A Grave Mystery

    Who doesn’t love a good mystery? From the story of the Loch Ness Monster, to the riddle of extraterrestrial life, and even the puzzle of the Zodiac Killer’s identity, they keep us spellbound, whether they happened yesterday or over a century ago. While Jack the Ripper never prowled the streets of Mokena, this writer can do you one better, for we have a mystery in our own midst. We have to turn back the hands of time 83 years, to the summer of 1939, and set the stage at the historic Front Street office of our town’s erstwhile newspaper, the News-Bulletin.  

   That first week of August, the paper was being assembled for its publishing date of the coming Friday. Various stories were laid out for inclusion in the issue, such as taxes to be raised in Marley, a series of nasty car crashes in Tinley Park, and the loss of Mokena’s only ball field to a property transfer. One column easily bested all the others though, and it was the one on the front page labeled Here is a Deep Mystery. The family of William and Margaret Semmler, the paper’s proprietors, even used a special bold, attention-grabbing typeface for the headline that they rarely used. 

 

      On Saturday, August 5^th, 1939, Local man Harry Barenz was busy on the Semmlers’ Front Street property digging a trench for a new cellar drain. He noticed something odd when the soil turned strangely soft after he had heaved through layer after layer of dark clay. As he stood in the five-foot-deep ditch, he noticed that the soft dirt was a mysterious dark shade that matched none of the others he had seen that day. As Barenz shrugged off the change and continued his work, he struck several pieces of wood. As he worked them loose, took them in his hands and picked off caked-on soil, he could tell that they weren’t pieces of root. Heavily rotten, he realized that one of them had a handle on it. A handle exactly like the kind used on old-fashioned coffins.

     This was something Harry Barenz couldn’t shrug off.

 

The office of the News-Bulletin on Front Street, the site of the mysterious grave unearthed by Harry Barenz in 1939. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

     As a feeling crept over him that was probably a mixture of apprehension and curiosity, he kept digging, but this time a little more gingerly. Within a few minutes, he realized he was surrounded by pieces of something else. He picked up a brittle rib, some ancient pieces of leg bone, and fragments of what seemed to be a lady’s shoe, a type of antiquated square-toed shoe that hadn’t been popular since well before the turn of the twentieth century. 

 

    It became clear that in digging the trench for the new drain, Harry Barenz had happened across a grave. After also having recovered some large, rusted spikes and a few more planks, he hurriedly alerted Editor Semmler to his find. The two flabbergasted men examined the deep furrow that hugged the northwest corner of the News-Bulletin office, and seeing that there was more wood in the ditch’s wall, reasoned that Barenz had unknowingly broken into the lower side of the long-forgotten casket. Over five feet of soil sat on the rest of the coffin, and for the time being, Mr. Semmler decided not to have the rest exhumed. 

 

    The lot on which the bones were discovered in 1939 counts as one of the most historic in all of Mokena. Today the home of an apartment building at 10842 Front Street, local lore has it that a Hessian by the name of Johann Martin Heim may have built a small, two room house on that site as early as the late 1840s, predating the first plat of Mokena by several years. One of the area’s first German settlers, Heim ran a small store out of his home, and numbered the builders of the Rock Island railroad among his costumers. In 1852 he completed an addition to his home and opened a saloon. Due to the fact that Heim was Editor Semmler’s grandfather, many tales of happenings at the tavern have survived. As the Heim place became one of Mokena’s more well-known watering holes, members of the Semmler family later recalled that the building served as a hangout for Union soldiers during the grisly Civil War, and also a premiere ball location, where fiddlers serenaded boisterous parties that “ran into the wee small hours of the morning”. 

