A wide, grey band, stretching through our midst, 191st Street is one of the main avenues traversing through Mokena. In the days when local roads were casually named after those who lived on them or where they led, it was known as Tinley Park Road. On its western side, 191st Street is primarily residential, with homes either fronting on it or subdivisions being directly in the neighborhood. As one comes upon Fire Station 2 and draws closer to Route 45, the mood becomes more business-like, with enterprises of various types abounding, sterling examples being Schillings and the expansive warehouse for Darvin Furniture. Nowadays, 191st Street bears the honorary name of Cpl. Robert Stanek, a Mokenian who lived on this road and made the ultimate sacrifice in 1968 as a Marine in the Vietnam War.
In the days of yesteryear, long before Robert Stanek and most of the rest of us, this road was a country farm lane that cut through the landscape like a ribbon through a cradle of agriculture. A prominent, recognizable remanent is now known as the Brandau Farmstand, but a century ago was the Henry and Ida Yunker farm, while directly to the southeast, where Import Exchange now stands, was the Louis and Elizabeth Lauffer estate, now obliterated from the landscape. Large dairy barns and tall silos once dotted the landscape here. Many faces play into the rich history of this road, and it would be impossible to recall the flavorful narrative of this one-time rural idyll without that of a sturdy and storied Mokena family, that of Lawrence and Lydia Kohl.
Our matriarch first saw the light of day as Lydia Emma Geuther on April 19th, 1896, born to this world here in Mokena. She came from good Frankfort Township stock; the Geuthers could proudly count themselves as among the first families of German heritage to settle in the yet-unnamed township in 1848, while her mother’s clan, the Bauchs, were also early arrivals. Jacob Bauch, a great uncle of Lydia’s, was a 19th century store keeper in Mokena.
Lydia was born on the family farm along the Tinley Park Road, on the north side of today’s 191st Street just east of LaGrange Road, a corridor where her family had tilled the soil at least as far back as the Civil War, when her grandparents Johann Georg and Elisabeth Geuther planted and harvested crops there, all the while also running a small cheese factory. Lydia’s father, Charles Geuther, was also a farmer, and in his day came to be something of a prominent citizen in Mokena, where he held a seat on the local school board for many years. Lydia Geuther had an older sister, Mabel, who was three years her senior, and sister Olive came on her heels two years after her own birth. Two brothers came along later, Milton in 1902, while the baby, Harold, didn’t make his appearance until 1909. Among Lydia Geuther’s earliest memories was of seeing a newspaper on her kitchen table bearing the details of President William McKinley’s assassination in September 1901, while she also remembered many years later that Saturdays were bath nights on the farm, all done in a tub that was heated on the kitchen stove. Lydia was an exceptionally sharp girl, having learned her times tables up to twelve before she started school at the age of five, having learned from atop a stool as she watched her mother sew.
The Geuthers were stalwart members of the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church, of which Pastor Carl Schaub would visit the farm a few times a year and be served wine from a pitcher. So it was, that when Lydia was not quite nine years old, her family decided to move to town, and when a sale was held at their farm, on a stormy day in February 1905, it was a huge success for the family, with some of the cows fetching as much as $55. When all was said and done, $1,500 had been netted. It helped that buyers and looky-loos had been drawn to the happenings by a big basket of donuts that was on hand for the taking. Charles Geuther had bought two five-acre tracts in the northeast part of Mokena by this time, and as the family moved from the farm outside town in this era, they had a commodious house and barn constructed in the village proper. The stone for the foundation was hauled to town by teams of horses from a Joliet quarry, ultimately being laid by J.G. Oswald, a local concrete man and stone mason, while town carpenter Adam Barenz raised the walls of the new house. A big cistern was built under the new kitchen for the Geuthers’ water use, while the family also had a cow, two horses and a barn stocked with hay. Charles Geuther secured wood for use at home from a local forest, had it chopped, which his family then sorted into an outbuilding on their property. Also on their acreage in town was a 40-foot-high windmill and a verdant garden, along with a plot upon which the Geuthers cultivated corn.
