A family’s peace can have profound consequences for a community. Luckily for we Mokenians, as a whole we tend to be an amiable lot, keeping to our own affairs as we live and let live. However, many have been the times in our town’s history that disputes between husbands and wives or parents and children have spilled out into the public arena, shocking all within hearing range. Happening in yesteryear, these incidents were only amplified by the smallness of our then-rural village, a place where everyone knew everyone else. Looking back over the span of ages, one incident from the far-off year of 1879 stands out as the perfect example. What had started out as a family drama, eventually engulfed not only Mokena, but our sister town of Frankfort to such a stark degree that the media in the county seat paid close attention. It all swirled around one man, a farmer named Jakob Baumgartner.
Bearing the immense honor of being one of our earliest pioneers, Jakob Baumgartner’s life is worth a close look. He came to us by way of an idyllic Swiss village called Rapperswil, where he was born on September 2nd, 1828 to Jakob Baumgartner Sr. and Anna Maria Bart. Baumgartner spent his formulative years in this charming sliver of Europe, a community whose history can be traced to the age of the Roman Empire. All in all, this resolute clan came to America and carved out a place of their own in the freshly formed Frankfort Township in 1851, the family unit at that time being made up of Jakob, his parents, two of his brothers and four of his sisters. At least one account mentions that Jakob’s older brother Johannes was already stateside at this time, seeking his fortune in the gold fields of California. Regardless of who was in our environs when, looking back over the stretch of more than a century and a half, we can call every member of this family a founding mother and father of our community.
The elder Jakob Baumgartner began amassing land holdings between today’s Mokena and Frankfort, and before his death in 1855, had come to own several hundred acres, that would by and by pass to his sons Jakob and Johannes, after the latter had returned from the west. The lion’s share of Jakob Jr.’s acreage was centered around contemporary Route 45 and St. Francis Road, where his homestead stood on the northeast side of the country intersection. In the spring of 1853, young Jakob Baumgartner took Philippina Maue as his wife, at a time when Mokena was a hatchling of a town, barely being a year old. Philippina was six years her husband’s junior, and the daughter of a pioneering German family who lived a tad north of where our village was sprouting up. Together, the couple would raise ten children of their own, all of whom were born in Frankfort Township.
The homestead of Jakob Baumgartner in Frankfort Township as it appeared in 1873.
Being possessed of the immoveable faith that characterized our Teutonic residents, Jakob and Philippina Baumgartner were founding parishioners of the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church in Mokena, having been with the flock since they first worshipped together in our one-room schoolhouse in 1858. In proving his dedication to his beliefs and congregation, Jakob made a gift to them that year of eight dollars, or roughly 280 dollars in today’s funds. By 1860, nine years after his arrival, the American dream had come to favor Jakob Baumgartner; his farm at the time being composed of 80 acres of improved land, with seven horses and twelve milch cows. Over the previous year, he had produced 100 bushels of wheat, and 2,000 bushels of Indian corn. The estate only expanded to the east as time went on, engulfing acreage previously owned by Baumgartner’s younger brother Benedicht. In his day, Jakob Baumgartner was a well-respected man in both Mokena and Frankfort, and by the 1870s, he was prospering, even going to establish a cheese factory in 1875 with brother Johannes, father-in-law Franz Maue, neighbor George Geuther and another man. A proud local landmark, it stood on the northern banks of Hickory Creek until it was moved to a spot east of Frankfort in 1991.
Jakob Baumgartner was no stranger to intrigue. A particularly ugly incident in the summer of 1868 ended with his being shot in the face by one Rudolph Gefeller, in what appeared to be a dispute over money. The wound was a serious one, but the farmer was able to pull through. In the prime of his life, America was a place where many societal problems could be blamed on alcoholism, a plague on our land. The glut of saloons in Mokena and Frankfort didn’t help either. So it was, that Jakob Baumgartner had fallen under the vile curse of drink. Everything came to a head in what one contemporary called a “most fiendish and hell-deserving outrage” shortly after the passing of his father-in-law, Franz Maue. As the funeral cortege of nearly 100 horse-drawn carriages was making its way to St. John’s Cemetery on rainy March 5th, 1879, the mourners passed a large, homemade sign outside Mokena reading “Jacob Baumgartner, a habitual drunkard and son-in-law of the deceased.” The sight was unexpected and a shock to all who saw it that day, with one Frankforter even opining
“Did anyone ever suppose humanity would become so debased as to offer such an open insult to a funeral procession? Alas, alas, what are we coming to?”
