Beyond the Milky Way: Mokena's History with the Bowman Dairy Company (Part 2)

   If you haven’t already, be sure to read Part 1 of this entry! (The first piece below this one on the page)

 

   In the aftermath of the 1909 tumult, the Milk Producers’ Association grew in influence, and came to boast of an active Mokena local, headed by dairyman and auctioneer Herbert Moriarty. Through the Association’s efforts, patrons of the Bowman plant were receiving $2 per 100 pounds of milk they sold to the company by January 1911. Five years came and passed, and as 1916 rolled around, World War I tightened its grip on Europe, and the Battles of Jutland, the Somme and Verdun dominated the headlines. Meanwhile in Mokena, another battle was brewing, one that dwarfed the troubles of 1909. Eventually dubbed the Milk War by the Joliet press, it luckily didn’t claim any lives, but it wasn’t for a lack of brutality. So it was, that another grim chapter in Bowman’s relationship with its Mokena suppliers began. 

 

Local auctioneer and dairy farmer Herbert Moriarty was the head of the Mokena local of the Milk Producer's Association.

 

   The trouble first started towards the end of March 1916, when the Association suggested to area dairymen to sell their milk for no less than 4 cents a quart, half the cost of retail in Chicago. Initially, Bowman would have none of it, sticking earnestly to its guns with its old price. Mokena producers were incensed, and the March 25^th issue of the Joliet Herald-News shouted that they were “on war paths.” The 187 area farmers who were in a position to sell their product to the Bowman plant set forth an ultimatum to the Chicago-based giant, urging that the new price be met by April 1^st, or they’d cut off their supply. 

 

    As the days dragged on, things looked dire for Bowman, when on March 30^th, all local members of the Association convened at the Mokena Hall on Front Street. A vote was taken, and with one fell swoop, the dairymen stood with other milk producers in Wisconsin and Indiana, and cut off Bowman. 

 

    The dairymen took steps to prevent any milk whatsoever from reaching Chicago. The Herald-Newsdescribed “Mokena seething with farmers”; some had formed a cordon around Bowman’s plant on Marti Lane, while others gathered at the Rock Island depot and shooed away shippers. Roads leading into town were under guard by bands of strikers, some of whom were said to be armed with “hoe handles and stale eggs.” At a time when the US military was pursing raider Pancho Villa south of the nation’s border, media accounts of the local boycott were rife with militant imagery. A newspaper report said the stretch of the Rock Island between Mokena and Chicago “resembled the Mexican border without the firearms.” 

 

    Bowman employee George Osmus was sent to pick up milk from some hold-out suppliers, and while en route to his destination outside town, he came across six farmers guarding a crossroad. Where exactly this happened in Mokena has been lost to time, but when the gang tried to force Osmus’s team of horses to turn back, their heavy handedness backfired. Village constable Fred Mau came to Osmus’s rescue and leveled a revolver at the dairymen, one of whom sensibly talked Mau into putting his gun away. Once the piece was holstered, Mau then brandished a “big hickory stick” and attacked the strikers. Serious injuries abounded after the melee; Byron Nelson came out with head wounds, Daniel Kohl had a fractured arm, and Fred Hentsch was knocked almost unto unconsciousness. 

 

    Tensions were hair-trigger after the brawl. The same day, Fred Brown of New Lenox tried to cross a picket, and was met by outraged farmers who threw his full milk cans into a roadside ditch. They were only later able to be recovered and brought to the Bowman plant under guard. Despite the fact that another warlike meeting took place at Mokena Hall, things were a little more under control on April 2^nd. The tense calm in Mokena was largely due to the fact that sheriff’s deputies from Joliet had by then arrived in town to allow milk to pass through the blockade. Town marshal Conrad Schenkel helped, whose presence drew “hoots” from onlookers. 

 

    Bowman’s reinforcements helped bring a trickle of product to the Mokena facility, infusing the company with a sense of confidence. Meanwhile, farmers around the village that still refused to cooperate fed milk to their pigs rather than sell at the old price. Within a few days, the Herald-News grimly predicted that Chicago was “near a milk famine” due to the situation in our neck of the woods. Miraculously, on April 3^rd, the blockaders stood down, and by the 7^th, news broke that the city dealers had finally caved, and agreed to buy milk from Mokena dairymen for nine cents a quart, a price that the Herald-News snidely commented would be passed on to the consumer. 

 

    As if 1916 wasn’t already bad enough for Bowman, it was about to get a lot worse. Barely three hours after Mokena’s dairymen signed the peace terms, the engineer of an eastbound freight train passing through town in the dead of night spotted flames shooting out of the plant. He slowed his locomotive until it ground to a halt, and laid on his whistle to alert the small village of the emergency, one account even has the intrepid man, whose name was never noted for posterity, dismounting his locomotive and running door to door to awake residents.  Conrad Schenkel, the aforementioned village marshal, was also commander of the Mokena fire brigade, and assumed charge of those who turned out and fought the flames for the next three hours. The only firefighting equipment the village had to boast of in this time was a hand-drawn hose cart, which incidentally, is still the property of the village to this day. Railroad cars on the switch tracks at the plant proved on early obstacle to putting out the fire, but easier access was gained once two switch engines shunted them away. 

   It would later be ascertained that the flames got their start in the boiler room. No one was ever able to get to the bottom of what caused the fire. Despite the best efforts of the 50 or so men who put out the blaze, machinery in the building’s boiler room, engine room and ice plant was totally destroyed, and over half of the mostly wooden plant was gutted. The company assessed its total damage at around $10,000, with all operations at the Mokena facility being totally shut down for ten days.  Meanwhile, on April 16^th, 1916, theHerald-News stated that “a large force of carpenters, machinists and electricians have been working day and night to get the plant in running order.”

   One can’t help but take notice of the timing of this conflagration. To say that it was suspicious, coming on the same night the Milk War ended, would be putting it mildly. Could this have been arson? The smoke still hadn’t cleared. Barely a month after the first fire, another blaze broke out on May 8^th, 1916, when a heap of tar-soaked cork used in the ice plant spontaneously combusted. While the windows in the engine room shattered due to the heat, the employees of the plant were able to put out the flames with a fire house on hand. 

 

Bowman Dairy's milk bottling plant as it appeared after the large 1916 addition, as seen looking west from the intersection of today's Wolf Road and McGovney Street.

 

   Business marched on, and years came and passed. However, beneath a veneer of prosperity in the post-World War I era, discontent was brewing. In the 1920s, a prickly issue reared its head amongst the local dairy farmers, namely that of having their herds tested for tuberculosis. This was a simmering problem that was long in the making, and had been grumbled about as early as 1908. A prime example is the state law that came into effect on New Year’s Day 1909, which directed that dairymen “have their cow barns whitewashed and kept as clean as possible, also that concrete floors be laid in these cow barns, and that each milker be attired in a white apron and that such milkers wash their hands after each milking.” What to our modern ears sounds like common sense, was a somewhat new-fangled idea to the farmer of yore. These directives, combined with the fact that inspection of cattle by government officials was thought to be near, didn’t sit well with a fair number of the agriculturists in Mokena. The opposition lay chiefly in the fact that no small expense was involved in bringing their farms up to snuff, and out of a fear that government meddling in their herds would result in their cows being condemned. 

