There is perhaps no greater virtue in our land than that of free speech. Guaranteed in the constitution, it is the cornerstone of democracy. No one item upholds and embodies this ideal more than the American newspaper. In the hands of its reader, it is the country’s truest speaker. From the metropolis to the humblest village, every community has an organ that not only represents its citizens, but also allows them a platform to speak and be heard. The newspaper is also an irreplaceable historic document, one that when properly cared for, loyally remains decades after its birth to give researchers hard facts where previously only false memories and muddled stories existed.
Every publication is a reflection of its creator, and no man has been better suited to helm a newspaper than William Semmler of Mokena, Illinois. Described during his lifetime as “an individualist with real American determination” and also as “one of Mokena’s most up-on-his-toes citizens”, his life’s masterpiece was the News-Bulletin, his hometown’s paper from 1919 to 1969. Semmler was a popular man about town, who “created oodles of friends” and was remembered by a contemporary as “hustling, smiling, agreeable Bill, with your handshaking which was always real.” From this authenticity sprung the greatness and immortality that he shared with his steadfast partner and wife Margaret, along with their two daughters Adeline and Ada. The Semmlers’ Mokena was one significantly different than today’s; where now we have a bustling suburb of Chicago, they knew a much smaller, rural community, one that boasted less than a thousand residents, a place where everyone knew each other and coal soot from passing Rock Island locomotives coated uptown buildings.
William Semmler’s roots reached back to the earliest days of the village where destiny found him. To really understand Bill, one has to look at those who gave him life, John and Catherine Semmler. His mother was born Catharina Heim, who first saw the light of day in Mokena on August 20th, 1855. The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad had been completed through the locale only 3 years before, and what began as a tiny hamlet clustered around a train depot was starting to show signs of growing into a lively village. Her parents were hardy folks of Hessian stock, having left their homeland and set down stakes in what would later become Frankfort Township at the end of the 1840s. After first trying his hand at rugged prairie farming, Catharina’s father, Martin Heim, soon became physically incapable of the grueling toil, and with the arrival of the Rock Island, set up a smart little store near the tracks that catered to the men who laid the rails and the other predominantly German-American citizens of the sparsely populated area. Counting some success in this endeavor, Heim converted his business into a beer saloon that became a mainstay in Mokena, a place where people of all walks of life rubbed elbows.
Seen here around 1870 with the proprietor in the doorway, Martin Heim's saloon was a Mokena fixture for decades. One of the oldest buildings in the village, it stood at today's 10842 Front Street. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)
Standing on what would come to be called Front Street, the tap room had modest living quarters adjoining it where the Heims raised four children. The third to be born, Catharina, or Catherine, as she came to be called, came of age in a Mokena that was bustling with activity and growing seemingly by the day. Her family were charter members of the German United Evangelical St. John’s congregation in the village, having been with the flock since its inception in 1862, and Catherine was confirmed there on Palm Sunday 1869. It was with this same congregation that on November 8th, 1885, at the age of thirty, Catherine married Johann Semmler, a Prussian shoemaker ten years her senior. Nothing has survived the ravages of time that indicates how they came together. Originally a native of a Gnesen in Prussia, Semmler found himself on America’s shore in 1867, after having done a stint in the Prussian military. He was in Chicago by 1871, plying his shoemaking trade on DeKoven Street. That year, he survived the destruction of the Great Fire, having been saved only by a lucky change in the wind’s direction at the last second.
After John and Catherine Semmler were married, they moved a few miles down the road west to New Lenox, where their only child was born on January 9th, 1887. He was baptized at St. John’s in Mokena on June 4th as Wilhelm Eduard Emil Semmler, but as a lad, he was known simply as Willie. The Semmlers moved to Frankfort in 1897, but were back in New Lenox by 1900. The elder Semmler set to work at his craft in the tiny community, where the family kept house along what would later be known as the Lincoln Highway. Living immediately south of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad tracks, young Willie became captivated by the puffing locomotives and coaches that passed back and forth behind his home. Like many American boys throughout the ages, he came to live and breathe all things train. His interest transcended that of most, however, when as an ambitious lad of 14, he set out to build his own locomotive. No small task, Willie set to it with ardor and dedication, displaying a vim that would be a trademark for all of his days. Attached to the back of the Semmler house facing the railroad tracks, the engine’s base was made with spare logs that were around his father’s shoe shop, while its boiler was fashioned out of a metal container used for displaying coffee, while a flour and sugar barrel completed the set-up.
