If Walls Could Talk: The Historic House at 11042 Front Street

  History is everywhere, and if one were to ask just where to find it, the possible answers would leave the inquisitor’s head spinning. Gettysburg, Valley Forge, and Tombstone are but a few of the places one would be told to look. Limiting the locations to just those in Illinois, we’d even hear of Grant’s Galena or Lincoln’s Springfield. However, we don’t even have to leave home to find it, for if we stay within the gates of Mokena, we’d find 11042 Front Street, a place steeped in well over a century and a half’s worth of local verve. 

   To understand the decades of history at this ageless location, we must first part the fog of time and look to a gentleman named Moritz Weiss. He came into the world on January 10^th, 1830, and was a native of picturesque Neuenbürg in the kingdom of Württemberg, in what is today southwest Germany. The son of an esteemed doctor, the young man became a pharmacist in his homeland before spending time practicing his trade in various locales in Switzerland. Good fate brought him to America, and then to our community in 1854, then a mere hamlet located along the newly built Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. 

 

   After he got settled in his new home, Moritz Weiss married Julia Gall in October 1856, an estimable Mokena lady who was described at least once as “one of the best hearted women in town” as well as having been immortalized by history as being the proprietor of the village’s first inn, along with her late first husband, Carl. After their marriage, the historic record indicates that they continued to keep up a rooming house together, counting six lodgers in the summer of 1860, including young Samuel Tinley, Mokena’s Rock Island agent. During the tumultuous years of that decade, one that would be fraught with civil war, Caroline Emilie Fischer, a Mokena infant whose father wasn’t on the scene, was taken in by the Weisses and raised as their own. The only child of Moritz and Julia, she would be called the “light and sunshine of their pleasant home.” 

 

   At some point long disappeared into the pages of posterity, Moritz Weiss hung out his shingle and gained the honor of being Mokena’s first pioneer pharmacist. He was successful in his business, and decided to upgrade in the prosperous years immediately after the war. In February of 1867, Weiss bought a lot on the northeast corner of Front and Mokena Streets from Leonard and Sarah Rudd for $550, or around $10,200 in today’s money. By the summer of 1868, he had built a brand-new building on this site that would contain space for his pharmacy on the first floor, and living quarters for his family directly above. The new place was considered a jewel in Mokena during an era when there was much construction. Barely two years after the shop opened, trouble struck when, in the words of the Joliet Republican, “some scamps who had been off on a drunk” hurled a huge rock through the pharmacy’s front window under the cover of darkness one Saturday night, causing no small amount of damage. Julia Weiss was scared out of bed by the racket, and in going to investigate the commotion, received for her trouble a nasty cut on her foot from a shard of glass.

         The former pharmacy of Moritz Weiss is seen here at left in this circa 1910 image.

 

   A journalist of the time would later describe the Weiss pharmacy as having “a full supply of bitters and sweets and a general assortment of soothing syrups, worm lozenges, plasters and nursing bottles.” The same writer noted, while painting a vivid picture of the Mokenian, that Moritz Weiss was “fat and jolly” and was possessed of a “merry whistle.” Another contemporary beamed that he was “a man of liberal education and of good judgment”, both of these points being backed up by the fact that he owned a substantial personal library. Weiss was also well involved in local affairs, having taken the office of justice of the peace, as well as Frankfort Township clerk and treasurer. 

 

   That the earliest years of this landmark took place in a world completely different from ours is best demonstrated by the fact that at the end of 1881, the newly formed village board ordered Weiss to clean up a cesspool that had formed in his yard, a problem begat by the lack of indoor plumbing the era. The problem wasn’t completely solved, as nearly two years later in August 1883 the town board of health noted that there was too much manure on site, not to mention an unsanitary outhouse. 

                            The final resting place of Moritz Weiss in St. John's Cemetery.

 

   Pharmacist Weiss died in town on February 7^th, 1882 after a battle with dropsy, and as a show of his stature in the community, the cortege that carried his earthly remains to St. John’s Cemetery was one of the largest that Mokena had ever seen. After her husband’s passing, Julia Weiss retained ownership of the pharmacy property for decades. She later married a Jolietan named Louis Blaeser, and hence the place was known by some Mokenians simply as the Blaeser building. Happenings here for most of the last two decades of the 19^thcentury are hard to put into focus, although the building still seems to have served the servants of Hippocrates, with local Civil War veteran Dr. William Becker maintaining his office here in roughly this time frame. 

 

   An enterprising young pharmacist named Richard Hensel, a 28-year-old Mokenian by way of Chicago, moved into this address in March 1896 with his goods, and the Mokena post office followed him a little over a year later. The druggists kept coming, as Dr. D.P. Teter set up shop here in the spring of 1904. Teter had spent ten years in Omaha, Nebraska and received his diploma from the Baltimore Medical College, before also attending post graduate courses at the Johns Hopkins School in Chicago. In the summer of 1905, the whole place almost literally went up in smoke. While the cause of the nasty fire was never gotten to the bottom of, the blaze started behind the prescription case, and wiped out Dr. Teter’s entire stock of drugs, while one local newspaper also said that the “furniture and building (were) badly scorched.” Luckily, the building’s bones were good, and it sprung back from the fire better than ever. 