 

   Health and sanitization were always number one with the Bowman company, and the whole process of accepting milk from the outside farms of the producers was no trifling matter. A typical example of their earnestness about the subject was when the company cut off the supply from local farmer August Hentsch in early 1912 due to typhoid in his family, much to his vexation. When hoof and mouth disease appeared in our neck of the woods at the end of 1914, a shallow ditch was dug in the Mokena plant’s driveway, which was then filled with a liquid disinfectant. Every team of horses hauling milk into the plant had to step through this chemical stew, of which the dairymen were not fans, piping up that the mixture was so strong that it was eating away at their horses’ hooves. 

 

   The issue with the cattle testing never really went away. The Chicago Board of Health began especially strongly campaigning for the tuberculin test in the 1920s, and a measure was even passed that forbade the selling of milk in the city that came from untested cattle. This spelled big trouble for our dairymen, who continued to strongly argue against the testing. A positive result in their herds would effectively put them out of business. In this case, neither state nor federal government would come to their rescue in any meaningful way. So unpopular was the testing measure that in March 1926, of the 162 farmers in and around Mokena who supplied milk to Bowman, only 18 of them had tested their herds. The movement had picked up a huge amount of steam, and a hard deadline of April 1^st was given to the dairymen to have the cattle testing done, after which point if the numbers had not significantly climbed, the Mokena plant would be shuttered. 

 

   So it was, that the first of the month came, and no great sudden change of sentiment had occurred, no last-minute wonder to save the plant once and for all. The doors were padlocked, and this time for good. The local men who worked there were given jobs at a Chicago facility of Bowman’s, and became commuters overnight. The closing was a staggering blow to Mokena, and the significant amount of trade from surrounding farms that came to town via the bottling plant was now lost. The News-Bulletin, our village’s home newspaper, shouted from its masthead the closing in its April 2^nd, 1926 issue, and starkly rued that “this effects every business in town and will mean less money spent locally”, going on that “in short, the dairy business in this section has been nearly ruined and it is probable that the dairy industry will never again be as flourishing as it has been.”  The many dairy farmers possessed of untested herds now faced a decision, either to change businesses, or feed their milk to pigs. A sliver of hope was held out that enough of the dairymen would come around and decide to test their cows, therefore allowing the Mokena plant to reopen in the summer or fall, but this never came to pass.

 

Mokena Mills, a Wolf Road mixed residential and commercial development, now stands on the site of the old Bowman Dairy plant.

 

   Thus the bottling plant on today’s Wolf Road was permanently shut down and mothballed for the next seven years. Mitchel Brewery occupied the premises from 1933 to 1940, and beginning in 1941, the Mokena Wallpaper Mill set up shop here. In 1988 Mokena Mills took over, another wallpaper concern, which kept up operations until June 1998. The rambling building was an old landmark, one that announced to Wolf Road travelers that they had arrived in our village. It was altered and added onto so many times in its long history, that looking at the massive, old place in its later years was like reading a beloved old book, with each new roofline and wing representing a new chapter in its history. It met the wrecking ball in the spring of 2004, and was forever erased from our landscape. What was once an important industry in Mokena, is also permanently gone. Not only is the Bowman plant with its glass bottles and big metal milk cans nowhere to be found, the 21^stcentury Mokenian would also be hard-pressed to find a single dairy cow in our neighborhood. 

  

Beyond the Milky Way: Mokena’s History with the Bowman Dairy Company

    Some places are forever tied with a certain industry, a giver of work and bringer of money to a community. One place might be known for steel, for example, while another might be known for coal mines. While the days in question are now long behind us, Mokena was once a dairy town, through and through. Milk is not only the great nourisher of life, but was also the lifeblood of our community as well. Vast dairy herds once grazed our pastures and brought a livelihood to their owners. In the early part of the 20^th century, the bottling plant of the Bowman Dairy Company not only provided employment for a good number of Mokenians, but also put us on the map as being the center of eastern Will County’s dairy district. 

 

 

   The earliest history of Mokena can’t be written without the humble milk cow. On the record of our years, it stands that in 1860, LaPorte Road farmer Diederich Brumund became the first in our neighborhood to ship milk over the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad to city markets. The single can was pulled into Mokena on a small cart by the brute force of Brumund’s powerful Newfoundland dog. This set a precedent that was followed for decades by local agriculturists, who sent untold thousands of gallons of milk over our railroad for urban retail. After many years of this practice, it was with this very road that an enterprising group of village fathers sought to revitalize the town. 

 

   In the first years of the twentieth century, Mokena found itself in a slump. The completion of the Wabash Railroad through neighboring communities funneled trade that normally came to us through the newer hamlets of Alpine, Marley and Orland, and a nationwide depression that pummeled the country in 1893 also bode very badly for Mokena. The bad condition of the roads leading into town also didn’t help the dire economic situation in this era. As such, after many erstwhile Mokenians moved away to seek their fortunes elsewhere, a federal census taker counted a meager 281 village residents after having made his rounds in 1900. 

 

   Mokena would be a very foreign place to modern eyes in this time, possessing of three modest churches, some unassuming houses, and a handful of mom-and-pop businesses lined up on Front Street. Looking to give the town a shot in the arm, options were discussed and explored amongst the movers and shakers, and it was decided to work with what the village had, namely a robust foundation in the dairy business and solid rail connections. By 1906, prominent citizens began a flirtation with the Bowman Dairy Company of Chicago, which in this time operated at least six plants in the municipalities around the city. On December 22, 1906, a group of villagers made up of mayor Ozias E. McGovney, cattleman Emil Krapp, hardware store owner William Niethammer and prominent farmer Fred Warning made the journey to Bowman’s plant in Barrington. They were impressed with what they saw, and in the words of a local journalist, were “convinced of the desirability of securing such an institution for Mokena.” It was stated that the company would need a minimum of 200 cans of milk through its doors daily in order to run, an order which our dairymen would have no problem filling. Bowman reckoned that a dozen or more jobs would be created in town, a welcome addition to the village in this era. Two days after Christmas another field trip to Barrington was organized, this time the travelers were the mayor’s son Ona McGovney, leading resident W.H. Bechstein and farmers Christian Bechstein, George Cooper and Christian Warning, among others. They also were won over with Bowman’s operation, and thus, through the lobbying of these civic-minded men, the company became very interested in our burg. 

 

   The ball got rolling in early January 1907, when Elizabeth Cappel sold ten acres of her family’s property to the company, this being situated on the west side of Marti Lane, (or today’s Wolf Road) just south of the Rock Island tracks. That April, Bowman turned the first shovel of dirt on the tract when they began building a drain which ran south to Hickory Creek. By June, construction had begun in earnest with the pouring of the new bottling plant’s concrete foundations. With the boundaries of the building staked out, they came to measure 150 by 20 feet, no small edifice in the Mokena of this timeframe. As its wooden walls began to rise courtesy of local contractor George Hacker and his crew, the village’s correspondent to the Lockport Phoenix-Advertiser was already singing its praises, proudly writing in his column that “the milk factory is evidence of Mokena’s rejuvenation.” Meanwhile, within a month, a well on the property was sunk to the depth of 175 feet, containing an impressive 125 feet of water. The work of building the plant moved slowly but purposefully, with an 80-horse power marine boiler being installed in September, along with an automatic engine, water purifier and ice crusher. Finally, the plant’s smokestack rose in the beginning of October, and the operation opened for its first day on the morning of Friday, November 1^st, 1907, when a company bigwig presented Front Street resident Julia Blaeser, one of the village’s oldest inhabitants, with the first bottle of milk to come off the line. By the time all was said and done, it had cost Bowman Dairy $30,000 to build its new Mokena plant.

