Everyday History: The Story of 11106 Front Street

   It doesn’t strut about Front Street like a peacock, nor will it be noticed for its architectural detail or outward flair. While those interested in the antiquity of our community may at first be drawn to such higher profile locales as Little Al’s Tavern, the former Paul E’s restaurant or Wolf Road’s Denny Cemetery, few places in Mokena are as richly steeped in local flavor and history as the old landmark at 11106 Front Street. A century and a half have come and gone, and this place has weathered the test of time, standing on our town’s main street like an old friend. 

The historic property at 11106 Front Street has seen over a century and half of life in our village.

   As we look backward through the ages, and follow the thread of the building’s past through the twists and turns of the decades, it’s hard to find the exact beginning, as is often the case with places of such an age in Mokena. In its earliest life, the place must have been an inn, as in days of yore the second floor was configured with a central hallway running the length of the building, with a series of small rooms situated on each side. Whoever might have run this establishment, and in what era, remains nebulous. What can be concretely reconstructed in the thick fog of time is that Johann and Helena Schiek sold this lot and the one adjoining it to the north to Wilhelm Jakob on November 10^th, 1868, the latter gentleman having paid $2,400 for it. It is likely that today’s structure was already there at this point, a time and place far in our past.  

 

  Wilhelm Jakob is a figure that goes hand in hand with the early days of Mokena. Born July 14^th, 1822 in the German grand duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt, by the time he was a young man he had immigrated to America’s shore and made a home in Chicago. There he was married to fellow Hessian Catharina Köhler, and together they experienced life in the blooming midwestern metropolis in the heady days of its youth. In 1850 the Jakobs lost their first-born child, an infant son, and within a year, struck out from the city into the verdant prairie surrounding it, and so it was that in 1851, they made their home in the freshly formed Frankfort Township. Part of the great Germanic wave that settled eastern Will County in this era, the Jakobs were here in 1852 when the steel rails of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad were laid and witnessed the birth of Mokena, while the same year, Wilhelm and Catharina welcomed their daughter Philippine to their home. 

 

   By 1860, the family patriarch had Americanized his name to William Jacob, and was tilling a small farm in the far northeast portion of the township. In the first few years after the end of the Civil War, Jacob put away his plow and moved to Mokena, upon which he acquired the Front Street property and opened a beer hall there to sate the thirst of his fellow German citizens. 

 

   The Jacobs’ everyday life was marred by a harrowing experience in the summer of 1876. A mere three days after our country’s centennial, and a week and half after General George A. Custer’s brutal defeat in the Montana Territory, a burglar gained entry to the Jacob premises.  

That early morning of Friday, July 7^th, the would-be thief pried open a back window, and slithered into the saloon. Helping himself to William Jacob’s gold pocket watch and chain, a revolver, and twenty dollars in cash, (or about $527 in today’s money) he was caught red-handed by the barkeep himself. In the darkness, Jacob fumbled for a way to attack the prowler. He picked up a chair and went to strike, but in the inky night and swirling confusion, he wasn’t able to see his target properly, and clubbed his wife Catharina instead. The housebreaker escaped with his loot, and was eventually caught in Chicago due to the dogged pursuit of Henry Stoll, a fellow village resident. The watch, chain, and revolver were recovered, although the historical record is unclear if William Jacob ever had his money returned. 

 

   While Jacob may have been a Hessian by birth, he was nevertheless a patriotic American in his adopted land, as is evidenced by the dance he threw for George Washington’s birthday in February 1876. He gave a “German ball” the Monday after Christmas 1875, and on New Year’s Eve, he held what was called his first “American ball.” For the latter it was noted that Jacob would close his saloon, and without mincing his words, the Mokena correspondent to the Joliet Republican stated that “Mr. Jacob…says he will have strict order.” These words wouldn’t have been taken lightly, as this watering hole could occasionally be a rough and tumble place, as was evidenced by the soiree that was held here on Friday, October 1^st, 1875. In a post brawl report, the Republican wrote that the gathering “went off nicely, until some beer soakers disturbed the party; a little boxing, cuffing, scratching and the likes of such, which is generally found at a beer place.” A more subdued time was had at the New Year’s Eve ball held a little later, when Mokenians rang in 1876 with dancing until dawn. 

 

   By 1878, Mokena was veritably beer soaked, with seven saloons counted in the village that year, one of which was William Jacob’s. By the summer of 1883, the Will County Advertiser indicated that the barkeep was re-opening his doors after a period of having been closed, which was possibly due to the death of his wife Catharina, who expired from a blood disorder that May. In perusing the records of dram shop licenses issued by the newly-formed village government, it seems that William Jacob finally shuttered his tippling house sometime around the summer of 1890. 

 

   Enter to the stage at this point William and Catharina Jacob’s daughter Philippine, who is integral to the history of this property. Shortly before she turned nineteen in 1871, she married Mokena farmer Robert Bechstein, who tragically died of smallpox in the prime of his life ten years later. It would later be remembered that some member of the Bechstein family ran a store here at the end of the 19^th century, but any details have long since dissipated into the mists of time. 

 

   Regardless of what business was being carried on, at the turn of the 20^th century Philippine Bechstein and her now elderly father continued to live at this spot. A curious incident occurred in November 1901, when the elder Jacob narrowly averted a disaster. He was on the wooden front porch taking in the autumn air, when he struck a match to light his pipe. Tossing the match aside, the hot stick combined with the dry wood caused a fire that had taken on some size by the time he noticed it. In hurrying to grab a pail of water, Jacob was able to put out the flames before they caused serious damage. 

 

   So it was that William Jacob departed this mortal life on August 24^th, 1905 at his Mokena home, after a long battle with dropsy. His obituary praised him as being “possessed (of) those sturdy qualities which make the Teuton a good man and a valuable citizen.” Philippine Bechstein retained ownership of the building in the era after her father’s passing. Within a few years, it had been converted into a multi-purpose space which came to be known around town as Bechstein Hall. Known by this moniker as early as 1913, it was used by everyone from the Mokena Friendship Euchre Club and the Royal Neighbors, to the Modern Woodmen of America. Typical of the happenings at Bechstein Hall was the banquet held by the Young People’s Association of St. John’s on Saturday night, March 11^th, 1916. It was put on by the boys of the group, for the sole purpose of feting the Association’s girls. 

   The youth had assembled at the Mokena Street home of Christian Bechstein, Philippine Bechstein’s brother-in-law, from whence the group made their way to the hall. Upon entering the building, the girls had to pass through a lane comprised of the boys, who were clad in yellow and white and donning white caps. The hall was fancifully decorated in yellow and white, with yellow daffodils adorning the tables. The young men cooked the entire menu themselves, but in the end did get a little help in making pies for dessert. At the end of four courses, the teens were entertained by Miss Charlotte Marouse, who acted as a fortune teller. All in all, Bill Semmler, Mokena’s correspondent to the Joliet Herald-News deemed the evening “one of the most pleasing church functions of the season.”

A window into a forgotten world: Front Street circa 1910. Today's 11106 Front Street is at third from right. 

 

   For eight years in the era leading up to the First World War, Dr. Elizabeth L. Ireland, a Joliet dentist, kept her office here. She was open to patients a couple days of every week, and years later, local scribe Clinton Kraus would remember in plain, direct words that “she used old fashioned methods.”

 

   Shortly after New Year 1917, August Pfleger purchased the building as well as the large barn that sat on the lot for $2,400, after the property had been in the hands of the Jacob and Bechstein families for nearly half a century. This changing of hands was no small news, and in reporting the sale local newsman Bill Semmler wrote that “the property in question is an old landmark in Mokena and considerable local history is attached to it.”