 

Pictured around 1870 in one of Mokena's oldest known images, is the saloon of Johann Martin Heim, who is visible in the doorway. This structure stood until the late 1970s, when it was removed to make way for an apartment building, which today stands at 10842 Front Street. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

     Martin Heim seems to have run his saloon on Front Street until he died of pneumonia in 1886. Editor Semmler’s father, a Prussian cobbler by the name of John Semmler, worked from the building sometime after the turn of the twentieth century, and from 1919 until well into the 1960s, the Semmler family made the historic building the headquarters of our community’s voice, The News-Bulletin. In 1977, the old place was torn down, and Mokena lost one of its most meaningful landmarks. 

 

     By the time the mysterious grave was unearthed in 1939, ownership of the property had been in the same family for nearly 100 years. In spite of this fact, not one of the Semmlers had a clue who the fragile remains could have belonged to. In a special issue of the News-Bulletin twelve years after the fact, Margaret Semmler theorized that they could have been those of an early Potawatomi inhabitant of our area. While this can’t be ruled out, the fact that the bones were originally housed in a wooden coffin, and the presence of the shoe from a recognizable, yet heavily outdated fashion makes this idea improbable, as they reflect European American burial practices of the time.

 

      The earliest pioneers of what would later become Mokena didn’t always use organized cemeteries. At least two German families in this area used family plots on their farms, and it was alleged that a few children of early settler Tilford Duncan were buried in the vicinity of today’s Woodland Circle. To this day there are undoubtedly ancient graves hidden all over what is now Mokena, their exact whereabouts and the names of those within lost forever to the ages. 

 

     Maybe the bones uncovered in 1939 on Front Street belonged to a member of the Heim family? Interestingly, a check of congregation death records from the then-named German United Evangelical St. John’s Church revealed that a 12-year-old daughter of Martin Heim named Anna Maria died of rheumatism in 1875. While the remains uncovered in 1939 seemed to be female, they did not appear to belong to a child.  

 

     The cellar drain on the Semmler place on Front Street was eventually finished. Not quite sure what to do with the bones that Harry Barenz dug up, Editor Semmler displayed them in his office. Days and weeks went by. Summer turned into fall. The bones eventually faded into history and were lost. As a born reporter, Bill Semmler asked himself the who, what, and where about who was in the inadvertently discovered grave, but he never got any good leads. 83 years later, Mokena still hasn’t gotten any closer. In the words of the News-Bulletin, it has truly stayed a “deep mystery”. 

 

     However, it shouldn’t be easily forgotten that the grave wasn’t completely removed on that day in 1939. No evidence has since come to light that it was ever was, which leaves us with one question: Is it still there? 

Stick 'Em Up: The 1924 Robbery of Mokena State Bank

    On dusty small town Front Street, the acrid smell of soot from coal-fed locomotives would have greeted a visitor to Mokena in 1924. Citizens doing business passed on the street, where every face was familiar and every personality known. The old Mokena State Bank, a beacon of stoic white Bedford stone and solid red brick, stuck out among a sea of wood frame buildings. Founded in 1909 by a group of influential Mokena businessmen, this institution came to reflect a rock of financial stability in the rural farm village. It was here on Tuesday, October 27^th 1924, that one of Mokena’s most audacious crimes was committed. 

     At 31 years of age on that autumn day, Karl Krapp was a lifelong resident of Mokena and the bank’s assistant cashier. The son of one of the bank’s founders, Krapp found himself occupied with some bookwork behind the bars of his cashier’s cage. Perched atop a high stool, in his periphery he would have been aware of two men entering the building’s front door. In the matter of seconds, a .45 Colt pistol was shoved through the bars into Krapp’s face, and a brusque voice barked “Hands up!” The young cashier laughed at what he took for a mischievous joke, not an unexpected reaction in a small town where not much of note happened. Upon seeing the rage of the armed man when his order was not complied with, and that at least one of the men had a handkerchief wrapped around his face, Krapp realized the deadly seriousness of the situation. The bank was being robbed. 

 

     Also present in the bank at this time were local blacksmith Albert Braun and his brother-in-law Harry Peterson, as well as George Hacker, who not only was the bank’s cashier, but also served as Mokena’s mayor. Having held the small building in their firm grip, the two robbers herded Braun, Peterson, and assistant cashier Krapp into a rear room, where the bandits forced them to face a wall with their hands in the air. 