 

The bottling plant of the Bowman Dairy Company at Mokena, seen here in its original form, circa 1907. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

   In those first days, the outlook was jubilant and optimistic. It was reported that Bowman was “very encouraged” by the amount of local milk that was pouring into the plant on a daily basis, and it was expected that by New Year’s Day 1908, this number would be doubled, when the most prominent dairymen of Mokena and Frankfort would have stocked up on even more cows. These agriculturists, who were on a contract with the company, hauled their milk in big cans to the plant, where it was offloaded and ran through machines before being sorted into smaller glass bottles on site. From there, the bottles were loaded in crates into special refrigerated box cars and shipped over the Rock Island to Chicago, where they were put on the market. By 1910, Preston Hird, a Wisconsin native, had been taken on as superintendent, and around 12,500 pounds of milk was being processed daily, or two boxcar loads.

 

A typical milk can, the faithful workhorse of the dairy farmer.

 

   The bottling plant was an industrious place, but that Bowman could sometimes be a dangerous one to work is proven by the long list of accidents that took place there. Take Fred Werner, the plant’s engineer, whose right eye and face were badly burnt when hot water squirted at them in March 1908. Next up, in the summer of that year, Oscar Christenson had his toe crushed when a cake of ice fell on it. In June 1913, a lightning strike near the building was beamed in through the iron bottle washer inside and the five men working the machine were tossed to the ground by the current. Miraculously, none of them were hurt. Another typical mishap took place on July 22, 1914, when a fast-revolving brush shattered a bottle that was being washed. A storm of glass shards flew in every direction, and John Schenkel’s right hand was nastily cut. These incidents, when taken with all of the others that happened over the years, read like a battlefield casualty report. 

 

   Despite the danger, it was noted in May 1911 that the rank and file who manned the plant were earning $50 a month, or close to $1,500 in modern figures. In the spring of 1918, the plant’s 20 workers were “compelled” to join the American Federation of Labor. The joining fee for the union came out to a steep $5, with dues of a $1 a month thereafter. 

   The Bowman Dairy plant had firmly become a part of Mokena. There was a receiving platform on the side of the building containing an incline upon which farmers had to drive their teams to unload milk. During winter the whole thing would become covered with ice, and to prevent accidents, Bowman’s workers would spread cork particles over the ramp. Years after the fact, local scribe Clinton Kraus recalled how he and his friends, come summer, would collect all the cork, stuff it into gunny sacks, and use the same for buoys when swimming in Hickory Creek. Kraus also fondly remembered how the company sold Mokenians ice from the plant in the dog days of summer, and how Bowman’s engineer would treat him to ice cream that was on hand. Activity at the plant had piqued the curiosity of many in the village, and loiterers and lollygaggers had become such a problem that in October 1908, a sign was hung in the building’s entryway that stated visitors were welcome, but stark red letters “politely inform that loafing is not allowed.”

 

The local crew of Mokena's Bowman Dairy bottling plant, pictured on the plant's loading dock around 1910. They are, top row left to right, George Aschenbrenner, August Pfleger, Ed Schenkel, William Weber and John Schenkel. Bottom row, left to right, are August Teske, Fred Steinhagen, John Helenhouse, William Werner, Howard Beagley and August Werner.

 

   Business at the bottling plant hummed along to such a degree that the building was quickly bursting at the seams. By August 1911, plans were afoot to expand the structure. A wooden wing would be tacked on to the building’s east side, running parallel to the Rock Island tracks and stopping a few feet short of Marti Lane, along with another small addition to the south. George Hacker and his carpenters, the plant’s original builders, were at work again, and by November a new 100-foot brick chimney was finished, which towered over the village for decades. $40,000 later, the ribbon was cut on the new wings in the first part of 1912, with the first electric lights in the concern coming soon after. More workplaces came as well, with employment now being offered for a crew of 18 men. 

 

The newly expanded Bowman Dairy bottling plant at Mokena, pictured circa 1912. (Image courtesy Richard Quinn)

 

   Just as the new additions were ready to be used for the first time, Bowman proudly announced that the Mokena plant was taking on a grand 20,000 pounds of milk every day. Prosperity reigned supreme, and around 34,000 pounds were being handled daily in the spring of 1915. Another addition came in the fall of 1916, when trusty George Hacker’s firm built a masonry section measuring 20 by 100 feet onto the ever-growing factory’s south side, which was to contain the offices of the manager and roomy storage space. 

            

   The history of Bowman’s time in Mokena is one of progress and industry, but also one of occasional disputes with its local suppliers, these being a litany of intensely sharp and acrimonious disagreements. Enter at this point in history the Milk Producers’ Association, a statewide organization not unlike a union. Made up of dairy farmers, it advocated on their behalf to secure the best possible prices for their products. By early 1909, the work of the Association had awoken the interest of many Mokena area farmers, and by and by, they began to join its ranks. After a particularly bad falling out with Bowman in that year, they began discussing alternative uses for their dairy products, and it was collectively decided that separating the cream from their milk and marketing it was a viable alternative. As such, that spring the dairymen banded together under the auspices of the Milk Producers’ Association, leased a vacant lot from Philipena Bechstein on the southwest corner of Front Street and Marti Lane and hired none other than village contractor George Hacker to build a rustic, one story wooden building thereon to house their skimming station. 

 

Seen here posing on the plant's floor around 1915 are the Mokena workers of Bowman Dairy. John Schenkel is at second from right. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   Although the majority of milk producers decided that skimming cream would be the way of the future, not all were in favor of the plan. Two of them, Henry Yunker and Fred Hinspeter sold their cows and left the business during that season. At the end of April, a haughty Bowman manager from Barrington came to town and told the farmers to be done with the strife, and demanded that they sign the company’s contract and stop building the skimming station. This was rejected. The Joliet Weekly News predicted that Bowman’s Mokena branch might close, even after a company man presented the dairy producers with what were considered good prices, but nevertheless the milk men dug in their heels and held out, stating they wanted the prices that the Producers’ Association was recommending. By the start of May, the worst had come true, and the milk bottling plant closed its doors, not quite two years after they first opened. A resident of neighboring Marley watched from the sidelines and opined to the Weekly News that “…it is a short-sighted policy on the part of the farmers and a hard blow to the business interests of Mokena, to compel the closing of the plant, none will deny.” Those in our environs who were still looking to sell their milk shipped it directly to Chicago themselves, and Front Street’s Rock Island depot was swamped with 147 cans on May 1^st, 1909. 

 

   That week, the skimming station was officially up and running, having received a whopping 5,310 pound of milk to be processed in its first few days. 8 cans’ worth of cream were skimmed from this initial bulk, which were shipped to the Beatrice Creamery Company, a man from this company was also on hand by May 13^th to help with operations. Meanwhile, across the railroad tracks to the south, the Bowman plant was being slowly gutted, with much of its machinery being stripped away and shipped to the company’s plant in Barrington. 

 

     What could’ve been a truly dire situation for Mokena was avoided when Bowman manager Preston Hird and another company man finally negotiated a contract with the local dairymen that was to their liking. With this, young cobwebs were dusted away and the plant’s doors were thrown back open after having been closed for about two weeks. On May 13^th, 1909, Bowman’s Mokena plant re-opened with a boom, finding more milk cans delivered to it then on its first opening day.