 

   Like William Jacob before him, August Pfleger was a native of Germany, having made his way to the United States in 1905 at the age of 19 after having done a stint in the army of his homeland. An early employee of Bowman Dairy’s bottling plant in Mokena, he married 28-year-old Helen Braun in the spring of 1916. A resident of the village since she was four years old, Helen’s brother Albert Braun was a Mokena fixture, who kept a well-known blacksmith shop a few doors west of their property. Upon moving into the Front Street building in 1917, the Pflegers opened an ice cream parlor here, which around 1924 gave way to a grocery store.

 

   While Front Street was already home to two other full-service grocery stores in these years, the Pflegers and their young daughter Genevieve were nevertheless able to carve out a niche for themselves in the fabric of our community. Their store was just a fraction of the size of the others in town, and while they only carried a handful of groceries, meat was what the Pflegers were known for. While they tended not to advertise their business in the local News-Bulletin, Helen Pfleger was no less a go-getter, being known to place friendly calls to Mokena’s mothers, reminding them that mighty good liver was on hand at the store. She was a pleasant lady, with a grandmotherly air to her personality. In addition to being remembered for her salesmanship, many are the fond memories that still exist of the large potted palm tree that stood in the store. 

 

    As August and Helen Pfleger aged, activity at the shop began to slow down, and in the spring of 1949 a sale was held to sell off stock and some of their equipment, such as show cases and counters. An era ended when Helen Pfleger passed away as the result of a stroke on March 1^st, 1951. Just over a month later, her husband held another sale, this one organized by local auctioneer Charles Erickson, where all of the fixtures from the store, such as shelving, the cash register, scales and slicers, and a commercial ice box, found new homes. August Pfleger continued to live at this locale until he too passed, in January 1954. 

 

   By and by, the historic old building was converted to apartments; two of the early families to live there were the Erdmanns and the Logans. The storefront was vacant for quite a long time, but in later years would come to house such enterprises as Kay Travel in the 1980s, in addition to various other short-lived ventures. If these time-honored walls could talk, they’d regale us with tales of weary travelers laying their heads to rest, of high-intensity barfights, of times of great mirth, and neighbors coming together. This old landmark is a priceless relic of the earliest days of Mokena, and deserves our veneration as such. 

A Carnival of Blood: The Mokena Riot of 1864. Part II.

(What follows is the continuation to last week's entry)

The Dead and Wounded

 

    As the smoke and dust settled, both in a literal sense for Mokena, and psychologically for those who instigated the riot, a dour assessment of the casualties began. As far as history can tell, no Mokenians were fatally hurt in the affray; the brunt of the casualties were borne by the Chicagoans.  Due to the chaos of the event itself, and the urgency with which the injured were whisked to their city homes, any definite number of the casualties inflicted in Mokena could never be established. Media accounts range from vague descriptions of chest and side wounds suffered by unnamed victims, to the graphically detailed narratives of those whose injuries read like a battlefield report.

 

    One Farnham S. White, a barkeep at a hostelry called the House of David on Dearborn Street, was named as having been shot in the right side of the head; the projectile having fractured his skull just above the ear. He was not expected to survive the grievous wound. Interestingly, White was noted as having been seated in a passenger coach that had been stalled on the siding when he was wounded by a stray ball. Injured in the same manner was one Nicholas Geary, who was severely wounded in the right arm while sitting with a young lady, as well as a Billy Pinkerton, who was hit in the hand by possibly the same ball that struck Geary.

 

     A man known only by the name of Kelly was said to have taken a ball in the shoulder. An unknown gentleman was shot either in the leg or groin; surgery was performed on him at the same night at his home at Michigan and Market Streets. Perhaps the case of Michael Casey was the most unique of the whole affair, namely in that it is rich with detail. A 24-year-old single man, Casey was mortally shot through the side in Mokena, the lead pistol ball having punctured his liver. Listed by at least one newspaper as part of the gang that left the train to fight, Casey lingered in agony for two days before eventually dying between 7:00 and 8:00 on the morning of August 16. Employed by the Illinois Central Railroad as a machinist, Michael Casey lived in the boarding house he died in at 162 Van Buren Street. He left behind two sisters. After his death, the Cook County Coroner held an inquest over his remains, but in the words of a contemporary journalist, “very little evidence concerning the affray (in Mokena) was elicited.”

 

     What was certain, is that in most circles, no sympathy was felt for any of the hurt. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune, who was careful to precede his statement with “if the information we received was correct”, wrote that the “assailants were properly punished.”

 

Upon Printed Pages

 

      As far as can be told, the rich historical narrative of the events in Mokena that summer night is completely true, and no fiction or embellishing has been added to this telling of the riot and its aftermath. It was reconstructed as coherently as possible amidst a confused tangle of contemporary reports, accounts that at times were vastly contradicting.

 

     The majority of current knowledge of this calamitous event comes from media contemporary to the incident, and this is perhaps the most interesting aspect of all. Attesting to the brutality of the fight, the riot was covered in at least five different newspapers, those being namely the Joliet Signal, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Evening Journal, the Chicago Times, and a German-language publication called the Illinois Staats-Zeitung.Each of their reports, in some cases carried over the space of two days, are in disagreement with those of their fellow journalists. Everything from the exact number of rioters, whether or not they came armed, even the approximate number of casualties is extremely clouded. What is clear however, is that each newspaper, in the style of the day, made no effort to hide which party had won their respective sympathies. 

 

    The Chicago Tribune distinguished itself with providing the most detailed and (relatively) objective reporting on the entire affray. Although he perhaps overestimated the total number of pleasure seekers that left Chicago the morning of August 15^th with 4,000, their reporter did reckon with eight to twenty casualties that night, perhaps three of which had been mortally wounded. He was of the opinion that the attack on Schiek’s inn (referred to incorrectly as the “Northwestern House”) was surely premeditated, as large stones were allegedly bought from New Lenox for the direct purpose of causing mayhem in Mokena. The writer mentioned a grim rumor that had reached the city stating that John Schiek had been lynched by the mob, but staying true to the facts, gave it no credence in his columns. The Tribune included a slight anti-Irish slant to their coverage, not only highlighting the drunkenness of the crowd, but also adding that the destruction of Schiek’s property was “in the matter of the countrymen” of those who began the ruin of the Western Hotel. 

 

     While the Chicago Evening Journal carried much of the same information that the Tribune did, its reporting placed special emphasis on the difficulty of attaining reliable witness accounts. Their source placed the number of wounded at anywhere from 10 to 30, but lead the reader to believe that this number exclusively referred to those wounded by stray rounds landing amongst the train coaches. The writer at the Evening Journal stated that “many persons say there were five or six killed” in the melee, while “others insist there were none”. A rumor was acknowledged that two or three of the attackers were killed outright, and hastily left on the ground in Mokena, where they fell. Their columnist noted that “the whole affair was brutal and reprehensible on both sides.” As of a day after the riot, no one in Chicago had been arrested for the clash, and those at the Evening Journal hoped that none of the guilty would escape without being punished. 

 

     In the pages of the Joliet Signal, one of Will County’s premier newspapers, a staunch defense of Schiek and his actions was to be found. The identity of the Signal’s correspondent has been lost to time, but he presented a very pro-Mokena stance to his readers. Without question, he stated that the episode was the “most fearful riot that has ever occurred in this county, and resulted from the excessive use of ardent spirits”, and insisted that the Chicagoans were already gregariously drunk and inclined to violence upon their arrival in Mokena. The last paragraph of the Signal’s reportage is a defensive editorial, coming to the guard of the shaken John Schiek. Readers were told not to place the blame for chaotic night on Schiek, who as an established resident of Mokena, was “always recognized as a quiet, peaceable man, who attends to his own affairs.”