A smoke stack was made out of an old stove pipe, a headlight out of a salmon can, sewing machine parts for the throttle, and a working bell and semaphore were attached to the engine as well. Every conceivable component of an authentic locomotive was fabricated by the young Semmler out of whatever material he could get his hands on. He also put together a waterproof cab with the help of some cast aside tobacco signs. Complete with a homemade engineer’s seat, it proved a popular place for neighborhood boys to seek refuge from the elements.
After all of Willie Semmler’s work was done, his locomotive measured 12 feet long, four feet wide, and 8 feet high, and bore yellow cardboard letters “C.R.I. & P.” and the numbers 932, after a real engine that ran the line. The lad’s engine came to be something of an attraction for passers-by on the Rock Island line; trainmen would sometimes throw authentic railroad knickknacks for the youngster to incorporate into his engine. If a passing accommodation was making a stop long enough in New Lenox, it wasn’t rare for railroad men to come get a closer look at Semmler’s handiwork, who declared it to be a “dead ringer of the real thing.” Willie was even once graced by a visit from the road master himself, as well as travelers who stopped by to photograph the locomotive.
Willie Semmler, one of the biggest train enthusiasts in Will County, was set for a career in the world of railroads until disaster struck. On the fateful night before Thanksgiving 1901, a calamitous fire destroyed John Semmler’s shoe shop along with the home of his family. While they escaped the inferno by the skin of their teeth, young Willie’s locomotive, the scene of countless passionate hours of his labor, also succumbed to the flames. The following year, while Willie Semmler was 15, the Semmlers moved home and hearth back to Mokena, to the house on Front Street that once held the old saloon of Catherine’s father, Martin Heim. The building was awash with local flavor, holding its original doors and windows, as well as timbers that still showed the scars of the ax that felled them decades before. The old bar made of black walnut could even still be found in the place. It was here that John Semmler opened up his shoe repair shop, and began conducting business in Mokena.
Aside from being a railroad buff, young Willie was possessed of an intellectual drive that gave him a thirst for the printed word, which led him to visit the farm of Willard Owen just southwest of Mokena, often times making the trek by foot with his father. Mr. Owen was known to keep a large personal library, from which he freely allowed Willie to borrow. Young Semmler only went to school until he was about 10 years old, but displayed an aptitude for spelling, grammar, history and geography, along with an early knack for writing. All would serve him well in the future.
As social networks are the wheels that drive life, a friend of Willie’s opened a door for him that would determine his destiny. Bill, as he came to be called in his adolescence, was the friend of Ida Kiniry, a Mokena resident about thirteen years his senior. The daughter of the village’s railroad crossing flagman, Kiniry was the local correspondent to the Joliet Weekly News, and in 1907 found herself engaged to be married. Looking to resign her position with the newspaper, she invited Bill to take over the spot for her. Thus it was that Bill Semmler of Mokena, a tender lad in his twenties, became a reporter.
The exact date of this turning point in his life, his formal introduction to the journalistic world, has become somewhat muddled over the years, with contradictory points abounding. It likely occurred around 1907, as this is the earliest known reference in the pages of the Weekly News to his being named a reporter. As the newspaper carried a vast array of items from across Will County, Bill Semmler served the publication as the local contributor for Mokena, Frankfort and the surrounding area. It was with the News that Bill cut his teeth with the press, recording neighborhood births, marriages and deaths for the paper, but also cheerful news of parties, occasional snippets of petty crime, and even details of property transactions. In a reflection of his heritage and the greater ethnic makeup of the area, Bill had an understanding of the German language, which also enabled him to pick up newsy morsels from Mokena’s more elderly residents, some of whom lacked English abilities. Aside from reporting community news, Bill also occasionally used his columns to showcase self-composed poetry.