 

Mokena's Bowman workers man a machine called "the Ferris wheel", which was used for washing milk bottles. Seen here around 1915 is manager Herman Schweser at far right, next to him stands John Schenkel. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   However, the dust hadn’t settled yet, and not everyone was happy. A letter from an anonymous dairyman appeared in the May 20^th issue of the Joliet Weekly News, and the author huffed that “The re-opening of the bottling plant by no means signifies a victory for Bowman.” He went on that the product now being sold to the plant would be shoddy, namely that “the milk it receives will be drawn from four to six miles in the summer sun, in very filthy cans, but it is claimed that by its cooking and doctoring process the stuff will keep for weeks.”  The new-found sense of calm that had settled in after the re-opening in the spring was misleading, as that November the dairy farmers were once again not signing Bowman’s contracts after it was felt they were slighted by low prices. A very critical situation was felt in the community, and again a closing of the plant was threatened. The farmers sent the company a petition for an increase of 20 cents per 100 pounds of milk, and by the end of December the situation had evened out enough that dairymen felt they were again getting fair treatment and were coming back to Bowman.

 

   Meanwhile, the Front Street skimming station closed in the summer of 1909, briefly re-opened that fall in fits and starts during the second round of trouble with the company, but by the following year the venture was on hiatus, and the whole endeavor was officially extinct by the spring of 1911, when the station was rented to a pair of Orland blacksmiths.

Check back next week for part two of this installment!

Bombs Away: The 1911 Safecracking of Mokena State Bank

    Money makes the world go ‘round, and while most of us gain our living through honest means; it can drive others to get it through more nefarious ways. So it was that in the autumn of 1911, a team of yeggmen, or safecrackers, descended upon our village under the cover of inky darkness, and laden with explosives, tried to blow their way into the Mokena State Bank’s safe. 

     A new edition to the community’s streetscape, the bank was built on Front Street in 1909, after having been founded by a group of local businessmen. With a regal facade of Bedford stone and a small interior heated by coal, the prominent landmark stood directly across the street from the Rock Island depot, and couldn’t be missed. After likely having cased the bank for some time, the team of unknown burglars closed in during the early morning hours of Monday, September 25^th, 1911. They scored their entrance to the building relatively easily, simply having broken in via the front door after jimmying upon its lock. 

Front Street circa 1915. The Mokena State Bank, seen here at left, was a commanding presence in town.

 

    Surviving historical records aren’t rich with details regarding their target, the bank’s vault. One account describes its door as “being almost impregnable, made of three layers of different grades of steel” and an exterior wall made of brick, which lends to the idea that the safe may have been built into the bank’s structure itself. Before getting to work that morning, the yeggs lined the exterior of the vault with empty sacks and grass to dampen the sound of the coming explosion. They set the charge, dove for cover, and threw the fuse. 

 

    It turns out that the burglars didn’t do quite as good a job muffling the blast as they hoped, for the sharp report echoed over dark Front Street and was heard by at least one neighbor. Anna Sutter, a grocer’s wife who lived next door to the bank, was jarred from her slumbers at about 2am. She peeked through a window, and seeing a soft light leaking from a window at the bank, Mrs. Sutter put two and two together and promptly lost any desire to investigate in person.

 

    Inside the bank, the robbers moved in to assess the results of their handiwork. As the smoke and dust settled, they realized that their bomb blew the safe’s combination dial clean off, but also that a weird twist of fate caused the force of the blast to jam the vault’s inner doors firmly shut, their hinges and workings having been horribly mangled. The yeggs realized that their shot at the riches within the steel walls was now hopeless, and the would-be safecrackers fled the scene. 

 

    Meanwhile, Anna Sutter was raising the attention of other Mokenians by phone, but as she was busy at the task, she caught notice of the sounds of some hurried footfalls disappearing into the night. The next morning, bank officials were in damage control mode. In checking over the building, only one item was actually missing: the teller’s revolver. Elsewhere in the village, two residents noticed their carriage rigs were gone, and local minds made a connection, surmising that the bandits had stolen them.

 

     In the words of a journalist at the Joliet Weekly News, local inability to access the vault “put a stop to the bank’s business to some extent.” The issue with the doors became a huge vexation, as no one in Mokena was able to open them. Specialists from Chicago were summoned, none of which were successful in prying them open either. At one point, an elaborate scheme was attempted involving tearing out part of the brick wall on the exterior of the vault, then boring a hole through to the inside in hopes of triggering a manual release. After hours of work, this too proved fruitless. 

 

    In its vulnerable state, night security was being provided by Mokenians John Frisch and Philip Werner, who both toted shotguns on the job. On September 29^th, four days after the blast, bank affairs were still at a standstill, and in the words of the same Joliet journalist, the institution had by now become a “heavy loser.” At around this time, representatives of the safe’s manufacturer had come all the way from Cincinnati to try their hands at solving the door crisis, and they too were no more successful. A Mr. Loeding of Chicago’s Ocean Accident and Guarantee company changed the tide of events on October 3^rd. Working a sharpened rod through the hole previously drilled into the vault’s side, Loeding was finally able to manipulate the lock, thus finally opening the doors.

 

     Four days after the blast, customers began to come and go as usual, and a sense of normalcy returned to the Mokena State Bank. As far as history has noted, no one was ever prosecuted for the attempted robbery. In terms of suspects, the nearest anyone could think of were some suspicious strangers that were seen at a village picnic shortly before the attempted burglary. While the failed safecrackers of 1911 escaped, Mokena’s townsfolk rested assured, knowing that their money stayed safely in local hands. 

 

Face to Face with History: The People of Pioneer Memorial Cemetery

    Mokena is a place rife with landmarks. Touring the streets of our village will reveal a handful of buildings that predate the Civil War, and dozens of other structures that have long since passed their centenary mark. Here you have Little Al’s Tavern, probably the most famous of them all, and there the old St. Mary’s Church, both prominent places well steeped in local history and flair. It’s impossible to forget the Ebert grain elevator, about which a book could be written. Even the railroad tracks have been here a long time, with the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific having been completed in 1852, without which our community wouldn’t exist. Taken as a whole, these places are all fixtures in our fair burg, but no landmark is as old as Wolf Road’s Pioneer Memorial Cemetery. It was here before they all were, and is older than the town itself. The only object in Mokena older than these ancient burial grounds is the road alongside it, which at the time of the cemetery’s founding was nothing but a narrow path cut through the prairie and stands of trees, so cramped that the Potawatomi who blazed it had to traverse it single file. 

   It’s very easy to overlook this spot, as it presents itself as more like a park than a nearly 200-year-old ossuary. These prim grounds hold the earthy remains of at least 36 souls, but likely contain many more. They were all people like us, with vivacious personalities, with hopes and dreams and love for their families, not just barely legible names on centuries’ old stone. While our most historic place, this hallowed acre is one of our most puzzling. No comprehensive records of interments here appear to have ever been kept, henceforth all that is known about the identities of those entombed here is what can be read from their gravestones and the thinnest of threads of information that have been remembered over the years. A modern researcher has to rely on the scant documentation that was done of these stone tablets before they became unreadable, such as in the pieces written about the cemetery in local newspapers that now survive as brittle clippings, or the handful of photographs that thoughtful minds had the wherewithal to take in decades past. Even a few time-honored local families can recall stories passed down over the generations about kin having found their final resting place here. 