 

   By the dawn of the 20^th century, Julia Blaeser was in the eighth decade of her life, and was considered the doyenne of Mokena. After she passed away in May 1911, the reading of her will revealed her generosity to those she loved, and ultimately her niece, Julia Schiek, inherited the old drug store on the corner, moving in with her elderly mother Elizabeth in the fall of that year. 

 

   As Father Time marked the passing days, Willard Martie later opened an ice cream shop and pool room in this historic spot, holding his grand opening in August 1927. Going into the venture with partner Walter Homerding, the 22-year-old Martie was the son of prominent Mokenian Edward Martie, a village trustee and future mayor. The dealings at the shop weren’t completely on the up and up, however, as a Prohibition era raid by a special investigator from the Will County state’s attorney’s office in the fall of 1930 netted such contraband as two barrels of beer and four and half jugs of moonshine that had been secreted away on the property. The state’s attorney had been tipped off by some concerned Mokena women, who reported that the illegal booze was being peddled to underage boys, and that illicit gambling was also taking place on the premises.  While Gus Braun, Martie and Homerding’s employee, plead guilty to the charges and was hit with a stiff $200 fine, it remains unclear what consequences the ice cream shop’s proprietors felt. For posterity’s sake, Willard Martie denied the rumors and stated to the village News-Bulletin that they had no basis in reality. 

             The historic Blaeser building on the northeast corner of Front and Mokena Streets.

 

   Going forward, in the spring of 1943 the property was purchased by L.S. Janes of the Sears & Roebuck firm, who was taking it off the hands of Mokenians William Helenhouse, August Hentsch, and George Knudson, its mortgage holders. Mr. Janes immediately go to work sprucing up the old place, which by the World War II years was regarded as being somewhat rundown, with the News-Bulletin even calling it a “dilapidated eyesore.” Nevertheless, the paper acknowledged that the newly re-furbished building would be a “real asset to the community” and called the work a “fine improvement” to the historic building. It was made over into three apartments, the first inhabitants of which were Mr. and Mrs. John Feltenhouse, the former working with the WLS radio transmitter northeast of town, local Rock Island telegraph operator Mr. Frogge and his wife, as well as Mr. Janes’s mother. 

 

   Thus it remains to this day, a silent witness to decades of local flavor. This time-honored landmark has stood for nearly 150 years at Front and Mokena Streets, at a place that some villagers have even called “the Times Square of Mokena.” May it stand for 150 more years. 

A Ghost in the Flowers: The Haunted History of 11210 Front Street

  It’s the time of year when leaves crunch under foot, the days get shorter and monsters and goblins again make their appearance on the streets of our burg. It’s the season when it’s easy to get goosebumps; not just from the chill of the air, but also from the mysterious tales that tend make their rounds this time of year. Every town has a ghost or two, some loom prominently in the narratives of their communities, while others lurk in the shadows, and only reveal themselves to a select few who are in the know. Mokena has been host to stories of paranormal activity over the years, and there is one in our midst that is currently ongoing. Just ask Kim McAuliffe, owner of An English Garden, a quaint flower shop on Front Street. 

 

   Situated in a historic house that has seen at least 150 years in our community, more than a few unexplainable incidents have happened in the shop over the years. As Kim was in the process of acquiring the property back in 2012, more than one person in the community approached her and let her know that the place was supposed to be haunted, with the source of the paranormal activity being an upper room that had once been a bedroom. 

   After she moved in and some remodeling was being carried out, Kim McAuliffe was pushed by a pair of invisible hands while coming up the basement stairs. Not one to be scared, she immediately reprimanded whoever or whatever it was that shoved her. She told it to stop, and that this wasn’t nice behavior; after all, she was pumping new life into the property and making it beautiful. 

 

   To Kim, it’s definitely easy to feel an otherworldly presence in her shop. Despite the shoving incident, it seems happy and content there, and seems satisfied with what she’s done to the place. On the other hand, she has a friend who has felt an ominous force in the old house’s basement. This is corroborated by Ashley Schuldt, a Mokena resident and former employee at An English Garden. While generally not afraid of basements or small spaces, she reports an oppressive feeling there, specifically in the southeast corner. She also recounts how items once fell off a counter in a room in the historic house’s second floor, as if swept off by an unseen hand. 

An English Garden, a quaint flower shop at 11210 Front Street. Does this historic house have a resident ghost?

 

   If one looks closely at the past of the old house where Kim McAuliffe keeps her flower shop, one will find a long and interesting narrative. If ghosts are what we think they are, namely the spirits of people who have abruptly and perhaps violently lost their lives, some candidates rear their heads for the identity of this local phantom. The first is one Henry Miller, who owned the property as far back as 1899, at a time when the oldest portion of the house was already around forty years old. He and his wife sold the place to their daughter Minnie Crager and her husband George in August 1901; within days Henry Miller was dead after being hit by a train west of town. 