Whether it was the imbroglio with the sign or some other long forgotten impasse, the proverbial straw had broken the camel’s back. 33-year-old Frank Baumgartner, son of Jakob, had reached a point of no return. He set the saloon keepers of Mokena and Frankfort, whom he faulted for his father’s condition, in his crosshairs. The younger Baumgartner swore out a complaint to the grand jury, and a total of eight saloonists from both towns were indicted on charges of “selling to a person in the habit of getting intoxicated.” Many accusations were made against the farmer, and from our standpoint in the 21st century, it must be remembered that Jakob Baumgartner was the victim of a terrible disease, one that had little prospects for cure in his day, and we shouldn’t view him with the harsh judgement that some of his contemporaries did. It bears remembering that none of us were there, and that we have to rely on period accounts to tell the story. The truth is somewhere between the clouds. As the Baumgartner case gained traction, it was noticed by the Joliet papers. The Signal was a steadfast defender of his, and refuted every point that been made about him, stating that he was “a man whose word is as good as gold” and that “he always manages his business successfully.” The Weekly Sunsaid that his “life has been a blameless one”, although both publications admitted there was at least a kernel of truth to the claims, with the former sheet writing “he would occasionally take a glass of beer and once in a while, perhaps, exhibit the exhilarating effects of so doing in a small degree” and the latter “at times he gets too much to drink, which (is) a great source of grief to his family.”
The case came to trial in the county seat in early 1879, and ran for two days. The defendants were watering hole owners Ferdinand and John Schiek, and John Zahn of Mokena, along with Charles Baumann, F. Kramer and Martin Muff of Frankfort. Two Mokena barkeeps, Nicholas Schuberth and Phillip Stellwagen were also initially indicted, but managed to have their charges dropped. The accused combined their resources to put up a mutual defense, but even this act of solidarity was a rocky road – one saloonist who was not party to the charges was encouraged to contribute to the fund, but would have nothing to do with it. Outraged, the others tried to blackmail him on charges of serving minors unless he chipped in, but upon reminding them that they did nothing for him when he sat in jail for a couple months previously, he made his point. Fifty witnesses were subpoenaed, leading citizens of Mokena and Frankfort both. At the end of the proceedings, each defendant was fined $20 and costs. Feeling morally justified, on reporting the verdict the Joliet Daily News preached that it would teach the saloon keepers to “look out for these old suckers”, referencing Jakob Baumgartner and those like him.
The grave of Jakob Baumgartner in St. John's Cemetery. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)
The actions of Frank Baumgartner in bringing charges against the saloon keepers led to an unexpected financial fallout for him. Maintaining the family cheese factory on Hickory Creek, he ran into problems in the aftermath of the debacle when Mokena and Frankfort’s German farmers refused to sell him their dairy products. In the words of the Joliet Republican, “the watch-word with them appears to be ‘no lager, no milk.’” With the passage of time, it is unknown how Jakob Baumgartner’s disease played out or if he ultimately recovered. In any case, he eventually retired and moved to Englewood, where he departed on March 16th, 1892 of cancer. The German United Evangelical St. John’s Church of Mokena buried him in their graveyard south of town, where a weathered obelisk stands over his dust, its gothic lettering still readable when the sun hits it just right. An acrimonious ruckus was raised in 1879, but all these years later we should remember that Jakob Baumgartner was a founding pioneer of our community and a pillar in St. John’s Church, which continues to do the same great work in our town that it did in his day. Although the path upon which he walked was sometimes rough, he deserves to be remembered and honored.