 

  Let es embark on a tour of the grounds, if you will. In a bygone century, this simple acre was known as Denny Cemetery in the mouths of locals, after the family upon whose estate it was situated. To get at the very roots of this place, a proper introduction to this clan must be made. The first of them to arrive in what would later become our neighborhood was intrepid pioneer Allen Denny, a 44-year-old resident of Chautauqua County, New York, who joined the smallest handful of other early residents in 1834. Having made the trek with the Holmes family, themselves early settlers of New Lenox Township, Denny set down his stakes here on the wild, untamed prairie upon which Mokena would later sprout. In his company were his wife Lucy, and at least two sons and one daughter. Our neck of the woods also proved alluring to Allen’s younger siblings, Hepsibah Haven and Lysander Denny, who made their homes here before the decade was out. Allen Denny had been a storekeeper before his arrival in Illinois, and also served in the New York militia during the oft-forgotten War of 1812, fighting the British at the Battle of Black Rock. 

 

   By February 1838, the Dennys of the Hickory Creek settlement were joined by the family patriarch and matriarch, Charles and Lucinda Denny, who made the long journey from New York to reunite with their adult children. The elder Denny was a man with an interesting past. 

Born Christmas Day, 1759 at Pauldingsdown, in Duchess County in southern New York state, he would become part of the venerated generation that fought for our young nation’s independence in the Revolutionary War. As an 18-year-old, Charles Denny served a stint in the New York militia in the summer of 1777, where he and his company saw duty at West Point, now the home of the famed military academy, then the site of a defensive fort, where they built a bunker known as the “Bomb Proof.” While in the militia that summer, Denny fed his comrades in his position as the company’s cook. Before the war’s end in 1783, Charles Denny would serve three more stints bearing arms for his home state. Years later, he would remember the times he saw not only Generals Arnold and Putnam, but also recall the time he came face to face with none other than General Washington. For his faithful service, Denny would later receive a pension of $31.66 per year, or a little over $800 in modern figures.

This granite boulder was placed over the grave of Charles Denny in 1939 by the Daughters of the American Revolution. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

   Charles Denny breathed his last on August 6^th, 1839, aged nearly 80 years, succumbing to the infirmities of old age. His wife, Lucinda Denny, preceded him in death by four days. Allen Denny buried his parents on a quiet rise on his prairie acreage, next to the old Potawatomi trail. This and the rest of the land around it wouldn’t officially become his until 1841, when the federal government placed it on the market in Chicago and Denny legally purchased it. With construction of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad through part of his property in 1852, he platted a small subdivision a little north of the cemetery alongside the new tracks that came to be named Mokena. With those move of foresight, Allen Denny became the father of our town and sealed himself into immortality.

 

   The little cemetery grew around the graves of Charles and Lucinda Denny, with their son allowing his neighbors to use it when the need arose. The final resting place of the elder Denny in our midst and his status as a fighter in the Revolution became a badge of honor for Mokenians over the years, as he is one of only four veterans of this conflict to have been buried in Will County. In 1916, as a new war was tearing Europe asunder, the Louis Joliet Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution procured a new gravestone for the old soldier. It was shipped to Mokena over the Rock Island railroad, where it arrived in the middle of winter. Village correspondent to the Joliet Herald-News William Semmler, who played no small role in getting the stone, arranged to have it stored in the local grain elevator until the spring thaw. The new marker did its job, but was rather plain and austere in looks. So it was that in the November 1939, another group of dedicated ladies of the Daughters of the American Revolution, (this time being the General Henry Dearborn chapter of Chicago) dedicated a more regal granite boulder over the grave. Both gravestones still hold eternal watch over Charles Denny’s dust to this day.

 

   Heading northeast from the Denny plot, we come to the next oldest graves in the cemetery, the earthen tombs of Ira and Truman Smith. The lettering on the simple grave markers has been so worn by the winds of time that they have since been completely obliterated from the stone. The son of John and Lucetia Smith, young Truman crossed the great beyond on October 28^th, 1839, aged a little more than a year. While Ira Smith, one of Rufus Smith’s sons, survived into what would have been his seventh year before he too passed in 1839, the presence of these and other children’s graves in this historic cemetery paint all too clearly a picture of the rough, unforgiving life that awaited our forefathers on the prairie. While modern research has as of yet been unable to determine if these two Smith families were related, an adult Trueman Smith arrived in the young Hickory Creek settlement by way of Vermont in 1835. Although this man spelled his first name slightly different, the uncommonness of it begs the question if he couldn’t possibly have been a relative of the infant Truman.

   Incidentally, Truman Smith’s small headstone is one of several that have been pilfered from the cemetery over the years, serving as a macabre souvenir to some unknown person. In a stroke of good grace, caring hands returned this piece of history back to the cemetery at the end of the 1990s.

 

   Heading deeper into the cemetery, one arrives at the grave of Sibyl Bennett. Her first name is still clearly legible on the gray rectangular slab that stands at this spot. Born in the fall of 1762, she came of age in colonial America, a time and place vastly and almost unimaginably different from ours. She departed on May 11^th, 1844, when the village of Mokena wasn’t even a dream in hers or her neighbors’ minds. The wife of one Ephraim Bennett, it’s been long since forgotten how this couple fit into the grander scheme of our early pioneers, but a Lester Bennett of Vermont was living in the newly formed Frankfort Township in 1850. Any connection has been blurred by the span of decades. 

 

   The solitary grave of Barbara Shaffer is also found in Denny Cemetery. Born in 1766, she is yet another of the cemetery’s denizens who would have well remembered the days of British rule on the thirteen colonies. She lived until September 15^th, 1846, having acquired the age of 80, at a time when the life expectancy for the average American woman was a meager 20 years. Barbara Schaffer’s name survives as her only legacy, all details about her life and family have been lost to the fog of ages. 

 

   Immediately to the south of Barbara Shaffer is the Andresen lot. Abel Catharina Andresen, who died November 29^th, 1864, rests here beneath a gravestone that has been broken in two. Her name can only be read with the most steadfast patience, as it has been worn smooth by over 150 years of wind and weather. The symbol of a hand, with a finger extended toward the heavens, can still be recognized at the top of the stone. Abel Andresen, a native of what is today northern Germany and whose maiden name has been alternately recorded as Heukmüller, Hückmüller or Hickmüller, married Hans Reimers Andresen in 1857 and made her home near Mokena in the years before the Civil War. Their children Hans and Ann are here too, Ann having met her demise as a three-year-old in 1863 when her dress caught on fire from a wood-burning stove. 

 

   Veering west toward the hum of Wolf Road, the visitor comes to the most unique monument in the cemetery, that which bears the name F.J. Bez. The faint German inscription on this truncated obelisk records that this person was born on August 18^th, 1798 and departed this world in 1856. The Bezes were an old family in Mokena, having arrived in our community in the 1850s via the kingdom of Württemberg. A census taker found mother Barbary Bez here in 1860 living in the boarding house of Andreas Markert. Her adult son George was a confectioner in town in the same era, and also held the office of Mokena postmaster starting in June 1861. Another son, John Bez, worked in a brewery near today’s Frankfort, and became a Union volunteer in the Civil War with the fabled 100^th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and offered his life upon the altar of freedom at the bloody battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. George Bez also became a warrior in this conflict, and suffered a debilitating wound from which he never completely recovered.

   With all details lost on the family member who reposes here at Denny Cemetery, it is likely that he is the family’s patriarch, whose full first name has disappeared in the pages of posterity. 