 

   Not too long after the dawn of the 20^th century, the Schenkels moved in, a family that would be indelibly linked to this property for decades. The clan’s patriarch, Conrad Schenkel, was born February 20^th, 1860 in Odernheim, a winegrowing village in Germany’s Rhineland. With his parents, he made the arduous journey to America in 1873, whereupon they settled in Chicago, a mere two years after the Great Fire. In 1881, all roads then led to Mokena. The Schenkels appear to have been a farming family at first, when later Conrad found work with the Rock Island railroad. In June 1907, he was appointed the village’s sole constable by the village board, ultimately wearing the star until 1919. In his years in this position as town lawman, he broke up countless fights, locked up many a miscreant in the village calaboose, trailed many suspicious characters, and even held watch for pranksters on many a cool Halloween night. 

 

   When Conrad’s wife, Kate Schenkel passed away in 1911 after a battle with cancer, the historic record indicates that it happened in this house. Less than a year later, Kate’s mother, Katherine Burger, died of old age on the premises, after having made her home there for the previous three years. 

 

   Another candidate for the energy that still remains in the flower shop would be Conrad and Kate Schenkel’s adult son, Edward. Having served as a village trustee from 1916 to 1928, Edward Schenkel lost his life in April 1935 when a spurned lover shot him to death in a Joliet saloon in a sensational murder suicide case.  Maybe something is keeping him bound to his family’s erstwhile home? As intriguing as Edward’s story is, at this late date it is still unknown whether or not he ever lived here during the time his parents did. 

 

   After Conrad Schenkel passed away in Chicago in 1930, the property made its way into the hands of his son John, who would keep the place until he died in 1953, who like his mother and grandmother, appears to have departed in the house. 

 

   There is much to ponder about the old place where Kim McAuliffe keeps An English Garden. Does a ghost roam the house, or is there a much more benign, natural explanation for the phenomena that has been experienced here? No matter how you look at it, just be aware that when the sun sets and you feel the cool bite of the fall air, things do go bump in the night in Mokena. 

Holy War: The 1899 Baptist/Methodist Fight

   Churches are the foundation stones of a community. They are sanctuaries of peace, a place where tumult and strife are left outside. Their congregations are made up of town folk, people from all walks of life who come together for a common purpose. However, the flock of a church is flesh and blood; people who are not perfect, and from time to time it is only natural that disagreements among them should arise. One such falling out happened in Mokena in the distant days of the 19^th century, involving our community’s Baptist and Methodist congregations. The strife eventually reached such a fiery, caustic head, that only a judge could solve the issue. The final outcome would have profound results for one of the parties involved.  

   To peel back the layers of this story, one must turn back the pages of history to the earliest days of our village. As early as 1855, a mere three years after the town was first platted, a Methodist congregation was holding services in the Mokena schoolhouse, a sort of local multi-purpose building when class wasn’t in session. It’s possible that the framework of this early assembly was descended from an even older one, as a group of pioneer Methodists had begun meeting around 1837 in the Hickory Creek settlement, the community that was the precursor to today’s Frankfort and Mokena. 

 

   The hamlet of Mokena on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad was growing bit by bit, and in the years immediately after the Civil War, the Mokena Methodists began to raise money through subscriptions to build their own church. In later years, a story would be passed down that the funds came from the sale of a stray horse. After the long, tedious work of collecting money was over, the brand-new sanctuary was dedicated on December 15^th, 1867, proudly occupying a prominent spot just east of their old meeting place in the schoolhouse on Mokena’s Public Square, a piece of land in the north end of village reserved for schools and churches. There they joined the quaint edifice belonging to the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church. 

 

   As the years marched onward, the Methodists enjoyed a comfortably sized congregation and shining, prominent place in the community. The membership of their Baptist kin was a trifle smaller, but had no less secure a place in Mokena. After the establishment of a local Baptist society sometime around 1851, predating the arrival of the railroad by one year, this group of the faithful eventually held their meetings in the town schoolhouse, just like the Methodists. Upon the completion of their peers’ church building in 1867, the Baptists entered into a neat arrangement with them to share the use of the sanctuary, with each congregation worshipping on alternate Sundays. The record of the years indicates that much was done hand in hand with the Methodists; a Sunday school was even conducted in unison with them during the 1870s. 

 

 

 

Seen here around 1910, the Methodist church stood on Second Street at the current location of St. John’s Christian Community Center. In 1899, the ownership of this building was bitterly disputed with the local Baptist congregation. 

 

 

   Somewhere in time, at a point long since lost to the ages, a bitter dispute arose as to who the rightful owners of the church were, and a straw broke the proverbial camel’s back, landing the two feuding parties in the court of Will County Circuit Judge Small in December 1899. Excitement was great in the case, with the Joliet papers being keenly interested in the proceedings. The Republican declared that “the war in Mokena has begun”, while the News promised that many witnesses would be called to testify, among them would sure to be some of the oldest settlers of the community.