In an uncommon move for a young lady in her time and place, Lydia Geuther received a higher education, having attended one year of classes beginning in the 1912 school year at the teachers’ college in DeKalb, this institution now being known as Northern Illinois University. Upon the completion of her courses, the newly made educator came back to Mokena and took a teaching position at the now all but forgotten one-room Marti School on the northeast corner of today’s Wolf Road and 187th Street. A tiny, primitive building by our 21stcentury standards, Lydia’s 1916 class consisted of eleven students, all of whom lived on nearby farms. Lydia took a salary of $60 a month until she gave up the spot in 1919.
The Geuthers of Mokena, seen here around 1916. Standing in rear row, left to right, are Mabel (Krapp), Milton, and Lydia (Kohl). Seated in first row, left to right, are Charles, Olive (Stellwagen), Harold and Sarah. (Image courtesy of Amy Donoho)
It was a past time of Lydia’s in those years leading up to the First World War to watch baseball matches from a two-seat swing in a shady spot of the Geuther lawn, which provided a commanding view of Erickson Park across the road, on the sight of today’s First Court. These local games were no trifling, small-time affair; on the contrary, nothing that exists in today’s village can be compared to them. The Mokena team was composed of crack hometown athletes who drew crowds of hundreds, especially when they played their arch rivals, Frankfort. One of our players was a robust lad named Lawrence Frederick Kohl, who everyone called Lence. Eight years Lydia’s senior, he was born in the southern reaches of Orland Township on a farm in the vicinity of what is now called 104th Avenue. Like the Geuthers, the Kohls were agriculturists, and no fresh arrivals to our environs, having first set foot in Frankfort Township by way of Chicago and a village called Fliessen in the Austrian Empire during the antebellum years.
Along the way, Lydia and Lence got to know each other better, and two paths merged as one when they were married in February 1920. Theirs was a small, intimate ceremony held in the Geuther house in Mokena, officiated by Rev. William Kreis of St. John’s German Evangelical Church. After the wedding, the new Mr. and Mrs. Kohl left on an evening Rock Island train bound for Chicago, amid, as the village News-Bulletin put it, “a copious shower of rice.” The couple moved to the Mokena farm of Lence’s parents after they tied the knot, a sprawling place on the north side of today’s 191st Street at the intersection with Schoolhouse Road. The whole estate was nothing to sneeze at, as it took up 160 acres. Lence’s Dad and Mom, Anton and Elizabeth Kohl, acquired the place from the widow Helena Schiek in 1895, which contained a spacious two-story farmhouse built not too long after it came into the Kohls’ hands. At one point during the early years of the Kohls’ ownership, the construction of a southern extension of what we now know as 108th Avenue threatened to bisect the farm, and in order to thwart the dissection of their property, the family built a large dairy barn in the path of the projected road in 1908, and as draconian eminent domain statutes didn’t exist in those days, the matter was dropped.
Newlyweds Lence and Lydia Kohl. (Image courtesy of Amy Donoho)
Three children would come to grace the home of Lence and Lydia Kohl, namely Roy Everett, who was born July 15th, 1921, next came Marvin Lawrence on May 23rd, 1925, who Mokenians always knew as Miff, and rounding out the family was Dorothy Mae, who came into the world on May 23rd, 1932. When she was a baby, Lence Kohl would rock his daughter in her cradle via a string tied from the cradle to his leg, so as not to take him away from card games in the next room with his friends. Musical talent ran strong in the Kohl family; Lydia played an upright Bauer piano that, upon her marriage, was shipped to Mokena over the Rock Island from Chicago. All in all, it cost $600, which she financed with her salary from the days teaching at Marti School. Lence played the violin, and Roy Kohl became a masterful and moving singer in his time. Dorothy Kohl was nothing short of a musical prodigy, taking up the piano in her earliest childhood before going on to take lessons from a teacher who traveled to Mokena from the county seat once a week. She eventually added the organ to her repertoire, and was playing local weddings by the time she was 16. So in demand was her talent, that she generally played nuptials every Saturday, and some days even two. Sharing her natural gift with not just Mokena, Dorothy also became a paid organist at New Lenox and Tinley Park churches, and continued her musical tradition even after she moved away in later years.