 

                                                                                    

                                                                                       

              The monument which stands over the grave of F.J. Bez is the most unique in the cemetery. The likeness of the hawk was added to the top of it in the 1990s. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

 

   Occupying a prominent spot in the middle of the cemetery are the graves of John and Betsey Atkins. True pioneers if there ever were any, their lives beg a closer look. Born October 28^th, 1783 in Claremont, New Hampshire, John was wed in marriage with Elizabeth, who always went by Betsey. When and where this union occurred, as well as Betsey’s surname, have long since disappeared into the ether, like so many of the details of this sacred plot. Eventually the young family packed up and moved to Waterbury, Vermont, where John shouldered a musket with the state militia during the War of 1812. He was a man of no small piousness, and it was later remembered that John “wouldn’t commune at the Lord’s table with a Christian who hadn’t been immersed,” referring to the act of baptism. Together John and Betsey Atkins raised at least four children, who all came with their parents to Will County in 1834. It was said that most of the family made their way to the Hickory Creek settlement in a wagon, while John traveled on horseback, carrying a trunk of their possessions behind him. Representative of the hardship that was the pioneers’ lot, their first meal here was bread and sour milk. The Atkins bunch settled along what is today LaPorte Road, with father John taking a long, narrow tract of land that ran north from the current S-Curve, reaching all the way to what we now know as 191^st Street. 

 

John and Betsey Atkins, seen here around 1860. They are the oldest known Mokenians of which a photograph exists.

 

    John Atkins was a strong anti-slavery man, who lived in an area known to be the home of more than a few abolitionists. He was a subscriber to The Western Citizen, a virulently anti-slavery newspaper published in Chicago, and was even known to help with the activities of midnight riders on the Underground Railroad, which was active in the Mokena area before the Civil War. Decades later it would be recalled by local old timers privy to the secret activity that Atkins shuttled refugee slaves to their next safehouse in his wagon, buried under hay to conceal their presence. 

   John and Betsey Atkins passed away within a few days of each other in January 1864, and were interred here in Denny Cemetery. Betsey’s gravestone, having been pieced back together after it was shattered into several pieces, bears the motif of an open book, representing the book of life. Like that of Charles Denny, John Atkins’s original grave marker has been lost since before anyone can remember. Nowadays, a stately marble tablet stands over his bones that was put there by the Mokena Women’s Club in 1997. 

 

The grave of Betsey Atkins in Pioneer Memorial Cemetery. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

 

   Of this handful of personages detailed, they are all united by the fact that some sort of marker stands over them. Countless others have been destroyed and stolen from the cemetery over the years, and thus, many graves exist here that are forever lost from the historic record, nameless for eternity. Careful research has shed light on some of them who rest here, such as Lysander Denny, son of the aforementioned Charles and Lucinda Denny. An early resident of the Hickory Creek settlement like his older brother Allen, Lysander was a millwright by trade and had built a sawmill on the south bank of the creek as early as the 1830s, opening one of the earliest enterprises in Will County. He later moved with his immediate family to Joliet, but relocated to the New Lenox Township hamlet of Spencer upon its founding in 1856. There he died in March 1872 at the age of 74, whereupon his earthly remains were brought to Mokena to the old family cemetery. 

 

   An unmarked grave also holds the infant Mathilde Krapp, the daughter of a Mokena butcher who was interred here on the eve of the Civil War in September 1860. No headstone bears the name of Albert Abrahamson, a local farmhand who froze to death in January 1897. One of the last times the soil was broken at Denny Cemetery was to receive the earthly remains of Abram Evans in March 1896. The historical record has yielded multiple variations of his name, noting such variations as Abram Evins to Abraham Evans. He was a New Yorker by birth, and like untold thousands of his generation, he volunteered for duty in Abraham Lincoln’s army with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Evans mustered into the 50^th New York Engineers as a 29-year-old in September of that year, and before his three-year term of service was done, he had gained the engineers’ rank of artificer. While he was in the ranks, this regiment saw hard fighting, such as when the unit was detailed to build bridges under withering enemy fire at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. 

   Great portions of Abram Evans’s life have fallen into the cracks of history, and are impossible to reconstruct at this date. At some point after Mokena’s incorporation in 1880, he found his way to our village, where he eventually made a home on the south side of Front Street, between Division Street and today’s Midland Avenue. As a fearless Union soldier, one who rallied to the flag during our country’s most dire crisis, his memory should never be forgotten by our community. 

 

   Denny Cemetery, or Pioneer Memorial Cemetery in modern parlance, is a priceless Mokena landmark. Here one truly comes face to face with our history. To understand the story of this hallowed acre is not to learn about famous personalities from the history books, but of brave veterans, simple farmers and everyday heroes. They were the normal people who built our town. 

A Hero's Wings: The Story of Lt. Oliver P. Lauffer

    Our village has had many heroes in its midst over the long course of our history. They’ve worn many hats, from teachers, pastors, and mothers. Others have made themselves shields between tyranny and all that is good, and have sacrificed themselves in doing so. Of all the Mokenians who perished in this manner, most of them died preserving the Union in the Civil War, but not to be forgotten, World War II claimed some of our own as well. Some were mere boys, having been taken from our midst in the prime of their lives, in fierce battles far from their Illinois homes. Once such resident of our village, 2^nd Lieutenant Oliver P. Lauffer, made the air over Nazi Germany his battlefield until he laid his life upon the altar of freedom in 1943. 

 

   Born December 13^th, 1921 to George and Florence Lauffer, Ollie, as his friends knew him, was a born and bred Mokenian, his great-grandfather having settled in the area where the village would later stand in 1846. Growing up with his siblings at the southern corner of Parker Street and Wolf Road, Ollie’s childhood was normal and solid, yet in the same breath, also turbulent. His parents went through a particularly nasty divorce that shook the village when he was a lad, and his stepfather, Alburn Steele, was killed in a bizarre motorcycle accident outside what is now Orland Park in 1931. Ollie attended school in Mokena, and like a fair number of his classmates, went to high school in Joliet. 

 

Ollie Lauffer, seen here as a senior in the class of 1940 at Joliet Township High School.

 

     The December 7^th, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent entry of the United States into World War II was not only a seminal moment in American history, but also the watershed event in Ollie’s existence. Not long after the start of 1942, the 20-year-old Mokenian enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where he volunteered to fight the Nazis from the clouds. On March 23^rd, 1942, St. Mary’s Hall on Wolf Road played host to a going away party held for Ollie Lauffer.  Looking back on that night from today, it’s easy to imagine the strong emotions and heartfelt goodbyes that must have flowed. 

 

    Ollie started his training in California at Santa Ana Army Air Base, and after finishing advanced flying school at Christmastime 1942, he earned a second lieutenant’s commission and his wings at Kirtland Field, near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lauffer would become part of a bomber crew, manning the position of bombardier among his plane’s pilot, navigator, gunners, and others. His work was grim; it consisted of manually using a bombsight in the nose of a B17 Flying Fortress to rain deadly cargo on Hitler’s Germany, delivering a powerful punch to the Nazis on their home soil. 

 

     From March 1943, Ollie was stationed in England with the 326^th Bomber Squadron of the 92^nd Bomber Group, within striking distance of the Reich’s heart. While in Great Britain, Ollie remembered his mother, Florence Steele, back in Mokena, and found time to write. In one letter from that summer, he mentioned that he and his buddies were able to pick up German radio broadcasts where they recognized the Jersey Bounce. His words were also filled with the homesickness of a Mokena boy far from home who was hoping for an end to the war, penning “it can’t come too soon for me.”

 

Bombardier Lt. Oliver P. Lauffer, a battle tested veteran of the skies of Europe.