 

   A big point in the Baptists’ defense was that not a few of them who had been on the scene since day one, were under the firm impression that the building was erected for both congregations jointly. One of the first witnesses called was George H. Cooper, member of a prominent local farming family. Under his examination on the stand, he refuted that Baptists’ claims, saying that in all his years of affiliation with the Methodists, he had only ever heard of the sanctuary as strictly belonging to them. A tricky attorney attempted to trip him up on his own words, trying to coerce Cooper into saying that the Baptists had a right to use the building. He remained stoic as a rock on the stand, and “denied positively” ever having made this remark. One of the main foundations of the Methodists’ defense was that when the money to build the church had been raised over thirty years before, that it was solely taken up in their name, while the Baptists stuck to the claim that theirs was a “union church.”

 

   After a period of deliberation, Judge Small made his decision just before Christmas, ruling that the church in Mokena was property of the Methodists. After the dust settled from the episode, the Baptist congregation, without a real home of their own, withered and died. Their Sunday school chugged along on life support, being conducted in the vacant Geuther building on Front Street, but they lost their meeting place when Frank Hirsch turned the place into a saloon at the end of 1902. 

 

   After that point, there is no further mention of a Mokena Baptist congregation on our collective timeline. The original group of worshippers disappeared into the fog of history, and any invoking of their name over the decades was always done in the past tense. It wasn’t until the fall of 1954 that the Parkview Baptist Church was formed in town, holding their first services in the VFW hall on Wolf Road, before building their own sanctuary on LaPorte Road and Scott Street a year later. Needless to say, this time there no plans for sharing their property with anyone else. 

 

Hatch Hall: True Mokena Landmark

  A new dawn in the business life of Mokena has been announced with the coming arrival of Zap Tacos, which will set up shop for hungry customers at 19711 Mokena Street. This address has been home to many local concerns over the years, most recently the well-known insurance agency of the late Cadet Cottingham. Turning back the pages of time, we find that there’s no small amount of history attached to this old landmark, and when a new chapter starts, it’s best to look at the beginning of the book. 

   In order to really understand this place, one first has to know the man whose name will forever be connected to this property, and whose life is more tied to it than anyone else’s in the record of years. John Alexander Hatch was born February 27^th, 1842 in what would later be Frankfort Township to rugged pioneer parents of English and Scottish birth. His earliest years were lived in the prairie wilderness, a world where neither Frankfort nor Mokena existed yet. 

 

   After spending his formative years here, as a young man John Hatch made his way to Tinley Park, then still known as New Bremen, where he found work with the Rock Island railroad. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he rallied to the flag and joined the 72^nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry at Chicago’s Camp Douglas in August 1862. Private Hatch became a veteran of the storied Vicksburg campaign, among other clashes, and at one point even saw duty on the home front as a recruiter. Just after the start of the war’s last year, he was transferred to the 47^th United States Colored Infantry, a unit made up of former slaves. In this new regiment Hatch was awarded the rank of Lieutenant, no small testimony to his skill at soldiering. 

 

   While John Hatch came out of the war’s veritable storm of shot and shell physically unscathed, he suffered a unique injury during his service that stayed with him for the rest of his days. While with the Colored Infantry in the gulf states, the region’s blinding sun caused irreversible damage to his vision. 

                       John A. Hatch circa 1914, Civil War veteran and Mokena businessman.

                               

   Home from the battlefield, he married local belle Nancy McGovney in Mokena on May 10^th, 1866. This union was ultimately blessed with nine children, all of which but one survived to adulthood. The first years of John and Nancy Hatch’s marriage held many travels for them. Soon after they tied the knot, the Hatches moved to the neighborhood of New Bremen, where John tried his hand at farming for three years. This was followed by a brief residence in Chicago, whereupon they went back to New Bremen for a spell. In 1869, the young family moved to Missouri with John’s parents, and finally came back to Mokena for good in 1876 after an absence of seven years. 

   

    With the re-planting of their roots in our neck of the woods, Hatch took a job at the general store of McGovney & Son, kept by his father and brother-in-law. Upon Mokena’s incorporation in 1880, he was elected clerk of the newly minted village, and thus, as the first to ever hold this position, the earliest written records of administrative doings in town are in his hand. John Hatch was the wearer of many hats in our community over the years, including postmaster, justice of the peace, and school director. 

 

   Bit by bit, Mr. Hatch became more established in the commercial affairs of Mokena, eventually branching out into the grain business, becoming the builder and proprietor of the town’s new grain elevator in 1884. After toiling at the general store for a while, he was at last able to buy the concern from his father-in-law along with the stock of goods. By the 1890s, John Hatch was maintaining his own general store on Front Street. 

 

   At some point towards the end of the 19^th century, he further diversified his business portfolio and filled a long-wanted need in town by managing a hall for social gatherings such as dances, balls and meetings in the village. It has long since disappeared in the pages of posterity when exactly this began, if he had any partners in this venture, or even where exactly in town the hall stood. What is known, is that for some reason, John Hatch decided to have the building jacked up, hitched to teams of horses, and moved to a new location in winter 1901. Hatch Hall, as it was known around town, was set down south of the Rock Island tracks along Mokena Street, close to the grain elevator. 

