Mokena’s story is a long and winding one, stretching back nearly two centuries, containing countless moments of mirth and buoyancy. When we look back, these are the times that first come to mind, and rightfully so, as they are what make our village feel like home. However, a close look upon the record of the years will also review nefarious bits as well. These are things we aren’t proud of, but that nevertheless, any locale as old as ours will have. From the bone-crushing riots of the 19th century detailed elsewhere in these pages, to the infamous robbery of Mokena State Bank that is still talked about to this day, nearly a 100 years later, we have some high-octane events on our collective timeline. One case ranks up with the rest of them, one that is remembered by increasingly few; the 1937 heist at the Mokena post office has all but slipped into the cracks of history.
This institution is almost as old as the village itself, tracing its founding to February 10th, 1853, when our town was less than a year old. The same day, the honor of calling himself our first postmaster was bestowed upon Warren Knapp, Esq., who a little over a year before, founded the first business in what would become Mokena, at a time before the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad was fully completed. A 26-year-old man of New York birth, Knapp married into the McGovney family in 1850, when he took Nancy as his wife, the younger sister of future first mayor Ozias. Where exactly Warren Knapp’s post office stood in the newborn village cannot be reconstructed from the historic record, although it’s reasonable to think it could have been in his combined general store and residence, a small stone building that stood on the site of today’s 11124 Front Street.
That Mokena was a railroad town since its birth, gave us excellent postal connections to the world. From the outset, it was the job of the Rock Island agent and his helper to bring sacks of mail from the post office to the depot, but a 1921 ruling passed by Uncle Sam changed this, from then on this would be the domain of a new hire. A blurb under the headline “Do You Want a Job?” that appeared in the November 2nd, 1921 edition of Mokena’s News-Bulletin looked for bidders for the position, it stating that applicants had to be at least 16, and that “whoever takes the job will be paid monthly”, not to mention that “six mails a day will have to be handled, in addition to hanging mail pouches on mail cranes twice daily”, the final part of the sentence referencing the wooden arms that allowed mail bags to be grabbed via hook from fast-moving trains.
Today we take it for granted that nearly anyone is a text message away, but in the days before this rapid, instantaneous communication, the arrival of a fresh load of mail over the rails was a much-anticipated event. Some sardonic pointers passed on by the postmaster of neighboring Tinley Park in 1924 give life to this fact:
NOTICE.
Advice to Patrons.
Positively no letters will be delivered until received.
If you do not get your letter the day you expect it, have the Postmaster look through all the boxes and in the cellar, also, it ought to be there somewhere and he likes to look for it just to please you.
If your friends don’t write, curse the Postmaster, he is to blame.
If he tells you there is no mail for you, put on a grieved expression and say there ought to be some, he is probably hiding your mail for the pleasure of having you call for it six or seven times a day, and after every freight or hand car.
ASK HIM TO LOOK AGAIN.
From its first days until the lean years of the Great Depression, the Mokena post office counted 20 postmasters and postmistresses, and was housed in a head-spinning number of different locations in the village. On June 18th, 1934, Miss Margaret M. Maue received her commission as postmistress, at a time when the community counted around 350 residents. The 28-year-old local native oversaw an office counting three employees; namely herself, her clerk and one rural mail carrier, at which time her charge was located in a small wing of an old building that stood on the northwest corner of Front and Division Streets. Less than three years into her stewardship, an event transpired that would stay with Margaret Maue for the rest of her days.
This idyllic circa 1925 view looking west from the corner of Front and Division Streets shows the Mokena Hardware Company at right, and within the red circle, the Mokena Post Office. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)
In the pitch black of Tuesday morning, March 2nd, 1937, Front Street stood quiet and still, not a soul stirred. At about four o’clock, a truck piloted by unknown yeggs cut through the pre-dawn darkness and ambled into town. The conveyance was backed up to the post office, and the nameless miscreants went on to cut a hole in the front door’s glass, whereupon one snaked his arm in and opened the catch lock. A team of men went inside, maybe four or five of them, and beelined for the office’s safe, an 800-pound colossus. Using lots of elbow grease and oomph, they lugged it from the back of the post office and through the lobby, leaving gouges on the floor, then outside and into the truck. Before they disappeared, one of the crooks tore open a package addressed to Ben Tewes, but open rifling through its contents, was not impressed with them and threw the box aside.
The whole thing was just as easy as that. The thieves made their hasty escape, leaving tire tread marks on the ground in front of the post office. The entire time they were busy, they never had to worry about being interrupted in their deed, as neighbors would later report having heard a truck idling in those early hours, but thought nothing of it.
Flashing forward to 5:30 that morning, 70-year-old Front Street resident and local mail messenger Julius Grothendick turned up at the post office to get started on the day’s work. To his horror, he found the office’s door ajar and the safe missing. Starting a chain of frenzied communication, Grothendick, Mokena’s sole veteran of the Spanish-American war, alerted Postmistress Maue, who in turn notified federal postal officials in Chicago. In no time flat, two inspectors showed up in town, who sealed off the premises, allowing no one to come or go. The whole post office was dusted for finger prints, and photos were extensively taken both inside and out of the small wing of the building that held the office. In the meantime, Mokena lawman George Bennett posted himself in the doorway and handed out the mail to any villager who came for it.
Miss Maue tallied up her losses. The biggest were the $1,300 in government saving bonds (worth around $27,000 in today’s money) and the $400 in stamps that disappeared. Along with them were cashed money orders representing $82, then $198 in cash, $60 in checks and two books of blank money orders. To add insult to injury, all of the post office’s record books were in the $50 safe, and none of it was insured.
Seen here around 1930, Margaret M. Maue was postmistress of the local post office at the time of the robbery.
The next chapter in the saga played out six days after the heist. On the morning of Wednesday, March 10th, a traveling attorney spotted what was described as a “pile of junk” along the old Monee road, four miles southwest of Chicago Heights. Whatever it was, it was “battered beyond repair”, and upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a safe, or at least what was left of one. Nearby, a set of railroad tools was found cast aside, consisting of a pick, two sledge hammers, and others. It was deduced that these had been used to smash it open.
Rightfully finding all of this fishy, the lawyer notified the police. Sure enough, with the help of postal authorities, the wrecked safe was traced back to Mokena. Interestingly, most of the contents of the safe from the post office were found along with it, only the $400 in stamps and $198 in cash were missing. Postmistress Maue was able to get the rest of the documents back to town, but the historic record is unclear as to what she did with the broken safe. Curiously, that same morning, yet another wrecked safe complete with railroad tools was found abandoned two miles east of Frankfort. Determined to belong to a grocery store in the county seat, it was surmised that this was the handiwork of the same gang that attacked the Mokena post office.
Life kept going in Mokena, the Second World War came and went, the baby boom started, and the village enjoyed a period of prosperity. In June 1952, there was yet another robbery of the post office, in which a large number of money orders were looted. In any case, the whole event wasn’t as high profile as the case 15 years earlier, and the whole thing has been forgotten by history, much as the 1937 heist has. Postmistress Margaret Maue, one of the most intrepid young women in our community’s history, took Francis O’Brien as her husband in 1941, and held her office in Mokena until 1968. Her 34 years running our post office is, as far as anyone can tell, a village record that still stands to this day. Perhaps the crowning moment in Margaret O’Brien’s career was the dedication of the new post office in 1960, a building which still stands at 11134 Front Street. The Mokena post office is a community institution that goes back almost to the day our village was born. As the great robbery of 1937 proves, its history isn’t all sorting letters and stamping cards.
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