 

      The Chicago Times presented the grisly fight in the larger context of the raging Civil War. Headlining their column “A Carnival of Blood”, scenes of the war were drummed into readers’ minds with phrases like “brothers are sheathing bayonets and hurling bullets into brothers’ hearts”, and “the bloody infection of war is growing with fearful rapidity.” It is easy to infer that the Times was blaming the war with a concurrent wave of crime that had Chicago in its grip, ultimately stating “for what does one life amount to when thousands are being killed in every battle?”

     As the Times’ coverage of the riot began, a distinct tone in the writing of their correspondent crept to the surface. He exploited the opportunity to address his readers in a haughty tone as if from a metaphorical high horse, and spared no detail in penning a very inflammatory, and ultimately anti-Mokena piece. According to the account of the unknown journalist in question, John Schiek greeted the excursionists at gunpoint when they entered his place, and ordered them to leave the premises or suffer the consequences. A violent outburst then ensued in the derisively named “grog shop”, the cause of which, in the face of the overwhelmingly disagreeing historical record, was allegedly not known to the travelers.  From the perspective of this writer, Schiek and his acquaintances, who were called “infuriated wretches”, also pointedly opened fire on women and children who were near open doors on the railroad coaches. Once again, this account is not mentioned in any other period sources. 

 

   Any account of that horrible day would be remiss not to acknowledge the extensive coverage of the Chicago-based, German language Illinois Staats-Zeitung. Of all the publications surveyed, none was more vocal about the events that August day. The Staats-Zeitung provides a unique, you-are-there look into the violence that day, as its reportage contained detailed correspondence from two of the Mokenians who felt the wrath of the “whisky-soused Irish rowdies”, Conrad Stoll and Moritz Weiss. 

    First and foremost, pharmacist Weiss wanted to set the record straight on the condition the excursionists were in when they steamed into town. In a letter to the editor penned in his mother tongue, he wrote “Allow a witness to report the truth…to your honored sheet.” While the Chicago paper had managed to send a reporter to Mokena, Weiss noted that he was “only able to report over a short time in a skin-deep way.” He communicated to the paper that the excursionists of the St. Vincent de Paul Society were the cause of three fights at Cold Spring Grove, after which “the cowards trampled down ten acres of corn, like a herd of swine”, after which they “split up lots of schnaps between themselves” and took the train to Mokena, in a “properly tanked-up” condition.  

   Moritz Weiss confidently declared that none of the gunfire emanating from the Mokenians hit the railroad cars, and in closing demanded that a proper investigation take place in the matter. 

 

   Mokena storekeeper Conrad Stoll praised the Staats-Zeitung’s coverage of the drunken riot, but modestly added that they still “didn’t know the tenth of what happened.” After submitting his richly detailed account of the day in German words, he pleaded to the editor to “please be so good to put all of this in the paper, so that law-abiding people can see what a band of rogues this was.” He also wished for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, and for them to made responsible monetarily for the damage that was inflicted upon Mokena that day. 

 

An Uncertain Aftermath

 

     In the end, it remains unknown if any of the parties involved in the melee were ever prosecuted. The matter is further complicated by the fact that legal records of any sort pertaining to the Cook County participants would have been destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871. As bitter as this truth is, the fact must be accepted that this portion of the fearsome night’s aftermath will forever remain unknown to modern Will County.   

 

    The grisly summer in Mokena and its blood harvest were quickly forgotten to the tides of time. Another ethnically charged incident in town during the 1890s (albeit one with no fatalities) sparked a flicker of remembrance by some locals, who in turn retold slightly distorted recollections to a Joliet reporter. Aside from the contemporary news accounts of the 1864 riot, it was never again mentioned in the known printed record. Past county and local histories gloss over the event, possibly in shame, but more likely in unawareness. Descendants of longtime, founding Mokena families recall no details of it having been passed down through the generations. 

 

    The fates of those Chicagoans who left the cars in Mokena that night remain unknown. Of the few identities that have surfaced from the fog of decades, those have proved unusually difficult to trace. Of those injured that weren’t already listed as having died, it can’t help but to be pondered if some lived for decades afterward carrying pistol balls in their limbs and extremities, telling tales of mayhem in a small town no one had ever heard of.  

 

    In a rather lucky turn, history has been generous in recording the life of John Schiek after the ghastly fight. In the post-Civil War era, he seems to have turned his focus to farming. In an 1873 plat map of Frankfort Township, Schiek’s name flows across a large portion of the township’s northwest. Included in this substantial acreage were two farms, ostensibly one could have served as Schiek’s main residence, while the other would possibly have been under the care of a family member or a leasee. Until relatively recently, one of these farms, having been situated on Wolf Road approximately 460 yards north of today’s 191^st Street, boasted a commodious farmhouse built in the Italianate style, contemporaneous with the era in which Schiek would have owned the property. Of the other farm, located on the north side of 191^st Street at what is now Schoolhouse Road, no trace remains. Upon leaving the ownership of the Schiek family in the early 20^th century, modern construction was carried out on this estate. 

 

     As years progressed, John Schiek became very involved in Mokena’s affairs. In the spring of 1887, he received a seat on the Mokena village board, taking part in the decision-making that marked the first few years of the village’s incorporation. Not long thereafter, John Schiek found himself in the sunset of his life. As he became ill, his mind surely wandered to thoughts of better days, and perhaps, also to a day of horror – the wanton destruction and gore at his hotel on August 15^th, 1864. Schiek passed away in Mokena the night of February 25^th, 1890 to a deadly combination of kidney inflammation and influenza. No sooner than Schiek’s family and friends laid his earthly remains to rest at St. John’s Cemetery, amid a sea of obelisks etched with flowing Germanic script, had his comrades from the village board honored him with a special resolution. Passing sympathy to the Schiek family, the resolution read, in part “…we mourn for one who was in every way worthy of our respect and highest regards.”

 

    At the epicenter of this entire account, stands Schiek’s Western Hotel, the site of the fatal riot. Over a century and a half after that night, the question begs itself of where exactly the inn stood in Mokena. In pouring over period property records, little solid information can be extracted. In an interesting footnote to history, a mysterious incident in 1875 could potentially shed light on the mystery. Although the period in question was one in which John Schiek considered himself a farmer, he still retained ownership on a building in Mokena. In November of the aforementioned year, a disastrous fire ravaged the property, destroying it. The wooden structure was devoid of inhabitants, and interestingly, the fire was quickly deemed the work of an arsonist; a rumor even spread in the area that the stench of an acrid kerosene accelerant could be smelled for a two-block radius. 

 

     Could this have been the site of the riot eleven years previous? At this late point, it is impossible to know. Too few details have survived the decades to hazard a guess. 

 

   So it was, that on a summer evening during our great Civil War, a booze-soaked hoard of troublemakers from the city came to our town looking for trouble. They found it, in this little known, yet significant event in the early history of Mokena. This incident, in all its wretchedness, deserves to be remembered as a major part of our narrative. 