                                        Hatch Hall as it appears today at 19711 Mokena Street.

 

   A new life was on the horizon for the place. As soon as the dust settled after the move, Hatch moved his general store into the former hall. By the end of October 1901, new shelving was built and various tables moved into place to complete the building’s transformation. Part of the store was used as Hatch’s grain office, with their scales being installed as the store was coming together. It was the ultimate convenience for John Hatch, as all of his businesses were now under one roof. It what was deemed “improvement fever” by one Mokenian, cutting edge gas-powered lights were installed too, two in the store and one outside. It was miraculously said that the business was as light as day inside, and one resident, prone to exaggeration at comic levels, said the glow of the one outside could be seen two miles outside town. Riding the wave of modernity, a Gramophone was also set up in the store, and for a span of a week, concerts were held each night, which adoring Mokenians ate up. 

 

   At the dawn of the 20^th century, John Hatch was one of Mokena’s most prominent businessmen, keeping not only the store, but also still selling grain, along with feed, coal, tile and everything in between. That Hatch was one of the most liked and well-respected men in the village would not need repeating in his day. After throwing a “dancing party” in the hall for the community’s youth in January 1900, Mokena’s youngsters “voted Mr. Hatch to be the best man in town.” After another dance about a week later, a local news correspondent noted that he “still cherished a place in his heart for the gayeties of young people.” The old veteran was later known to dole out large lumps of maple sugar to youngsters visiting the store. Years later, it would be warmly reflected that “he was a kind-hearted man who always went out of his way to do a favor to anybody. He was beloved by all who knew him. He always was of a cheerful disposition and made and retained friends readily.” 

 

   The book closed on John Hatch’s long life on July 17^th, 1920, when his passing was rued on the front page of the News-Bulletin, our community’s erstwhile newspaper. Within months, Hatch’s youngest son Alfred re-converted the building into its second iteration as a hall. The store was deconstructed, the interior completely remodeled, and the floor even freshly polished. On November 20^th, 1920, the opening dance was held with a handsome turnout, 77 tickets having been sold. In this era, silent movies were also screened at Hatch Hall, which were noted to be just as “good as can be seen in city theaters”. They were aided by musical accompaniment on a Bauer piano that Alfred Hatch had installed. 

 

   In January 1924, the old place was made over into the headquarters of the Hall Medicine Company, named not after the building, but rather its proprietor, the illustrious Don Carlos Hall. He, his wife Clara, and their children Don Carlos Jr, Walter, and Inez Hall moved into the place and also made it their home. They were newcomers in town, and rarely on the pages of Mokena’s history has there appeared a more unique couple than Mr. and Mrs. Hall. A salesman of patent medicine, former member of the Wisconsin state legislature, as well as a Shakespearian actor, Hall was affectionately called “Colonel” by those who knew him. The Halls were also known for their prowess at traveling by thumb, having crisscrossed the country hitchhiking. Favoring western attire and sporting long whiskers and flowing white locks, Colonel Hall had one of Mokena’s most unforgettable visages. When Chicago was in the world’s spotlight for the 1933 Century of Progress, Colonel and Clara Hall were naturally a part of it, running the “Days of ‘49” mining camp on the fairgrounds, hearkening back to the days of the California Gold Rush. The Colonel served as the settlement’s mayor, while Clara was the camp mother.

                                    Colonel Don C. and Clara Hall, circa 1940.

   By 1930, the Halls had packed up their household and relocated elsewhere within Mokena, and during the Great Depression and World War II years, the building served yet again as a public hall, hosting among other organizations, the William Martin Post of the VFW. In April 1953, Halley and David W. Noble, residents of Chicago and photo finishers by trade, took possession of Hatch Hall. They opened Noble’s Variety Store here, which sold a little bit of everything. They also brought the old place into the post-war era, thoroughly modernizing it with indoor plumbing, fluorescent lights, and even a coral rose color scheme to the interior. Like the Halls previous to them, the Nobles made their home in the building. 

 

   If the walls of Hatch Hall could talk, they’d tell of moments of whimsy; dances and masquerade balls, the business of fraternal meetings, and the coming and going of customers over the span of time. They’d reveal the personalities of some of the most interesting and unique people in our community’s history. In the frenetic pace of today’s world, it’s easy to get lost in the here and now. Upon pausing and reflecting, it’s just as easy to lose oneself in the history of this important, hallowed Mokena landmark. 

Unsung Hero: The Story of John Van Horn

 If you’re an old reader of mine, you’ll know that not only do I take a personal interest in the history of Mokena, but that I also have a special place in my heart for the unique personages of our town. My mind revels in the stories of those from our community who have set themselves apart from the rest, and especially those who have marched to the beat of their own drummer. Figures like these enhance life in our community. On this note, it is this writer’s pleasure to introduce John Van Horn, a well-known figure in the annals of Mokena’s past, and a man with a poignant story.  