     The lead thief jammed his pistol into Krapp’s side and vulgarly threatened him as cashier Hacker was forced into the bank’s vault. Karl Krapp would later recall that the criminal’s weapon “felt like a cannon” and with his senses at their highest level of awareness, he expected a shot to ring out at any second. At the vault, bundles of currency were scooped into the second thief’s burlap sack; such was the robber’s haste that a packet of bills containing $200 burst onto the floor where it was abandoned.

Mokena State Bank on a better day. Pictured here around 1910 are, left to right, bank secretary W.H. Bechstein, John Cappel, cashier Frank Liess, and president Christian Bechstein. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

    As quickly as they carried out their brazen task, the criminals bolted from the bank and into a large touring car, where three comrades awaited them, one of which was said to be armed with a shotgun. The auto disappeared as it roared westward down Front Street. The robbers’ loot equaled slightly more than $4,000, consisting of paper bills as well as gold and silver. Measured by the standards of today, the value of the heist would equal approximately $50,500.

 

    In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, Mokena and the surrounding countryside became alive with law enforcement personnel. After being notified by local telephone office manager Clida Deadmore, Will County Sheriff John Walker and deputies from Frankfort, Joliet, New Lenox, as well as Mokena took up the chase. Initially these men were unsuccessful in getting ahead of the robbers, until the tread of the getaway auto’s tires was followed in Front Street’s dust over rural roads to an abandoned farm outside New Lenox.

 

    Approaching the light brown touring car with trepidation, attending deputies found the auto to be devoid of life. Inside were discovered the empty billfolds of George Hacker and Karl Krapp, which had been snatched from them during the robbery, as was the handgun which had been employed in the attack. The thieves’ loot was nowhere to be found. Most ominously, more tire tracks along the dumped vehicle indicated that a second car escaped with the wanted men, from which all traces dissolved into oblivion. In a last attempt to nab the fugitives, two police German shepherds were used to track down the men.   While promising at the outset, the presence of farmers in the surrounding fields quickly threw dogs off the target scent. 

 

     The trail seemed cold until shortly after the robbery, when Sheriff’s Deputy Walter Fisher, a Front Street storekeeper, took George and Vernon Touzen into custody. Newcomers to Mokena and initially claiming to be brothers, Vernon supposedly had been held at gunpoint outside the bank during the raid. During questioning, he eventually confessed that his actual surname was James. Their kinship wasn’t the only part of their story to be bogus; a claim of being prohibition agents also fell apart under scrutiny.   

 

    Having made what were deemed “suspicious statements” about the robbery by our town newspaper, the News-Bulletin, James and Touzen were summarily locked up at the county jail. In their absence, authorities removed suitcases from their temporary place of residence in Mokena, inside which were found not only matching ammunition for the robbery gun, but also piquant letters from local girls. 

 

    The issue of James and Touzen intensified when it was discovered that the pair were known to be friendly with John Frisch, a Mokena railroad worker and the village’s constable. Many in town openly wondered about Frisch’s involvement in the robbery, as one of the suspected twosome had recently swapped pistols with him. So loud was the mistrust against Frisch that the Mokena Village Board was forced to investigate him until Deputy Fisher vociferously defended him, stating that James and Touzen had “pulled the wool over Frisch’s eyes as to their intentions.”

 

     As history notes, no charges were ever formally leveled against James and Touzen. There was simply no conclusive evidence, no smoking gun tying them to any involvement in the robbery of the Mokena State Bank. After their release from jail a short time later, James threatened to exact revenge on Deputy Fisher, and promptly disappeared along with Touzen into the untraceable void of time. 

