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.