This work was mostly seasonal, having to do with holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine’s Day, but he also wrote “Rewards”, which appeared in the News on August 15th, 1907, which contained stanzas such as
Glory after the gloom/Blessing after the blight,
Joy after deep sorrow/After darkness the light
Another piece, “The Threshold” which appeared the day after Christmas that year, partially read
The joyous bells o’er moor and fell/in mellow echoes their story tell
And this is their joyous refrain:
A bright and happy New Year’s here again!
Every man has the woman in his life who propels him forward, and Bill Semmler found his in Margaret Oestreich. While the historic record has left us with many rich details on Bill’s early life, we are left with comparatively few on Margaret’s. She was two years younger than him, having been born on May 18th, 1889. In a geographic parallel, Margaret Oestreich was a native of Joliet, the seat of Will County, located 11 miles west of Mokena. While a school chum of hers later described the young lady as a “very sweet girl with a wonderful disposition”, Margaret had an exceptionally tough childhood, at one point spending a year in bed with a heart condition. She moved to New Lenox in 1906, where her sister Clida was manager of the local telephone office, taking a job there as her assistant. No details have survived the course of time as to how, but in some way Margaret Oestreich and Bill Semmler got to know each other as teens, and later she often accompanied him as he traveled the Mokena area in search of news in a horse-drawn buggy that had been provided him by the News. The young couple tied the knot on October 21st, 1914[i] at Zion Evangelical Church in Joliet, from whence they set down their stakes in a cozy, newly built home on Niethammer Avenue in Mokena. Margaret Semmler was very civically-minded in her new hometown, leading the local Camp Fire Girls as early as 1915, a spirited group of young ladies akin to the Girl Scouts.
Standing today 19525 Midland Avenue, Bill and Margaret Semmler built this house around the time of their 1914 wedding on what was then called Niethammer Avenue.
Seen here with her Camp Fire Girls in a Front Street parade around 1916, Margaret Semmler sits to the left of driver W.H. Bechstein.
The Joliet Weekly News, Bill’s employer, consolidated with the Joliet Herald in 1915, which put him on the staff of the new Joliet Herald-News at its inception. Ever looking to expand, Bill Semmler set up a small print shop in his Mokena home in early 1916, after having gotten a jump start in $8.00 of capital that had been borrowed from W.H. Bechstein, the owner of the village’s grain elevator. After the passing of John Semmler in April of that year, Bill picked up his equipment, which consisted of a small, hand operated press and a few different fonts of type, and moved the shop into the old property on Front Street, where his maternal grandfather had served sudsy beer and his father worked on shoes. He took on a partner in the venture, namely a Mokena gent named Wachter, who when the population of the village in this era is surveyed, was likely one Andrew Wachter, an engraver who was a near neighbor to the Semmlers. Before long, this partnership dissolved, and the historic record hasn’t left us the reason why. Bill’s erstwhile printing business, which turned out business letterheads, auction posters, as well as Forward, the flavorful bulletin of Mokena’s German United Evangelical St. John’s Church, was eventful for him, as his simultaneous experience as a reporter and the new know-how as a printer gave him a solid foundation of valuable knowledge for the future.
Bill Semmler’s budding career was almost interrupted when America entered World War I in 1917, during which time he was summoned to the Will County Courthouse by the draft board to undergo a physical examination. What transpired isn’t known, although the fact that he listed his “invalid, widowed mother” as a dependent on his draft card and declared himself “not physically strong” may have played a role in his never having been called up.
Bill Semmler wore many hats in the Mokena of his day, for not only was he a printer and gatherer of local news, he also took a seat as village clerk in April 1912 under mayor Ona McGovney, having received a whopping 65 votes from his townsmen to his opponent’s one. In this capacity, which Bill filled until 1922, he took down the minutes of the village board and issued local hunting licenses, among other tasks. Bill’s drive to serve the community was tireless, as much later, he became a Mokena village trustee from 1937 to 1943, serving also as clerk of Frankfort Township for eight years. Another venture soon started for Bill and Margaret, that of parenthood, when their marriage was graced by the arrival of their first child, Adeline Semmler, on August 18th, 1917. She was followed by her sister Ada Semmler three years later on February 7th, 1920.
(Tune in next week for Part 2 of this story!)
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