 

   Mokena was a changed place after the heinous robbery, with all strangers looked upon with suspicion. An unknown face would be asked to explain his business in town, and if a satisfactory answer wasn’t becoming, would be hustled out of the village. The bank was quickly stocked with firearms, and the building itself was fortified. Within a year of the robbery, the cashier’s cage was completely surrounded with bulletproof glass, while all woodwork in the bank was backed with steel, not to mention the windows that got bullet resistant screens. The doors to the cashier’s space and the president’s office also got a treatment of steel, as well as an apparatus that allowed them only to be opened from the inside by means of an electric button. The directors of the bank weren’t about to take any chances on the supposedly bulletproof glass, and invited Deputy Fisher to give it a test. On the afternoon of Tuesday, November 24^th, 1925, the deputy fired three rounds from his .38 caliber revolver into the glass. Not a single one made it through. The News-Bulletin was there, and noted that “the only effect on the glass was a whitening of the surface, same as seen on a piece of ice when it is struck.”

 

     Mokena may never know who was behind the robbery of October 27^th, 1924. Loose ends existed that were never followed up on, and ringers for the crime were released without charge. What is sure, is that the crime resonated so deeply in the collective psyche of this sleepy railroad village of decades past, that it is still remembered with dread to this day. 

The Currency of Time: The Early Days of Mokena State Bank

   Money makes the world go ‘round. While our streets have never been paved with gold, we’ve had a tidy financial institution within our village gates for well over a century that safeguards the treasures of our town folk. Weathering safe crackings, robberies, and global financial crises, it’s still with us to this day. What merged with the State Bank of Illinois in the first decade of the 21^st century, was originally the Mokena State Bank, which found its beginning in the summer of 1909. 

   While the institution has been around for as long as any of us can remember, it is not the first bank to exist in town. 25 years before anyone even dreamt of Mokena State Bank, the Mokena Exchange Bank was on the scene. Time has not been kind, and the narrative of this institution has proven impossible to reconstruct through the fog of the ages. It’s hazily remembered that it was in the hands of father and son Ozias and Erwin McGovney for a time, and that future Mokena mayor and Chicago Board of Trade man Noble Jones was running it in 1882, when a failed attempt to dynamite the safe shocked the community. Sometime in those last two decades of the 19^th century it went defunct, and nearly every trace of it was swept away by the ebb and flow of time. 

 

   At the dawn of 1900, Mokena found itself in something of a slump, with a mere 281 people living in the village proper at the time. Eastern Will County was still reeling after the nationwide Panic of 1893, which led many Mokena people and businesses to seek greener pastures. An increase in railroad commerce in the younger towns of Alpine, Marley and Orland Park that normally would have come our way also didn’t help matters, and neither did the lack of good roads in our neck of the woods. Starting in the autumn of 1907, Mokena underwent a rebound, first with the opening of the Bowman Dairy Company’s bottling plant on today’s Wolf Road, and then with the first inkling of a new bank in our neighborhood. 

 

   The roots of Mokena State Bank were planted as early as October 1907, when the state auditor issued a permit to Fred Ehlers, an enterprising merchant from Grant Park in Kankakee County, to form a bank in our village. Whatever his connection was to Mokena and his reasons for going into commerce here have long since been forgotten, but it stands on the historical record that he took three of our businessmen with him in the venture. However, the state of the economy was still a bit shaky at the time, and not totally conducive to establishing a bank, as William Semmler, Mokena’s correspondent to the Joliet Weekly News noted that a “financial stringency” was abounding in our midst. He went on to detail that “the people around here have not much faith in bank scripts and other bank paper money that is issued, so it is declared, will not accept any such money at any rate.” As such, the bank project went to sleep for a while. 

 

   It sprung back to life a little over a year later, when another mystery man came onto the scene. A Chicago attorney by the name of H. Gilbrath engaged himself promoting a state bank in Mokena. Over those last few weeks of 1908, the idea was looked upon quite favorably by village folk. Optimism was in the air, and in reporting on the developments for the Weekly News, William Semmler wrote 

 

“Our business people and prominent citizens, as well as dairy farmers have come to the conclusion that a bank in this town would not only greatly improve business facilities, but will also benefit the town, and as we hope, prove to be a stepping stone to future worthy enterprises.”