 

     Those who knew Ollie said that he completed five raids across skies filled with enemy fighters and raked by murderous Nazi flak. He saw harrowing action over northern Germany, taking part in missions to attack the port cities of Hamburg and Kiel. On Wednesday morning, August 4^th, 1943, Florence Steele received a telegram she’d been dreading for over a year. It read that Ollie had been missing for over a week, he and his plane having disappeared over the German coast on July 26^th. A day later, a letter came to Mrs. Steele from one Wayne Plymale, telling her that he had been a buddy of Ollie’s since their arrival in England, mentioning that their bond has grown closer since they’d been under fire in the Reich’s skies. While he re-informed Florence of her son’s status, the bulk of the letter was spent reassuring an anxiety-ridden mother of her child’s safety, stating that he was probably a prisoner of war, and that she’d likely hear from him through the Red Cross within a month or so. 

 

     Written with the noblest of intentions by a brother in arms, the letter was a gentle lie, one meant to spare Ollie’s mother undue anguish. Subsequent investigation into the July 26^th incident would reveal that while he and his fellow crewmembers were returning from a raid over Hanover, Germany, a Nazi fighter had rammed their massive bomber. With its tail torn to shreds, the American plane was last seen plunging into the murky depths of the North Sea near Norderney Island.

 

    In February 1944, with the World War II still raging, two Army officers visited Mokena to present Mrs. Steele with the Air Medal, a decoration awarded to Ollie for bravery in the course of his duties. The William Martin Post 725 of the VFW sponsored a ceremony for the handing-over of the award in the auditorium of the Mokena Public School on Carpenter Street, where Ollie romped in more peaceful times. Glen Peterson, the VFW’s commander, extolled his bravery and virtues, before Rev. William Riemann of St. John’s Church spoke to a somber audience. Afterward, the medal was put on display for townspeople to admire. 

Ollie Lauffer's cenotaph at St. John's Cemetery. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

     In the aftermath of Lieutenant Oliver Lauffer’s untimely death in war, pain and heartbreak were felt in Mokena. In the years thereafter, a little monument of gray marble was erected in his memory. Tucked into a serene corner of St. John’s Cemetery, lichen now grows over his name, etched into the cold stone. The motif of a Purple Heart is still plainly visible; giving mute testimony to Ollie Lauffer’s supreme bravery in the face of tyranny. 

The Brilliance of our Youth: A History of the Mokena Campfire Girls

  They were young. They were in their late teens at the oldest, but their community spirit, and the vim and vigor with which they worked for Mokena are still worthy of our respect to this day. Their hearts beat for our community. The Camp Fire Girls, a group of adolescent ladies that were very similar to the modern-day Girl Scouts, did many good deeds for the village in their short existence, and inspired those around them. Their members and leaders were a solid representation of our town, and while they were all ordinary girls, their impressive list of accomplishments elevates them to the status of local heroes.  

   In the years before the First World War, the scouting movement swept the United States, which culminated in the official formation of the Boy Scouts of America in 1910. Mokena’s boys formed their first troop in 1914, and as they grew successful in their endeavors, their sisters looked on, and feeling the same drive to do well, decided that they would not be left behind in the shadows. Having been founded in 1912 as a direct answer to the Boy Scouts, the Camp Fire Girls of America came to town in 1915 when our village’s first official camp was formed. This group formed out of a pre-existing girls’ club called I.R.B., the initials of which stood for some meaning long since lost to the ages. On March 6^th, 1915, a meeting of girls was held at Front Street’s Bechstein Hall, and a group of eight members called their organization into existence. These founders, whose names read like a who’s who of Mokena in this time, were Alma Bechstein, Esther Bosold, Cora Cooper, Agnes Frisch, Olive Geuther, Eunice Hacker, Ruth Niethammer, and Myrtle Oswald.   The girls ranged in age from 15 to 17, and represented a cross section of the community, being the daughters of the pastor of St. John’s Church, a Front Street merchant, and a railroad worker, among others. 

   In getting on their feet, they got a boost from member Alma Bechstein’s mother Emma, a true Mokenian who was known to help worthwhile local efforts, while the girls also received help in getting their charter through her father, W.H. Bechstein, the village grain dealer. For their guardian, a position not unlike a troop leader, the new Camp Fire chose 26-year-old Margaret Semmler, the wife of Mokena’s correspondent to the Joliet News.While she was newly married and had only lived in town for about a year at this time, Margaret showed the heart she had for her new home by being the guiding light to this new group of well-doers. At the outset, Mrs. Semmler’s husband William noted in his village column of the News that “the young ladies are taking a keen interest in the new organization and are displaying remarkable enthusiasm and are determined to make their society a power for good in the community.” The original eight members of the Moke Camp would quickly be joined by more local girls, and before long, 15 members were attained, the requisite number to make a Camp. The young ladies christened their new assemblage the Moke Camp, after the mythical Chief Moke, a Potawatomi man said to live on the prairie where Mokena would later be born. Before long, the new Camp adopted a star as their official symbol. 

 

   The Camp Fire Girls followed “The Law of the Camp Fire”, their creed, which stated “seek beauty, give service, pursue knowledge, be trustworthy, hold on to health, glorify work,” and “be happy.” According to their laws, the young ladies were not allowed to accept any monetary donations, and had to work for any money their Camp earned. At the meetings of the group Camp business was discussed, with songs being sung, as well as a time for games and socializing. The gatherings rotated at the houses of the members, and in some cases, such as when they met with Cora Cooper or the sisters Alice and Dora Andresen, they commuted en masse to their farms north of town on spring wagons. Staying true to Chief Moke and the namesake of their camp, the girls favored Potawatomi imagery, donning fringed gowns and beaded headbands that they wove themselves. 

 

  The Moke Camp were a busy group of girls. Typical of their activities was a bonfire held in the wooded thickets alongside Hickory Creek on April 17^th, 1915. The camp’s full membership formed up at the home of Margaret Semmler on Niethammer Avenue, and walked to the woods with their lunches in bags which they tied to sticks, which in turn were hoisted over their shoulders for the march. Once their council fire was started, the girls roasted hot dogs, and in the words of Joliet News correspondent William Semmler, “they tramped through the woods and had a pleasant outing.” Barely a week later, the Camp re-convened at the Semmler place at the crisp hour of 5:00 o’clock in the morning, this time for a sumptuous breakfast of roasted marshmallows. Also being a vigorous, energetic lot, that same day members Carrie Cappel and Eunice Hacker hiked from Mokena to Joliet, finishing the trek in about three hours. Around the same time, some of the other girls made a round trip to Frankfort by foot. 

 

   Not content with just camping on the outskirts of town, the girls set their sights on renting a cottage at the New Lenox Methodist Campground in the summer of 1915. After liberally peppering Mokena with colorful posters advertising the event, they put on a bake sale at Paul Rinke’s meat market on June 19^th, 1915 to raise money for the rent, and when the day was out, the Moke Camp counted $19 to their name, or close to $500 in today’s money. The young Mokenians got settled in at the Campground at the end of July, and enjoyed their time out of town despite damp weather. While in our neighboring community, the Mokena Boy Scouts hiked to New Lenox to visit the girls, where 10 pounds of hot dogs eventually disappeared over the camp fire. 

 

   Aside from various activities offered by the churches, the Mokena of the First World War era was not exactly a place brimming with opportunities in the way of fun for local youth. Seizing the initiative, the Moke Camp Fire Girls sought to change that. At the beginning of summer 1915, a committee of four members visited member Eunice Hacker’s father, mayor George Hacker, and asked for his permission to build a tennis court in the village. They got his word, and a plot of land north of the Methodist and St. John’s Churches was chosen. By early August the work was done, the new playing surface being complete with a double court net. The court was open to anyone in town who wished to use it, each player only had to supply their own ball and racket. 