At her 191st Street home, Lydia Kohl was a hardworking farm wife. She used a wood-burning stove, and in the words of her daughter Dorothy, she “baked homemade bread, pies, cakes and did the washing and ironing.” The Kohls didn’t have indoor plumbing or electricity until May 1932, the midst of the Depression years. In these rough days, Robert Hohenstein worked for the family, a young nephew of Lence’s who had lost his mother at a young age. All vegetables in the household came from the Kohl garden, along with all fruit from the orchard, which would be made into jams and jellies. It was a true farm to table lifestyle, with all meat being butchered on site.
For the Kohls, Mokena wasn’t just a place to live, but a locale where they directed their hearts back into the community. Lence was one of the founders of the Will County Farm Bureau, and was especially active in local school matters, having served on the board of District 159 for many years. As the Second World War was ending and the recent closure of Mokena’s two-year high school was fresh on all minds, the idea began to be kicked around of forming a new high school district encompassing Mokena and Orland Park. Within a few years, this initial concept grew and transformed into a plan to combine Mokena, Frankfort, Lincoln Estates, New Lenox and Manhattan into a new district. Thus the seed was born for the creation of Lincoln-Way High School, of which Lence Kohl played an integral role, first taking a place on the survey committee, and then ultimately on the new school’s first board of education. As the groundwork was being laid, Dr. William Reavis of the University of Chicago’s School of Education came to our neck of the woods to give his advice, and after all was said and done, the doctor presented Lence with an august cane of hickory in honor of his work establishing the new high school district, which ensured the future of Mokena’s students. As he got on in years, Lence Kohl was honored by the Mokena Chamber of Commerce in 1963 for his service to the village, not only recognizing him for his work with our schools but also for his involvement with the Mokena Planning Commission, having a seat thereon since its inception in 1952.
Lydia Kohl was also devoted to Mokena, having served not only on the 1963 historical committee that produced the lively booklet The Story of Mokena, but also gave much of her time to 4H matters. To this day, she is still lovingly looked back upon by the Mokenians that she mentored in their youth, remembered as a leader who was kind and caring, hardworking, and available to all who needed her.
The farm of the Kohl family on 191st Street in the era following the Second World War. (Image courtesy of Amy Donoho)
Lence Kohl crossed the great beyond in May 1976, in his 88th year. Another pall was cast when the stately dairy barn and silo on the Kohl farm were consumed by fire at Thanksgiving time 1978, Lydia being greatly saddened by their loss, lamenting that her home no longer looked like a farm without them. The incident was whispered in town to have been arson by an outside party; an eerie reminder of a similar fire that happened on a frigid February night in 1969 when unknown hands placed an ignited street flare against the wall of a corn crib. Luckily, in this first occurrence, passing motorists saw the flames, managed to awake Lence Kohl and together they put out the blaze before serious damage could be done.
As her Mokena slowly lost its rural atmosphere in the sunset of her years, Lydia Kohl continued to live in her idyllic home on 191st Street where she kept busy crafting braided and hooked rugs. She departed this world in Joliet a few weeks after New Year’s 1990, in which year she would have turned 94. The Kohl farmhouse disappeared from the landscape not long thereafter; an earthen mound at the northern head of Schoolhouse Road is all that remains of the family homestead. Lence and Lydia Kohl along with their children are now gone from our midst, but they all are fondly remembered by countless village folk. The Kohl legacy lives on in the Mokena that was greatly touched by their having been a part of it. May their memory live eternal in our community.