A Carnival of Blood: The Mokena Riot of 1864. Part I

   Never before or since, has our land seen such a trying time as the Civil War. With our nation torn asunder, it was a period of great meaning not only for the entire country, but also for our village. Dozens of Mokena’s men and boys were marching in Abraham Lincoln’s army and facing danger every day, while our community was paying a heavy price to preserve the Union. Local souls were heavy. A great letting of blood was happening in far off fields, and one summer day a tumult came to our door that was just as great an atrocity as anything seen at the front. On August 15^th, 1864, a taste of the war came to our village. 

The Man in the Middle

 

     At the center of this story stands a man named Johann Georg Adam Schiek. Born to this world on June 1^st, 1825, Schiek first saw earthly light in a modestly sized village called Neckarbischofsheim, in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Today a part of the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, this region of gentle hills, small villages and green countryside was the home of Johann’s parents, Heinrich and Rosina Schiek. Including himself, Johann was one of 11 children born to the couple; by all means a large family, but one not unusual in its time and place. A hearty farmer, the elder Schiek would have surely counted on young Johann’s help in the fields during planting and harvest. 

     

     What was already a rough and grueling life took a turn for the worse in the late 1840s. During Johann’s young adulthood, Europe was thrown into violent revolution. By 1848, brutal political turmoil was widespread in most of the German-speaking world, and in the ensuing uprisings, countless protesters were killed across the continent. Later generations would claim that the elder Schiek was a revolutionary, and like many of his countrymen who found themselves in a dangerous position when the tide turned against them, he fled Baden with his family in tow. 

    

     Along with his parents and siblings, Johann Schiek first set foot in the United States in August 1848. Upon their arrival, the immigrant family found their way to Chicago, where a sojourn of several days was made. From this Midwestern metropolis, the Schieks set forth into a dense wilderness of prairies, negotiating rough terrain by foot the entire way, and camping in the open during the nights. The family eventually reached Joliet, and soon after, made their permanent home on the site of today’s Mokena.

 

     Having in 1848 been the home to settlers of European descent for a short 17 years, Johann Schiek would have fit in well with his few neighbors; as the yet unnamed township was already being settled by many pioneers of German birth. Heretofore Frankfort Township had been home to roughly a dozen families of eastern American origin, hailing from such places as New York, Ohio, and Vermont. The 1840s heralded an ethnic shift in this portion of eastern Will County, with most new arrivals to the vast wilderness of the area being of Germanic descent, the majority of them being Bavarians and Hessians, geographic neighbors to the Schiek’s Baden home. So strong was the German influence on the area, that according to early Will County historian George Woodruff, an early Teuton settler named the township for his Hessian home, Frankfurt am Main.

   

    With the birth of Mokena in 1852, the young man soon found an opportunity for profit in the new rural community; establishing an inn in the rural locale within several years of its start. An early Will County directory first records Schiek’s establishment, the Western Hotel, in 1859. J.H. Quinn, a federal census taker who visited Mokena on July 3^rd, 1860, recorded five male laborers residing in Schiek’s hostelry, possibly employees of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. Having by this time Americanized his name to John Schiek, he and his wife Helena, along with their four young children, were well known in the new community. Schiek’s place in Mokena was respected by his friends and neighbors, one later mentioning that his “energy was equaled by his business veracity”. 

 

    This era marked the end of the last semblance of normalcy that Mokena and the rest of America would see for the next five years. The Civil War loomed ominously on the horizon, and Schiek and his contemporaries were entering a time of great carnage and despair. In 1864, it would reach a highpoint in Mokena. 

 

Mokena, 1864 AD

 

     In the summer of 1864, as the Civil War raged for its third bloody year, Mokena was a relatively newborn community located 11 miles from Joliet on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. Although settlers of European descent had populated the immediate region for just over three decades at this time, the unincorporated hamlet had first been platted in 1852 with arrival of the railroad. Consisting of a few streets and perhaps a couple hundred residents, Mokena was a small, rural town surrounded by a lush agricultural region. 

     

     Along rustic 1864 Front Street, residents patronized such business houses as the general store of James Ducker, a native of England who was one of the Mokena’s most successful merchants, along with the modern shop of Teutonic-born Conrad Stoll. Fellow countryman Moritz Weiss kept a well-stocked drug store. The saloon of Martin Heim, a native Hessian, was known to quench the thirst of railroad workers, and a steam-powered sawmill at the tracks catered to the needs of the steadily growing town. The hum of work at a flourmill had even started, but carried on for only a short time before the building burned in 1860. 

     

    Two blocks north of muddy Front Street (often simply referred to as Main Street by locals) stood a wide, sunny expanse of ground set aside for schools and churches. Known as the Public Square, the wooden frame church edifice of the German United Evangelical St. John’s congregation stood here. A few rods to the west of the modest church stood a small, one room schoolhouse; one of Mokena’s first proper buildings, having been built nine years previous.

     

     The area was the home to a fair share of abolitionists in this era. Allen Denny, a New Yorker by birth who in 1864 would have been nearing his 75^th year, was an early settler and one of the region’s well-known residents, as well as being the founder of Mokena proper. Denny kept a station on the Underground Railroad near town, and even found himself indicted under Illinois’s fugitive slave laws. 

     

    Patriotic fervor was high. Having furnished at least 50 men to the Union army to combat the rebel hordes since the Civil War’s start, Mokena could boast at this time of sons, brothers and friends in the ranks of the 20^th, 64^th, and 100^th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiments. A devastating blow was dealt to the small community on September 19^th, 1863, when three of its sons were killed in the Battle of Chickamauga in northwestern Georgia, a fight of unspeakable horror that was second only to Gettysburg in terms of body count. 

     

    By 1864, America was in the midst of vast bloodshed and tragedy, the intensity of which the land had not seen before or since. Although far removed from the front lines of war, the most violent period of our nation’s history begat one of the most terrible events in Mokena’s history. In the summer of 1864, a firestorm of ferocity struck Mokena that exploded across headlines of newspapers as far away as Chicago.

 

“A Carnival of Blood”

 

    The summer day of August 15^th, 1864 found a long train coasting along the rails of the Rock Island toward Joliet. Filling several coaches that day was a large band of merry makers, all of whom en route to Cold Spring Grove, about seven miles outside the county seat. They were members of the St. Louis conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, a Catholic charity based in Chicago. Upon reaching their destination, a grand picnic was held, and much fun was had by the day-trippers and their families. After a day of high spirits and jollity, all were in a good mood, and with the outbreak of evening and casting of shadows, the time slowly came to re-board the train to their Chicago homes.

 

     Predominantly a group of Irish immigrants and those otherwise of Celtic heritage, alcoholic beverages has been flowing in copious amounts that day at Cold Spring Grove, and by all accounts, a party atmosphere had continued in the train on the way back north. After traversing a fair amount of miles and leaving Joliet far behind them, the locomotive slowly lurched to a halt at about 5:15pm.  Word made its way through the cars that they were stopped on a siding, giving the right of way to another passing train. If the passengers peered out the windows, they would have seen some houses, stores, and if they were positioned just right, possibly a church spire or two. They were in Mokena.

 

    With no signs emerging of a quick continuance to their journey, the more uproarious of the train’s passengers began to grow restless. 

 

   By and by, the passengers came to leave the cars and wander out into Mokena. The first inkling of trouble that evening began at Moritz Weiss’s drugstore. Mr. Weiss stood in the doorway of his shop, comfortably smoking his Meerschaum pipe and taking in the hour, when 10 or 12 of the alcohol-fortified Chicagoans came to him, and brusquely demanded more grog. He explained to them that he was a pharmacist and didn’t keep any, when one of the toughs rudely plucked the pipe from his lips and proceeded to brutally kick him in the shin. This made the druggist’s “blood boil”, who responded by punching the hoodlum in the stomach, who was bowled over by the impact. Moritz Weiss hurriedly called out to his wife Julia to bring him his shotgun, and as she appeared with the gun, the ruffians beat a hasty retreat. 