 

   Mokena headed into the summer of 1915, and the Fourth of July appeared on the horizon. Always a day of great gaiety and mirth in our village, that year the Mokena Men’s Club was at the helm of planning the festivities. As things were coming together, the Camp Fire Girls approached the businessmen of the Club with an idea, something new for that year. Why not put on a parade? After all, it was years since the village had seen one, the last parade for the Fourth having been held in 1903, and the girls reasoned that it would “bring a crowd to town and liven things up.” The young ladies suggested to the men that the town businesses should each enter floats in the procession. Traditionally this was done using horses and wagons, but as cars were slowly edging them out of traffic, it was resolved that it would be an auto parade, a first in the history of the town. The parade was a huge success, wending its way through the main streets of town complete with a Charlie Chaplin impersonator, and ended at Cappel Grove just south of town. 

   Once the revelries kicked off at the Grove, an area just south of town complete with a dance pavilion, the Boy Scouts and others took part in the day’s program. The Moke Camp was in charge of the flag raising ceremonies, and their leader, Margaret Semmler, read a patriotic verse. One of the Andresen sisters, both of which were Camp members, read the Declaration of Independence. Different types of games rounded out the rest of the day, and cash prizes were awarded to the best floats from the parade. While those of local businessman Frank Liess and the Sippel general store ranked first and second, the Camp Fire Girls landed in third place, and were given $2 for their efforts.

The Moke Camp Fire Girls in the village Fourth of July parade, circa 1915. At the wheel is local grain merchant and early supporter of the Camp W.H. Bechstein. In the passenger's seat is Camp guardian Margaret Semmler. In the back seat left to right are Carrie Cappel, Alma Bechstein, and Ruth Niethammer. 

 

   Over the rest of 1915, the work of these Mokena youths stirred up so much interest amongst the girls of town that a second Camp Fire was established in April 1916. For their guardian, the new group chose Mrs. Mabel McGovney, a former school teacher, and thus forth christened themselves the Potawatomi Camp, again hearkening back to our rich native past. The list of their deeds is impressive and inspiring. Taken as a whole, the apex of the girls’ achievements was their planning and staging of Mokena’s first public Memorial Day celebration in 1916. Originally known as Decoration Day, this reverent occasion was born as a direct result of our great national bloodletting, the Civil War. Originally observed as a day in which to honor the legions of Union dead of the North, it was first formally marked in 1868, three years after the conflict’s end. Over the years, village residents observed the occasion privately, and without great pomp and circumstance. Correspondent Semmler even decreed that the occasion had been “neglected” in our midst, adding with a sting that “the churches of the village and the various societies have apparently never given the matter any thought.” As the Civil War was still very much within living memory in their day, Mokena’s Camp Fire Girls had a deep recognition and appreciation of the day’s meaning, and sought to bring it into the light. 

 

   They first felt deep reverence for the occasion in May 1915, when they ventured into the tangled overgrowth of the old Denny Cemetery and decorated with flags and flowers the grave of Charles Denny, who marched as one of General Washington’s men in the Revolution. Previously, this patriotic duty of adorning his and the many graves of Mokena’s Civil War soldiers was shouldered entirely by aging local veteran John A. Hatch, who not only made the rounds on his own, but also humbly took care of all the associated expenses out of his own pocket. 

   The Camp Fire Girls had great expectations for what Memorial Day could be in Mokena, but in order to put on any kind of event for the day, they needed funds. To solve this prickly issue, they put their minds together, and after much brainstorming, it was decided to stage a play. After a period of rehearsing together, the curtain went up on February 26^th, 1916 at Mokena Hall to the premier of When the Cat’s Away, a one-act comedy. As the doors at the Hall opened that cold night, the town folk streamed in with high confidence in the girls, as their work on the previous Fourth of July was still the talk of the community. They would not be disappointed. The full complement of Camp Fire Girls were there, attired in their Potawatomi garb, gracing a stage that was “prettily decorated with a latticed background entwined with roses” that gave the scene the effect of a rose garden. All of the lights in the hall were turned down, leaving the whole auditorium swaddled in a reddish glow that emanated from the footlights’ covering of red paper, and the charcoal-fueled campfire in the middle of the stage. Sisters Eva and Louise Groth, both members of the Moke Camp, gave a piano duet, and rounding out the evening were readings performed by Miss Catherine Mitchell and her pupil, both having come to town from Joliet. Once again, the Camp Fire Girls made a big splash, and the whole program was a success. 

 

    The planning for Memorial Day began in earnest after the play.  Helping the girls in their endeavors were some “enterprising church people” and some of the village’s old Civil War veterans. On Sunday afternoon, May 28^th, 1916, John A. Hatch took the Potawatomi Camp under his wing and together they went to Marshall Cemetery, where he showed them the graves of old Union soldiers, which the girls then decorated with flags and flowers. The Moke Camp followed suit that Tuesday, and did the same at the St. John and St. Mary Cemeteries, as well as at the historic Denny Cemetery. The big day came for the both of the Mokena Camps on May 30^th, when once again the Mokena Hall was used for the event, this time being festooned with flags and bunting. The young ladies invited three of the village’s heartiest Civil War veterans, including the aforementioned John Hatch, as well as Griffin Marshall and Elijah McGovney, who were escorted to places of honor on the hall’s stage by the girls. At 2 o’clock their program started, with stirring music being furnished by the village’s Boy Scout band, to which the Camp Fire Girls sung “Strew Fairest Flowers”, along with the community’s ladies’ quartette, who performed several selections as well, including “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground,” an old Civil War tune. The speaker of the day was Rev. J.M. Schneider of Joliet, who gave a rousing address in three sections. First, he hailed both Camp Fires for their work marking the day in our village, and then he moved to the ideals of preserving the Union for which the audience’s parents and grandparents had so perilously toiled. The reverend than moved to a topic that was gaining in earnestness in his day; namely the brutal conflict raging in Europe that we now refer to as World War I. With a heavy note, he warned the folk of Mokena against a spirit of militarism, and said that while he was for America being on the defensive, he stated that he “did not feel that it is right for (mothers) to raise their sons to be a soldier and fodder for cannons.” 

   To wind up the day, Mrs. Grace McGovney read an honor roll containing the names of every Civil War soldier buried in Mokena. While admission to the program was free, the Camp Fire Girls accepted donations from generous residents, and even set up a candy booth at the Hall. At the end of the day, the counted $26 in their coffers. 

 

   As the United States entered World War I in the spring of 1917, both the Moke and the Potawatomi Camps kept up their good deeds in town, backing up our local doughboys by working arm in arm with the Red Cross’s efforts on the home front. Alas, all good things must come to an end. For reasons long since disappeared into the ether of the past, the Mokena Camp Fire Girls dissolved in the spring of 1918. One by one they got married and started families, but in the words of their erstwhile guardian’s husband, each “always cherished the fond and pleasant memories” they had made with the Camp. Over the years, the girls held reunions where old times were re-lived and old Camp Fire songs sung, with these gatherings happening on an annual basis at least through the 1920s. The last known reunion took place in Mokena in the 1960s, when the girls were now mothers and grandmothers.

 

   The Camp Fire Girls of our village went above and beyond in their endeavors for our community. They reached for the stars bringing holidays to us that we now all too often take for granted. May their memories be immortal. The girls’ can-do attitude and their Mokena spirit come along once a generation. Even though over a century separates us from their deeds, they have set an example that would be a worthy one for us to follow. Who of us will take up the torch?