   He first saw the light of day on September 16^th, 1825, at a place called Fundy in central New York. John could count among his cousins William Cornelius Van Horne, who, aside from spelling his surname slightly different than our Van Horn, would go on to be honorarily knighted by Queen Victoria for his services in building Canada’s first coast-to-coast railroad. The early history of Frankfort Township cannot be writ without this family, as patriarch Mathew Van Horn broke the virgin soil here as early as 1832, counting the John McGovney clan of Ohio as some of his very few neighbors. 

 

   History has long since erased how exactly young John Van Horn fit into this larger family, but he arrived in our neighborhood around 1836 as an eleven-year-old, and was later noted to have lived in a rustic pioneer’s log cabin with his parents close to where Frankfort would later sprout up.  He spent his youth on the untamed prairie, and as one who knew him would later state, “devoted his time and energies to agricultural pursuits.”

 

   By 1860, John was living with his mother and stepfather near Mokena, which at the time was a young hamlet along the Rock Island railroad. Not long thereafter, he struck out on his own and found work as a farmhand not far from Manteno in northern Kankakee County. Like countless others of his generation, John Van Horn found himself in the center of the storm in the vicious debate over slavery, and four months after the Civil War finally broke out in April 1861, he volunteered for service in Abraham Lincoln’s army. At a time when the average Northern soldier was about 25, 36-year-old John generously rounded down his age by 11 years upon enlistment. Shouldering a rifled musket with the 88^th Illinois Infantry, he first heard the whine of shot and shell at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky in the fall of 1862. Less than a month later, however, his military service came to an abrupt end, when he was sent home on account of a long-forgotten disability.

 

The Civil War Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, where Mokenian John Van Horn first saw combat in the fall of 1862.

   After shedding his blue uniform, he spent time in his Illinois home, but before long the ex-soldier made up his mind to head back to New York, the place of his birth, to look up his brother Yates. Despite his first stint in the Union army having ended prematurely, John’s desire to quash the traitorous uprising of the slave holders knew no bounds, and he re-joined the army in April 1864, this time falling in with troops from the Empire State in the 115^th New York Volunteer Infantry. Once again, John Van Horn saw hard fighting, this time in the tangled underbrush of the Wilderness, the bloodbath at Cold Harbor, and the brutal siege of Petersburg, all in the state of Virginia. A contemporary would later say that Van Horn “didn’t know what fear was.”

 

   Years later, it would be said that he was wounded in action, although under scrutiny, no documentation of this can be found. Private Van Horn did however suffer an injury during the war that plagued him for life. As he would later put it, lugging backbreaking crates of hardtack in Virginia gave him a hernia that would eventually grow to the size of a goose egg, requiring him to wear a truss in later years. His service to the Union complete, John Van Horn was discharged from the army in June 1865, this time for good. 

 

   After the war, he stayed in New York for a spell and found work in the lumber camps of the Great North Woods. In the fall of 1865, John tied the knot with Nancy Miller, who was eight years his junior, in Herkimer County. All roads led back to Illinois, and in 1871, the year of the Chicago Fire, the Van Horns came back to Mokena, where they made their home for the rest of their days. The historical record doesn’t indicate that John had any kind of steady profession after the Civil War, but he was known to work in town as a laborer, and also came to be partially supported by a meager veteran’s pension from the federal government. Opportunities for John and Nancy Van Horn may have been limited in their day, as neither one could read or write.

 

   The Van Horns settled into a domicile on Cross Street, that was described as being a “quaint cottage”, a one-story structure “roofed with heavy sheet iron.” John proudly referred to it as his “shanty”, behind which was a little vegetable patch that would matter-of-factly be referred to as the best kept garden in Mokena. “There is not a weed to be seen along the well-cultivated rows of sweet corn, and blossoming potatoes, and carefully-staked peas”, said one who saw it firsthand.

 

  As they got older, Nancy became more or less crippled with rheumatism. As such, John did all the duties of the household for his “Mother”, as he affectionately called Nancy. The old soldier was a doting husband, seeing to his wife’s every need in her disability, doing all the cooking, baking, and dish washing. He was known to even personally cut and feed dinner to Nancy, such was her ailment that even holding a knife or fork was too difficult. One who gained access to the domestic life of the Van Horns noted that dessert usually was cool beer, and being the rugged folk they were, that was usually washed down with a “swig of Bourbon or sour mash.”

 

   One long-time Mokenian remembered years later that “Johnny Van Horn liked his liquid refreshments, especially when free.” In Van Horn’s day, Front Street saloon keepers dispensed their wares out of big wooden barrels, and when done with the barrels, would leave them in front of their establishments. The veteran would make his rounds of our town’s main street, starting at one end, and working his way down, emptying the last drops out of every keg he encountered. The resident recalled that by the time he was finished with his last barrel, the veteran “was ready for a nap.”

 

   The same Mokenian recalled a time when, in the middle of winter, one of his townsmen said something to Van Horn that didn’t sit right with him. In response, he ambled into the barroom where the naysayer sat with some other men, all gathered around a small stove fighting off the day’s chill. John was wearing thick mittens that day, and showing that he had the last word, he picked up the hot stove and walked out the door with it. Ultimately, “everyone laughed, including Johnny” and there were no hard feelings. 