 

   Meanwhile, another drama was brewing a few doors down at John Schiek’s Western Hotel. Around fifteen or twenty excursionists, or possibly as many as fifty, left the cars and stumbled through the railroad yard, across a narrow dirt road, and into the inn. They had one goal, and that was the procuring of more booze.  

 

    Responding to their calls for drink, Schiek served the glut of unexpected customers a round. Glasses tilted back, foamy liquid was consumed, and merriment continued for the time being. Schiek was quickly confronted with a problem, that being that he had more customers than he had glassware. This, combined with the fact that the revelers were already calling for more, prompted the innkeeper to ask for payment for the first round before he would make good with a second. To their Irish ears, Schiek’s request in his Teutonic voice led the inebriated and confused visitors to take the decree as an ethnic affront. In their stupor, the Chicagoans made no haste in escalating the situation, venting their anger and ransacking the Western Hotel in response. Shards of glass and splinters of wood filled the air as chairs and bottles were smashed, and the bar’s counter was overturned. 

 

    In shock and anger at the destruction of his property, John Schiek dashed upstairs and fetched a revolver, partly in self -defense and also to frighten the disorderly group into leaving. At this point in the episode, certain aspects of the historic narrative become foggy and unclear. What is clear, is that Schiek was then joined by an armed assistant or two, at least one of which was a Union soldier on furlough. They set out to clear the inn by force. The mob beat a hasty retreat under the Mokenians’ guns, and upon congregating in Front Street, began to pelt the Western Hotel with rocks and logs. The rioters gained help at this juncture, for some would later claim that several women emerged out of the stalled train, cradling hefty rocks in their aprons that had been picked up in New Lenox, handing them off to the men in their group. 

 

     The glass in his windows being no match for the angry, drunken crush, Schiek, his assistant, plus another acquaintance took up a defense stance in the inn’s doorway. Sometime between the initial retreat from Schiek’s establishment and the episode in the street, a shot was fired, and one of the mob was wounded. The depths of time have clouded which party pulled the trigger first, but it mattered for naught - the Mokenians were by now indiscriminately firing from the door. Whizzing through the night air, the lead balls found their marks, although some accounts would say that many of the rounds went high and found their place in the railroad coaches. Under this withering fire, the rabblers rallied and stormed the inn, overwhelming Schiek and his friends. 

 

      John Schiek made a run for the back door, hoping to escape to a nearby forest, but to his horror, the building was now surrounded by the angry horde. According to one account, a “shower of stones, brickbats and missiles of every description” kept him trapped in his place. Joined by his two compatriots, who by this time had fired over 70 shots and had no more rounds between them, Schiek and the men eventually fled into the night. A few days later, it was reckoned that they were up against an angry, booze-fueled mob of about 100 to 150 men. Schiek was unable to escape the angry masses. They caught him, ruthlessly pummeled him with their fists, and proceeded to steal his revolver and the cash from his pockets, leaving him as an unconscious, crumbled heap in the darkness. 

 

     Eventually a second train of the day’s Chicagoan revelers arrived in Mokena, and with the initial group of ruffians, a number of them began to set to work further tearing apart the Western Hotel. In essence, the building was gutted, witnesses would later report that the house was almost completely obliterated from the Mokena streetscape. One account from shortly after the riot called the house “nothing more than a ruin.” A calculated and wanton destruction of the worst sort was inflicted; everything of value in John Schiek’s establishment was ruined.  His doors were broken up, partitions were torn apart, all his glasses had been shattered, ten boxes of cigars were looted, and between twenty and thirty dollars (roughly $335 to $500 in today’s value) were taken from Schiek’s cash drawer. A grim coup de grace was also nearly dealt. Some of the group, yelling “burn down the damned place!” piled kindling against the Western Hotel in order to immolate the building, although they were ultimately thwarted by the cries of an elderly woman in a neighboring house to spare the buildings.

 

     At the height of the riot, John Schiek wasn’t the only Mokenian who felt the wrath of the drunken horde. Their rage fanned out in all directions surrounding the Western Hotel: Private residents would later report their homes having been plundered, and lastly, it was whispered that some of the offenders also attempted to stone one of John Schiek’s young children to death. 

 

   As the awful tumult was taking place at Schiek’s, a sidebar to the grisly affair was taking place at the nearby grocery store of Conrad Stoll. He would recall that Mokena was in over its head from the get-go, as within 10 minutes of the first train arriving, “the saloons and stores across from (it) were filled to the brim with the Chicago bandits.” He estimated that about 100 or 150 squeezed and hoarded into his place of business, and demanded brandy and whisky, which Stoll didn’t carry. The crowd left his place under a cloud of “horrible curses” and proceeded to begin their storming of John Schiek’s inn. 

 

    Conrad Stoll wasn’t out of the woods yet. Another mob “jumped in masses from the cars” and crowded him to his eyeballs, and demanded candy, cakes, coffee, cigars, “simply everything they could see”, he’d say. He and two others were working the counter, but he estimated that they wouldn’t be paid a tenth for what they gave to the unwelcomed customers. Wanton stealing was the order of the evening. Stoll’s display cases were ripped open and pilfered. As the storekeeper reached his wit’s end and shouted that he’d be forced to grab his gun, Stoll’s brave wife, Franciska, was aiding her husband by attempting to physically force some of the crush out of the building. Conrad Stoll’s words from shortly thereafter echo repeatedly as “they took everything they could get their hands on” and “all (my) begging helped for nothing”; an illustrative example being the thieves who filled their pockets with sugar and tobacco, and the 18 hats that the Stolls lost, along with glasses, pitchers, buckets, and stone crocks.

 

    As he was forking over a handful of cigars to the mob, a hand reached out to give Conrad Stoll a dollar bill. As he made the change, “a big rogue fell over the drawer” and snatched three 10-dollar bills and some coins, amounting to at least $500 in today’s money. Now was the time for Stoll to regain his footing and pull together a semblance of control over the situation. He grabbed a menacing cheese knife, held the drawer shut with his other hand, and fought off the rowdy. “I threatened to stab everybody who wouldn’t leave the store immediately” he breathlessly reported shortly thereafter. A new problem arose, however, when the mass found their way behind his house, attacked his summer kitchen, and carried off everything that wasn’t nailed down.

 

   Meanwhile, some fellow Mokenians came to his rescue, and as they helped Conrad Stoll barricade his shop, the villagers witnessed the chaos nearby at John Schiek’s, “as hundreds stood at John Schiek’s house and bombarded it with rocks, when all the windows and doors were turned to rubble.” He recounted the gunfire coming from inside the saloon directed at the drunken mob, saying simply that it was “a horrible picture.” Stoll mentioned little bands of villains who ran back and forth through town, who at one point, absconded with his 15-year-old son from behind his house and went on to “beat him like barbarians”. Luckily the young man was able to climb back into his house through an open window. 

 

   As this was transpiring, Conrad Stoll had grabbed his double-barreled shotgun, loaded it with buckshot, and took up a post in a window in the second floor of his building.   