 

   Stock in this new institution was being subscribed for at such speed, that just before Christmas it was confidently declared that “For its size, the bank will be one of the strongest in the county.” The local investors set their calendars for their first meeting on Saturday, January 2^nd, 1909. On a day filled with meaning, they chose 55-year-old Christian Bechstein as the first president of the Mokena State Bank. For many years a LaPorte Road agriculturist but lately a resident of the village, Bechstein had a seven-year term as mayor behind him when he took the president’s chair. He remained captain at the bank’s helm until the day he passed away in 1924. Filling the vice president’s position was George Cooper, member of prominent local farming family, while the secretary’s spot was taken by local grain merchant William H. Bechstein; President Bechstein’s nephew. Rounding them out was the youngest of the group, 31-year-old Frank Liess, who became cashier, a position akin to a modern teller. A further ten men were chosen for the new bank’s board of directors. 

 

   In early 1909, the new bank’s building committee was working on plans for their brand-new structure, and had engaged an architect named John Ahlschlager to draw up the plans. While he was a resident of Chicago, Ahlschlager had grown up on a farm a few miles southwest of town, while his family had been early members of St. John’s Church, proving that all roads lead back to Mokena. That March, after scouting for locations in the village, cashier Frank Liess bought a Front Street lot from elderly Franziska Stoll, that he in turn would sell to the bank for a handsome $550 before the year was over. The businessmen in charge of the concern couldn’t have asked for a better location, it being directly across the street from the Rock Island depot and smack dab in the middle of everything in Mokena. 

 

Mokena State Bank, as it appeared around 1910. Seen in the doorway are cashier Frank Liess (left) and president Christian Bechstein (right). This regal building stood on the north side of Front Street, about 75 feet west of Mokena Street. (image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   As spring dawned, a fortuitous moment came when the bank’s building committee assembled at secretary William H. Bechstein’s grain office on Mokena Street and awarded the contract to Alfred Wenberg of Joliet to begin construction on the edifice. It would measure in at 36 by 22 feet, have solid brick walls and a regal façade of Bedford stone, containing stately columns and an august shield bearing the name Mokena State Bank. In May of 1909 ground was broken on the Front Street lot, and the first building materials began arriving over the Rock Island. The outlook was good, with the Mokena Phoenix-Advertiser boasting that “Mokena will have as fine a bank as any town of its size in the country.”  Another important contract was let in this time, namely for the bank’s steel lined vault, its burglar-proof door, an inner safe and 50 deposit boxes, all of which would be “of the best steel and workmanship.”

 

   As the walls rose on Front Street, last minute modifications were being made. A small addition was tacked onto the rear of the still-incomplete building to house its heating and lighting system in July, which proved to a month of great progress. Mokena concrete mason Julius G. Oswald and his workforce were busy plastering the walls then, while the character-rich stamped steel ceiling went in at the end of the month. In the first few days of August came the steel vault, which weighed in at 10,400 pounds, not reckoning in its door, which alone came out to 4,800 pounds. 

 

   All the finishing touches were being put on Mokena’s newest gem, and before the doors were finally thrown open to the public, all the modern conveniences such as an adding machine, a coal-fed stove for heat, and before long, a telephone were installed. Opening day came on Saturday, August 14^th, 1909, and it was a very busy day indeed, as 500 souvenir fans were given away. No small feat, as the population at the time was only a touch over 350 residents! The next big rush came for the newly unveiled Lincoln pennies, as many town folk wanted them for souvenirs. 

 

Scenic Front Street looking east towards Mokena Street, circa 1915. Mokena State Bank is visible at left. 