 

  John Van Horn ran afoul of the village’s laws at least once, in another event that was probably fueled by alcohol. On September 6^th, 1884, he was hauled in for using “loud and boisterous language, and disturbing the peace” when it appears that he had gotten mixed into a fracas involving two other men. The incident won him a fine of three dollars, or about eighty-five dollars in today’s money.

 

   The pain of this alcohol use hung over John Van Horn like a specter; it reached its apex at the turn of the twentieth century, when a meddling neighbor of his tipped the scales for the 75-year-old. The neighbor in question was fellow Cross Street resident Horace E. Clark, a piano tuner who had married into the McGovney family. History hasn’t left us modern day townfolk too many details in regard to what exactly rankled Clark’s delicate sensibilities, but he was known to spy on the Van Horns through a hole in the fence that separated their houses, and whatever he saw, scandalized him. Descriptions would be rife of “sprees” and accusations hurled that the Van Horns “get drunk and disport themselves in a shameful manner.”

On the right, a modern day view of the former home of Horace Clark on the northwest corner of Cross and Division Streets. The Van Horn home formerly stood to the left.

   Horace Clark’s complaints would eventually be heard by county authorities, and John Van Horn was officially charged with being a “vagabond”, the legal paperwork also windily declaring him to be a “dissolute person, a common drunkard, railer, and brawler, and a lewd, wanton and lascivious person in speech and behavior.” His cousin Kate McGovney kindly furnished his bail, allowing Van Horn to return to the village for the time being. 

 

   Mokena was agog over the charges leveled against John Van Horn. It was said that the population was divided into two camps, those who easily supported the claims, and those who took pity on the old man and outright rejected them. Neighbor Clark had the support of a good number of his church, while on the other hand, the flock of one of the other Mokena churches, long since lost which one, considered themselves sympathizers of the aged veteran. The involvement of the churches in this affair is an interesting sidenote, and plainly illustrates their importance in the small-town life of Mokena in this day. Nothing in the dusty pages of history indicates that John was a church-going man, nor that he had anything to do with one congregation or another. 

 

   The case was set to be tried in the summer of 1900 in the common law court of Will County Judge Albert O. Marshall, a native of New Lenox. Many Mokena residents had been subpoenaed to appear as witnesses for one side or the other, and it was leaked that even Noble Jones, a former village mayor, would be among them. 

 

   A reporter from the Inter Ocean, a city paper with wide circulation through what we now call Chicagoland, got wind of the story brewing in our country town and took special interest in it. With no small curiosity, the publication noted that Will County’s Civil War veterans had taken the case keenly to heart. John Van Horn’s fellow “Boys in Blue” pledged to be on hand at the trial to show their support to their comrade, and to personally see to it that he would “not (be) disgraced now, at a time when one foot has already slipped over the brink of the grave.” 

 

   With all the media attention and local hubbub that the Van Horn case churned up, it is now completely unknown how it ultimately played out. All further coverage of the trial is conspicuously absent from local newspapers, and the archive of the Will County Circuit Clerk is devoid of records on the trial. Therefore, we are left holding our breath, not knowing if John Van Horn was found guilty of the charges that were brought upon him. 

 

   The old warrior breathed his last on January 17^th, 1909, and his earthly remains were buried outside Mokena under the sod in a peaceful corner of Marshall Cemetery. Even though Nancy Van Horn continued to draw a widow’s pension for her husband’s true service to the Union during the war, it wasn’t enough to live off of, and furthermore, without John’s care, she couldn’t live on her own. She had to move from the village to the state-run Soldiers’ Widows’ Home in Wilmington, where she ultimately passed away on January 24^th, 1912. 

 

   A little over a year after he died, a government-issued marker was erected over the grave of John Van Horn. It had arrived in the cemetery thanks to the efforts of Bill Semmler, a Mokena reporter who pulled the right strings to make sure that a fitting monument adorned the place. Nowadays weather beaten and covered with lichen, the stone proudly states John’s service, standing sentinel over the earthen mound that bears his bones. 

 

The grave of John Van Horn in Marshall Cemetery. (image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

   In one breath, it might be easy to call John Van Horn a hard-drinking troublemaker, one of rugged individualism, or to dismissively brush him off as the village drunk. With another deeper, and probably more empathic look, one must wonder if his years-long struggle with alcohol was the result of the carnage he lived through as a battle tested Civil War veteran. With a hindsight of more than a century, it’s not too difficult to realize that John and Nancy Van Horn could have been the victims of malicious gossip on the part of their busybody neighbor; the bane of small-town existence. For someone who put his life on the line during this country’s greatest crisis, it’s time that John Van Horn’s reputation be rehabilitated, and he be recognized for the hero that he was. 

Mokena's Oldest Sidewalk?

   Pictured below is what is likely Mokena’s oldest length of sidewalk, built on Union Street around 1910 by Julius Gustav Oswald. A lifelong native of the village, Oswald was a manufacturer of all things concrete and was responsible for the installation of the majority of hard sidewalks in town in the early part of the 20^th century. 

