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    Naperville, Illinois
    Naperville, Illinois
    Naperville, Illinois
    Ebook233 pages55 minutes

    Naperville, Illinois

    By Jo Fredell Higgins

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The remarkable city of Naperville, Illinois, began as an agrarian community in the mid-1800s. The rich prairie filled the grain elevators and cattle were shipped to the Chicago "Yards." Through the medium of historic photographs, this book captures the evolution of the people of Naperville, from the mid-1800s to the present day. These pages bring to life the people, events, communities, and industries that helped to shape and transform Naperville. With more than 200 vintage images, Naperville, Illinois, portrays a community that is both idyllic and contemporary. This book takes readers back to Naperville's simpler days, and provides a glimpse as to how this community grew into a new mecca. Business and commerce thrive, the schools offer quality education, city services are national award-winning, cultural activities are diverse and plentiful, and traditions blend easily with the future.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439630013
    Naperville, Illinois
    Author

    Jo Fredell Higgins

    Jo Fredell Higgins has written two previous books for Arcadia's Images of America Series-Naperville, Illinois in 2001 and Geneva, Illinois in 2002. She is an internationally-published and award-winning writer, as well as a community leader who serves on five boards of directors.

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      Book preview

      Naperville, Illinois - Jo Fredell Higgins

      film.

      INTRODUCTION

      History is the ship carrying living memories into the future.

      —Stephen Spender

      History is a composite biography of those who have lived before us and left their social notions, business methods, public opinions, standards of morality, art, music, and photography. It is a kaleidoscope of life that now provides an ever-changing pictorial. About 175 years ago, DuPage County was a wilderness of Native Americans. It was a beautiful land, unknown to white men, peopled by savage tribes. A Frenchman named DuPage settled in l800 near the joining of the east and west branches of the river that now bears his name. He built a trading post on this fertile earth that lay rich for the coming hand of husbandry.

      The early settlers of Naperville, Illinois, included landed gentry and yeoman of Great Britain, Yugoslavia, Germany, Denmark, Scotland, France, Verl Prussia, Luxembourg, as well as Vermont, New York, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. They arrived in the mid-l800s, and built their homes, barns, and shops, raising their families on homesteaded land. It was an arduous but merry life that included spelling bees, threshing dinners, barn dances, and lots of reading. Lumber, hay, fuel, grain, seed, steers, coal, and cattle all were sources of labor and employment for those early settlers. Fertile prairie land sold for $28 an acre in l843. Original deeds to farms were occasionally written on buckskin. By l916, the Peter Olesen farmland cost $180 an acre for 190 acres east of Naperville on a road that was to be called Olesen Lane. In 1901, telephones were installed, followed by gas and then electricity, modern plumbing, the tractor, and milking machines. From this beginning of log cabins and blacksmith shops, from buggies pulled by grey Percheron horses, has grown the dynamic and progressive city of Naperville, Illinois.

      Listen, while I tell you of her story.

      We are members of one great body, planted by Nature in a mutual love and fitted for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole."

      —Seneca

      Pictured here is Mayor A. George Pradel. (Photograph by Jo Fredell Higgins.)

      Dear Reader:

      I would like to take the opportunity to welcome you to the city of Naperville as seen through the eyes and camera of Jo Fredell Higgins. Through painstaking research and diligent application to detail, a wonderful portrait has emerged about the history of this great city and the moments we wish to remember. The poet Longfellow wrote that His solemn manner and his words had touched the deep, mysterious chords that vibrate in each human breast alike. In reading this book your spirit will be touched and elevated, your knowledge of this particular place and time in the history of our city will be enhanced and enjoyment will abound. Do appreciate the beautiful photographs in this book as they show you both the past and the present Naperville.

      Enjoy the ride. The view is spectacular.

      Best Regards,

      Mayor George Pradel

      Mayor, City of Naperville

      In the Year 2001

      One

      A FARMER IN A FERTILE LAND JOSEPH NAPER

      In the early 1800s, there was no regularly traveled road west of Detroit or Cincinnati. The country beyond was unbroken and unknown, inhabited only by Indians and a few scattered settlements. The avenues of travel were Indian trails and buffalo runs. The stars and the sun were the only guides. A singular fact is that where the buffalo would have bivouacked would have been found the largest Indian village which, in turn, became the places which were natural locations for our great cities. The early roads became the trunk lines of the railroads. Thus, they came, the strong and silent heroes who brought their women and children in an ox wagon.

      Joseph Naper, captain of the Great Lakes sailing vessel the Telegraph, arrived on July l5, 1831, with his group of settlers. He made preparations to build a cabin at what is now the southeast corner of Mill Street and Jefferson Avenue. From DuPage County records we read that they trekked out to the west branch of the DuPage River, unloaded their belongings and put up their first rude huts about 2 miles north of Bailey Hobson’s cabin. In the autumn, the Naper brothers Joseph and John erected a sawmill. By the spring of 1832, the mill was in running order.

      Captain Joseph Naper was a seafaring man, master of the schooner Telegraph owned by Captain Benjamin Naper of Ashtabula, Ohio. When Captain Joe was commissioned to sell the ship to a buyer in Chicago, he took several families on the voyage from the Ashtabula River to the mouth of the Chicago, and then by wagon train to the banks of the DuPage River where he, in June of l83l, founded Naper Settlement. The settlers survived the first severe winter in their log cabins. Captain Joe staked his claim to the land under the Pre-emption Act of l820, allowing a homesteader 80 acres at $1.25 per acre. The pioneers used the timber for homes and for firewood, clearing the land in this way for later crops. Thus the wooded land beside the river was quickly gone. (Courtesy of the Naperville Heritage Society.)

      Willard Scott, son of Willard Scott Sr. and one of the beginning leaders of the new settlement, is pictured here on July l8,

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