 

     Leaving Mokena tattered, smashed, pillaged, and in pieces, a locomotive’s shrill steam whistle sounded in the evening hour, and the drunken mass beat a hasty retreat from town and back to the cars, carrying their bloody wounded with them after the fray at the Western Hotel. Seemingly as quickly as they stormed onto the scene, their trains disappeared into the prairie, and back to Chicago. With an extremely agitated and bloodthirsty mood still prevailing amongst them upon their arrival in the Garden City, a contingent of the day’s revelers set upon ravaging a saloon near their terminus station. Luckily, a concerned police officer intervened, warning the mob sternly that “a squad of soldiers was in sight”, and they desisted their brutal work.

 

    Sheltered Mokenians cautiously emerged from their hiding places, and the local injured were nursed to their senses. That night, all able-bodied men in the village stood watch, armed to the teeth and nervously staring down every train that passed through. The day’s carnage in Mokena was just the beginning in the grim affair.

(Check back next Friday for the conclusion to this story)

Mokena Meets Shakespeare: The Story of Col. Don C. Hall

   Within our village gates, there was once a man known as the Colonel, with his flowing silver locks, sparkling blue eyes and snow-white beard, who made a name for himself by wearing suits of buckskin and ten-gallon hats. He was able to recite Shakespeare by memory, was called “beloved and colorful”, and those who made his acquaintance said this gentleman had a “high intellect” and “kindly disposition.” Once a generation there comes a larger-than-life character, a personality that is truly one of a kind, and Colonel Don C. Hall was ours, a true Mokena original. 

 

A forgotten idyll: Col. and Mrs. Don C. Hall pose at the village outskirts around 1940.

 

   Don Carlos Hall entered this world on March 6^th, 1867 at Eau Pleine in central Wisconsin, the son of William and Anna Hall, his father a farmer turned lumberman and his mother a school teacher. At a very early age in the boy’s life, the Halls packed up and moved to the Dakota Territory, which in those days still counted as the wild, untamed west. In later years, Don C. Hall would claim to have been at the scene in Deadwood, as a nine-year-old, when the legendary Wild Bill Hickock met his untimely end, as well as being at his funeral. Taking this story into consideration, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Hall had a bend for the grandiose, and that there is no way to verify this tale. In any case, at his future home in Mokena, he exhibited an old pair of knee-high boots that he proclaimed were worn by Hickock at the time of his ultimate demise, which, as the tale went, he received as a gift from Hickock’s acquaintance Calamity Jane shortly before she died in 1903. 

 

   In time, the Halls found their way back to Wisconsin, this time to Stevens Point, a logging town in the central part of the state not far from Don C. Hall’s birthplace. The young man was said to have gotten his education in “the rugged school of experience”, and would at one point study bookkeeping. However, the lad’s heart belonged to the theater, and here at a young age, he began to make his career. Hall’s biggest passion were Shakespearian roles, for which his heart would beat for the rest of his days. 

 

   In January 1888, aged not quite 21, Don C. Hall took Clara Alice Crocker as his wife, a young lady almost a year his senior. They tied the knot at Crocker’s Landing, Wisconsin, the bride’s familial home. Clara would be remembered as a “wonderful character, lovable, always cheerful and never seeing the dark side of life.” The new married couple cut quite a figure together, as contemporaries described Clara as “diminutive”, while they described her husband as “tall and stately.” One admirer would later write that the Halls “were an inspiration to all who knew them.’

 

   Don and Clara Hall carved out a living in theater, coming to form the Don C. Hall Company, with which they traveled and performed all over the United States, visiting every state at least once with the exception of Maine. Eventually the company came to have two railroad coaches at their disposal with which they crisscrossed America. The Halls welcomed three children into their lives, Don Carlos Jr, Walter Richard, and Inez Olivet, who came into the world between 1888 and 1895, all of whom were born on the road while the family was on tour. 

   The company contained versatile actors, as Clara Hall would state that they performed “comedy, drama, melodrama, tragedy…and just about anything else the public wants.” Among many others, they were known to stage such works as Enoch Arden and Ten Nights In a Bar Room, while husband and wife also came to pen their own pieces, including a drama based on Shakespeare’s Richard III. During the great Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, the Halls called a theater on Halsted Street home, where they put on Rudolph the Cripple during the fair. By 1900, the Don C. Hall Company boasted of around 20 to 40 thespians and musicians. 

 

   His career as a dramatist went on hold for a short time in 1913, when Don C. Hall was elected to the Wisconsin state legislature on the Republican ticket from Portage County. He held the seat for six years, during which time he was also an unsuccessful candidate for state governor, and also claimed to have rubbed elbows with Theodore Roosevelt. During Hall’s time politicking, he picked up the honorific title of Colonel, bestowed upon him by state senator Robert La Follette. The moniker would stick with Hall for the rest of his life. When the Colonel set his heart to something, he gave it his all. While he wouldn’t become a professional politician, government was something that always remained dear to him. 

 

   A new venture came to the Colonel in the tumultuous years of the First World War. By way of a gentleman from Milwaukee, Hall first heard of a coveted Seminole herb called Conyagada, which the tribesmen purported to be medicinal; a cure for just about everything. Knowing a business opportunity when he saw one, the Colonel searched out the Seminole in the Florida Everglades, and after some initial distrust on their part, they eventually warmed up to the actor politician, and taught him how to distill the root of the Conyagada plant, from which Hall made a tonic. Having gained the proper know-how, he returned to Wisconsin and won a license from the state to operate a still in which the tonic was manufactured. 

   So it was, that for around a decade, the Hall family once again traveled to every far-flung corner of America selling the remedy, complete with trucks bearing platforms that unfolded, upon which the medicine shows were staged. Don C. Hall Jr mingled in the assembled crowds with a box full of the product strapped on his back, seeking out customers. One of the Colonel’s sales barks was “Seminole Indian Conyagada rubbing oil for aches, pains, cuts, bruises, headache, earache, toothache, neuralgia.” Years after the show had closed up business, the root still remained a favored remedy in the Hall family. 

 

   It came to pass that in 1923, the medicine show was on the road in Will County, and one of its trucks gave up the ghost in Frankfort. Little would they know it, but this would prove to be a fortuitous moment loaded with consequence for Colonel and Mrs. Hall, as a golden path led them to Mokena, the site of their future home. In those days a steel water tower rose over Front Street, which was lined with businesses such as Al Braun’s blacksmith shop, George Wannemacher’s soft drink parlor, the Cooper & Hostert Ford Agency, Krapp Bros. Mokena Hardware Company, along with the village’s two-story, wood frame public school. Barely three years before, the community was home to 475 souls. Called by some (with tongues firmly in cheek) the purveyors of snake oil, the Halls moved into a building owned by the Hatch family on Mokena Street, a place that for most its life had been a general store, but as of late had been a hall. 

   One of the Halls’ first acts upon getting settled in Mokena was to subscribe to the News-Bulletin, our erstwhile village newspaper. They quickly became enamored with the jaunty small-town publication, and in later years it would be remembered that their affection for it was a main reason for their deciding to set down roots in town. 

 

   When they weren’t on the road doing business, the Halls got settled in our community and were accepted by the village at large. Their tradition as great thespians continued in their new home, because while Stratford-upon-Avon may have had Shakespeare, Mokena had the Halls. Among other pieces, they presented the play Davy Crockett in four acts at the end of April 1924, their stage being the empty lot at the southeast corner of Denny Avenue and Mokena Street. After putting down stakes here, Colonel and Mrs. Hall, along with their adult son Don Jr., moved to a quaint cottage on Third Street. The walls of its living room were covered in old newspaper, which gave the whole space a golden shine. The couple, now getting on in years, were friendly with neighborhood children, and Clara Hall could be counted on to treat young visitors to cookies. 