 

   All in all, the Mokena State Bank cost $5,000 to build, and by the end of September, $30,000 had been deposited there, roughly equal to over $900,000 in today’s money. It was an institution of financial security, and one of the stateliest buildings to ever grace our village. The old building served us faithfully for 63 years, busy as a beehive, and emerged from the Great Depression without as much as a scratch. The historic edifice was substantially remodeled and added onto in 1956, in a way that one could almost describe as brutal, as all of the grace and dignity of the original building were obliterated. In the end, the bank was unceremoniously erased from our landscape in 1972. 

 

  Join me on April 3rd, when we will explore a watershed moment in the history of not just Mokena State Bank, but also the village at large, when we’ll go back to the fall of 1924, to the day gun-toting ruffians terrorized our town. 

Up and Away: The Moving of Mokena Buildings

   Like it or not, we’re a society that doesn’t sweat throwing something away. While easily replacing many items might make life easier, it also has a bad effect on our environment and lends to shoddy craftsmanship. In stark contrast, our forefathers were of the “waste not, want not” cloth, and calling them resourceful would be an understatement. In foregone days across the country, as in Mokena, if uses for a property changed, a structure would sometimes be hoisted up and moved to a new location instead of being wastefully torn down. 

    Be it using teams of horses and log rollers, or much later, completing the process with trucks, Mokenians were avid building movers. As early the 1870s, the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church took on a project in which donations from the congregation moved the small, disused village schoolhouse and attached it to their newly-purchased parsonage on Third Street. Built in 1855 on the Public Square bounded by Third Street, Union Street, and Second Street, the school had first been vacated when a new house of learning was put up on Front Street, then came to fill St. John’s need for their own parochial school. While the move wasn’t a particularly long one, the little building having been lugged only around 300 feet, the old school got 50 extra years of use before it was detached from the parsonage at some point in the 1920s. It still stands at 11121 Third Street, one of the oldest structures in the village. 

 

    St. John’s was involved in yet another building relocation when two local brothers purchased the landmark house of worship, had it pulled a short distance, and converted into a duplex. When the then-named St. John’s German Evangelical Church opened their current, grandiose edifice in 1923, the days of usefulness for its original 1862-vintage sanctuary were over. After having acquired the church building, Milton and Roy Krapp had it moved in March 1925 from Second and Union Streets to a lot on the southwest corner of First and Division Streets, just behind their Front Street hardware store. 

 

    Not all cases of transplanting buildings were so lofty. A simple, by the books example is the example of Simon Hohenstein and Paul Rinke, saloon keeper and butcher respectively, scooting a small residence down Front Street in 1902. The two promptly converted it into an icehouse. Another typical case is that of farmer Dick McGovney, who in 1916 moved another Front Street structure, the village’s small wooden jail, to a spot south of today’s LaPorte Road, where it became his rustic home. 

 

     The transplanting of buildings didn’t always go smoothly. In the first days of 1908, local general merchandise firm Liess Brothers resolved to set down a barn behind their store building, which stood at the location of today’s 11018 Front Street. The structure originally stood south of the Rock Island tracks near the grain elevator, and as it was gingerly rounding the corner of Front and Mokena Streets, its roof got snagged on some telephone wires, and their pole snapped under the pressure like so much kindling. According to a story passed down through the generations, in roughly the same era the Bostrom family had their domicile moved down LaPorte Road, only to have the house get bogged down in a low spot. In frustration at the hiccup, the family had the house set down near that point. 

 

    Our village forebears didn’t necessarily have historic preservation in mind when they moved buildings to and fro across the village, but their ingenuity has enabled us to still count significant historic landmarks in our midst. When the old St. John’s church was moved in 1925, a long piece on its history and its proto-recycling appeared in Mokena’s News-Bulletin. Nostalgically taking the building’s 1862 construction to mind and looking brightly into the future, the paper stated that “Barring fire or storm, this building can be of service for 62 years or more.” 62 years have long come and gone since these words were first written in 1925, and the sanctuary turned house still stands solidly. Instead of wanton destruction, Mokenians of yore re-used. We would do good to learn from them.

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)