guard of the shaken John Schiek. Readers were told not to place the blame for chaotic night on Schiek, who as an established resident of Mokena, was “always recognized as a quiet, peaceable man, who attends to his own affairs.”
The Chicago Times presented the grisly fight in the larger context of the raging Civil War. Headlining their column “A Carnival of Blood”, scenes of the war were drummed into readers’ minds with phrases like “brothers are sheathing bayonets and hurling bullets into brothers’ hearts”, and “the bloody infection of war is growing with fearful rapidity.” It is easy to infer that the Times was blaming the war with a concurrent wave of crime that had Chicago in its grip, ultimately stating “for what does one life amount to when thousands are being killed in every battle?”
As the Times’ coverage of the riot began, a distinct tone in the writing of their correspondent crept to the surface. He exploited the opportunity to address his readers in a haughty tone as if from a metaphorical high horse, and spared no detail in penning a very inflammatory, and ultimately anti-Mokena piece. According to the account of the unknown journalist in question, John Schiek greeted the excursionists at gunpoint when they entered his place, and ordered them to leave the premises or suffer the consequences. A violent outburst then ensued in the derisively named “grog shop”, the cause of which, in the face of the overwhelmingly disagreeing historical record, was allegedly not known to the travelers. From the perspective of this writer, Schiek and his acquaintances, who were called “infuriated wretches”, also pointedly opened fire on women and children who were near open doors on the railroad coaches. Once again, this account is not mentioned in any other period sources.
Any account of that horrible day would be remiss not to acknowledge the extensive coverage of the Chicago-based, German language Illinois Staats-Zeitung. Of all the publications surveyed, none was more vocal about the events that August day. The Staats-Zeitung provides a unique, you-are-there look into the violence that day, as its reportage contained detailed correspondence from two of the Mokenians who felt the wrath of the “whisky-soused Irish rowdies”, Conrad Stoll and Moritz Weiss.
First and foremost, pharmacist Weiss wanted to set the record straight on the condition the excursionists were in when they steamed into town. In a letter to the editor penned in his mother tongue, he wrote “Allow a witness to report the truth…to your honored sheet.” While the Chicago paper had managed to send a reporter to Mokena, Weiss noted that he was “only able to report over a short time in a skin-deep way.” He communicated to the paper that the excursionists of the St. Vincent de Paul Society were the cause of three fights at Cold Spring Grove, after which “the cowards trampled down ten acres of corn, like a herd of swine”, after which they “split up lots of schnaps between themselves” and took the train to Mokena, in a “properly tanked-up” condition.
Moritz Weiss confidently declared that none of the gunfire emanating from the Mokenians hit the railroad cars, and in closing demanded that a proper investigation take place in the matter.
Mokena storekeeper Conrad Stoll praised the Staats-Zeitung’s coverage of the drunken riot, but modestly added that they still “didn’t know the tenth of what happened.” After submitting his richly detailed account of the day in German words, he pleaded to the editor to “please be so good to put all of this in the paper, so that law-abiding people can see what a band of rogues this was.” He also wished for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, and for them to made responsible monetarily for the damage that was inflicted upon Mokena that day.
An Uncertain Aftermath
In the end, it remains unknown if any of the parties involved in the melee were ever prosecuted. The matter is further complicated by the fact that legal records of any sort pertaining to the Cook County participants would have been destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871. As bitter as this truth is, the fact must be accepted that this portion of the fearsome night’s aftermath will forever remain unknown to modern Will County.
The grisly summer in Mokena and its blood harvest were quickly forgotten to the tides of time. Another ethnically charged incident in town during the 1890s (albeit one with no fatalities) sparked a flicker of remembrance by some locals, who in turn retold slightly distorted recollections to a Joliet reporter. Aside from the contemporary news accounts of the 1864 riot, it was never again mentioned in the known printed record. Past county and local histories gloss over the event, possibly in shame, but more likely in unawareness. Descendants of longtime, founding Mokena families recall no details of it having been passed down through the generations.
The fates of those Chicagoans who left the cars in Mokena that night remain unknown. Of the few identities that have surfaced from the fog of decades, those have proved unusually difficult to trace. Of those injured that weren’t already listed as having died, it can’t help but to be pondered if some lived for decades afterward carrying pistol balls in their limbs and extremities, telling tales of mayhem in a small town no one had ever heard of.
In a rather lucky turn, history has been generous in recording the life of John Schiek after the ghastly fight. In the post-Civil War era, he seems to have turned his focus to farming. In an 1873 plat map of Frankfort Township, Schiek’s name flows across a large portion of the township’s northwest. Included in this substantial acreage were two farms, ostensibly one could have served as Schiek’s main residence, while the other would possibly have been under the care of a family member or a leasee. Until relatively recently, one of these farms, having been situated on Wolf Road approximately 460 yards north of today’s 191st Street, boasted a commodious farmhouse built in the Italianate style, contemporaneous with the era in which Schiek would have owned the property. Of the other farm, located on the north side of 191st Street at what is now Schoolhouse Road, no trace remains. Upon leaving the ownership of the Schiek family in the early 20th century, modern construction was carried out on this estate.
As years progressed, John Schiek became very involved in Mokena’s affairs. In the spring of 1887, he received a seat on the Mokena village board, taking part in the decision-making that marked the first few years of the village’s incorporation. Not long thereafter, John Schiek found himself in the sunset of his life. As he became ill, his mind surely wandered to thoughts of better days, and perhaps, also to a day of horror – the wanton destruction and gore at his hotel on August 15th, 1864. Schiek passed away in Mokena the night of February 25th, 1890 to a deadly combination of kidney inflammation and influenza. No sooner than Schiek’s family and friends laid his earthly remains to rest at St. John’s Cemetery, amid a sea of obelisks etched with flowing Germanic script, had his comrades from the village board honored him with a special resolution. Passing sympathy to the Schiek family, the resolution read, in part “…we mourn for one who was in every way worthy of our respect and highest regards.”
At the epicenter of this entire account, stands Schiek’s Western Hotel, the site of the fatal riot. Over a century and a half after that night, the question begs itself of where exactly the inn stood in Mokena. In pouring over period property records, little solid information can be extracted. In an interesting footnote to history, a mysterious incident in 1875 could potentially shed light on the mystery. Although the period in question was one in which John Schiek considered himself a farmer, he still retained ownership on a building in Mokena. In November of the aforementioned year, a disastrous fire ravaged the property, destroying it. The wooden structure was devoid of inhabitants, and interestingly, the fire was quickly deemed the work of an arsonist; a rumor even spread in the area that the stench of an acrid kerosene accelerant could be smelled for a two-block radius.
Could this have been the site of the riot eleven years previous? At this late point, it is impossible to know. Too few details have survived the decades to hazard a guess.
So it was, that on a summer evening during our great Civil War, a booze-soaked hoard of troublemakers from the city came to our town looking for trouble. They found it, in this little known, yet significant event in the early history of Mokena. This incident, in all its wretchedness, deserves to be remembered as a major part of our narrative.
That is an amazing story! Thanks for sharing!
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