J.G. Oswald's maker stamp in what is likely Mokena's oldest length of sidewalk on Union Street. 

Located on the east side of Union Street headed north from Second Street, this is likely Mokena's oldest sidewalk. 

Wanted: Indiana Billy

 Who doesn’t enjoy a hair-raising story of true crime? From bank robberies to safe crackings and horse thievery to street brawls, Mokena has seen them all. These dot our collective village timeline, providing for some proverbial spice to otherwise uneventful periods in history. It might not be so easy to believe, but our idyllic community has been the stage for quite a few violations of the law over the years, and when we turn back the pages to the year 1903, one will find that none other than the elusive Indiana Billy, a feared criminal of yesteryear, was in our midst. 

 

   The Mokena of the earliest years of the 20^th century was pretty sleepy place, even by the standards of rural farm towns. The reasons for this were many, primarily that trade and commerce that would have normally came to our community had been diverted to the newer trading points of Alpine, Marley and Orland due to the construction of the Wabash Railroad about twenty years earlier. A dearth of good roads in the area also wasn’t exactly auspicious for Mokena. These factors plus a severe countrywide economic depression in the 1890s led the town to experience such a drain of citizens, that by 1900, a federal census taker logged a mere 281 souls living within the corporate limits. 

 

   Thus, the scene was set for treachery. Under the cover of inky darkness one night in July 1903, a daring criminal act was committed when Mrs. Harry Miller’s village home was burglarized. The historical record isn’t clear as to whether or not Mrs. Miller was there when the thief struck, but he managed to make off with some valuables, including silverware, and about $12 in cash, or roughly $345 in today’s money.  

 

   As the small town reeled from the burglary, another drama was unfolding. Officer Oscar J. Klose had been Mokena’s sole peace officer for two years, and was used to run of the mill escapades in town, usually of the kind fueled by alcohol. What would happen on July 14^th would prove to be a little different. As he patrolled the village that morning, it was the general consensus of the town folk that the perpetrator of the burglary at Mrs. Miller’s was likely to still be lurking the community, and the constable kept a sharp lookout. With this in mind, Officer Klose spotted a suspicious character making his way up the Rock Island railroad tracks across from the Hacker lumberyard on McGovney Street. As Klose made his way over to the figure to see who he was, the stranger took off on foot. 

The Hacker Lumberyard, across from which Indiana Billy was captured, seen in its later iteration as the Mall Lumber Company. These buildings stood on the site of today's 11125 and 11131 McGovney Street.

 

   He wasn’t fast enough for Oscar Klose, who caught up with him in no time. In a dramatic escalation, the man then drew a revolver and attempted to shoot Klose. After an exhaustive tussle, the Mokena lawman subdued the would-be shooter, and with the help of general store keeper John A. Hatch, was finally able to handcuff the man and take him prisoner. Before a hearing with the town magistrate, the miscreant was drawn into a village building to be searched, and was quickly determined to not be the Miller burglar, as he had no cash on his person. However, what was found raised more than a few eyebrows, namely some fake keys and a bottle of nitroglycerine, all tools of a professional safe cracker. 

   The frisk very nearly had a completely different ending. When questioned more closely about the bottle, the stranger fibbed and said it was full of liniment for his leg. It was then thrown with a dismissive toss onto a bed, nearly resulting in a calamitous explosion of the agitated nitroglycerine. In a statement to the Joliet Weekly News a few days later, the man readily admitted that he “was trembling in his boots for a moment.” He went on to say that “I couldn’t open my mouth quick enough to stop him and I thought we would both be blown into eternity.”

 

   Officer Klose didn’t know it just yet, but he had just snagged an elusive criminal, the loathsome William Warren, otherwise known as Indiana Billy. It would turn out that he was wanted for a daring robbery in Missouri, and one local newspaper proclaimed that he was “one of the most expert safe blowers in the country.” Indiana Billy was sent to Joliet, where he stood before the grand jury, who slapped him with a charge of having burglary tools in his possession, and also sent him to stay in the Will County jail for seventy days on one count of vagrancy. 

 

   The saga was not yet over for the hardened criminal, who in early October of the same year got a new charge of assault with a deadly weapon, harkening back to his confrontation with Officer Klose in Mokena. Klose testified as a witness in the proceedings, as did the venerable John A. Hatch, the town storekeeper who helped the officer wrangle Indiana Billy the day of the incident; Mary and Ida Kiniry, mother-daughter residents of McGovney Street attested too.  For this charge, Indiana Billy was given a fine of $50 and court costs, but he couldn’t settle the fine, so he was carted back off to the county jail. His increasing familiarity with the jail in Joliet led the Lockport Phoenix-Advertiser to snort that he was now “Weary Willie.”

 

   The historical record is imprecise as to what criminal hijinks Indiana Billy found in his future after his run-in with the law in Mokena. What is clear, is that his short stay within our gates was one that undoubtedly stayed in his memory for a long time.