 

This cozy house at today's 11120 Third Street is one of the several places the Halls called home in Mokena. 

 

   Colonel Don C. Hall was a sharp political commentator, and took up his old mantle of politics in his new Illinois home. When the abysmal condition of Mokena’s roads was a thorny political topic in the interwar era, the Colonel would be remembered as an advocate for their improvement and took a major role with other prominent Mokenians in the campaign to get Wolf Road concreted in in that time. In 1934 he ran for state senator, during which time our News-Bulletin confidently said that “he can and should win.” Unfortunately, voters saw it differently. Unwavered by defeat, at Christmastime 1939 Colonel Hall announced his candidacy for another office; setting his sights even higher by tossing his hat into the ring on the Republican ticket for US senator. Championing the campaign slogan “A Wage for Age”, the focal point of his policies was an old age pension program. Once again, he was shot down at the polls. 

 

   Husband and wife were avid travelers, even while not doing drama or selling patent medicine. When taking to the open road, they left behind their sales truck and didn’t touch the steel rails of the Rock Island line, instead always preferring to go by hitching rides. Before the sun had set on their lives, Colonel and Mrs. Hall had blazed a trail over just about every inch of the land by hitchhiking. Once in December 1936, they completed a trip from Dallas to Mokena in 38 hours, all by thumb, having completed the whole route in only three rides. The trek was considered a record, and was proudly reported from the front page of Mokena’s News-Bulletin. A few years later, the Colonel went on the record, saying “we have splendid luck. I think we can safely say our longest walk in a day was twelve miles.” He was known to tote about 60 pounds in two bags, while Clara Hall carried a wicker handbag. At the end of the 1930s, the Halls humbly claimed to have 25,000 to 30,000 miles under their belts in three years alone. 

 

   The two had a knack for making a name for themselves, and in 1933, they became Mokena’s representatives at the historically unforgettable Century of Progress, Chicago’s second World’s Fair. At the Days of ’49 exhibit, in which visitors immersed themselves in the lives of prospectors in a Gold Rush camp, Colonel Don C. Hall played the mayor of Gold Gulch, the role he was born for. While performing at the fair, the Colonel’s past as a medicine salesman was also played up. The Days of ’49 had its own newspaper, the masthead of which read The Gold Gulch Self-Cocker, which highlighted the Mokenian, painting the perfect picture:

 

“Dr. Hall, the medicine man… is in Gold Gulch and has been entertaining our people with quips and gests, occasionally dropping into poetic verse interspersing his lectures on the subject of health. He claims to cure everything from a broken heart to a disordered liver and to relieve one of tape worm any length desired. See the Doctor before you die – he will at least cheer you up on your journey across.”

 

   Both Colonel and Clara Hall were known to wear pioneer garb around Mokena, such as the fringed buckskin suits that the gent sported. One of his main claims to fame was his uncanny, double-take inducing lookalike to Buffalo Bill Cody. Hall was instantly recognizable by his resplendent silver mane, he once having told a reporter for the Herald-News that he last cut his hair in 1873 at the tender age of six. 

 Clara and Col. Don C. Hall seen at the Mokena Fall Fest of 1944. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   Don C. Hall became a talented author of logs describing he and his wife’s travels, always filing detailed reports in the News-Bulletin on the various events that they visited all over the country. In 1936, the Halls were Texas bound, where the Colonel opened the centennial fair’s Pioneer Days show, and then in 1939, they hitchhiked back-to-back to the Golden Gate International Exposition held in San Francisco as well as to the World’s Fair of that year held in New York City. At the latter place, the two received press credentials, where a media correspondent from the Big Apple was especially taken by his appearance, penning “cultured and witty, the Colonel wore a ten-gallon hat, a white tie and a long black morning frock with cloth-covered buttons.” In a wink to our Mokena editor Bill Semmler, Hall wrote in his notes from San Francisco: “Will visit the press department again today and will have your card with me(,) and you may know that they will know the News-Bulletin before we leave them. Mokena has scored again. We never neglect the old home town.” It was later estimated that the Halls were the most photographed couple at both fairs. 

 

   When, in 1945, Norma Lee Browning of the Chicago Tribune came to Mokena to pen her tasty booklet Mokena Memorabilia, she inevitably crossed paths with Colonel and Mrs. Hall. She noted their advanced age, but marked their drive to keep hitchhiking, quoting the pair “Once you give up and sit down, you just wither away.” In rounding out her piece on their impressive lives, Browning wrote that “Together they have devoted their life to drama, temperance and hitchhiking.” 

 

   The Halls were invited to the Chicago Railroad Fair in the summer of 1949, and once there, they didn’t have a specific program to follow, a reporter simply stated that they “wore their western “get ups” around to create atmosphere.” At this time they also staged productions in Joliet and Chicago schools, with the Colonel lecturing on “The Spirit of the West”, as his words were acted out on stage by Clara Hall, clad in gingham and bonnet. In 1950, the Joliet Spectator profiled the couple, calling them “a pair of congenial old troopers” who had “fallen in love with the stage and the West at an early age and can’t get either out of their systems.” Despite the years behind them, the Colonel “still want(ed) it made known in no uncertain terms that he and his wife are still showmen ready for a job.”

 

The Halls of Mokena, seen here in 1950. The Colonel is sporting the purported Wild Bill Hickok boots.

 

   In their later years, the Halls settled into a cozy little house on Bonness Avenue, where they spent the sunset of their lives, receiving friends, well-wishers, and curious media figures to the last. Clara Hall passed away in Mokena on August 8^th, 1951, at which point the Colonel went to live with their son Don Jr in Mississippi. The siren call of home brought him back to us soon thereafter in the summer of 1953. So it was that on Halloween 1953, Colonel Don C. Hall peacefully breathed his last at a Joliet nursing home. His passing came as a great shock in our village, as he hadn’t been ill. 

 

   People are what make the community. They are forever associated with their place, the scene of their labors and love. They are the irreplaceable pieces of fabric that make up our greater narrative. To know the Halls, is to know Mokena. 

 

A Night to Remember: Mokena's 1956 Homecoming

   Our community isn’t a stranger to big events, with yearly favorites being the bashes of July 4^th, the Firecracker Dance and Halloween Hollow. All of them bring in crowds and are loved by villagers of all ages. However, turning back the clock of time, if one asks any Mokenian of a certain age what the most fun time of year was, the answer will be a resounding yes to the annual Homecoming celebration held in days of yore. It’s the granddaddy of them all, holding an unstoppable wave of nostalgia.

   The very first two-day Homecoming and Harvest Festival was brainstormed up by the Mokena Civic Club, a new group of local do-gooders and “live wires” in the autumn of 1938. It was a heady time, one in which the air was filled with anticipation and high hopes as Mokena pulled itself through the waning years of the Great Depression, as our town newspaper The News-Bulletin proudly proclaimed that the fest was nothing short of “Mokena’s big moment” and “two of its most outstanding Red Letter days”, not to mention that it was widely acknowledged that nothing close to its size had ever happened in town. The center of the village was given over to the festivities on October 21^st and 22^nd, with the grounds around the Rock Island depot (in those days being located on the north side of the tracks) being built up with tents holding exhibits on corn, pumpkins, lima beans, potatoes, fruit and even flowers, to which ribbons would be awarded to the best entries. Not to be bested by agriculture, the Civic Club also displayed samples of local weaving and wood carving.

   Music would also be in abundance from the Mokena Band, Frankfort’s “Hillbilly Band,” the Civic Club Trio and even “a genuine old time square dance with a caller and old time dance music.” To accommodate the latter, an open-air dance floor was leased from the Orland Park Fire Department that measured 18 by 20 feet, allowing “even Jitter Bugs to dance.” The length of Front Street from Gus Braun’s ice cream parlor on the northwest corner of Front Street and Mokena Street west to George Wannemacher’s grocery store was roped off and turned into a “great white way.”

   Perhaps the biggest piece of that first Homecoming was the children’s bicycle parade down Front Street, in which Mokena’s kids and their decorated bikes showed themselves off to an adoring crowd. 

A peek into Mokena of yesteryear: The children's bicycle parade down Front Street at the 1938 Homecoming, the village's first. 

 

   That very first Homecoming in 1938 was a huge success, and after it returned the next year for a second time, it became an annual fete and local staple. While the village-wide party was cancelled in 1943 and 1944 due to manpower and supply shortages in the Second World War, a scaled-down event dubbed Fall Fast was held in September of the latter year at Robinson Park on the site of today’s Anna Street. Homecoming came back bigger and better in 1945, a time that held special meaning, as the festivities that year were held on the heels of the euphoric Allied victory. 

   Over the years, as Homecoming became synonymous with days of mirth, it was the gala event of Mokena’s social calendar and an irreplaceable part of our community fabric. There was simply no topping it. 

 

This decorated hayrack piloted by Dick McGovney (standing with tophat) and his team of horses was a highlight of Mokena’s first homecoming. Standing just to the left of McGovney is Col. Don C. Hall, one of the most recognizable faces in the village. 

   By the time August 1956 rolled around, Homecoming was a busy event and ran like a well-oiled machine. That year, the ultimate goal of the village-wide party was to raise money for the new Mokena park on LaPorte Road. Two parades were in store, for children and pets respectively, not to mention rides, games and a Homecoming queen contest, in which a young lady would win the crown based on the number of chances sold in her name. (The two local contenders that year being Sheila Bennett and Rosemary Dempsey) With all things considered, this Homecoming would be like none of the others before it. To this day, it lives on vividly in the memories of those who were there, for it was on Sunday, August 12^th, 1956 that a storm of unusual strength and ferocity hit Mokena at the height of the merrymaking. 

 

   At the bare minimum it was a particularly severe thunderstorm, but it was never ruled out that a small tornado was at hand, with at least one news report describing the strength of the winds as “tornado velocity.” Chaos reigned supreme at the squall’s outbreak, which blew into town around 9 o’clock that evening, and in the words of the Joliet Herald-News, “swept a six-block area the length of the village.” The torrent made short work of an eight-inch thick, 15-foot-high brick wall that was under construction at Wolf Road’s Hunter Foundry, the same gale carrying a booth ran by the fire department into an excavation on Front Street for an addition to Mokena State Bank. Village resident and future mayor Eric Book was blown into the foundation along with the booth. 

 

   28-year-old Mokenian Les Oakley lost two cars to a falling tree, one of which, a brand-new 1956 model, he had just won at a church celebration a few weeks beforehand. Rudolph Kurnat of New Lenox was also the unlucky owner of a smashed car, when a tree behind Muehler’s Tavern crushed it. The wind gusts decimated Front Street, with anything not nailed down being whisked away. 

 

   Most dramatic was the collapsing of a 50-foot exhibit tent, in which the story of unselfish heroism and staggering injury is highlighted. As the tent’s 400-pound support pole came crashing to the ground, 52-year-old Mokena building contractor A.S. Duncan bravely sprang into action to rescue a little girl who stood in its path. While the girl’s identity has been lost to time, Duncan’s bravery saved her from harm. He would not be so lucky. The contractor and two other men caught the pole, but their attempts to hoist it upright were all for naught due to the wind and the crushing weight of the wet canvas. Two of the men jumped out of its way in the nick of time, while Duncan was hit full on with the heft of the pole, pinning him to the ground. His left leg was horribly mangled, being broken twice below the knee and also about two inches above his ankle. 

 

   A.S. Duncan’s ordeal was nothing short of terrifying. Soaked canvas was suffocating him, and in the vivid words of The News-Bulletin, “a foot of water was tumbling down Front Street and pouring into the area where the exhibit tent was pitched. Duncan could feel the water rising.” Thoughts raced through his mind of suffocating under the canvas or drowning in the flood, to which soon was added the thought of being trampled to death, as unknown feet trod upon him and his broken leg from on top of the collapsed tent. Somehow, as if by miracle, he was able to get free and then succeeded in dragging himself about 10 or 12 feet, where his shouts for help were heard, upon which Mokena firemen found him and made him as comfortable as possible until an ambulance was able to arrive from Joliet. By and by, A.S. Duncan was borne to Silver Cross Hospital, where emergency surgery was carried out on his leg. 

 

   Meanwhile, at least two Front Street businesses, the taverns of the Muehler and Surovic families were thronged by stampedes of people who rushed their doors in order to get out of the biblical torrent. It would later be remembered that an inch of water stood on the floor of the Muehlers’ barroom, having streamed off the soaked refugees. 

   That night, Mokenian Phil Hacker supplied lights to help with the clean-up, while Donna’s Coffee Shop stayed open round the clock giving hot drinks to those sorting out the mess. In its post-storm reportage of the incident, The News-Bulletin gave all the credit to the Mokena Fire Department for saving the day. “They not only helped calm persons panic stricken by the suddenness and ferocity of the storm, but also freed some that were caught by flying canvas and then provided guards that remained in the area thruout the night and Monday afternoon to prevent pilfering.” Words of praise were also spoken by Mayor John Scarth, who told the paper “The village board joins with me in expressing our gratitude for the excellent work performed and community spirit displayed by the firemen.”

   Over the coming days, as the rain and wind settled, it was estimated that there was about $8,000 in damage to the Homecoming, or close to $82,000 in today’s figures. To add further shock, no insurance was carried by either the Civic Association or the Mokena Lions Club, the organizers of the event, which could’ve proved disastrous for both of them, especially in light of Mr. Duncan’s horrific injury. 

 

   The effects of the storm continued to be felt. More than one Mokena youth saw dollar signs when rumors spread through town that paper money was blowing around the village. Indeed, tills in some of the booths were blown away, and a ten-dollar bill was found a block away from Front Street. The night after the deluge, several Homecoming committee members could be seen raking puddles in an effort to find any lost money. The good nature of Mokenians was evident, as more than a few dollars of the wind-strewn cash were turned back in to the Homecoming’s treasurer. Even local livestock felt the storm, as LaPorte Road resident Dick McGovney’s cow was freed by the gale, and proceeded to help herself to a plot of corn belonging to a family on Center Street. 

 

   After the colossal storm and disastrous end to that year’s Homecoming, the joint operating committee of the Lions Club and Civic Association found themselves staring in the face of financial ruin. To get back on their feet, they decided to throw a dance at Wolf Road’s VFW Hall on Saturday night, September 29^th. All the unfinished business from the night of the storm would be completed at the dance, such as the awarding of prizes and the crowning of Homecoming Queen Sheila Bennett. 

 

   Alas, the festivities of 1956 would not only be remembered for their terrible climax, but for the fact that it would be the final year that Homecoming was held on Front Street. It was the end of an 18-year tradition, and also of an era. From this point, the gala would be held at the new park on LaPorte Road, but it was never quite the same after that, and it fizzled out not too long after.  Thus the Great Storm of ’56 served in a way as the final curtain to the Mokena Homecoming. While over half a century has since passed, the momentous day has yet to be forgotten by our community.